USA Today was kind enough to share a little carpool commencement speech. Here’s a snippet and a link to read the rest. What advice would you add? (Join the conversation here OR better yet on the USA Today site.) With a 600-word limit – and an editor that made a few changes – I was a bit limited in what I could include. But what can an unknown do but say/shout THANKS!
Advice from commencement speakers is one thing. But your mom knows you best.
Young men and women of 2015, I would say, my chief counsel is this: Take the good from headline speakers — and from anyone else who impresses you — but use them to add to who you are, and not to subtract from how you see yourself.
As a dark-horse commencement speaker, I would give three pieces of advice:
1) Dare to not compare. Give up the impulse to measure up.
Comparison is like an electric car, I’d say. It pulls up in silence and captures attention through envy, what-ifs and if-onlys, fair and not fair, measuring and striving to be enough. The car doors open to woo you to the Land of Discontent where all the street names end in –er: Better, Prettier, Faster, Smarter. (You’ve been there — the land where everyone else’s highlight reels appear to be another day in the park.)
Forget that car. Your job is to be the fullest version of yourself, which excludes living up to any image on your smartphone screen, notebook screen, computer screen, movie screen … any screen.
2) Life is a journey and not a relay race, so travel alongside people and not against them.
The trend to live out loud surrounds you, but life is not a win-or-lose event on any of a dozen performance platforms. There is no…
Click HERE to read the rest:
Thanks for walking the road with me
-Kay
