What is your Greatest Achievement?

Recently on a hike over the Great Dividing Range we came to a resting spot with a beautiful view from Mount Cordeaux all the way down to Brisbane City's skyline over 90 kilometres away.

There were families, couples, tourists and us; my wife, her friend from school and I. Sat atop the lookout, enjoying lunch.

That's when he rocked up. An action man type fellow with his partner and two children, one boy, one girl. I noticed him reaching the lookout because he exclaimed "oh what?! Is that it?? We aren't even at the summit, how disppointing!" Amongst all of his negativity, his partner, she seemed submissive, his children remained quiet before he turned on them. As his partner had given them some food, he started to go off at her about the rubbish food the kids were eating. He just seemed like an all round unpleasant guy to be around. After all of this I could not get over the fact at how disappointed he was at the view.

That's when I started to think, "I wonder what this guy thinks about, I wonder how much of his life is disappointing, I wonder what his greatest achievement is?" That's when it hit me. What a fascinating question. If I were to ask him that, what would he say? I wondered. Because asking that question not only asks you what have you done in your life that is the most impressive. It renders the interviewee to assess several aspects;

1, do I care what the interviewer thinks about me.
2, what does the interviewer consider as impressive.
3, shall I be humble or take the opportunity to whole-heartedly brag about my achievements.
4, what is the most important thing that I have ever done that is important to me.

And this was the lightbulb moment for me because I wanted to ask this question, of my friends, my family, strangers, my wife. For reason number 4, that the answer given tells you so much about the person answering the question.

You might be disappointed to find out that I didn't end up asking the action man what his greatest achievement is. But as we left for the next stage of the hike, I posed the question to my wife, and her friend. My wife, being the crafty little lady she is, kept quiet as I explained the consequences of the answer. Her friend asked me, "Well, what is your greatest achievement?" I thought for a moment, and after recently being married, the thing that was foremost in my mind was love. I answered, "finding love." The response was a unanimous "nnnnawwwwww!"

I spoke to my wife later that night about it and she let me know she was thinking how lucky we were to have found each other, and that she considered that her greatest achievement. Roll on the brownie points. <3

As a side note, I did end up asking my friends via Facebook what their greatest achievement was. It was interesting to see, all of my friends who had children said that was their greatest achivement, some friends responded with a joke comment and my friends who had taken a great risk and travelled the world when they finished school had said that was their greatest achievement. The fun part was analyzing my friends responses to see how they got to their conclusion.