As I’ve talked about here on this blog and in plenty of other places, gratitude is something I’ve made a lifetime habit of practicing. It’s an automatic part of my everyday life.
But it so happens that today is my birthday—my 80th birthday, as a matter of fact. And there’s something about a birthday that makes you especially reflective, isn’t there? You just can’t help but look back on the experiences that have led you to where you are, and give a little extra thought to where you want to go next.
Now, I don’t get hung up on age as any kind of marker of what I should be feeling or am supposed to be doing. Never have. Yet there’s no denying that 80 years gives you a particularly abundant stretch of road to ponder.
Henry Ford said, “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.” I agree so profoundly with this observation. I have met 20-somethings ancient before their time, bereft of a stimulating, fulfilling present or a compelling vision of the future, all because they have neglected to nurture that glorious thinking stuff knocking around in their heads, and no one has ever persuaded them otherwise or shown them how to do it. I WAS one such 20-something, until that guardian angel of a friend pressed Think and Grow Rich into my hand and changed my life forever.
My learning odyssey began that day and has never stopped, not for one moment. For that reason I am, in every way that matters, younger today at 80 than I was on that day so many decades ago. If there ever was a fountain of youth, lifelong learning is it. And it’s right out there in the open, available to each and every person on this planet. Helping other people to discover it and reap all of the incredible rewards that accompany that discovery has been my life’s work.
Every once in a while, someone will ask me when I’m planning to retire. The concept is truly unfathomable to me. I do what I love to do. I fight going to sleep at night because I hate to stop doing it, even for a little while. I bound out of bed in the morning because I can’t wait to get back to doing it. Retiring from that would be retiring from life itself, and that is something I have no plans to do.
Today, with 80 extraordinary years behind me, I am filled to the brim with gratitude and thanks for everyone and everything that has brought me to this point, and helped lay the groundwork for the path that lies ahead.
Thanks for the great mentors and teachers of my past—those I was fortunate enough to know personally and those I came to know through the legacy of their words and ideas—who opened my eyes to the limitless horizon of possibility and opportunity that exists for me and for all of us.
Thanks for the incredible family, friends, colleagues and partners of my present, who inspire me, support me, have made this critical work their own and advanced and expanded it in ways I would never have imagined.
Thanks for each and every one of the hundreds of thousands of individuals who have come to one of my seminars, picked up one of my books, been one of my students or listened to one of my programs, and proven the value of this work I love and believe in so much.
And thanks for YOU, reading this right now. You who are taking action to do, be and have MORE in life. You are the greatest gift I could ask for. You are the birthday wish that keeps coming true, every single day.
Tweet Bob’s Birthday out now!
