"What's the Meaning of Life?"

     What’s the meaning of life? Well, who the hells knows?… I am sure there are religious, scientific, and philosophical answers to this question… But I’m not going to try and research any of these here…

What I will do however, is give my hypothesis on what it takes to succeed in life… I call it, “The Four Tenets of Life”… I truly believe that any success story encompasses these four items and every disaster story can be traced back to a failure to achieve one of the four.

Organization – “if you can’t find it… you can’t get it to them”

This is the downfall of many endeavors. If your ducks aren’t in a row, don’t even bother entering the shooting gallery. Organization allows for quick and accurate responses that help to build one’s confidence in your information and abilities. This is the first building block of developing relationships with your customers, personal or professional. If you can provide thorough, complete, and efficient answer within easily decipherable formats, you will get what you need from people more often than not.

Communication – “if you can’t explain what you need… you aren’t going to get it"

Communication is key to getting a job done. Despite thorough documentation, there isn’t a person in this world that possesses all knowledge. People depend on the knowledge of others. This knowledge cannot be transferred (or even requested for that matter) without the ability to write, speak, and think clearly. People will eventually stop coming to you for assistance, or providing you assistance if the communication is garbled and indecipherable. Most people do not want to spend their time decoding the intent of an email, letter, or phone call. You will receive quicker and better responses from people if they can determine a request easily. If you can’t convey what you want, how can you expect it to happen?

Honesty – “you might get away in the short term without it, but you will lose in the long run”

This must be the foundation of any relationship, be it personal or professional. Long-term trust (and success) cannot be attained without it. One might be able to “pull a fast one” and get away with it in the short run, but this “success” can’t be maintained. Honesty will create a relation that more often than not will lead to “win-win situations.” Everyone knows in business, the goal is to create an advantageous position for oneself. Honesty will create the aforementioned symbiotic relationship that is more likely to propagate. Furthermore, if you are honest, your reputation will precede you in many circumstances, putting your audience at ease and making mutually beneficial arrangements much easier to achieve.

Passion – “if you don’t want to get it done… you won’t”

Nothing gets done without passion. Check that, nothing ever gets done well without passion… Passion is the best motivator. This is not to say that Passion will make efforts noble or goals moral, but will help to achieve your goals… Look at Billy Bob Clinton… He had a passion to become President like no other… His steps to attain this position may not have been the most admirable, but with Passion at every step, he overcame all sorts of shortcomings to become the most powerful man in the world…Passion makes it possible.

RESPONSE::::

    When you die, if you get a choice between going to regular heaven or pie heaven, choose pie heaven. It might be a trick, but if it's not, mmmmmmm, boy! -JH