Flinging Yourself into the World

My students always ask me what business books I would recommend.  I’ve put together and presented my top ten business books and done a short presentation on those the last 4 semesters.  There are the typical suspects:  The E-Myth, Good to Great, Traction, The Breakthrough Company, and Never Eat Alone. There are a few that reflect my own personal quirks, like The 4-Hour Workweek and The New Capitalist Manifesto. But I lead and end with a book that has most likely NEVER made any list of business books: I Will Not Die an Unlived Life by Dawna Markova.

My reason is simple – live your life with intention. As you build a business, engage is a career, start a family, become a community member – make sure it matters. Matters to you and to others.

Today I share with you Dawna’s poem, which comes from the book, and a challenge. As leaders, business owners, parents, friends, board members, neighbors, voters and in all the places where you can contribute – are you? Are you showing up with intention? Are you planting seeds and nurturing seedlings so that your life is both fully lived and makes a difference – today, tomorrow and ten years from now?

LIVING WIDE OPEN
By Dawna Markova

I will not die an unlived life.

I will not live in fear

of falling or catching fire.

I chose to inhabit my days,

to allow my living to open me,

to make me less afraid,

more accessible,

to loosen my heart

until it becomes a wing,

a torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance,

to live so that which came to me as a seed

goes to the next as a blossom,

and that which came to me as blossom,

goes on as fruit.