Real Wisdom

A few days ago I was speaking to 28 year old Kate Atwood, one of Atlanta’s outstanding young leaders. Kate’s mom died when Kate was 12. Her teenage years were hard, lonely, and grief stricken. You’d never know it today except for her uncommon wisdom.

Four years ago Kate founded Kate’s Club, a non-profit dedicated to helping grieving children who have lost one or both parents. It’s been a huge success and has become a major community asset.

Kate offered a profound insight about the human condition. She said the number one fear of a grieving child is that the dead parent will be forgotten and that implies that inevitably so will the grief-stricken child. Kate said our greatest inner fear is that we don’t matter, that in the end we are insignificant. What most of us do to shield ourselves from this fear is to amass wealth, power, and fame as a defense against being forgotten. This coping strategy is the cause of nearly all of our world’s problems and most of our personal ones. In a desperate bid not to be irrelevant we become so.

But all of us have a legacy. All of us have a unique purpose. All of us have influence far bigger and broader than we imagine. As author Matthew Kelly passionately puts it, our purpose, the universal purpose of each of us, is to become “the best version of ourselves.”

We are unique for a reason. Each of us has a unique Greatest Total Value equation where the sum of our gifts, talents, actions, and relationship add up to infinite, irreplaceable value. No one can take that from us. We can only abandon it ourselves. And yes, our choices do matter. As Kelly reminds us, every choice either brings us closer to our best health, best work, best relationships, best lifestyle, best thought, best spirituality, or it takes us somewhere lower. Every choice takes us toward integrity or assaults it. Only integrity will make us happy.

So in an age of social insanity, political chaos, and economic insecurity, it is a time to look inward. We need to remember the wisdom of Kate Atwood. “Insignificance is an illusion, we all matter in exactly the way we are designed to.” Live the life your inner integrity is calling you to.

Give your gift.

Serve others.

2 comments.

How We Failed Our Children

How We Failed Our Children

Thirty years ago we didn’t have personal computers or fax machines.  What we did have was our energy crises.  Twenty years ago we didn’t have cell phones, the Internet, DVD’s or email.  What we did have was an energy crisis.  Ten years ago we didn’t have high definition television, plasma screens or Google.  What we did have was an energy crisis.  Today we have a full-blown energy catastrophe.  Why?  Because we choose to.

Gas near our home costs $3.35 a gallon.  A fill-up for my daughter’s Honda is $40 bucks.  She spends $60 a week on gas to get to school and get to work.  At her $10/hour wage, it takes her a full day of work to net after taxes a week’s worth of gas!  But the price of gas is not my daughter’s biggest problem.  It’s where the damn stuff comes from.  The financial price of gas is only a fraction of the true cost to our future. 

The engine of modern prosperity runs on oil.  That may have worked in the last century, but it’s a complete and total disaster in this one.  And unless we get to a radical new solution right away, our children will be slaves.  Oil plagues us in every way. It pollutes our air, over heats our atmosphere, funds terrorists, and gives sinister governments enormous power and sophisticated weapons. The people most hurt by this are students and lower paid workers who need a car to get to school or work.  It also hurts small business owners who have little power to raise prices, and no power to reduce fuel costs.

When oil is expensive it determines how warm we can keep our homes or how far we can drive.  It impacts the cost of everything that travels by truck.  Little things like food, clothing, and building supplies.  Other than that, it has no influence over us.

Think about it.  For over 30 years our government and business leaders have led us down a dark slippery path where our way of life and our standard of living would become increasingly dependent on religious fanatics or ruthless despots.  So what have we done?

We’ve darkened our children’s future. We’ve enriched scary countries like Saudi Arabia who support terrorism, Iran who wants to nuke Israel, and Venezuela who is becoming the new Cuba.  Meanwhile, Europe has turned reborn ruthless nuclear Russia into an energy-fueled totalitarian powerhouse.  And it’s only going to get worse.  Why?  World demand is exploding and too few people control the supply of “devil juice.”

There are solutions.  When we’re told there aren’t and that all we can do is conserve, buy a few hybrids, or stuff corn in our fuel tanks, it’s a lie.  We can do much more.  When leaders tell us they want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil by 20% in 10 years, they are just mouthing the words of the oil-lobby.  Conservation and hybrids help to be sure.  Growing corn for inefficient fuel is like mistaking a Twinkie for a protein bar.  It’s empty calories.  But practical ideas are abundant.

