Career coach Marshall Goldsmith was asked, “If you had to choose one piece of advice that would help people achieve more happiness on the job, what would it be?”
Goldsmith, interviewed in Money magazine, said you should imagine yourself being 95 years old. “If you could talk to the younger you, what advice would you give about having a better career and a better life?”
Whatever that wise 95-year-old would tell you to do, says Goldsmith, do it. Start now, because that’s the best advice you are ever going to get. Listen to it closely.
When the time comes, you want that 95-year-old to be proud of you. If the conclusion is that you were a success, you were. Of all the performance appraisals you’ll ever have, how you’ll feel about yourself in the last days of your life is the only appraisal that really matters.
