Imagine this scene. You’re on a plane with another 2 hours before you are due to land and boredom has well and truly set in. You finished the only book you had with you hours ago and you’ve decided you really don’t want to watch Shrek 4 for a third time.
So you start to rummage around in the seat pockets in front of you looking for some interesting reading matter to fill some time. Fortunately for you, it’s your lucky day, because some muppet inadvertently left a book behind in their haste to disembark the previous flight.
You look at the deep red cover and the rather provocative title of ‘How To Be Rich and Happy’ and maybe even have a chuckle to yourself. “Yeh, that’s be nice you think, but what’s the odds of a book delivering on that promise”
You then laugh out loud thinking about the poor sucker that coughed up $25 for a book about being rich and happy and then left the thing on a plane before they had chance to put it into practice!
You’re still smiling and shaking your head when you open the book to realize it wasn’t a mistake after all. Inside the front cover there’s a handwritten note from the previous owner saying:
“If you find this book, the it is meant for you. When it changes your life, like it did mine, please pass it on” – GM Baker 7/01/10
Now what would you think? Would you be more inclined to read the book, or would you still scoff?
I got tagged on Facebook last week. In and of itself that’s not very remarkable, until that is I tell you I’ve never met the person that tagged me and to the best of my knowledge she has no photos of me.
I tend to ignore 90% of the Facebook communications I get, but this one definitely piqued my interest and I obediently clicked on the link that took me to the tagged photograph that you now see in this post.
I cannot begin to tell you how pumped I was reading the note and and what a brilliant idea I think it is, it really made my day. What if everybody that bought the book did something similar and we started a real grass roots movement, wouldn’t that be something?
Paying somebody’s bridge toll or parking fee for them is a cool way of paying it forward, but not as cool as giving somebody something tangible to positively effect their life, right? With that in mind and if you decide to do something similar, please let us know so we can blog about it and tell others.
GM Baker (Twitter link) is currently undertaking a huge project of her own on her path to being the worlds most famous adventurer.
She’s embodies so much of the Rich and Happy spirit and formula because she’s not listening to people that tell her she’s being unrealistic, or that she should be settling down with a nice cubicle job and looking after her kids (they are going with her by the way). After all that would be ignoring her values, her calling and denying her authentic self, which incidentally, is not something Rich and Happy people do.
A day or so after this I got an e-mail from James the mastermind behind Men With Pens, the Canadian-based web design and copywriting site that has in excess of 20,000 subscribers. James read the book cover to cover over the previous weekend and really loved it? How much did he love it? Enough that he was willing to offer a free advertising spot on his site, normally worth $199, so that we could promote the book to his loyal readers!
So today I wanted to thank GM and James for paying it forward and allowing us to do the same!
Tim, This is a great piece that demonstrates the value that purposeful living brings, and I love the concept of paying forward kindness, particularly in the sort of random what that GM did.
BTW Mick, I was trying to work out how much it would cost to ship books to the UK. Basically it’s about $2.50 per book if we ship in batches of about 25. So if you know a charity that would pony up the cash for shipping we’d be happy to send some books your way.
I’m flying to Washington in August so if anyone wishes to leave me your book I will gladly change my life and then pass it on…or you could just send me one and I promise to change my life Tim! Great post and the quote you wrote from the book on the plane is pure gold. Those are the stories that matter. Hope there’s one in my copy when I recieve it!!!!
You could buy a case John, just to make sure that is! Then you can give them out yourself, I’ll even give you a hefty discount.
That’s so awesome Tim! Much better than my plan to leave a copy in my bathroom so my husband and son would read it. Hopefully more sanitary, too, but planes these days…
I’ll buy/distribute a few if you get some to the UK
@ Tracy – And have they read it?
@ Rob – It costs about $3 per book to ship in quantity to the UK, so if you can find somebody to cover the shipping costs and they’ll go to worthy causes then I’d definitely be up for talking about that.