We can all learn a thing or two from Gatsby.

If you’ve read the book or seen the film, you know that Gatsby threw crazy, opulent parties where hundreds of people poured through the doors.

Here are some of my big takeaways from the story…

1) Why throw parties

If you’re the person throwing the party, everyone knows you.

The person throwing a party is someone we call a ‘hub’.

You become everyone’s common point of conversation, you’re the favourite topic for people to talk about, and everyone gets to know you better through their discussion.

The great thing about being a ‘connector’ is that by putting people together, people want to reciprocate by helping you out and doing you favours. You become important in that way.

2) An alternative to becoming a ‘hub’

With that said, you don’t have to be the one throwing the party all of the time to develop a network.

What you do need however – if you’re not going to be the hub – is build a good relationship with a hub.

If you know the person throwing the party, you always have a way to go and meet people.

You can then use this person as a gateway to meeting more and more new people.

3) Have an emotional vision for life

One of the things we know about Gatsby is that through all of his achievement, he had an extremely emotional vision of where he was going.

I’m always coaching that if you want to get somewhere, you can’t be driven by logic.

Logic doesn’t last. Logic leads you to running on will-power and will-power never lasts.

You have to run on emotion. You have to find something that drives you on a visceral, gut level.

For Gatsby it was a woman. It was the ideal he had in his head – and of course that become an unhealthy ideal because it became unrealistic – but he had something driving him that was bigger than an amount of money or the size of a house. It was a VISION of his life with somebody.

We all have to find an emotional vision that’s going to drive us through the hard times.

4) Believe you’re destined for greatness

Gatsby believed that he was destined for greatness, even as a boy.

You have to believe on some level that you’re destined for great things. We all have to believe that we’re special in our own way.

–What makes YOU special?

5) Have a plan

Gatsby had a way of constantly improving himself and saw himself as his greatest asset.

(In the book) His dad found a journal with his daily diary.

Schedule Sept 12th 1906

Rise from bed – 6:00 AM
Dumbbell exercise and wall scaling – 6:15 – 6:30 AM
Study electricity etc. – 7:15 – 8:15 AM
Work – 8:30 – 4:30 PM
Basketball and sports – 4:30 – 5:00 PM
Practice elocution, poise and how to obtain it – 5:00 – 6:00 PM
Study needed inventions – 7:00 – 9:00 PM

General Resolves

–No wasting time at Shafters
–No more smoking or chewing
–Bathe every other day
–Read one improving book or magazine a week
–Save ($5.00 – crossed out) $3.00 a week
–Be better to parents

Have things that act as a compass for how you live.

If you’re thinking about this when you wake up, it’s already too late.

This has to done the night before so that when you wake up, you’re straight into action and you know exactly where you want to be.

Now Gatsby had his flaws. But I feel like we can all learn something, even from flawed men.

When we take his best parts and combine them with the learnings we see from a far, that’s when we’ll achieve our own form of greatness.

Question: What did you take away from The Great Gatsby? Let me know in the comments below!