One of the wealthiest and most successful people of his time, Andrew Carnegie believed that he shared a secret with all of those who were his peers in financial and personal success. That secret has become the core preaching of many motivational speakers of today. Simple enough according to Carnegie was the idea that if you have a desire that is great enough, literally nothing can stop you from achieving it through the power of like-minded attraction; but only as long as this desire does not have selfishness as a component.
That simple concept involves two separate components; the first being the idea of living a life of purpose and the second was to live a life that involved being of service to others. My favorite part of the Carnegie story is the fact that at the end of his very successful business career there were over 40 people working for him that had each become millionaires (at a time when that was a lot of money) while in his employment. Actually, Carnegie found people who didn’t want to work for him, but wanted to partner with him, and then he worked to develop their skills.
Carnegie espoused the formulae that a person should spend the first third of their life preparing to achieve success, the second third of their life becoming the greatest success possible and the final third of their life distributing their wealth for the benefit of their fellow-man. By the end of his life Carnegie gave away a third of a billion dollars including the building of over 2,800 ‘Carnegie’ Libraries in communities all over America.
Rotary has a purpose, the Object of Rotary starts with these words, “to encourage and foster the ideal of service as the basis of worthy enterprise.” The idea of Rotary came into existence at a about the same time as Carnegie set out on his defined task for the final third of his life. I find great inspiration in the idea of having a life purpose and surrounding myself with like-minded individuals who have a positive purpose is unselfish. That is a large part of why I am a member of Rotary and I suspect that is a large part of the appeal Rotary would have to those in our community who are in the first or two third’s of their lives. An idea worth passing on.