Detective Duffy looked through the hole in the wall that he had drilled. And held his breath in disbelief. The bed in the apartment had been flipped upside down, and shredded through, as if it were paper. The wallpaper looked like a cat was sharpening its claws. A large cat. A very, very large cat. In fact, 500 pounds of Bengal tiger. And all 500 of those pounds cooped up in a tiny apartment in Harlem, New York.

If we would care just a little more… We can lead a business that will bless the lives of others. And that very act will live on, somewhere, somehow, in someone’s life. Long after the show is over.

I knew I was gawking. I knew my mouth was wide open, as I stared at the doors. That pair of great, weather-beaten oaken doors at the front of this magnificent place. This place of memories. This place. My cousin and I looked at each other. Our mouths unable to form the words finding their way across our faces. Countless decades on, we remembered everything, as if it were yesterday morning.

“Have I Brought Joy To Others?” Surely, for those of us fortunate enough to have experienced decades of adult life… This is the essential Bucket List Question.

Competition demands the best of us. But I wonder – when this spills over into our working life – whether we know when to stop competing, vanquishing, dominating.

I believe many of us are called to do a Greater Work than we’re currently attempting. The challenge (I’ve found in my life) is that Greater Work comes with a need for us to change.

There are so many voices. They flood us with their information. They smother us with their opinion. On top of which every Best Practice Meeting tells us “This is how you do it. Just copy me.” We think that by copying their Best Practices, we’ll become successful and happier too. It seldom works that way.

If you’re going to recruit people… If you’re going to have (seemingly) little people in your life… Recruit them with the intention to build and nurture them into people who are, ultimately, at least as amazing as you.

Scaling up… growing… competing… dominating a market… These are all excellent, exciting, driving aspirations, and create much innovation, satisfaction and fulfilment. Yet for everything we choose there’s a trade-off.