Personally, Heather has achieved great levels of success in her life. Dedication, time, and accountability are the three building blocks if you want to achieve success and fulfill your dreams.

Five tips for a successful life by Heather Hans

1. Believe in yourself – Our desires are the stimulus of our thoughts. Therefore, whatever you have achieved so far has a direct relation to the fact that you had faith in yourself that you could do it. Once this undying faith is established, you can move on to other steps to obtain success.

2. Attain total health and healing – There is a strong interrelation between mind-body-spirit. Therefore, you should work on developing a harmony within your mind, body, and soul – the trio serves as the foundation for success. You can take help of self-help books and professionals in your goal to sustain a good physical, mental and spiritual health. Be diligent in your efforts and always trust your instincts.

3. Discover your inner desires – Explore within and find out your deepest desires. Together with your hard work, the law of the universe would also turn in your favor to let you accomplish your goals. Ascertain the goals that are in tune with your values. The law of attraction states that focusing on positive thoughts will give you positive results provided your goals are in harmony with the world. The universe will push you towards your goals if they sow the seeds of love and betterment of the world.

4. Align your goals and be brave – Positive thoughts can certainly help create a positive aura to achieve a goal but only intentions wouldn’t help. You need to work hard to create a blueprint of your goals. Create plans, seize the opportunities, develop a proactive nature and look for results. A number of factors would try to stop you from achieving your big dreams, these are mere roadblocks, ignore them. Diligently work towards your goal. Remember, if something is not happening as per your plan, a new plan would do the trick. Don’t give up at any step.

5. Enjoy your life – The whole exercise of dream fulfillment is to help you realize your inner desires and lead a happy life. So why not enjoy it while in the process of dream fulfillment. If you are enjoying the whole process, you would be more relaxed with your present state and hence will have renewed energy that will drive more creative ideas and results. Besides, what is more satisfying than enjoying life.

These five success strategies from Heather Hans can put you on the road to success. Follow these step-by-step to lead a harmonious life.

Adapted from an article by Heather Hans on Digital Journal.com.

Image courtesy: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Today I am going to talk about keeping the spark shining. Or to put it another way, how to be happy most, if not all the time.
Where do these sparks start? I think we are born with them.

My 3-year old twin boys have a million sparks. A little Spiderman toy can make them jump on the bed. They get thrills from creaky swings in the park. A story from daddy gets them excited. They do a daily countdown for birthday party – several months in advance – just for the day they will cut their own birthday cake.

I see students like you, and I still see some sparks. But when I see older people, the spark is difficult to find. That means as we age, the spark fades. People whose spark has faded too much are dull, dejected, aimless and bitter. Remember Kareena in the first half of Jab We Met vs the second half? That is what happens when the spark is lost. So how to save the spark?
Imagine the spark to be a lamp’s flame. The first aspect is nurturing – to give your spark the fuel, continuously. The second is to guard against storms.

To nurture, always have goals. It is human nature to strive, improve and achieve full potential. In fact, that is success. It is what is possible for you. It isn’t any external measure – a certain cost to company pay package, a particular car or house.
Most of us are from middle class families. To us, having material landmarks is success and rightly so. When you have grown up where money constraints force everyday choices, financial freedom is a big achievement. But it isn’t the purpose of life. If that was the case, Mr. Ambani would not show up for work. Shah Rukh Khan would stay at home and not dance anymore. Steve Jobs won’t be working hard to make a better iPhone, as he sold Pixar for billions of dollars already.

Why do they do it? What makes them come to work everyday? They do it because it makes them happy. They do it because it makes them feel alive Just getting better from current levels feels good. If you study hard, you can improve your rank. If you make an effort to interact with people, you will do better in interviews. If you practice, your cricket will get better. You may also know that you cannot become Tendulkar, yet. But you can get to the next level. Striving for that next level is important.

