Planet Good Radio Interview with Will Marre

In all of my experience I have found that most people have a motive inside of them driving them to do good. Why they don’t pursue it is because they’re afraid. Fear can be a dangerous thing. Fear drives airplanes into buildings. Fear drives us to work 80 hours a week. Fear keeps us in our status quo. Whether it’s fear of being broke, being fired, or not being successful, fear keeps us from doing what we really want to do, what we were meant to do.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak on Planet Good Radio.

What I shared is that we must have the courage to act despite our fears. Let’s face it. I don’t think our fears will ever completely disappear and we can always come up with excuses of why we shouldn’t act, but the real rewards come from acting anyway. Once we release ourselves from our fears and become driven by service, our imaginations will explode. In my book, Save the World and Still Be Home for Dinner, I tell numerous stories of people who have done just that. None of the people I write about have any formal power or resources. Take for example:

• Chris who, though he couldn’t afford to build a school for all the Sudanese Lost Boys and support his own family, nurtured and paid for one Lost Boy’s U.S. college education.
• Martin, a global executive of a multi-billion dollar company, who reinvented himself as a revolutionary leader of environmental sustainability throughout North and South America turning his knowledge of business into a force for change.
• Kim who saved her struggling training school by enlisting the help of every employee and transformed the company into a powerhouse within eighteen months––without a single lay-off.

What these individuals have is courage, will and imagination.

Towards the end of the interview with Tea Silvestre, the question that I always ask others was turned on me. “What’s the best thing you can imagine doing?” It got me thinking. What’s the best thing I can imagine doing?

For me, I think it comes down to one thing. All of my speaking, writing, leadership development, consulting, and business works culminate to this…

Change the purpose of business. I think this is the fastest way to save the world.

So, what’s the best thing you can imagine doing? What can you do to transform your job, business or life to help create a sustainable future for all? If we all will stop waiting for the world to change and start changing it…if we turn the power of enterprise into the power of good, imagine the world we will create together.

Will Marre

Money Madness and Socially Responsible Leadership

Perhaps the most tragic failure of a human being is to live our life without learning its most important lesson.  It is our greatest opportunity for happiness.  It’s simple.  Life’s purpose is more than our self-interest.  Much more.  I am continually shocked by the alarming display of leadership failure that parades through our media daily.  Mostly this failure is rooted in the singular pursuit of self-interest, which, like a coiled snake biting itself, dies from its own toxicity.

Our government, which like all governments, struggles to effectively regulate the behavior of powerful, selfish economic interests is seemingly overwhelmed by its own corruption.  Our latest defense budget is weighted down with billions of dollars of earmarks for weapons and projects not wanted by our own military.  We fund these special interest contracts because companies donate millions to targeted senators and congressmen willing to sell their power for campaign contributions.  Many of these lawmakers who enthusiastically insist we waste billions on weapons that will never work are the same ones who violently argue we can’t afford health care reform.  This is failure of leadership.  It’s money madness.  Imagine our society if we exercised self-control instead of needing the bumbling bureaucracy of regulatory control. Regulations are awkward, slow things down and always lead to unintended consequences.  The only thing worse is no regulations, which gives us products that kill us, bankrupt us and poison our future.  We need wise regulation because we are selfish.  What if we weren’t?

Today we have Wall Street whose leaders are wrestling with Washington to avoid any meaningful regulation while they pay themselves billions in bonuses for catastrophic failure.  Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, both huge beneficiaries of taxpayer bailouts, have paid 1434 individuals over $1 million in bonuses in 2008 (USA Today).  This is for performance during the meltdown!  It’s bewildering.   These are people who lead an industry that has caused immense suffering to millions worldwide.  Over 6 million of us have lost our jobs in the past two years due mostly to wildly irresponsible leadership of our financial system.  Meanwhile, responsible bankers who haven’t participated in the financial madness get punished for the sins of the selfish.  Something very basic is wrong.  It’s madness driven by money.

