Life Is What You Make It: Find Your Own Path to Fulfillment

Life Is What You Make It: Find Your Own Path to Fulfillment

by Peter Buffett
Life Is What You Make It: Find Your Own Path to Fulfillment

Life Is What You Make It: Find Your Own Path to Fulfillment

by Peter Buffett

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Overview

From composer, musician, and philanthropist Peter Buffett comes a warm, wise, and inspirational book that asks, Which will you choose: the path of least resistance or the path of potentially greatest satisfaction?

You may think that with a last name like his, Buffett has enjoyed a life of endless privilege. But the son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett says that the only real inheritance handed down from his parents was a philosophy: Forge your own path in life. It is a creed that has allowed him to follow his own passions, establish his own identity, and reap his own successes.

In Life Is What You Make It, Buffett expounds on the strong set of values given to him by his trusting and broadminded mother, his industrious and talented father, and the many life teachers he has met along the way.

Today’s society, Buffett posits, has begun to replace a work ethic, relishing what you do, with a wealth ethic, honoring the payoff instead of the process. We confuse privilege with material accumulation, character with external validation. Yet, by focusing more on substance and less on reward, we can open doors of opportunity and strive toward a greater sense of fulfillment. In clear and concise terms, Buffett reveals a great truth: Life is random, neither fair nor unfair.

From there it becomes easy to recognize the equal dignity and value of every human life—our circumstances may vary but our essences do not. We see that our journey in life rarely follows a straight line but is often met with false starts, crises, and blunders. How we push through and persevere in these challenging moments is where we begin to create the life of our dreams—from discovering our vocations to living out our bliss to giving back to others.

Personal and revealing, instructive and intuitive, Life Is What You Make It is about transcending your circumstances, taking up the reins of your destiny, and living your life to the fullest.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780307464729
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Publication date: 05/03/2011
Pages: 272
Sales rank: 169,215
Product dimensions: 5.00(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

About The Author
PETER BUFFETT is an Emmy Award-winning composer and producer and cochairman of the NoVo Foundation. Buffett began his career in San Francisco writing music for commercials. He has released albums on the Narada, Epic, and Hollywood labels, as well as six releases on his own label. His work in film includes the “Firedance” scene in the Oscar-winning film, Dances with Wolves. He lives in New York City.
 
Download a free collection of Peter’s music at: www.peterbuffett.com/PBMusic
Enter code: lifeiswhatyoumakeit

Read an Excerpt

Introduction


This is a book about gifts received and gifts given back to the world, about expectations and obligations, about family and community, and how they shape us. It’s about living in a society that lulls us with unprecedented comforts, but also tweaks us with anxieties—both economic and otherwise—and too often leaves us empty and bewildered in our search for purpose.

In short, this is a book about values—about the convictions and intuitions that define what’s worth doing during our brief stay on Earth, about the actions and attitudes that will add up to a well-lived life. Economic prosperity may come and go; that’s just how it is. But values are the steady currency that earn us the all- important rewards of self- respect and peace of mind.

This is also a book about identity—about the callings and talents and decisions and quirks that make each of us uniquely who we are.

Values and identity. In my view, these things can be meaningfully addressed only as two sides of the same coin. Our values guide our choices; our choices define who we are. Life is what we make it. The concept is simple, but the process by which we make our own lives can be complex and baffling. Expectations and external pressures blur the outline of our truest selves. Economic reality, for good or ill, plays a big role in the dynamic, as does pure dumb luck.

Ultimately, though, we create the lives we live. This is our greatest burden and greatest opportunity. It is also the most basic, bedrock premise of everything I have to say in these pages.

So then, what sort of people will we choose to be? In the myriad choices that we face each day, will we choose the path of least resistance—or the path of potentially greatest satisfaction? In our dealings with others, will we meekly shy away from intimacy and honesty and tolerance—or will we open ourselves to robust and candid relationships? In our work lives, will we settle for making a living—no sure thing these days!—or aim at the higher goal of earning a life? How will we become worthy of the various gifts we have received? How will we learn the redemptive art of giving back?

Answers to these questions can come only from inside each of us. The goal of this book is simply to raise them, to offer a framework for thought and, I hope, discussion.

But who am I to be writing such a book? The honest answer is no one in particular. I’m not a trained philosopher or sociologist, and I’m not setting up shop as one more self-help guru. My only credential, in fact, is my own life—a life that has forced me to think long and hard about these matters.

