Tony Inman - If Lifes Worth Doing, Its Worth Doing Well: Finding Sane Fulfillment in an Insane World

The following is one of my favourite quotes of all time. Its from a speech given by President Theodore Roosevelt entitled Citizenship in a Republic, which was delivered at the Sorbonne, in Paris, France on April 23, 1910. From the moment I read it, the words have influenced me profoundly, because they are an endorsement of my lifes philosophy: Life is too short not to give it your best shot. When you are about to take your last breath in this world, you and your higher consciousness, whatever that means to you, are the only ones who can truly judge whether you did or did not do all that you could have in your life.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt 26th President of the United States

In the occupation of being a business and lifestyle consultant, coach and mentor, as I am, we say to people, Start with the end in mind. In business, that means think about your endgame or your exit plan. In life, it means think about the legacy you will leave behind you for your family, your friends, and perhaps even for mankind.

Greatness is a subjective perception.

You can greatly influence mankind by becoming a billionaire and making space flight available to the masses like Sir Richard Branson, or you can be relatively anonymous, yet still deeply influence another life or even several lives. You can be a great adventurer, a great sportsman perhaps, or you might simply be a great lollypop lady who helps children cross roads safely. In truth, the very fact that you exist means you are already great. To simply be a blend of the sperm that won the race among millions of contestants, with the egg that awaited its arrival, already makes you part of the miracle of existence.

Whatever your situation, whatever your circumstances, you have the power to evolve and become something greater still. What that greater being is, however, is for you to figure out. If you do figure out what it is, then you probably also need to figure out why it is worth going after. If you cant figure out, Why? then maybe the question should be, Why not?

Heres the ultimate twist in the game of life, in my opinion, and you dont have to agree with me thats okay either way...

Whether you succeed or whether you succeed differently, either is fine. There are always lessons to be learned from both.

Its not the destination that counts; its the journey.

Maybe thats the ultimate answer to the question of the meaning of life! In the satirical TV programme, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy , one of the characters asked, What is the answer to the Ultimate question of Life, the Universe and Everything? After painstaking and exhaustive research, many years later, the answer was given as 42. I think the point of the satire was that the answer is, Whatever you want it to be. There is no right or wrong answer. There are only perceptions that we form, based on our understanding of the world and how it should be, which are based on our values and our beliefs. It is when other humans act in accordance with their values and beliefs, which may suit them, but may be diametrically opposed to our own, that we see no rhyme or reason to their behaviour. In such cases, we often label them as criminal, evil, stupid or worse. Another great man whose teachings have influenced me tremendously is Dr. Wayne Dyer. He said, We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. Rather, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.

That is why, in your dreams, you can be anyone you want to be. You can do anything you can possibly imagine, because there are no limits. If you want to leap over a building with one jump, you can become Superman! You can dive with sharks, wrestle crocodiles, bed a famous movie star... (Watch out though. They might be similar experiences!). It also might explain that connection that we feel with other humans. You know how you can think of an old friend, and the next day, they call you out of the blue or you meet them unexpectedly? Thoughts are energy. In fact, human bodies are really a mass of energy. If youve ever seen a dead person, youll know that the body seems totally different when that life force has gone somewhere else.

Another of my teachers, Carl Buchheit from the NLP Institute in Marin, California, explained the concept of duality in that spiritual connection with the example that you cant have a victim without a murderer or a murderer without a victim. The two spirits are inexorably linked. Furthermore, when he explained his research into family systems, he revealed that the families and descendants of both the murderer and the victim become linked spiritually, until forgiveness is achieved and peace takes the place of the unease. Its very powerful work and perhaps best left for another book.

A point I do wish to make to help explain my statement of no rights or wrongs, is that there is a duality to everything. Yes, there is a duality in good and evil, black and white or yin and yang, because thats part of the balance that has to be there right down to the fundamental building blocks of life itself: protons and neutrons. Heres what another of my teachers, the incredibly inspirational Dr. John Demartini said: