« Success Tip - Ten Habits of Successful People | Home | Success Tip – The Key to Motivation is Having a ‘Why.’ »

Success Tip - Life Lessons Worth Remembering

By arbutuscoaching | February 2, 2010

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll remember that I wrote a couple of weeks ago about my 77-year-old Dad, Gary Santini, being admitted to hospital for emergency surgery.

To our great surprise, the man we dubbed the ever ready battery who despite quadruple bypass, kidney and prostate cancer, a number of  aneurysms and much, much more who kept going and going finally ran out of energy and passed away January 24, a day before his 78th birthday.

In honour of my Father, who taught me many life lessons, I’d like to pass on some of his wisdom to you. He was a wise man and I know you, my readers, will benefit from a few of his pearls.

A few lessons, in no particular order: 

v    Demonstrating a great work ethic is an invaluable legacy to leave your children, or for that matter anyone around you. They say children pay less attention to what you say than what you do. Dad was an incredibly hard worker, and one of our last conversations was about how I had that trait too. While it was nice to be acknowledged, I believe his great example impacted me and helped me realize the importance of loving what you do and doing it well.

v    Successful people value learning and are the stereotypical life long learners. Dad was one of the brightest men I ever met (with apologies to Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, who I’ve never met), who was fascinated with the world. He was well read on a variety of subjects, extremely well travelled and spent his life deepening his understanding of his personal world and the world at large.

v    Don’t discount those who don’t have a degree or formal education. My Dad, like Bill Gates who quit Harvard to start Microsoft was a self-made man whose education ended in 1950 at Grade 13. In North America one of the first questions we ask each other when first meeting is “What do you do?” It’s worth exploring beyond that to discover what treasures the particular person we are talking to has to offer us. People are sometimes like oysters, the outside is rough and unattractive, but if you dig a little deeper you just might find a pearl.

v    And lastly, the importance of having a vision and not waving your white flag prematurely. Dad started Parklane Homes, B.C.’s largest home builder in the 1980s, at a time when interest rates were in the upper teens. Not a lot of people were buying houses and I was privy to some very serious conversations about Plan B around the dinner table. By hanging in there, during the darkest hour, he reaped incredible rewards.

Take Action Challenge

Make a list of 10 lessons you learned from the important people in your life when you are growing up. When reviewing them, think about which beliefs serve you and which ones don’t. Lastly, what beliefs could you replace the ones that don’t serve you with? Replacing beliefs that don’t work for more productive ones will improve your life immensely, because we see the world through the filter of who we are, not as it is.

We’ll be exploring how beliefs create our personal worlds in the group coaching program My Best Year Yet, which starts tonight, Feb. 2, 2010 at 6 p.m. PST. For more information and to register, visit http://www.arbutuscoaching.com/group.php 

Kathy Santini
Arbutus Coaching – Growing People and Possibilities
250 388-6108
Kathy@ArbutusCoaching.com
http://www.ArbutusCoaching.com


If you don’t subscribe to Arbutus Coaching’s newsletter, Growing People and Possibilities, you’re missing out on some valuable coaching tips which will make your life easier and you more effective. To subscribe, go to Arbutuscoaching.com\newsletter.php.

What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver, poet

Topics: Success |

Comments