What Is Your Life's Blueprint?

I have come across a lot of people in my life that have felt like they were not enough, that what they were doing in life was not making a difference. I admit that I have felt this way at times, which is why in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, I wanted to share something he said that really resonates with me.  In October of 1967 King gave a speech to a Junior High School in Philadelphia called What Is Your Life’s Blueprint? Here are some of my favorite excerpts:

Number one in your life's blueprint, should be a deep belief in your own dignity, your worth and your own somebodiness. Don't allow anybody to make you feel that you're nobody. Always feel that you count. Always feel that you have worth, and always feel that your life has ultimate significance.

Secondly, in your life's blueprint you must have as the basic principle the determination to achieve excellence in your various fields of endeavor. You're going to be deciding as the days, as the years unfold what you will do in life — what your life's work will be. Set out to do it well.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great essayist, said in a lecture in 1871, "If a man can write a better book or preach a better sermon or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, even if he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door."

And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Don't just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn't do it any better.

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well. If you can't be a pine at the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. Be the best little shrub on the side of the hill.

Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If you can't be a highway, just be a trail. If you can't be a sun, be a star. For it isn't by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are.

So whatever your job is, do it the best you can. Put your heart and soul into it and don’t let others define your worth. If you are giving the world your very best, that is more than enough. J Whether you are a stay-at-home-mom(or dad), a lawyer, a policeman, an accountant or a shoe shiner, whatever you do, do it the very best you can. 

My Most Important Job :)