Nature designed with a random set of genes and circumstances in which we were born. To be happy, we have to accept it and make the most of nature’s design. Are you? Goals will help you do that. I must add, don’t just have career or academic goals. Set goals to give you a balanced, successful life. I use the word balanced before successful. Balanced means ensuring your health, relationships, mental peace are all in good order. There is no point of getting a promotion on the day of your breakup. There is no fun in driving a car if your back hurts. Shopping is not enjoyable if your mind is full of tensions.

You must have read some quotes – Life is a tough race, it is a marathon or whatever. No, from what I have seen so far, life is one of those races in nursery school, where you have to run with a marble in a spoon kept in your mouth. If the marble falls, there is no point coming first. Same with life, where health and relationships are the marble. Your striving is only worth it if there is harmony in your life. Else, you may achieve the success, but this spark, this feeling of being excited and alive, will start to die.

One last thing about nurturing the spark – don’t take life seriously. One of my yoga teachers used to make students laugh during classes. One student asked him if these jokes would take away something from the yoga practice. The teacher said – don’t be serious, be sincere. This quote has defined my work ever since. Whether its my writing, my job, my relationships or any of my goals. I get thousands of opinions on my writing everyday. There is heaps of praise, there is intense criticism. If I take it all seriously, how will I write? Or rather, how will I live? Life is not to be taken seriously, as we are really temporary here. We are like a pre-paid card with limited validity. If we are lucky, we may last another 50 years. And 50 years is just 2,500 weekends. Do we really need to get so worked up? It’s ok, bunk a few classes, goof up a few interviews, fall in love. We are people, not programmed devices.

I’ve told you three things – reasonable goals, balance and not taking it too seriously that will nurture the spark. However, there are four storms in life that will threaten to completely put out the flame. These must be guarded against. These are disappointment, frustration, unfairness and loneliness of purpose.

Disappointment will come when your effort does not give you the expected return. If things don’t go as planned or if you face failure. Failure is extremely difficult to handle, but those that do come out stronger. What did this failure teach me? is the question you will need to ask. You will feel miserable. You will want to quit, like I wanted to when nine publishers rejected my first book. Some IITians kill themselves over low grades – how silly is that? But that is how much failure can hurt you. But it’s life. If challenges could always be overcome, they would cease to be a challenge. And remember – if you are failing at something, that means you are at your limit or potential. And that’s where you want to be.

Disappointment’ s cousin is Frustration, the second storm. Have you ever been frustrated? It happens when things are stuck. This is especially relevant in India. From traffic jams to getting that job you deserve, sometimes things take so long that you don’t know if you chose the right goal. After books, I set the goal of writing for Bollywood, as I thought they needed writers. I am called extremely lucky, but it took me five years to get close to a release. Frustration saps excitement, and turns your initial energy into something negative, making you a bitter person. How did I deal with it? A realistic assessment of the time involved – movies take a long time to make even though they are watched quickly, seeking a certain enjoyment in the process rather than the end result – at least I was learning how to write scripts, having a side plan – I had my third book to write and even something as simple as pleasurable distractions in your life – friends, food, travel can help you overcome it. Remember, nothing is to be taken seriously. Frustration is a sign somewhere, you took it too seriously.

Unfairness – this is hardest to deal with, but unfortunately that is how our country works. People with connections, rich dads, beautiful faces, pedigree find it easier to make it – not just in Bollywood, but everywhere. And sometimes it is just plain luck. There are so few opportunities in India, so many stars need to be aligned for you to make it happen. Merit and hard work is not always linked to achievement in the short term, but the long term correlation is high, and ultimately things do work out. But realize, there will be some people luckier than you. In fact, to have an opportunity to go to college and understand this speech in English means you are pretty damm lucky by Indian standards. Let’s be grateful for what we have and get the strength to accept what we don’t. I have so much love from my readers that other writers cannot even imagine it. However, I don’t get literary praise. It’s ok. I don’t look like Aishwarya Rai, but I have two boys who I think are more beautiful than her. It’s ok. Don’t let unfairness kill your spark.

