You Can't Always Get What You Want

I was 21 years old, standing about 100m from the stage at the old Wembley Stadium with goosebumps on my arms, thoroughly enjoying the moment.

It was a warm July evening and Mick Jagger was singing to me. Yes, singing to me, directly at me. It wasn't that he was looking at me or anything so obvious. It was his words. "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you'll get what you need". They hit me.

Now I'm not sure how I'd managed to be a Stones fan for all of my teenage years without having heard that song.  But that's how it was. It was at Wembley that I first heard the song and the timing was perfect.

I'd just graduated from Manchester Uni. It wasn't exactly a celebration. I was in fact quite seriously pissed off. I'd ended up with a grade lower than I had expected. To make matters worse I had missed it by one mark. One mark out of six hundred. You couldn't miss the grade any closer. Despite my appeal to the examiners I could not leave with the grade that I had consistently scored in coursework all through my final year.

So, I was deep down pissed off, knowing I could have done better. It's a horrible feeling, that you let yourself down, but Mick picked me right up and in the course of four minutes turned me inside out and made me feel good again.

"You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you'll get what you need".  The message was clear. You make your own success and it doesn't come free. You've got to work for it. It may not always go your way, but try hard, and you'll get your reward.

6 months later and I was listening to the same song on my Walkman sitting on a chairlift in the sun. I had my skis on and I was trying to see if it was possible to ski every high point and every low point in the Espace Killy ski area (Val D'Isere and Tignes, France). I had decided that I wanted to do a ski season and despite being flat broke with my credit cards maxed out, here I was, soaking up the sun and living the dream. Mick's words sounded better than ever because it was my own bloody mindedness that had made it possible for me to be working in a ski resort.  (Oh yes, I skied the entire area that day: non-stop in 6h15).

So, here I am working in an internet start up in 2011.  A little older, a little wiser. One thing remains true. Nothing in life comes for free. Success requires effort, persistence and belief. It also requires laser sharp focus and a view on the horizon that we're headed for. Mick was right, it's the trying, the striving, the effort that gets us what we need. No-one does it for you, you've got to make it happen yourself. You've got to try sometimes.