GRADUATION

A Message for Those Born in the 80s and 90s.

?I delivered a graduation address at Sydney University recently which took me back to my 20s, a decade that’s transformative, a train wreck or anything in between. My 20s were certainly more of a trainwreck than a transformation.

This is what I said to the students.

The four years I spent here were the most important years of my life, though I didn’t recognise that at the time.

My education turned me into a lifetime learner.

So please don’t graduate and turn learning off.

It’s the beginning of your wisdom journey, not the end.

Learning for me from the day I could read has always been like a hunger that I couldn’t satisfy.

‘The beautiful thing about you learning,’ said B.B. King ‘is that no one can take it away from you.’

My education also gave me my greatest gift.

The knowing that I was smart. Not PhD or academic smart, but smart enough.

Once you know you are smart enough then you can do whatever you want in life.

I left university with a world view and a passion for travel and an understanding that this great big place we call the earth is connected on so many different levels.

My much-maligned arts degree also liberated me.

How so?

Because I was not directed into a specific career lane. I could work in whatever industry or profession I wished, and I often only brought responsibility and reading and writing skills to a problem or a project.

The final thing I took from here was an appetite for life and for reading and research and for solving problems through hard work.

I left here with an understanding that if you worked hard, you got better at things. Your marks improved.

Here are some other lessons I have learned since I graduated -most of them absorbed after the making of mistakes. No mistakes mean no learning as far as I can see and there’s no improvement from inside your comfort zone.

‘There’s nothing to be learned in the second kick of a mule.’? - Samuel Clements.

1.?Turbulence is normal.

I was a very nervous flyer after a bad flight in my 20s between Athens and London. Lightning outside the plane window, a Greek Orthodox priest sitting next to me praying loudly and screaming passengers and hostesses. You’ve got the picture.

I went looking for a way to fly calmly and I found a book about planes that told me that they are over engineered for turbulence and will not break up in the sky.

The book also said that turbulence was just like the current and swell in the ocean. It was normal.

And then I was walking through a London Bookshop and saw a book called ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway’ by Susan Jeffers and I understood that my fear of flying would not magically go away so I had to acknowledge it and just do it anyway.

2.?There is not a right path in life, there’s just your path.

Trying to follow someone else’s path is more like acting.

Some of us find our path, some of us don’t.

Some find it early in life and some of us discover our path much later.

Don’t stop looking.

Lennon and McCartney could not read music and they became the most successful songwriting team in history.

3.?You do not need a destination in life you just need a direction. I’ve never had a destination.

In your twenties you might not have either but that’s ok because even vague directions are enough.

Travel is a direction.

Life experiences are a direction.

Acquiring new skills is a direction.

Even shaping your personal values or working out what you don’t want to do with your life are directions.

Your 20s and 30s are a lot like exposure therapy so don’t waste these decades. Go and expose yourself to as many experiences as you can because in so many ways, these are THE most important years of your lives.

4.?Curiosity drives everything important in our lives. Our betterment, our relationships and most importantly our continual growth.?

Don’t be afraid of people and work hard at being a fearless asker of questions.

Don’t just ask normal questions.?

People will always answer your questions despite your fears that they won’t and particularly if the questions are about them because we are always our favourite subject.

?To be interesting, be interested.

Asking questions also gives you control of conversations and shows people you care.

In years of interviewing CEOs and writers and politicians I cannot remember anyone refusing to answer a question, but I can remember some long pauses while they formulated a good answer to my question.

This pause is a nod to the quality of the question and to the questioner.

I have collected good questions all my life.

5.?Clarity comes mostly after you act, not before.

I once spent a year overseas mid-life waiting for clarity on a big question.

What should I do with the rest of my life?

The answer never arrived.

6.? I was never much good at the work-life balance thing.

I climb into bed with an empty tank most nights.

I sleep well though and l like most of what I do but here’s the thing.

We only get one life and it’s not a rehearsal.? I understand why lots of people don’t live to work but work can be rewarding however you define work.