Finally, the last point that can kill your spark is Isolation. As you grow older you will realize you are unique. When you are little, all kids want Ice cream and Spiderman. As you grow older to college, you still are a lot like your friends. But ten years later and you realize you are unique. What you want, what you believe in, what makes you feel, may be different from even the people closest to you. This can create conflict as your goals may not match with others. And you may drop some of them. Basketball captains in college invariably stop playing basketball by the time they have their second child. They give up something that meant so much to them. They do it for their family. But in doing that, the spark dies. Never, ever make that compromise. Love yourself first, and then others.

There you go. I’ve told you the four thunderstorms – disappointment, frustration, unfairness and isolation. You cannot avoid them, as like the monsoon they will come into your life at regular intervals. You just need to keep the raincoat handy to not let the spark die.

I welcome you again to the most wonderful years of your life. If someone gave me the choice to go back in time, I will surely choose college. But I also hope that ten years later as well, your eyes will shine the same way as they do today. That you will Keep the Spark alive, not only through college, but through the next 2,500 weekends. And I hope not just you, but my whole country will keep that spark alive, as we really need it now more than any moment in history. And there is something cool about saying – I come from the land of a billion sparks.

- Chetan Bhagat
Writer

Chetan Bhagat is a one of India’s most popular writers of English fiction, rated by New York Times as the greatest selling Indian author of all time; he was also included by Time Magazine in the list of the most influential people in 2010. His best selling books include Five Point Someone, One Night at a Call Centre, The 3 Mistakes of My Life and Two States. Some of his books have been adapted to make Bollywood films. The above speech was delivered by him to welcome a new batch of BBA students at the Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies in Pune, India.

Three stories. Three key messages. That’s what Steve Jobs, the founder and CEO of Apple, had to give to the graduating class of Stanford 2005 in his memorable and inspirational commencement speech. One of the most popular and motivating commencement speeches of all time, it has been circulated by e-mail countless times or published on websites around the globe. There is a certain timelessness to this speech.

For many, Steve Jobs has a reputation of being a egotistical and selfish boss, who is driven by an insatiable appetite for success. But listening to this speech gives a completely different picture of the man. Here’s a man who was given up by his unwed biological mother before he was born;, who never graduated from college; who depended on free food from a Hare Krishna temple for the ‘one good meal a week’, who is today a multi-billionaire, but probably more importantl y, the driving force of a company that changes the shape of industries with products that have truly passionate buyers. Humility has seldom been associated with Steve Jobs; but in this speech, he displays tons of that. Perhaps it is the rags to riches story, the fact that he is a truly self-made guy that touches a chord in everyone’s heart.

Nevertheless, there are three key messages that Jobs delivers in this speech.
> Connect the dots: A lot of things that happen in life are the result of conscious (and may be even not-so-conscious) choices we make. Believe that the dots will get connected in some way, keep faith. Let’s say, this is Jobs’ way of asking you to believe in the Law of Attraction.

Continue to love, even if you lose: With his own personal example of getting fired from the company he found and nurtured into a multi-billion dollar enterprise in a few years, Jobs inspires you to continue to do what you love, even if you have lost. Love is important, loss is a mere obstacle. Keep up the passion.

Death: He uses death to draw attention to the importance of focusing on what’s more important, on what you want to do instead of living somebody else’s dreams. It is a reminder to make the best possible use of time. Death is perhaps the most powerful time management tool.

Of course, there is his most powerful message in the end– one that this speech has become synonymous with. He implores the young graduating students to “Stay hungry, Stay foolish”.

An insatiable hunger is the key for continuous improvement, and continuous renewal, without which even the best brains will wither and die. And we have been shown time and time again, without ideas that were always considered outrageous and foolish ideas, our world would have been a completely different – and less exciting- place.

Read the complete transcript of Steve Jobs’ Stay hungry, Stay foolish speech.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960′s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

- Steve Jobs
Founder & CEO of Apple

This is a transcript of Steve Jobs’ commencement address to the graduating class of Stanford in June 2005. One of the most inspiring commencement addresses, this is one speech that doesn’t fail to give some goosebumps and a lump in the throat no matter how many times one reads or hears it. Watch the Stay hungry, stay foolish video.

