I won’t write about how inspired I was just by listening to how Angela Ahrendts starts her mornings each day (with coffee and a podcast by the way – I love tangible life tips like that and, well, coffee is involved so count me in). I won’t mention how Juliette Funt’s stories and video clips made me laugh harder than I have in recent memory or how, speaking of tangible advice, she is just spilling with actual, useful tools that make it impossible to NOT be inspired by her. I won’t recall how Danny Meyer’s passion and accessible hospitality wisdom made me grateful to have worked in a service industry and reminded me why I love it. And I definitely won’t even hint at how Danielle Strickland’s talk on equality made me shake with excitement, righteous anger, and down-right inspiration by the end. Nope. I’m so glad I resisted that temptation to talk about more than one speaker… 😊

 

But who I will mention, briefly now since I may have strayed from the rules a bit, is Simon Sinek, as his talk has stayed with me the longest and clearer than any other I heard during our two-day experience. The Infinite Game was his title and, long story short, it essentially posed the question to us…to me…what kind of life are you living? “Finite games have known players, fixed rules and agreed-upon objectives. Infinite games have known and unknown players, changeable rules and the objective is to perpetrate the game.” He went on about how your only competitor is actually yourself. And, for me, in a world that looks so different than the way I grew up, and I am only 33, where it seems like social media and hashtags and Kickstarter campaigns and Pinterest and this never-ending cycle of comparison, out doing each other and keeping up with the Kardashians, if you will, it was quite refreshing to be reminded that none of that is the point. Are you the best version YOU can be? Regardless of how Sally or Joe (or Khloe or Kim) are doing?

 

He told a story about speaking at two different summits: one for Microsoft and one for Apple. I bet you can guess, as I did, on his point here. Essentially his recollection was Microsoft’s focus was how to beat their competitor…. Apple’s objective was how to create the best products to meet their primary goal which was helping educators and students. Phew. That will preach! And yes, he spoke about how being driven to be better, even by some worthy competition, can be good. But our focus? Absolutely not.

 

I stay home with my 2-year-old son full time.

* Insert shameless plug here. Any stay at home parent reading this who is interested in freelancing for roux and doesn’t think it is an option to do both things – trust me: it is! And you should totally do it. End tangent. *

But I am painfully aware of the mommy blogging, mommy shaming, mommy hating on other hard working momminess of our generation and I don’t want any part of it. This talk by Simon was good for my business side, but it was great for my wanting to leave a lasting legacy for my family side. Leaving a forever impact on this world. Enabling the people around me to love working with me, spending time with me, and maybe even wanting to learn from me. I don’t want to focus on short term, non-consequential things that steal my focus from the infinite game of living the best life I can.

 

And I know I am not doing justice to all that was shared. The stories I heard and the eloquence with which he spoke…even his main points, which I wrote down, I think he would even argue are not the point though. More important than anything, he left me with the feeling of “I want to do better…be better…for me.” A feeling I won’t soon forget. And I truly couldn’t have asked for anything more.