To echo, of course, the 9 lessons and carols of the traditional Christmas service. So I will now – at the ripe old age of 38 – bestow upon you nine life lessons. However, I have had large groups of people listening to what I say for quite a few years now, and it’s given me an inflated sense of self-importance. And I’m certainly not here to give career advice, cos… well I’ve never really had what most would call a proper job. I’ve never lost a limb on a mountainside, metaphorically or otherwise. Point being, I’m not an inspirational speaker. Searching for meaning is like searching for a rhyme scheme in a cookbook: you won’t find it and you’ll bugger up your soufflé. And they help you find meaning where there is none.
It’s not inspirational – it’s confusing.Īnd if the mountain was meant to be a symbol of life’s challenges, and the loss of limbs a metaphor for sacrifice, the software guy’s not going to get it, is he? Cos he didn’t do an arts degree, did he? He should have. Some poor guy who arrived in the morning hoping to learn about better sales technique ended up going home worried about the blood flow to his extremities. Software salespeople need to hear from someone who has had a long, successful and happy career in software sales, not from an overly-optimistic, ex-mountaineer.
In a bid, I presume, to inspire their salespeople to greater heights, they’d forked out 12 grand for an Inspirational Speaker who was this extreme sports dude who had had a couple of his limbs frozen off when he got stuck on a ledge on some mountain. “In darker days, I did a corporate gig at a conference for this big company who made and sold accounting software.
I gave an “occasional address” for a graduation ceremony at my old Uni, The University of Western Australia. Occasional Address by Tim 25th Sep 2013 | 205 comments Tweet