In September 2009, I was really fortunate to be able to attend the Twitter Conference in Los Angeles. At that conference I got to hear the keynote given by Tony Robbins. It stands as one of the top 10 best moving speeches I’ve heard in my life.

The Quality of Your Life is the Quality of Your Relationships

During Tony’s presentation he said “If you’re a business person you can look at your business. You can look at your employees, you can look at their Tweets and within a few minutes you can see how they think. Are they emotionally driven? Spiritually driven? Financially driven? Are they people that are building people up? Tearing them down? You can quickly know what they are about and you now know how to serve them. Twitter shows you a persons blueprint really quickly. Some of you it’s all business, all relationships, spirituality, money, there’s not that many things in life.”

“The quality of your life is the quality of your relationships, because, that is where emotions are most magnified.” – Tony Robbins

Lesson Learned:

In the start-up world, I feel like I’ve seen it all. Some of it first hand, other times observing from the sideline. Founders firing their co-founder. Founders firing their first employee. Employees quitting in batches. Relationships being discarded left and right.
Over the years I’ve had my fair share of goodbyes. Some of these goodbyes were initiated by me, some by others. It is painful to say goodbye when I have to fire someone. It sucks when people you invest in — quit you. The thing I’ve come to peace with is that I want to be with people that “want to” be with me. I recognize each of us are on our own journey, our paths cross and are aligned, then sometimes the path diverges. So the lesson is, don’t be so hard on yourself. Forgive yourself and extend more grace to others.

Alternate Lesson:

“Do what you did in the beginning of the relationship at the end and there won’t be an end.” – Tony Robbins

When relationships break – here’s something to consider… “There’s no weakness in forgiveness” – Annie Vander Pol (Director, Social Evangelist) wrote an amazing blog post that might shift your perspective.

5 Years Lessons Learned

I’ve made tons of mistakes over the last five years since starting up thinkspace. These are some *highlights* of the mistakes and lessons learned along the way. Thanks for being a part of the journey!