Inspirational Speech- Michael McCollough

Micheal McCollough, he is one of the more enigmatic people I have ever met. However, through the use of the internet, and the other liaisons I have learned a little bet more about him. Ok, I will start at the beginning, a few moths ago, when I found out that I would be Vassar’s liaison, I creeped quite a bit on the Quest website. I found Michael’s speech at one of the college prep. meetings he holds.  

This is the film: Amazing Video

So I was a little prepared for what was to come, I will say this, that man knows how to throw the conversation in a room. We were all animatedly chatting, and quieted down to let him speak. He call’s it tweaking the mood, in general he will ask a question or something else along those lines that will achieve some sort of thought change.

In essence his speech boils down to this, life is short. Do you know what you want, what are your long term goals? Once you know what you want do you can plan accordingly. He broke up pleasure into three groups, there is short term pleasure, meaning, and flow- which is being so incredibly in the moment or that action that time ceases to be noticed.

What Michael wants is for us to live just a little differently, to be more mindful about how our actions are working towards our goals, to… have a higher consciousness.

He wasn’t always serious, one story I enjoyed was about he challenges himself to “fear roulette.” As part of this he would say “I am going to try to do stand-up, and they are either not going to let me, or I will go up there and make a fool of myself. I like what he said, its not easy to do the difficult things, the things we fear, but they can be the most enlightening.

I sort of already, incorporated his thoughts into my personal philosophy, I like to ask myself, “What can I do to maximize my opportunities, and goals, and experiences today, what can I do today, to ensure that I will either have something memorable tomorrow, in two months, or a decade. But I think he hit the nail on the head, I have been living a bit hedonistically; trying to gain the most experiences possible this year. But I would like to think that it is not only because I enjoy traveling, but that I see traveling as a mechanism through which to understand the world, others, and myself, I find that it gives me the chance to reflect, which, in my opinion is vital to ensure I am not just living on auto-pilot. Well, we shall see, we shall see.

-Jerry