💡 "Your big bag of experience"

Published 11 months ago • 1 min read

Speaking of commencement speeches, I think often back to my own, given by Jodie Foster at Penn in 2006 (clip starts at 03:20):

All of that fine and delicious matter has a way of becoming the material of your life.

You pick up bits and pieces of treasure and trash, pain and pleasure, passions and disappointments…

…and you start stuffing them in your bag

...your big bag of experience.

You do some dumb things that don’t work out at all.

You stumble excitedly on little gems that you never saw coming.

And you stuff them all in your bag.

You pursue the things you love and believe in.

You cast off the images of yourself that don’t fit.

And suddenly you look behind you and a pattern emerges.

You look in front of you and the path makes sense.

There is nothing more beautiful than finding your course as you believe you bob aimlessly in the current.

Maybe Jodie wasn’t talking specifically about consultants (or IP 😉), but 18 years later, I can’t help but see that she was laying out:

building your unique lens over time
finding your through-lines
and leveraging that into your next step

💡

-Wes

Share this page

💡 The Lightbulb

💡 "Your big bag of experience"

💡 The Lightbulb