Billions of venture funds are flowing into solutions.  In the near future, we can increase average gas mileage by 50% by buying hybrids, using bio-diesel, and reducing the excessive weight of our biggest vehicles.  We can offer tax credits to buyers to get these cars on the road.  We can radically invest in new technology to create clean renewable fuels.

Sooner than we think we can free ourselves from fossil fuel.  The answers are maybe in new ways to harness hydrogen, waste product conversion, or electricity from the sun, wind, and water (for a great resource on renewable energy click here).  It will undoubtedly come from the radical experience of our imaginations like using chemical proteins we can grow (for more info. visit the J. Craig Ventner Institute).  But none of this will happen without leadership and a united public will.  We have a 13 trillion dollar economy.  Through incentives, tax credits, and direct investment, why can’t we spend one quarter of one percent ($320 billion) a year to find clean, renewable solutions that will create new jobs, hope for a more peaceful world and a future for our children?  If what we were spending on the “war” was spent on freeing ourselves from oil slavery, wouldn’t that be money better spent?

If you think all of this is impractical idealism.  It is only because we think so.  The idea of America was one of the most impractical, idealist concepts in history.  What was different was that we had leaders who were committed to our independence.  Isn’t it time to demand from anyone running for a major public office to have a real plan for energy independence.  Shouldn’t it be standard to be taken seriously?

There are always people who will tell us we can’t achieve our dreams because they profit from the status quo.  When we believe their version of the future we feel powerless and act like we are.  There is not shortage of solutions to solving our energy crisis, only a famine of will.

13 comments.

Lifeology - An Online Magazine

Lifeology: An American Dream Project eZine

Our first issue of Lifeology was launched today. Lifeology is our new online magazine - “ezine” - featuring the ideas and ideals of our members who constantly blow my mind with their insights and courage. It also features key articles on how to navigate your career, enrich your relationships, seek education and live your happiest life. It’s a beautiful web publication, free to download and send to anyone you know.

Click Here to Download it Now: Lifeology - June 2007

To subscribe to future issues, enter your email address on Need-to-Know Updates on our homepage: AmericanDreamProject.org.

Articles Include:

CITIZEN: Volunteer to Do Things You Value
RELATIONSHIPS: Creating a Blissful Marriage
EDUCATION: Education, The Engine to Liberty
LIFESTYLE: Comfortably Buying a House Where You Want to Live
LEADERSHIP: REALeadership: Because Leadership Matters
CAREER: Where You Start in Life Doesn’t Determine Where You Finish

PLUS - Recommended Reading and What’s New with the American Dream Project

2 comments.

Change Your World, Change The World

I’ve been off the Grid for several weeks. We’ve been improving the website and extending the reach of our blog so I’ve had some time to think, really think. During that time someone asked me what our core message is. For someone who is an idea junkie, that is not as easy to define as it sounds. So, it took some reflection. And here it is in all its blinking simplicity: Change Your World, and The World Changes. We are not powerless. There are answers on the sea of uncertainty we find ourselves adrift upon. Our research partner, DYG, reports that since 9/11 our societies’ psychological self-confidence has continued to decline and that our individual response is to face the truth that in the end we are responsible. Responsible for our own lives, our own future, the quality of our relationships, and the moral culture of our circle of influence. This is not the time to throw up our hands, nor to exhaust ourselves over-defining our problems. It is time to choose our lives. In so doing, we’ll have a rippling impact that will make all the difference.

Consider this:
If we are sick of foreign wars, make peace with our personal enemies.
If we are concerned with our nation’s debt, save our own money.
If we are sickened by materialism, buy only what we really value.
If we are concerned with global warming, conserve, walk, telecommute.
If we are worried about the environment, recycle, plant trees, grow something.
If we are angry with our leaders, propose and post real solutions.
If we are worried about health care costs, eat right, exercise, and sleep.
If we are worried about crime, drugs, and violence, participate in a neighborhood watch.
If we are sad about the decline of marriage, make ours the best example of commitment and fulfillment we can.
If we are worried about terrorists, put some boundaries between ourselves and those who use or abuse us.

I hope you can see what I’m trying to get at. These suggestions are simply metaphors for thinking about our lives. They are not meant to be absolute or literal statements. These are simply reminders that for every big overwhelming problem in the world, there is a version of it in our lives. If we focus on what we can control, our own lives will bloom and our influence will spread. So right now, what big-huge world problem is most disturbing to you? How does a version of that show up in your life? How’s the ecology of your relationships, the sustainability of your lifestyle, the humanity of your judgments? More than ever I believe that when we change our world, the world changes. I am sure there is something we could each change for the better right now. I know there is for me.

