In 1962, Clare Boothe Luce, one of the first women to serve in the U.S. Congress, offered some advice to President John F. Kennedy. “A great man,” she told him, “is one sentence.” Abraham Lincoln’s sentence was: “He preserved the union and freed the slaves.” Franklin Roosevelt’s was: “He lifted us out of a great depression and helped us win a world war.” Luce feared that Kennedy’s attention was so splintered among different priorities that his sentence risked becoming a muddled paragraph. (this was an excerpt from “Drive” by Daniel Pink)
When I read this recently, I really liked the idea. One sentence to summarize your life. One sentence to provide focus and purpose in your everyday world.
So…what’s your sentence?
When your time has come and all is said and done, what do you want people to say about you? Not some glowing biography or lengthy obituary…just one sentence. Just a few words strung together to describe your life. What would you want that sentence to say?
Would you want it to describe the kind of friend you were? How you treated others? What you did to make a difference in the world? Your accomplishments at work? The kind of family person you were?
One sentence.
What’s your sentence?
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