At that age, I’d take any excuse to make estimates and do minor arithmetic. I’d calculate our gas mileage — figure out useless statistics on things like grocery spending. I’d been hearing an ad campaign about smoking. I can’t remember the details, but basically the ad said, every puff of a cigarette takes some number of minutes off of your life: I think it might have been two minutes per puff. At any rate, I decided to do the math for my grandmother. I estimated the number of cigarettes per days, estimated the number of puffs per cigarette and so on. When I was satisfied that I’d come up with a reasonable number, I poked my head into the front of the car, tapped my grandmother on the shoulder, and proudly proclaimed, “At two minutes per puff, you’ve taken nine years off your life!”

I have a vivid memory of what happened, and it was not what I expected. I expected to be applauded for my cleverness and arithmetic skills. “Jeff, you’re so smart. You had to have made some tricky estimates, figure out the number of minutes in a year and do some division.” That’s not what happened. Instead, my grandmother burst into tears. I sat in the backseat and did not know what to do. While my grandmother sat crying, my grandfather, who had been driving in silence, pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway. He got out of the car and came around and opened my door and waited for me to follow. Was I in trouble? My grandfather was a highly intelligent, quiet man. He had never said a harsh word to me, and maybe this was to be the first time? Or maybe he would ask that I get back in the car and apologize to my grandmother. I had no experience in this realm with my grandparents and no way to gauge what the consequences might be. We stopped beside the trailer. My grandfather looked at me, and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, “Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever.”

Differences between gifts and choices

What I want to talk to you about today is the difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy — they’re given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you’re not careful, and if you do, it’ll probably be to the detriment of your choices.

This is a group with many gifts. I’m sure one of your gifts is the gift of a smart and capable brain. I’m confident that’s the case because admission is competitive and if there weren’t some signs that you’re clever, the dean of admission wouldn’t have let you in.

Your smarts will come in handy because you will travel in a land of marvels. We humans — plodding as we are — will astonish ourselves. We’ll invent ways to generate clean energy and a lot of it. Atom by atom, we’ll assemble tiny machines that will enter cell walls and make repairs. This month comes the extraordinary but also inevitable news that we’ve synthesized life. In the coming years, we’ll not only synthesize it, but we’ll engineer it to specifications. I believe you’ll even see us understand the human brain. Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Galileo, Newton — all the curious from the ages would have wanted to be alive most of all right now. As a civilization, we will have so many gifts, just as you as individuals have so many individual gifts as you sit before me.

How will you use these gifts? And will you take pride in your gifts or pride in your choices?

Following your passion
I got the idea to start Amazon 16 years ago. I came across the fact that Web usage was growing at 2,300 percent per year. I’d never seen or heard of anything that grew that fast, and the idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles — something that simply couldn’t exist in the physical world — was very exciting to me. I had just turned 30 years old, and I’d been married for a year. I told my wife MacKenzie that I wanted to quit my job and go do this crazy thing that probably wouldn’t work since most startups don’t, and I wasn’t sure what would happen after that. MacKenzie (also a Princeton grad and sitting here in the second row) told me I should go for it. As a young boy, I’d been a garage inventor. I’d invented an automatic gate closer out of cement-filled tires, a solar cooker that didn’t work very well out of an umbrella and tinfoil, baking-pan alarms to entrap my siblings. I’d always wanted to be an inventor, and she wanted me to follow my passion.

I was working at a financial firm in New York City with a bunch of very smart people, and I had a brilliant boss that I much admired. I went to my boss and told him I wanted to start a company selling books on the Internet. He took me on a long walk in Central Park, listened carefully to me, and finally said, “That sounds like a really good idea, but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn’t already have a good job.” That logic made some sense to me, and he convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision. Seen in that light, it really was a difficult choice, but ultimately, I decided I had to give it a shot. I didn’t think I’d regret trying and failing. And I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all. After much consideration, I took the less safe path to follow my passion, and I’m proud of that choice.

Tomorrow, in a very real sense, your life — the life you author from scratch on your own — begins.

