Forget Brad Pitt: 61-Year-old Bob Goff Leaves Me Speechless … and Utterly Star Struck

“I used to be afraid of failing at the things that matter. These days, I’m afraid of succeeding at the things that don’t.” – Bob Goff

Bob Goff, author, speaker, recovering lawyer, honorary consul to Uganda and overall life force, came to Richmond, Va., this week. He spoke to roughly 1,800 big dreamers on Feb. 20 at The Altria Theatre, and led a smaller workshop at The Lodge at HOPE Church the morning after, thanks to Needles Eye Ministries and a slew of really good humans.

Because I am an unapologetic Bob Goff disciple, I made sure a group of some of my most precious people went to both. And the blessing of it is literally still coming out of my pores.

One of my dearest loves Beth Heavrin introduced me to Bob’s books and studies Love Does and Everybody Always a couple of years back. Using crazy good storytelling from his own wacky, purpose-filled life, Bob helps you see that love is actionable. It’s important not to sit and plan all the actions you will take with perfection, but instead just GO and DO the actions you will, in fact, do with perfect imperfection.

His thinking will make you evaluate how you’re spending your finite time and loving your most treasured tribe. He’ll make you consider if you’re living uncomfortably enough, because the most beautiful things tend to happen inside the biggest chaos.

And importantly, he’ll teach you how to push aside the extremely distracting woes of our time in service to what we can control. Spoiler alert: what we can control are the simplest yet profound parts of life like loving our neighbors and making our whole hearts accessible to others.

If you don’t know his work, check out his books, podcasts, videos, events … whatever speaks to your heart. Go to www.bobgoff.com and dig into the hard work of knowing what magic you were born to create.

Because as Bob says, “it’s better to fail trying than to fail watching.”

Bob Goff encourages everyone to take 20 seconds of insane courage to do something bold today, because something good will come of it.

When Jonathan and I met Bob, I hugged him fighting back tears and could merely say: “I’m a little star struck. Um … you’ve changed my life. Yea. That. I’m star struck, I’m sorry. Can we please have a selfie?”

Mercy.

He smiled and said: “I’m so happy to meet you! We’ll all be together in eternity, so it’s good we started today!”

Love Does indeed.

Michele Rhudy thinks everybody should live like Bob.