I am forever grateful that my older brother turned me onto Queen when I was young. The amount of incredible music they made (Keep Yourself Alive, Seven Seas of Rhye, Killer Queen, Somebody to Love, We Will Rock You / We Are The Champions, Bicycle Race, Another One Bites the Dust, I Want It All, Bohemian Rhapsody and soundtracks to Flash Gordon and Highlander…to name a few) is a measure of their unbelievable gifts.
Yesterday would have been Freddie Mercury’s 65th birthday.
One way you can celebrate is to participate in Freddie for a Day. Here’s the explanation from their website:
“Freddie For A Day is a fundraising campaign for the Mercury Phoenix Trust, the charity set up in Freddie Mercury’s name in 1992. It’s fun, it’s slightly crazy AND it raises money to help the charity fight HIV/AIDS worldwide.”
Basically, you ask people to sponsor you to dress up like Freddie – even if it’s just wearing a mustache!
While Labor Day overshadowed it here in the States, you can still join in or put it on your calendar for next year.
However, it is Freddie’s entrepreneurial spirit that I am reflecting on today, that I want to share with you.
Brian May, the guitarist for Queen, wrote an entry for the Google blog to go along with Google’s amazing homepage doodle - sharing his memory of their unforgettable frontman.
May’s entry reveals valuable insights into Freddie as an entrepreneurial man, as you can see below.
“Freddie was fully focused, never allowing anything or anyone to get in the way of his vision for the future.”
Freddie had a vision for the future that he pursued unrelentingly. I was watching Tony Robbins’ newest video yesterday and he kept referring to the importance of having a “compelling future” as well. Entrepreneurial men must have a vision for their future that draws them, compels them, onward.
I often get caught up in the day-to-day and lose sight of my goals, or lose heart and let my vision for the future fade.
We must create a vision for our future, a vision to pursue, that makes each day burn with possibility and promise.
And, once our vision is established, we need to focus our lives on living it out.
Even if we create a solid, strong, compelling vision for our future, the many distractions of life can blunt our efforts or cause us to lose our way.
We need to continually revisit our vision, to hold it in front of us, to focus our time and attention on it, allowing the unimportant to fall away.
Have a compelling vision for your future and fully focus on manifesting it.
“…be, like Freddie, fearless – unafraid of upsetting anyone’s apple cart.”
Fear often holds us back, limits and defeats us. We might be afraid of rejection, of criticism, of failure.
Being fearless, to me, is the external representation of handling fear well. I’m sure Freddie felt fear, just like the rest of us. The difference is that he took action in the face of his fear, appearing to all other as if fear did not exist.
Acknowledge your fear and take action in spite of it, continuing toward your vision.
“…Freddie was always the one who could find the compromise – the way to pull it through.”
When May writes of compromise, he doesn’t mean that Freddie compromised his vision. Looking up the definition of compromise gives us a better sense of what he meant: “understanding, give and take, meet each other halfway.”
May writes of how Freddie took action to maintain healthy, positive relationships with the rest of the band members. He would be generous and funny and, at times, give a special present. Freddie was aware that his relentless pursuit of his vision would occasionally cause tension and conflict and he worked to repair rifts and grow relationship without abandoning his compelling future.
Don’t leave a tangled crush of wounded behind you in the wake of your pursuit of vision.
Take the time to care for the relationships of those who join you on your journey, helping others with understanding.
“He was daring, always sensing a way to get outside the box. Sometimes he was too far out…and he’d usually be the first to realize it.”
Sometimes it takes going too far to know how far you can go.
Many tend to play it safe, staying in our comfort zones. To create something uniquely new and valuable, it takes going outside of the norm, trying new things, taking chances. It takes risk.
Take risks and test the limits, being aware of when you’ve gone too far, taking responsibility and adjusting accordingly.
“Freddie made the last person at the back of the furthest stand in a stadium feel that he was connected.”
Freddie connected to the people he served, his people.
Entrepreneurial work is made up of a seemingly infinite number of tasks. Creating, managing, supervising, marketing, selling, servicing, revising – even when we have employees to take these over we’re still responsible for oversight.
It’s a sign of the end when we forget it’s all to serve.
We seek to live out our passions and find out purpose in serving others, in creating results that they find valuable, that add to their lives.
In all you do, make sure you connect with those you are committed to serve.
Freddie wonderfully captures the essence of the entrepreneurial man – focused on his vision, overcoming fear, prioritizing relationships, pushing too far at times, but always connecting to those whom he served.
With all these great insights into Freddie’s life, there was one description, toward the end of May’s entry, that struck me most powerfully:
“And he lived life to the full. He devoured life. He celebrated every minute.”
Will your friends say this about you at the end of your life?
Let’s be more like Freddie and live life to the full.
Links:
Freddie For A Day – Fight HIV/AIDS Worldwide
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