I have also learned importantly that if you work a lot then you can weave good things into your workday, pilates or movies or an afternoon nap or meditation or coffee dates with friends. Put them in your diary.

?All work and no play is dumb.

7.? Looking outside yourself always for what ails you is tough.

In fact, if you think the answers to problems are always someone or something else your life will be full of pain and you will never have control of your emotions or your life.

“If it's going to be, it's up to me,” as an attitude is liberating.

8.?The 5 most powerful words in the English language are

Please

Thank you

Sorry

Why

No

Use them often, particularly the last one.

9.? Depleted is different to defeated

We are all depleted right now after Covid and fear is in everyone’s veins, not just in the veins of the anxious.

Covid taught us we all need a

depletion strategy.

Sleep

Good food

Friends to talk to.

Meditation

Professional help if needed.

The pandemic also taught us we all need to belong to a community.

10.? Gratitude and generosity.

Gratitude really saved me in my 30s.

My twenties had tested me, and it was not until I found a purpose in life that things started to make sense and I began to feel like I belonged in this world and not in some other world.

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you work out why,” said Mark Twain?

I found out in my 30s that I liked helping people and that generosity was about giving to give, not giving to get.

If you are a giver, find a job or profession or organisation which has helping people as its business model. It’s your natural home.

11. Understand that we all have the shitty little voice in our heads and sometimes it’s there when you least expect it like when you walk up to a podium to speak to a graduating class.

This voice tells us we are not worthy.

It tells us to compare up, which is a no-win game. It tells us not to put ourselves forward which stops so many good people from prospering in their lives.

Nod to the voice and walk right past it.

Don’t engage.

It wins when you engage.

Remember, it’s not your voice it’s just a shitty little voice.

12.?Patience

I was born bereft of patience.

I would pay someone to stand in an atm queue if I could, so patience is hard for me.

There’s a line in a Paul Kelly song that goes something like ‘Do you know how to wait?’.

I didn’t know how to wait for many years.

We all must learn how to wait if we want to build anything good in our life.

Nothing good happens quickly as far as I can see, only bad things happen quickly.

Joyce’s novel Ulysses is recognised as a seminal work of art.

Its creation took him 7 years, 20,000 hours, 8 illnesses, and 19 different houses.

13.?Earnestness.

A shout out here for all the earnest people on our planet.

Without you the world will stop.

Earnest people are the glue of all our organisations and our communities.

If you are earnest, be proud and understand you are invaluable in this world.

14.?Self-esteem, which I used to think was solely genetic, can be acquired over time by doing esteemable things.

Self-esteem is joined at the hip with confidence and they both accumulate.

Just do good things.

Help people and care for people and share with others and I can assure you your self-esteem will grow.

15.?Careers do not need to be linear or singular.

Careers can be squiggly today or you can have parallel careers and work in different spaces as I have.

‘I don’t have a career I have a life,’ said

Tilda Swinton.

19. Hard things are hard.

20. Pick the right advisors in your life and only take criticism from people you would take advice from.

21. Improvement is incremental, even granular.

22. Spend time deeply thinking, not just responding.

A CEO friend of mine retired recently and told me in the months after she stopped work, she realised that 80 % of what she had been doing in her working day was crap.

Responding to emails and reacting to stuff.

23. Your attention is your responsibility and distraction today is our biggest challenge.

‘We all now live in a world of nothing but distractions with a blizzard of stimuli,’ said

Maureen Dowd.

You need a distraction strategy from the get-go as disruption will be your biggest challenge in years to come. Discipline is the vital ingredient here.

?Finally, I want to tell you that if you have a head full of dreams and unrealistic ideas that’s ok as I have lived my whole life inside such a head.

Like all of you this is my first graduation because I missed my own decades ago as I was in the Galilee in Northern Israel working on a kibbutz.

Thank you all for passing your exams so I could finally get to wear the academic gown and hat and get a photo to prove to all my friends that I really went to university.

I want to leave you all with a quote from a great Australian, Betty Churcher.

“Talent only gets you to the bottom of the hill.”

Thanks for listening.

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