Our health care system needs radical surgery because we are currently ranked 37th in the world in health care effectiveness as measured by money spent for results.  The primary reason for our breakdown is that too many pieces of our health care system are dominated by profit-first motives.  Should health care really be viewed as an “industry” to get rich on?  Are there too many pigs at the trough?  Meanwhile those health care leaders who are caregivers and most compassionate and effective get squashed in the gears of the machine of selfishness.  Something very basic is wrong.  It’s money blindness.

Then there is us.  As a nation we nearly consume 40 percent more per person than our closest runner-up, Great Britain.  Yet, we spend more money on anti-depressants, treating stress disorders, have the highest suicide rate and highest divorce rate of any developed country.  We don’t have to wonder why.  Did you see the study released this week at the American Society Association?  After studying 136,000 people in 132 countries, it concludes that less money can make life simpler and easier to enjoy (See Money Affects Life Satisfaction, but not Day-to-Day Happiness).  Money doesn’t buy happiness.  Happiness, contentment, life satisfaction, all those things we long for are primarily driven by the quality of our personal relationships and the enriching experiences we have.  I think we knew that.  Maybe we just forgot.

Of course not having enough money to pay our bills causes unhappiness, stress and relationship problems.  You see, money as a psychological motivator is known as a “dissatisfier.”  Not having enough causes dissatisfaction but having much more than enough doesn’t cause higher satisfaction.  What drives our higher satisfactions?  Meaning and love.  And the great source of human meaning is serving others.  Put another way, meaning is love, and love is meaningful.  That’s not new news; that’s persistent wisdom of humanity recorded through history.  Selfishness, self-interest, self-glorification is self-inflicted pain.  Love, service, relationships are joy.  We all know this.  When we forget it, most often we have been blinded by money.

What’s the best thing we can do?  First, put down our blackberries and iphones, push away from whatever screen we’re watching and experience the feelings of love with those who love you.  Second, view money like the weather.  Sometimes it will be sunny, sometimes stormy.  Sometimes we’ll have money, sometimes we won’t.  Don’t fret about what you can’t control but take charge of everything you can.  Don’t waste money on too many things.  And don’t sell your peace of mind for debt.  Third, demand that leaders of all our institutions act on principles beyond their self-interest.  The world’s power is shifting to the power of consumers, employees and voters.  Every choice we make can be an act of leadership.  An act of socially responsible leadership.  It’s time to cure money-madness and sharpen our vision to see that things really matter.

We are the World

In some very important ways maybe all of us are more like Michael Jackson than we think. I know. He invented moon walking and was also a moon beam. He optimized the tragic weirdness of someone disconnected from others’ reality. That’s my point. Michael Jackson is just an extreme example of the mixed bag that all of us are. His talent was extreme. Even unique. But his gifts of singing, dancing, songwriting, and envisioning never-seen-before entertainment were developed through immense amounts of hard work and tireless practice.

As Malcolm Gladwell tells us in Outliers, extreme success is nearly always the result of extreme effort. Michael was extraordinary principally because he chose to work at it. So can we. Researcher Carol Dweck reports that nearly all people who are considered experts or masters at something have simply practiced much more than only competent people. I think Tiger Woods, Eli Manning, John Grisham, Steve Jobs and other over-the-top achievers would agree. They focus their talent on being great in a certain way, their way, and over-invest in themselves. The result is unique competence and often spectacular results. So one inspiring thing we can all take from Michael Jackson is that when humans are inspired to do things with enough drive, determination and relentless practice, greatness can result.

