Yesterday I attended a funeral for a great man. A man who lived RICH his entire life. The church was packed and the words shared about him spoke volumes about how he gave. It made me think of my legacy and the words I would like spoken at my celebration of life service. It also reminded me something I read years ago in Stephen Covey Seven Habits for Highly Effective People book. Covey asked readers to imagine you were attending your own funneral. There four people spoke about you: someone from you family, a close personal friend, a co-worker and someone from you place of worship or a community group for which you belonged. What would you want each to say? It was a powerful illustration about the importance of living a life that would be worthy of those comments. What do you think?

I still can’t fathom what happened at the Universalist Unitarian church in Knoxville on Sunday. About 15 miles from where I live, a hate-filled man changed lives forever. No matter how liberal or conservative someone is, we still should be able to disagree respectfully. What is wrong with our world? Why are we seeing so much of this type of tragedies? How can we prevent things like this from happening? Questions? I wish I had answers. I wish our churches had answers. I wish our politicians had answers.

I don’t want it in my backyard or yours.

I recently received a hot news from my blogsultant. The content of the email was new news to me and I included portions below:

According to Tia, FriendFeed is the rage. It’s on ALL the industry sites. Tia asked the question: What is the difference in FriendFeed and other social sites, especially microblogging sites? I don’t have a clue of course and am hoping SOMEONE will chime in here and tell me how they use FriendFeed. Tia explained it as an RSS feed for YOU.  FriendFeed will track when you last blogged, updated your LinkedIn site, your Facebook page, your Twitter feed, Flikr, etc, which means anyone “following” you can see you anywhere you go online.

Blogsultant says it might be a bit intrusive and too “big brother”ish but she likes the potential it has as a branding tool. It recently launched so if you are curious and want to help securing your brand, FriendFeed might be your friend indeed.

If you find a FriendFeed a friend, just call out my name and I’ll coming running…winter, spring, summer or fall.

I have been writing recently about work people do that they are passionate about. It appears that there are some who take their passion too far. Had I know that DEATH was a potential hazard from blogging, I don’t think I would have ever started my blog. According to stories both on CNN and in the New York Times yesterday, people are blogging themselves to death! Of course, I would not be one to make light of something like death but can you imagine the obituary? What about the tomb stone? Or the article in a home town newspaper. Blogger, Bob Webb, died today. He lived well but died due to complications resulting from blogging. He is survived by his IMac, his Iphone, and his Ipod and his dog who was rescued after barking for hours at Bob’s computer screen.

If you read the article or saw the CNN piece, know that I don’t intend to lose sleep, weight or my life, SO… I am done (for the day).

I will be back soon with a healthy post on living. It’s what I do best.

Tim Richardson is an inspirational speaker who speaks about how giving increases employee morale, lowers employee turnover, increases customer loyalty and creates higher profits for Fortune 500 companies, associations, and national conventions. He is the founder of the The Worlds Biggest Blog Party an event which will connect bloggers from all over the world to raise money for charity. He is also founder and president of the Bill Walter Melanoma Research Fund and co-founder of the Jeffrey Roth Cycling Foundation. Click here for more information on professional speaker Tim Richardson.

As I write this, the sun is hiding outside beneath a layer of clouds. While it’s overcast and gloomy outside, I am full of sunshine and happiness inside as I am in one beautiful place and enjoying watching my son experience a turning point. He and I are in Western, NC on a confirmation retreat at Lake Junaluska Assembly. Junaluska, according to Wikipedia, is an Indian name which means many sixth graders gathered in one place create many jokes involving bodily functions.  Lake Junaluska is also the Southeastern Conference for the United Methodist Church to which I belong. In my denomination, when a young person reaches the sixth grade (and after they have memorized every joke that makes them laugh in church till they start an earthquake) they are encouraged to go through a series of classes to help them learn about their faith and the doctrine of the United Methodist Church (it’s about as rivetingly interesting for a 12 year old as watching paint dry). Partly as a joke for my fun-loving pastor and partly out of desire to know more about the founder of Methodism, I checked out a book from the library on John Wesley who founded the Methodist Church. Wesley was man short in stature with wiry long hair (picture a street preacher who hasn’t showered in about six months). John Wesley doesn’t seem like a person that would have attracted the great crowds that followed him (or the women who apparently thought he was hot). When asked once why so many people came out to watch him preach, Mr. Wesley replied, “I set myself on fire and people come out to watch me burn.” Not that I want to give any lunatics another way for self destruction but that’s what he REALLY said.

What creates a passion like that? Where does it come from? Are you doing something that you are passionate about? What advice would you give others on creating a life that includes a career that brings you exquisite joy?

For the next week or so, I am going to pose that question to people who are passionate about what they do. I will, of course, blog my responses and hope to have a bit of a dialogue here. Are you one of those people? Do you just LOVE what you do? I’d love to know more…

Tim Richardson is an inspirational speaker who speaks about how giving increases employee morale, lowers employee turnover, increases customer loyalty and creates higher profits for Fortune 500 companies, associations, and national conventions. He is the founder of the The Worlds Biggest Blog Party an event which will connect bloggers from all over the world to raise money for charity. He is also founder and president of the Bill Walter Melanoma Research Fund and co-founder of the Jeffrey Roth Cycling Foundation. Click here for more information on professional speaker Tim Richardson.