> How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make?

> Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions?

> Will you follow dogma, or will you be original?

> Will you choose a life of ease, or a life of service and adventure?

> Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions?

> Will you bluff it out when you’re wrong, or will you apologize?

> Will you guard your heart against rejection, or will you act when you fall in love?

> Will you play it safe, or will you be a little bit swashbuckling?

> When it’s tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless?

> Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder?

> Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?

I will hazard a prediction. When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story. Thank you and good luck!

- Jeff Bezos, Founder, Amazon.com

This is the transcript of the commencement address by Jeff Bezos, an inventor and founder of Amazon.com, to the class of 2010 at Princeton delivered on May 30, 2010. Bezos is an alumnus of Princeton.

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If given a chance, will you try to find passion in your job or to make your passion your job?

I believe those who had tried and/or are still trying to find passion in their job, will find it hard to succeed. In any part of our life, we are always being told what we should do and what we should not do. But how do these people who tell us know exactly what we like to do and what we are actually good at? Take for example, Mother A tells her son that he should pursue a business degree because it is essential for him to climb the corporate ladder. Or, Father B tells his son to study medicine because most of their family members are in the medical industry. Mother C tells her daughter to study law because she can earn good money and have a good living standard. Mother D tells her son to stay put in his current job, regardless of his unhappy situation there, just because it is hard to find a job in a tight economic situation. Many of them remain unhappy because they have to find passion in their job, which is hard.

Imagine this. You are sitting on your couch, thinking about what you really like to do, your life purpose and passion. Suddenly you see the light and you know what you want in life. Do you have the courage to pursue it? What are the fears and worries? Do you start questioning yourself with the “what if”, “how” and the “but”? Are these the subjects that are stopping you from initiating your first step to your life purpose?

The person in you who questions you with the “what if”, “how and “but” is your ego. Your ego hates to see you being awakened and be yourself. He is always trying to stop you from pursuing your own happiness. He tries very hard to associate you with him. Therefore, in order to be able to handle this false identity, you need to separate yourself from your ego. Once you are able to separate yourself from your ego, you will be able to put your mind at ease and pursue the life you want.

Next, start working on the passion and seize opportunities. Turn your passion to competency. If you need to pick up new skills, go and acquire the skills. You might need to pay some money to learn these skills but it is worth investing your time and money as you will figure it out. Keep experiencing different things. Do not fear failures. Great men failed multiple times before they could succeed. If you are new to the industry, find mentors and leverage on their skills and experience.

You don’t have to quit your current job to embrace your newfound passion. You can do it as a freelancer. Once you are confident with the business, you can go full-time and this could be your second career.

Constantly visualize the happiness in you, doing what you like to do. Understand the Law of Attraction, that is, positive thoughts attract positive energies. I found my passion 20 years ago, that is singing. Now, I am embracing my passion full-time, teaching voice. I found my purpose in life and am living my life to the fullest. I am sure you can too. If you enjoy what you are doing, you will not mind working for long hours because every second is an enjoyment.

Here is a step-by-step guide to find and live your life purpose:

- Find your passion – what do you like to do?

- List down all the positive barriers such as acquiring new skills. Invest in it if there is a need to.

- Start working on your passion. Seize opportunities. Look for mentors who can help you build your career.

- Don’t be afraid of failures. Experiment with different things. Learn from every failure.

- Set your goal and vision. Ensure your goal and vision points towards inspiring people and enriching others’ lives rather than mere monetary goals.

- Don’t worry about the outcome, just embrace and enjoy the process. If you are positive you will attract positive energy and good things will happen to you.

Carina Tien is the founder of The Voice Room, Singapore, and specializes in voice and speech training. The Voice Room has recently launched a Voice Teaching Mastery Program, allowing inspiring entrepreneurs to be trained and have a head start to the voice teaching profession. The Voice Room promotes: Self-Confidence; Opportunities; Entrepreneurship; Life Purpose; Passion; Dreams and Self-Achievement. Find out more on The Voice Room Website.