As most of you know, I work at a call center, doing customer care for a major telephone company. Lately, we’ve taken on a new project—pitching a new product to callers after we’ve taken care of the reason for their original call. Way out of my comfort zone and I don’t do well at it.

We are, of course, coached and trained in selling techniques. Last week, we had some cool guys come to give us selling tips and enthuse us about selling. Who knows if I’ll be able to use those tips to sell—time will tell there. But, one of the guys blew me away with this quote from Tony Robbins:

“Your attitude should be an indication of what you aspire to and not a reflection of what you’ve been through.”

Wow. I pretty much stopped listening to the sales tips when I heard that. Hit me like a bolt of lightning. Because as a lot of you know, my attitude largely affects what I’ve been through. Period. I recall saying “James’ death defines me.” I recall the feeling that my life changed completely after he died. Other things have happened since and happened before–you know.

I sat there and thought, “What do I aspire to? What matters anymore?” I don’t have an answer to those questions, and I wonder if Tony Robbins would toss out his solutions so blithely if his son shot himself. How can it not consume you? Yet, my life isn’t over, much as I wish it were. Mostly, I spend it in the past. I seem to have failed at all I aspired to and now maybe I need to develop some new aspirations and priorities.

There are a lot of wise people in the world; well, we can all be wise sometimes (sometimes the stupidest people we think we know say some pretty wise things). Tony Robbins annoys me; I don’t pay a lot of attention to inspirational speakers who get rich off their dynamic personalities and other peoples’ weaknesses. But there’s something to what he said.