Advice, part 4: Improve

Wait, it's been a week already? Then, clearly, you must be waiting for my words of wonderful wisdom.

Improve

Two of my favorite books are by Richard Bach - Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah. Neither would be things that most people who know me would likely predict.

On the back of my copy of the latter novel is a simple quote that seems relevant for this week's wisdom:

Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't.

The world is what it is. The people around you are who they are. You are what you are. None of the three is anywhere near perfection.

Do what you can to improve them all.

I'm not saying that everything you do has to make the world or the people around you or even yourself better every minute of every day, but be sure that you're doing something from time to time. But start meking some sort of difference here and there.

For some of you, that means that you should set big, hairy, audacious goals so that you can see the big picture, the whole direction in which everything is heading. These are the whole-to-part folks. These are the ones who write big goals on the fridge: be a millionaire by forty, run a marathon, fit into 34-inch pants by June. The goal is always kept right in front of them, and they let the small things fall into place.

The rest of us need to take small steps here and there and let those steps add up to something more. We're the ones who instead choose to invest $50 a month, exercise daily, stop eating pop-tarts. These little steps grow over time and become something larger.

Both approaches work for different people.

But do something.

"Make you the world a bit better or more beautiful because you have lived in it." - Edward Bok's grandmother

Make sure that the world that you leave behind you is a little better than the one that you entered. This ties in nicely into last week's bit of advice: give, but this week adds in the advice that you need to remember to take time to improve yourself.