17 comments.

What Are We Teaching Our Children?

The educational question of the century is, “Are we even teaching the right things?” Daniel Goleman’s research on emotional intelligence confirms that high IQ has a low correlation to high life success (Goleman, Daniel, 2005). Emotional intelligence. Bantam Publishing.The most important factors in life are not as much mental as emotional. Emotional Intelligence includes :

Self-Awareness - Knowledge about our personal strengths and weaknesses and our impact on others.

Self Control - Trustworthiness, responsibility, and impulse control.

Goal Achievement - Willingness to sustain creative efforts to achieve worthwhile goals.

Empathy - Awareness of, and caring about, others’ needs, feelings and concerns.

Social Wisdom - Ability to influence, negotiate, communicate, collaborate and form lasting bonds.

These skills are not controversial. They are not part of a religious or political agenda. The research validating their essential utility is overwhelming. These skills are the common sense equipment any parent would want their children to have. They are fundamental to a successful, happy individual life and a high-functioning society.

But millions of our children are not learning these skills or gaining emotional maturity. In many homes, these skills are neither taught nor modeled. This is not just an inner city problem. In lots of middle class homes, family life has disintegrated to community living arrangements. Parents are little more than roommates living high-speed, separate lives while their children live in entertainment-saturated luxury suites, isolated from adults, operating with digital identities and running with their tribal peer groups.

We’ve reached a critical mass. For society to work, we must institutionally teach emotional intelligence to our children. Only then will they have the self-awareness, self-control, self-discipline, and selfless motivations to be high-functioning humans. There is no mystery about how to teach these skills. We know how. We just have to want to.

11 comments.

From First to Worst? The Quality of Our Education System

PART 1 of 2

The quality of our world’s future depends on the quality of education.

In the 21st century, there is nothing more important to individual opportunity and societies well being then education. In a free society, a self-governing society, education is essential. At a time when traditional jobs are disappearing into a raging sea of globalism and computerization, and when new jobs are being invented faster than the Labor Department can slap names on them, education is crucial. In an age when our leaders seem to have lost their common sense and, increasingly, their common decency; when the New Deal has become No Deal; and when the shining city on the hill is only shining because the lights of a new casino are on, education is the make-or-break factor of our future.

And, we are broken.

Only 25 years ago we were ranked number one in the world in education, today we’re 18th. (Behind Poland) (CBS News, Poor Marks for U.S. Education System) We spend more than $500 billion a year on K-12 grade education. And what do we get for our money? You know the answer. Our primary school education system is so broken and so bureaucratized that America’s fastest growing schools are home schools. Perhaps we should not be surprised at the quality of education we get with chronically low paid teachers who often have to buy school supplies for their students. It’s hard for teachers to concentrate when 40% of them are thinking of quitting because of threats of violence. And “Leaving no child behind” is a joke because the money your school receives is based mostly on the property values of the neighborhood it’s in.

For example, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, just one of the city’s 12 high schools made “adequate yearly progress” last year under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Of Albuquerque’s 128 public schools, only 47 met the standard, according to the state Public Education Department. There is also rising frustration and desperation over poor student achievement, crumbling buildings, bureaucratic wrangling among school officials and revolving-door superintendents. (USA TODAY, More Mayors Move to Take Over Schools)

So what’s going on? Education, with its half trillion-dollar budget is simply a bureaucracy stumbling around, wrestling in its own underwear. Teacher unions, administrators and politicians all want more money. And maybe they should get some, but not without a proven plan.

For starters, most school districts spend nearly 40% of their budget on administration and overhead. If we could only cut that down to 35% we could hire 350,000 more teachers. 350,000 more! Today!

But beyond just hiring more teachers, we already know what works. We’ve got plenty of examples. All across our country there are brilliant administrators and dedicated teachers who create schools of unexpected excellence. What they seem to have in common is a whole person commitment to each student. Teachers and administrators who actually care about kids and aren’t afraid to show it. Discipline, standards, inspiration, expectations and consequences are critical. And where there is little parental support, mentors, interns and extended school hours, even Saturday field trips, can make a difference.

The answers are right in front of us. It’s no big mystery. What’s missing is leadership. The will to change things.

6 comments.