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ОглавлениеHarvey Keitel and Windows of Opportunity
I don’t always get it right (I told you I’m no guru). But please know that I try so hard to walk my talk and to ensure my video is in alignment with my audio. Still, I am a human being, and that means sometimes I slip (I’ve yet to meet a perfect one). Here’s what I mean.
I spend a lot of time encouraging the readers of my books and the participants at my workshops on personal and organizational leadership to “run toward your fears” and to seize those “cubic centimeters of chance” (opportunities) when they present themselves. I challenge my clients to dream, to shine and to dare, because to me a life well lived is all about reaching for your highest and your best. And, in my mind, the person who experiences the most wins. Most of the time, I am a poster boy for visiting the places that scare me and doing the things that make me feel uncomfortable. But recently, I didn’t. Sorry.
I was downtown at the Four Seasons in Toronto, in the lobby getting ready for a speech I was about to give to a company called Advanced Medical Optics, which is a long-standing leadership coaching client of ours and an impressive organization. I look up and guess who I see? Harvey Keitel. Yes, the Harvey “Reservoir Dogs Big Movie Star” Keitel. And what does the man who wrote The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari do? I shrink from greatness.
Each day, life will send you little windows of
opportunity. Your destiny will ultimately be defined by how you respond to these windows of opportunity.
I don’t know why I didn’t stand up and walk over and make a new friend. I’ve done it with baseball legend Pete Rose at the Chicago airport (we ended up sitting next to each other all the way to Phoenix). I did it last summer with Henry Kravis, one of the planet’s top financiers in the lobby of a hotel in Rome (I was with my kids, and Colby, my 11-year-old son, thought he was pretty cool). I did it with Senator Edward Kennedy when I saw him in Boston. I even did it with guitar virtuoso Eddie Van Halen when I was a kid growing up in Halifax, Nova Scotia. But I missed the chance to connect with Harvey Keitel.
Each day, life will send you little windows of opportunity. Your destiny will ultimately be defined by how you respond to these windows of opportunity. Shrink from them and your life will be small. Feel the fear and run to them anyway, and your life will be big. Life’s just too short to play little. Even with your kids, you only have a tiny window to develop them and champion their highest potential. And to show them what unconditional love looks like. When that window closes, it’s hard to reopen it.
If I see Harvey Keitel again, I promise you that I’ll sprint toward him. He may think I’m a celebrity stalker until we start to chat. And then he’ll discover the truth: I’m simply a man who seizes the gifts that life presents to him.
