Plan To Serve, Not Be Rich
Graduation season is upon us and for graduating college, university and professional students the pressure is on to earn some money and start paying back some loans. One might think the best way to do that is by getting a job that pays a lot of money, but sometimes the best way to your goals is by finding a way to serve others.
In the commencement speech given by Oprah Winfrey to Stanford’s 2008 graduating class, Ms Winfrey makes exactly this point. The commitment to serve is better than the commitment to make a lot of cash. She has been the long time recipient of the rewards of such actions. It can sometimes seem like wealthy people become wealthy through wily wheeling and dealing, but in realty the truly successful take something they love and share it to the benefit of others. Whether that love is acting, researching, playing a sport or talking, the first task is the passion for the field, the second is to serve. It is what makes the challenges, the risks and the failures more endurable. Without this passion the failures appear to be failures rather than moments that can teach. Moments that can make your teen stronger, wiser and better able to complete the next tier of challenges.
This year’s graduating class is being put out into a world with seeming despair, but in reality more hope than ever before. It is in the ebb of the economy, the wealthy, the dreams of society that a big dreamer can find some way to make their mark as did the millionaires of the great depression (e.g. Rockefeller, ford and Vanderbilt). The goal is to serve, to help, to ask how you might be used to make this world better than it was before your teen’s arrival that they can find the type of inspiration that creates amazing inventions like the car, the internet and yes the blackberry.
So at your next graduation affair ask the teen before you what they plan to do to serve rather than what they plan to do to make some cash and really give them a jolt in the right direction.
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