The Time Has Arrived…
Well it’s almost been three years since I had the honor of addressing a private career college of graduating business students. It was certainly an evening to remember, for I had never done anything like that before.
When asked to deliver the speech, I was remiss at saying yes, as I didn’t have the foggiest clue of what to talk about. I mean what could I offer that would have had any bearing on a group of young graduates eager to enter the work force? I racked my brain for ideas and thought about that great expression “walking a mile in another’s moccasins” thinking if I were them, what would I like to hear knowing what I now know with the benefit of hindsight?
Oddly enough, I can’t remember what was said some 25 years earlier at my commencement address. Not sure if that’s a reflection on the speaker or whether it was just my lack of attention. It was most likely the latter. In any event, looking back over all those years, I came to the conclusion that really three fundamental things had marked my career and life since that hot spring graduation day (funny that I do remember it was hot). They are three things that epitomize the essence of life and all that it means. And so it was on that late summer night three years ago that I came to speak about dealing with change, taking action and developing trust. I called it The C.A.T. Principle with the hopes that an acronym would somehow leave these thoughts embedded upon those eager minds that day.
Whether or not that was accomplished, I’ll never know. But what I do know is that the reception I received from the students, parents and relatives afterwards surprised me. Many parents and elderly relatives came forward saying that they never contemplated life in this way, and wished that they had heard these things when they had graduated. Needless to say, I was somewhat flabbergasted and taken aback. After all, change, action and trust; aren’t they simple concepts that everyone understands? It appeared not, or at least not in the manner I had described them. It was then and there that it dawned on me that a compact and easy to understand book relating these three intrinsic life ingredients might just be a good idea.
Click forward almost three years, and that book has now, finally, become a reality. The process of writing is never an easy one, at least not for me. But sure enough, a little writing here, a little writing there, the words do start to add up. Sometimes breaks of months intervened before the pen was picked up between thoughts, but even in spite of that, the book marched toward its completion. I’m definitely a tortoise, but even a tortoise eventually reaches its destination.
So here I am to say that the time has arrived…yes, the tortoise has finally made its way to that greatest of rivers, namely that great river named Amazon…
For more check out The C.A.T. Principle: Change, Action, Trust – Words to Live By, a 2014 Global Ebook Awards Nominee, available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
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