Christmas or holiday the year you were
12 I do while my friends were begging
their parents for gerb Oh genes and Sony
Walkmans I pled for my mother to bring
me a Franklin day planner it might have
been the only 12 year old in history but
it was a real goal and I had high
anticipation and on Christmas morning I
opened up a box of success goodness my
friends were walking around the
neighborhood donning a label over their
zipper and listening to cassette tapes
and almost obsolete technology I was
writing a mission statement
prioritizing to-do lists and getting
very organized this was not a phase I
grew out of in fact I had a paper
planner all through high school and
college only taking a brief break for a
Palm Pilot
speaking of obsolete but I’ve read all
the books and I could plaster walls and
small communities with all the personal
development books I’ve read things like
smart goals and planning and
productivity and purpose and having a
high positive outlook on life all became
tools and mantras for me to live a
high-performance life and then people
said well why don’t you come and teach
us your things because I started using
these tricks to start businesses and
start a family and grow in my career and
be successful in marriage after I failed
the first one of course it was just a
starter but now as we move into teaching
corporations and organizations about
high performance and success now we
start to have a real conversation about
what really matters and then people
would come to me afterwards and say
thank you this is great do you have a
book and I didn’t and I would recommend
books by the three C’s Covey Canfield
and Christensen and then the time came
for me to write my own book myself
published it at first and then later it
got picked up by a national publisher
not one of the top ten out of New York
but I saw that international
distribution
my book was available on Barnes & Noble
and at Target and at Amazon and it never
quite did what I wanted it to do turns
out if you want to be number one even in
just your category do not launch a book
the same time as Tony Robbins but in
this book that I came to know and love
and put all of my success principles and
there’s one chapter that I love the most
on positivity now in the book I talk
about how being positive can actually
make you more successful that looking on
the bright side will help you succeed in
your goals while I still believe this to
be true I figured something out after my
book launched because the book launch
came and went and I sat there and
thought not what I’ve worked on the book
for six years and I can cast
anticipation excitement and thrill and
then it comes and goes
and then it’s down and over the last 12
months I’ve kind of wandered a little
wondering what really mattered not
knowing what to write about next or what
to work on next and then I learned
something really powerful that while
positivity is important actually just
pursuing our goals and our dreams makes
us happier regardless of the outcome we
live in a world with millions of
self-help books and unknown numbers of
success coaches yet 90% of the world
still reports feeling unfulfilled why is
that does the world really wear us down
does reality really sink in I’m sure we
could pass around the microphone and we
could share with each other our tales of
personal whoa statistically speaking in
this room we have people who are
divorced caring for aging parents caring
for kids with disabilities we also have
people who are struggling financially
people who are trying to figure out how
to overcome loneliness and even just
paying the bills our problems are real
but how can our dreams and everyday
despair coexist in 2012 a think tank
called the world happiness report
surveyed individuals
in 156 countries all over the world
something they continue to do and they
report back every spring to the United
Nations with their findings they ask
individuals in their own language to
evaluate their life on a ladder where
zero represents the worst life possible
and ten represents the best life
possible now before we go into the
findings I want you to answer that
question for yourself on a scale from
zero to ten how would you rate your
current life where zero represents the
worst possible life and ten represents
the best possible life now let’s dive
into the findings it was hypothesized
that those from companies hunt countries
like America that have stronger
economies and more technological
advances would have higher levels of
satisfaction than those from
underdeveloped countries or would it be
the other way around I was surprised to
find that across every economy every
country and every culture the findings
were evenly distributed and the median
answer was five just five and as I think
about these findings as we evaluate
whether or not we consider our life to
be wonderful
or great it doesn’t matter what our
opportunities are I believe that where
there’s a lack of purpose there’s a lack
of progress where there’s a lack of
progress there’s a lack of happiness see
inside each of us we have this inherent
innate need to want to progress we want
to do more we want to be more we want to
have more and yet we wander around
saying well this is the way life really
is could be better could be worse I’m a
five now I was raised by an eternal
optimist
she had happiness quotes plastered all
around our house and she wore the
Chinese character for happiness all
around her neck and she would talk to us
all the time about how looking on the
bright side is the most important and
understanding her reality made that very
valuable to me as an adult she was a
single divorced mother care
for four kids and my youngest brother
has Asperger’s syndrome and the world
teaches us about the optimist and the
pessimist the world teaches us that the
pessimist looks on the bad side and the
realist sees things as they really are
and the optimist looks on the bright
side and as I became an adult I started
to feel like being the optimist wasn’t
enough the challenges that were coming
my way seemed to be only dealt for
people that had stronger abilities
stronger skins and yet I craved
happiness and then I realized there was
something more called
the happiest H a P P why I st the
happiest doesn’t just look on the bright
side the happiest is the bright side
they’re the ones going after their goals
and the dreams they’re the ones looking
around for people who want to do the
same and helping make their dreams a
reality the happiest is the way
happiness is not the destination
it’s a practice and all too often we put
that at the end of what we want to
achieve I’ll be happy when I get that
promotion I’ll be happy when I publish
the book I’ll be happy when I lose that
ten pounds
or twenty but until we realize that
happiness is the way we’re missing the
point
but as we go about doing the things in
our souls that we really care about not
the things that we should do but the
things that we want to do because with
the challenges that we have wouldn’t it
be possible that if we all were going
after our hopes and dreams and if they
were preserving us even in the midst of
our challenge that our realities could
be enveloped by the things that we care
about in our hearts and maybe just maybe
reality isn’t why we’re here in this
human existence
maybe reality is the distraction for who
were meant to be and what we are meant
to feel the happiest is the only way to
live and while I was a little bit
confused about it as a child wandering
as an adult if I could really make that
happen I realized that my mom was the
happiest she was being the bright side
for us she was being the bright side for
other people in the midst of her
challenges and she survived some of the
hardest things because of her outlook
she just didn’t know it then she didn’t
know that she was the happiest but now
if you’re hearing this you do and you
know and you can become this in your
every day lives and as I’ve thought
about this even more I start to get
excited and companies have been calling
me not to talk about high performance in
the min the height of my high
performance book launch they’re asking
me to talk about happiness because they
know that it’s about more than
productivity and planning it’s about the
things that we feel that matter in our
businesses in our homes and in our
personal lives and now I know what to
write about next don’t live like a 5 you
have one life
[Applause] [Music]