Lifestyle

Insider Tips from the Pocket Mentor: Be Yourself

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Last week we introduced our newest Entertainer contributor, Vince Reardon. Vince is a highly acclaimed motivational speaker and author of The Pocket Mentor: Insider Tips from America’s Most Successful People. He will be sharing great motivational tips in Monday’s feature of the Motivational Minute. On Thursdays, we will be sharing insider tips about achieving success and being the best you. This week, Vince focuses on being yourself.

After interviewing 101 influential people for his book, Vince explains that overwhelmingly, people’s advice centered around being yourself. Vince explains that in order to be happy and successful in life, the most essential tip is to follow who you are, not someone else’s expectation.  He says, “honor who you are and follow that throughout your life and throughout your career.”

The artist, Mel Leipzig from New Jersey, told Vince that people need to “stick to their guns.” Vince explains that Leipzig had gone to Yale and Cooper Union to study painting. He had always admired works by Rembrandt and Degas, but he was told by esteemed teachers that those artists weren’t worth of emulating – that he should focus on abstract expressionism. While his teachers imposed this style on him, he became unhappy. He decided that he could follow what his teachers told him to do, or follow his inner voice.

“Had I not followed my inner voice, had I followed what they wanted me to do, I would be nowhere. Absolutely nowhere today.”

The terrific thing about Leipzig is that he has become a successful artist. He not only has taken part in many solo and group showings in New York, but he has taught painting and art history. When students want to be come painters, he helps them get where they wanted to go, and to become their better self.

He is an inspiring example of the essential ingredient in life – being yourself.

 


Stay tuned to Insider Tips from the Pocket Mentor each week to hear more about varying topics from the variety of people in Vince’s book, The Pocket Mentor: Insider Tips from America’s Most Successful People.

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