There was once a businessman who was sitting by the beach in a small Brazilian village.
As he sat, he saw a Brazilian fisherman rowing a small boat towards the shore having caught quite few big fish.

The businessman was impressed and asked the fisherman, “How long does it take you to catch so many fish?”
The fisherman replied, “Oh, just a short while.”
“Then why don’t you stay longer at sea and catch even more?” The businessman was astonished.
“This is enough to feed my whole family,” the fisherman said.
The businessman then asked, “So, what do you do for the rest of the day?”
The fisherman replied, “Well, I usually wake up early in the morning, go out to sea and catch a few fish, then go back and play with my kids. In the afternoon, I take a nap with my wife, and evening comes, I join my buddies in the village for a drink — we play guitar, sing and dance throughout the night.”

The businessman offered a suggestion to the fisherman.
“I am a PhD in business management. I could help you to become a more successful person. From now on, you should spend more time at sea and try to catch as many fish as possible. When you have saved enough money, you could buy a bigger boat and catch even more fish. Soon you will be able to afford to buy more boats, set up your own company, your own production plant for canned food and distribution network. By then, you will have moved out of this village and to Sao Paulo, where you can set up HQ to manage your other branches.”

The fisherman continues, “And after that?”
The businessman laughs heartily, “After that, you can live like a king in your own house, and when the time is right, you can go public and float your shares in the Stock Exchange, and you will be rich.”
The fisherman asks, “And after that?”
The businessman says, “After that, you can finally retire, you can move to a house by the fishing village, wake up early in the morning, catch a few fish, then return home to play with kids, have a nice afternoon nap with your wife, and when evening comes, you can join your buddies for a drink, play the guitar, sing and dance throughout the night!”
The fisherman was puzzled, “Isn’t that what I am doing now?”

A classic Brazilian story, probably also present in other cultures.

Hala Fadel is chair of the MIT Enterprise Forum of the Pan-Arab region and has laid the efforts to organize the MIT Arab Business Plan competition, which is now in its fifth year with over 3,000 participants every year from 17 Arab countries. She is also a European Equity Fund Manager at Comgest. The Group has $13bn under management, all run for institutions in Europe and the middle east. Comgest is characterized by a tried and tested management style, focused exclusively on the investment in a limited number of quality growth listed companies. Hala also runs the Islamic funds practice within Comgest. Prior to joining Comgest, she was an analyst and associate in mergers and acquisitions at Merrill Lynch in London.

Hala has a Bachelor degree from HEC and holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
At MIT, she participated in and was among the winners of the MIT $100K Business Plan Competition, following which she started a telecom software company, Booleo, in the Cambridge area, which she eventually sold.
She is married and has 3 kids.

“You know, I do believe in magic. I was born and raised in a magic time, in a magic town, among magicians.

Oh, most everybody else didn’t realize we lived in that web of magic, connected by silver filaments of chance and circumstance. But I knew it all along. When I was twelve years old, the world was my magic lantern, and by its green spirit glow I saw the past, the present and into the future.

You probably did too; you just don’t recall it.

See, this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand.

But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God’s sake. And you know why we were told that?

– Robert. R. McCamman

Read Full Blog Post: http://krix.me/hbYCrn

Sometimes life’s going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love.

And that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking — and don’t settle.

As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.

So keep looking — don’t settle.

Extracted from Steve Jobs Commencement Address at Stanford University, delivered 12 June 2005, Palo Alto, CA

Full video, audio and text can be found here

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