News from Mr. Smith
Posted on February 05, 2012 by Chaya Abelsky, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.
What kind of adult are you?
What does creating ideal triumph in your life mean to you?
What does success look like?
Imagine, this morning, you receive a call:
“This is Tim Smith, senior partner at Smith, Deringer and Lewis,” the voice on the phone says. “I’m calling to inform you,” he continues in a syrupy Southern drawl, “an elderly man in McDermitt, Nevada, who wishes to remain anonymous, picked your name out of the phonebook and named you his heir. You’ve just inherited $752,222,344 after taxes and fees.” After you ask a few pointed questions to make sure this isn’t a cruel scam, Tim gives you the address of his office’s Manhattan headquarters, where a bank check is waiting for you with his receptionist.
You now possess three quarters of a billion dollars. You make yourself a cup of coffee, and you sit at your kitchen table, thinking about the money. How does it change your plans? How does it change who you are?
How would $752,222,344 change your life?
Most of us build our lives in reactionary mode –often reacting to both our childhood and financial pressures. My career was certainly a reaction to both: when I became an independent adult, I rejected the simple, spiritual life I had been raised to value and sought material possessions. I worked hard to earn money, and when success came, I bought lots of pretty, shiny things. I built a successful life on this foundation of reaction: Every day I put on my strong suit and worked like a robot until the day was done. My mind was focused on what I had, and what I was going to have. My life was a continuous cycle of buying things, paying bills, working, buying more things, paying bigger bills, working harder, and on and on and on.
I never heard from Tim Smith, but I did receive a more subtle wakeup call: My son was ten years old when he started looking forward to his Bar Mitzvah. “What’s going to happen?” he asked me one morning, as we walked home from a friend’s kiddush. “What does it mean?” I explained to him how important a milestone a Bar Mitzvah was. We talked about what it means to be a grown up, how each of us shapes our life, and how I, as his mother, hoped he would shape his own. That night, I couldn’t sleep. As I tossed and turned, my conversation with my son came back to me… what it means to be a grown up… how we create our own life. I was struck, deeply, by how badly I needed to consider the very words I was trying to teach my young son. I had spent my adult life in a cycle of reaction to my family and my finances – but who was I really? What kind of adult was I? What kind of life did I actually want?
It was a life-changing realization. It left me feeling lost. Beyond trying to prove to myself that I was financially successful – who was I really? I had no idea what I really wanted my life to be about. A few days later I was talking about this new awareness with a friend of mine, and she ‘introduced’ me to Tim Smith.
“Imagine,” she challenged me, “you got all this money, so you didn’t have to worry about bills or buying things, you had everything you desired. If Tim Smith called and told you that – how would that change your life?”
It’s been five years since I ‘met’ Mr. Smith.
I now run “Triumphant Journeys” a thriving business as a Personal Certified Coach as well as “High Impact Coaching” an institute, developed in partnership with Brooklyn College, that trains life coaches. My life is no longer about money, bills or shopping. It’s about what I love to do most: helping other people realize their dreams. When I went through the process of discovering my passion, I realized how much I enjoyed it, and after learning from some of the best coaches in the world at New York University, I’m now in a position to empower others to find their own truths, to become their best selves – and even better, I educate others so they too, can fulfill their own purposes as coaches, and begin an exponential process of empowering others.
I don’t have three quarters of a billion dollars, but the intriguing thought experiment of imagining I did, helped catalyze me to explore what I wanted beyond financial success. And I got something better than three quarters of a billion dollars: on that proud day when my son became a man, as I watched him walk to the front of the shule to accept his new role of responsibility as a grown up, I could feel assured that I was setting a good example of a thoughtful adult life.
In closing, I return you to your kitchen table, with Tim Smith’s news ringing in your ears. If you could escape from the materialistic rat race – who would you really be? What you be capable of? Once you figure that out, can you find the courage even without a real Mr. Smith, to build the life of your dreams?
