What's going to be in your Obituary?

On Tuesday March 26^th, a live speaker broadcast was being shown via a live video stream for all of the National Society of Leadership and Success (NSLS) students. The feature speaker of the broadcast was Brad Meltzer, who is a best-selling author. Meltzer, who is a University of Michigan graduate, is the author of several best-selling books including “The Tenth Justice”, “The First Counsel” and “The Book of Fate “.

Meltzer first started off his presentation by saying that he actually paid someone to write his obituary. He mentioned that the only thing that the person could write was “Brad Meltzer was a…”. He couldn't think of anything to write because he didn't know Meltzer that well. He then followed that story up by saying that “your obituary will be the last time that your resume will be remembered, but what you do for other people will be your legacy”

He told the story about how he started writing novels, and he would send it to different publishers and he often got rejected. There was even a time that he sent a novel of his to different publishers twenty-five times and each of those twenty-five times was rejections. He then told a story about how his parents were the biggest reason for his early success as a novelist. He mentioned that they would go into the bookstores around where they lived at the time and they would buy his books. Then they would tell other people to buy his books also. There was a time that his parents went into a bookstore, and then started praising their son for the quality of the book, pretending that he was even their son. The bookstore clerk then replied by saying “I know that is your son”. He concluded that story by saying “that wasn't mentioned in their obituary”, but he will always remember that they did that for him.

Meltzer went on to talk about not being afraid to fail when striving for success.  He said that everyone that has been great at something had to fail at some point while they were chasing their dreams. The example he used was the Wilbur brothers and their attempt in making the first airplane. He included the fact they brought some extra tools with them because they not only thought they were going to fail at some point, but knew they were going to fail. However, they were prepared for whenever they did fail and didn’t give up.

He then finished his presentation with a message to the crowd. He mentioned that this message is something he tells his three children before they all go to bed. The message was to “dream big, work hard and stay humble”. You can view all of his works on http://bradmeltzer.com/