More Hungry!
Hunger is insolent and will be fed. – Homer (Greek poet, author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, 9-8th Century BC)
One night after delivering a sales tele-coaching session, one of my students told me that he had mentioned to his team while listening to the call that I was very aggressive in my approach, a comment to which one of his team members replied, “no, he’s Hungry.” I was thrilled with the description because if there was ever anything I want to be known as it’s hungry…in other words, never satisfied and always searching for more or the next level in whatever I’m involved with. To be like that has often times left me in a lonely place in a world where acceptance of average or mediocre seems to be the norm. What some people have described as success, I have only seen as a simple step forward…do you really believe that even if you were to achieve great success like a sport’s championship, graduating with high honors, growing and selling a company for multi-millions, having a bunch of healthy children or grandchildren, that it just ends there at the pinnacle? Of course not, there is always MORE!
Recently, I had the opportunity to hear Gene Simmons, the co-founder of the rock band Kiss, speak to a crowd of marketing students about his business and life philosophy. If you ever get the opportunity to hear Gene speak, don’t miss it! This guy’s desire is tireless. By way of background you should know that he is the son of a holocaust surviving mother whom he credits with instilling in him a great work ethic prodding him to always “shoot for the stars”, which he used in his focused pursuit of success in the entertainment business. This effort ultimately resulted in Kiss breaking every attendance record set by Elvis Presley and the Beatles and is America’s #1 Gold Record Award Winning Group! KISS continues to be the juggernaut of the licensing and merchandising world with over 2,500 licenses! Incredible! During Gene’s talk you could feel the thirst he has for MORE, always looking for new opportunities. His thought process is so anti-mediocre that he could almost not even relate to questions asked of him that were based on small paradigms! I loved ever minute of it and felt relief that there were actually other people that think like this! Not so lonely anymore!
So if you read this and react negatively…well that’s just greedy or I don’t need more than what I have, then go back and read it again. Would you reject MORE love? MORE opportunity to help your friends and family? MORE happiness? See, being hungry for MORE transcends material pursuits and goes much deeper…I would even argue that we are hungry right down to our core in our pursuit of survival! MORE LIFE! How many of you know somebody that “retired” from their job only to drop dead shortly thereafter! I do. So beware that being hungry for MORE is what sustains us, it’s that childlike curiosity that keeps us moving forward to discover new and exciting things in life that we might otherwise not have seen. At the time of this writing we are reminded of the fragility of life with the untimely passing of well respected reporter Tim Russert, a constant figure in the US media covering Washington politics. Why is there so much love poured out towards one person…I think one of his contemporaries put it best when he said it was Russert’s love of family, religion and politics…certainly because he knew that there was always MORE of all of them and we respected him for that! So as the Russert family yearns for more time with Tim, remember to start your day looking for MORE…whatever that means to you is all that is important, but DO IT NOW!
