Lunch Lesson: Life is short. Decide what you want to accomplish before you die, and start doing it now! NOW = No Opportunity Wasted.
Today’s Lunch Lesson comes from someone all Amazing Race fans know and love, Phil Keoghan. I don’t normally get to hang out with the speakers at these events, but today this one was different. How cool is it to be able to meet The Amazing Race Guy! I asked him what he liked about his job and he said the travel and the people. Sigh. Ask a routine question, get a routine answer, right? I should have asked him something more outrageous, like if he would teach me how to sky dive or something. There’s one good opportunity wasted, I guess.
While most North Americans know him solely for his role as host on The Amazing Race, Phil has done a lot more than just stand around at the finish line while other people do the traveling. For more than 20 years Phil has been an actor, author, television host, producer, and cameraman on a variety of adventure programs.
At 19, he had a life-changing, near death experience of getting lost inside a deep-sea ship wreck. This experience motivated Phil to write a list of things to do before he died and developed a philosophy he calls, No Opportunity Wasted, which he describes as learning how to live while you still have the chance, letting go of the handrails, thinking outside the box and ditching the excuses.
Phil has inspired a CBC show, No Opportunity Wasted, in which the host surprises people and gives them the opportunity to face their fears.
Phil’s Quotes
“Learn how to live while you still have the chance and don’t hold anything back.”
“People ask me what the most important thing to take on the race is, and I always say it’s a sense of humor. If you’ve got nothing but a sense of humor, you will survive.”
“Imagine if, all your life, you wanted to climb Mount Everest. If I were to suddenly plunk you on the summit, it would be a great experience for you to be there, but it wouldn’t feel half as good as if you looked back down and realized you had put in all this hard work and effort to get to the top.”
Audience question: “Phil, I would like to be on the show but I am Canadian. Why aren’t Canadians allowed on The Amazing Race?”
Phil’s response: “We are not allowed to have Canadians participate on [The Amazing Race] because all of our network sponsors and advertisers are American companies paying to reach an American audience.”
