Graduating High School or College is an accomplishment. It’s also a time for celebration and quite possibly a frightening transition for students.
Long after the commencement speeches are forgotten, the reality of reality imposes new obstacles to overcome.
Why is initiative the perfect graduation gift?
Because it keeps giving long after graduation and in unexpected ways.
There is probably no better essay on this topic than the wildly popular A Message to Garcia.
Translated into over 50 languages, this 1899 inspiration written by Elbert Hubbard has been printed and re-printed more times than anything else — except for the Bible!
Do you want to give your graduate a secret weapon?
Then don’t wait for graduation to give this gift.
A Message to Garcia: And Other Essential Writings on Success
is available on Amazon in paperback.
Excerpt: A Message to Garcia
By Elbert Hubbard
Initiative
The world bestows its big prizes, both in money and in honors, for but one thing.
And that is Initiative.
What is Initiative?
I’ll tell you: it is doing the right thing without being told.
But next to doing the thing without being told is to do it when you are told once. That is to say, carry the Message to Garcia: those who can carry a message get high honors, but their pay is not always in proportion.
Next, there are those who never do a thing until they are told twice; suchget no honors and small pay.
Next, there are those who do the right thing only when necessity kicks them from behind, and these get indifference instead of honors, and a pittance for pay. This kind spends most of its time polishing a bench with a hard-luck story.
Then, still lower down in the scale than this, we have fellow who will not do the right thing even when some one goes along to show him how and stays to see that he does it; he is always out of job, and receives the contempt he deserves, unless he happens to have a rich Pa, in which case Destiny patiently awaits around a corner with a stuffed club.
To which class do you belong?
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