By the luck of the draw— what my father calls “winning the Ovarian Lottery”—I was born into a caring and supportive family, a family whose first and most important gift to me was emotional security. Over time, as a bonus that came as a gradual and wonderful surprise, my family also got to be wealthy and distinguished. My dad, Warren Buffett, by dint of hard work, solid ethics, and steady wisdom, has become one of the richest and most respected men in the world. I say this with plenty of filial pride—but also with the humble acknowledgment that those are his accomplishments, not mine. No matter who your parents are, you’ve still got your own life to figure out.

Further, as is widely known, my father has some pretty strong opinions on the subject of inherited wealth. Basically, he believes that the silver spoon in the mouth too often becomes the silver dagger in the back—an illconsidered gift that saps ambition and drains motivation, that deprives a young person of the great adventure of finding his or her own way. My father had the enormous satisfaction of discovering his own passion and making his own mark; why should his kids be denied that challenge and that pleasure? So, no big trust funds for the Buffett clan! My siblings and I, upon turning nineteen, were each given a very modest amount of money, with the clear understanding that we should expect no more.

Certainly there would be no juicy end-of-life bequests. Back in 2006, my father, in an act of philanthropy historic in its scale, gave away the bulk of his fortune—$37 billion—to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. At the same time, he established billion-dollar charitable endowments to be administered by each of his three children.

So here’s an irony for you. Today, at the age of fifty, I find myself with the enormous opportunity and responsibility of stewardship over a billion dollars meant to be given away, while in my own mind I remain very much a working stiff—a composer and musician who, like most of my colleagues, is only as good as his last composition, neither more nor less successful than my next job lets me be.

But that’s okay; I’m doing something I love, something I’ve chosen for myself, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I guess I’ve inherited more than just my father’s genes; I seem to have absorbed much of his philosophy as well.

Don’t get me wrong: I am very well aware that I was born into a privileged life. The economic head start I received from my father may have been a relatively modest one, but still, it was more than most people have—and it was entirely unearned. Similarly, through no merit of my own, I have enjoyed the various, often intangible benefits of a famous last name. Far from denying these advantages, I have spent my life wrestling with their meaning and implications and consequences. To stand an old cliché on its head, I’ve had to learn to make the best of a good situation.

There is a famous quotation from the Book of Luke that was taken very seriously in our family: From those to whom much has been given, much is expected. And it was made very clear that the most important gifts of all had nothing to do with money. There were the gifts of parental love and close community and warm friendship, of inspiring teachers and mentors who took delight in our development. There were the mysterious gifts of talent and competence, capacity for empathy and hard work. These gifts were meant to be respected and repaid.

But how? How do we repay the gifts that came to us unbidden and more or less at random? And not just repay them, but amplify them, so that they grow beyond our own small circle to make a difference in the world? How do we balance ambition and service, personal goals and the common good? How do we avoid the pressures that can trap us into lives that are not really our own? How can we work toward a version of success that we define for ourselves—a success based on values and substance, rather than mere dollars and the approval of others, and that cannot be tarnished or taken away by shifting fashions or a bad economy?

It is my belief, based both on intuition and observation, that there are many, many people wrestling with these questions. Young men and women hankering to set off on their own course, even when their aspirations entail risk and sacrifice and bold divergence from the usual paths. Parents who want to instill solid values in their kids, so that they grow up with a sense of gratitude and adventure, rather than the smug passivity that comes from feeling entitled.

These people, and many others—teachers, nurses, business leaders, artists—recognize that they are members of a society unprecedented in its affluence but appalling in its inequality. They are people of conscience—people who respect the gifts that they’ve been given and want to use those gifts to make not just a livelihood, but a difference. If this book is of some small help and comfort to the many individuals who are questing to live their own true lives, and to give back in the process, then I will have accomplished what I hoped to do.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Normal is what you're used to 7

2 No one deserves anything 25

3 The myth of the level playing field 43

4 The (mixed) blessing of choice 59

5 The mystery of vocation 79

6 Buying time 103

7 Don't just find your bliss-do your bliss 125

8 Portals of discovery 141

9 Be careful what you wish for… 157

10 What we mean when we say "success" 179

11 The perils of prosperity 199

12 The gentle art of giving back 221

Epilogue: Begin it now 245

Acknowledgments 257

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