Great Lives Are Built on One Big Mission

A note to young leaders.

Very few of us dedicate our lifetime to a single cause. We grow bored, frustrated or restless – and too soon move on to something else.

But the rare few who do, often meet with uncommon success.

One such person was Jane Addams, America’s first female Nobel prize winner.

Born in 1860, in Illinois, Addams grew up witnessing the suffering of factory workers and immigrants in nearby Chicago. At just seven years old, she told her father she wanted to build “a house where poor children could play and learn.”

This was no childhood fancy. It became the organising principle of her life.

At 29, she bought a crumbling mansion on Chicago’s South Side. Over the next 46 years, she grew “Hull House” into a 13-building campus serving over 9,000 people a week.

Addams didn’t just run Hull House – she lived there, among the people she served.

Stay the course for a lifetime.

Success is not the dozen things you dabble in, it’s the one big thing you do.