Do you have people in your life who tell you what you need to know not what you want to know? If so, you are a RICH person. Today, I had a brief conversation with Brian Palmer of National Speakers Bureau. Brian was kind enough to watch my new promotional video I have just completed. He was also kind enough to be honest, to tell me what needed more work, what didn’t work, and what to think about. I get that same kind of feedback from professional speaker friend and branding expert, Bruce Turkel (who, BTW, has one of the coolest websites I have ever seen). I regularly get feedback from Bruce. He’s an incredible friend and supportor in that he tells it like it is (or at least as he sees it). I totally value that kind of friendship and honest feedback.

When speaking with Brian, he told me about a speech he had recently heard given by Tim Sanders, author of Love is the Killer Ap and The Likeability Factor. Tim spoke recently for Meeting Professionals International. Watching Tim’s speech will take you less time than watching American Idol  plus it will be a productive insightful investment in your thinking. Tim is writing another book coming out this year called Save the World at Work. I think he is “Spot on”. Check it out here.

Wishing for you a few good men (or women) in your life.

Tim Richardson is an inspirational speaker who speaks about how giving increases employee morale, lowers employee turnover, increases customer loyalty and creates higher profits for Fortune 500 companies, associations, and national conventions. He is the founder of the The Worlds Biggest Blog Party an event which will connect bloggers from all over the world to raise money for charity. He is also founder and president of the Bill Walter Melanoma Research Fund and co-founder of the Jeffrey Roth Cycling Foundation. Click here for more information on professional speaker Tim Richardson.

What you have no doubt already gathered if you are a regular on this blog, is that this blog is not about making more money or people who have great financial richness. It’s about being RICH ( I will write about the difference in being rich and being RICH in a future blog). Know this for now: my definition of RICH is not how the world defines it. It’s not about investments, or how to retire early or anything like you see in on the cover of Money, Fortune, or Forbes magazine. The realty is, as you no doubt have already heard, he (or she) who dies with the most money, still dies. When I die, I hope to be darn near broke. I hope to give away a lot of money and have a lot of fun while doing it. I hope to have visited every continent on the globe, to have had RICH conversations in remote areas of the world including some with indigenous people who haven’t experience the “RICH” experiences I haven’t had. I hope to have left a legacy of love, adventure and caring to my five children. I hope that the love I feel for my wife will be ten times stronger than it was the beautiful June day we were married at the oldest church in St. Augustine, FL in 1992. I hope that I will have richer and deeper relationship with God and that at the end, someone will say, “WOW, that guy sure was RICH!”

Of course, I hope the same for you. But I know none of that will happen for you the reader or me the writer without being intentional about it. Without creating the picture of the kind of RICHness that you want and then working at it tirelessly, Living RICH won’t happen. I am convinced that you have to create it in your mind first. So what does it mean to really be RICH vs. rich, to be wealthy beyond measure, to live like there’s no tomorrow?

Care to chime in on the conversation? I’d love to hear what you think. I’ll tell you what I think (if you don’t already know!)

Tim Richardson is an inspirational speaker who speaks about how giving increases employee morale, lowers employee turnover, increases customer loyalty and creates higher profits for Fortune 500 companies, associations, and national conventions. He is the founder of the The Worlds Biggest Blog Party an event which will connect bloggers from all over the world to raise money for charity. He is also founder and president of the Bill Walter Melanoma Research Fund and co-founder of the Jeffrey Roth Cycling Foundation. Click here for more information on professional speaker Tim Richardson.

Over twenty years ago, before I was married, I was attending a wedding in Colorado. The day after the wedding, I stayed to do some hiking though not sure if I were going to go solo or have a hiking buddy. At the wedding, I had gotten to know one of the bride maids and the two us ended up spending the day hiking together. In her car, she had a book called the Book of Questions which we took with us on the way to the hike. Both on the way there and even while on the hike we read the questions from the book and took turns answering them. Some questions were very easy to answer quickly while others took some time to think about. By the end of our day, I felt like we knew each other pretty well.

I think questions are wonderful. They make you think. They make you work. They make you search. As much as I would love to have all the answers, it simply isn’t true. I do have life as a teacher and I know for me the questions are almost more important than the answers. I think the answer to a lot of questions are:”it depends”. Life is not like the questions we had on test in high school and college - tests where you picked the best answer from four or five choices. One of my favorite childhood philosophers from TV show Kung Fu said “The answer is in the question, grasshopper”.

So fresh back from my National Speakers Association meeting in San Francisco, I am armed with questions. Questions I’ll be thinking about as wrap my arms around my year and a big agenda. I’ll share some of my questions this week as well as a recap of one of the most amazing weekend learning experiences I have ever had. It’s totally rocked. Questions and all.

What questions have rocked you?

What or who has really made you think?

What did you think of this post?

What’s the best question you have ever been
asked and the answer you gave?

What’s the best question you have ever asked
and what response did you hear?

Bring it on…

Tim Richardson is an inspirational speaker who speaks about how giving increases employee morale, lowers employee turnover, increases customer loyalty and creates higher profits for Fortune 500 companies, associations, and national conventions. He is the founder of the The Worlds Biggest Blog Party an event which will connect bloggers from all over the world to raise money for charity. He is also founder and president of the Bill Walter Melanoma Research Fund and co-founder of the Jeffrey Roth Cycling Foundation. Click here for more information on professional speaker Tim Richardson.