But even with extraordinary greatest, all of us are flawed. And no matter how hard we may discipline ourselves, those flaws dog us or new ones appear. To be human is to be flawed. Our flaws are widely seen and yes even talked about. Perhaps the greatest flaw is the arrogance of thinking our own shortcomings don’t matter. I think most of us would rather be judged by our sincere intentions than our uneven behavior. Which brings me back to Michael Jackson. People who knew him best and people who worked with him (I happened to know one of his producers in the 1980s) said he brimmed with positive intention and gentle kindness. Yes, he was afflicted by inner demons (The Man in the Mirror), and who knows how all those demons played out, but all of us have at some time in our lives battled our own darkness. It’s then we need affirming friends who call us on our crap and lift us to higher ground. Authentic friendship is both tough and loyal. I am not sure Michael had many real friends. Friends who didn’t need or want anything from him. All of us need such friends and need to be such friends. All of us. As the singer wrote, “We are the world.” It’s up to us to “make it a better place.”

What’s the best thing we can do? Be a great friend to someone today. A friend that encourages persistence, effort and practice towards worthwhile goals and a friend who also holds up a mirror and says, “You’re better than that!” when our friends give in to their weakness. That’s a friend.

Independence Day and Our American Dream

I’ve been giving speeches and writing about the American Dream for the past 5 years my quest has been to discover what our dream is for the 21st century. Today I have a powerful conviction that deep down we know we have the solutions to our own confusion. Answers seem to be on the tips of our tongues, like a memory that has just slipped our mind. The answers we seek are already embedded in our spiritual wiring; we are merely fumbling in the dark for the switch to turn the lights on.

Amidst the darkness of the evening news, the never-ending war in the Middle East, the decline of the middle class, the tidal wave of national debt, and the corruption of our institutions, there is another voice calling out. A voice calling for a rebirth of vision. A vision in which the greatest good for each and all is once again the ideal. It’s a new model of governing without the corruption of special interest and financial favors. A new model of sustainable enterprise that aims for the Greatest Total Value for all. A new model of personal action based on understanding our own unique design and our most noble human desires.

This is all more than a dream. It is The Dream. The Dream envisioned by the most inspiring human phrase, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” It is time to dream again. Will you?

A recent survey reported in the Harvard Business Review reveals that Baby Boomers and Generation Y have a lot in common (July/August 2009, p. 71). This is the first time parents (Boomers age 50+) and their children (Gen Y age 22 to 32) have been in the same work place in large numbers. Both generations are about the same total size, 70-75 million. Generally these are two generations that like each other. About 1/3 of Gen Y children talk to their parents everyday! So now Gen Y and many Boomers battered by the world we created have found common ground.

Here’s what we want! The genuine American Dream. The exhausted refugees of Boomer World and their meaning-hungry children find themselves longing for the same five things.

We want enduring relationships and families that work.

Love, loyalty and intimacy are our greatest needs because that’s what has been missing. It’s time for a re-commitment to commitment. For our children and us.

We want a lifestyle we both value and enjoy.

We want to live in a safe, attractive place we can afford. We want to do things that feed our soul and engage our emotions. We want community, meaning and sanity. For our children and us.

We want a career that embodies our Dream.

Neither a job nor a profession alone is a career. Our whole Dream Life is our career. We want real work with real meaning and real rewards. Over 85 percent of us want our work to make an important contribution to society. We want flexibility, autonomy and to be rewarded for results. We want to make a meaningful contribution, express our talents and follow our interests. For our children and us.

We want growth.

We want the tools to reinvent ourselves as often as we choose to in this constantly changing world. We want to learn whatever we need in order to excel at our priorities. We want affordable, efficient, stimulating education and access to enriching experiences. We want spiritual growth. For our children and us.

We want real leadership.

We demand truth, not spin or hype. We’re bombarded daily by a barrage of exaggeration and outright lies. People we should be trusting shamelessly offer denial, blame and rationalizations to worm out of their own failures. We have become a nation of skeptics because our leaders are less than we need them to be. We want leadership of vision, substance and honesty. In our homes, factories, stores, schools, banks and churches…everywhere.

We are that X factor. Our common values are powerful. Imagine how good our world will be when we live according to these aspirations. This is an exciting time in human history. How you and I act, right here and right now, is crucially important. The counterfeit American Dream invented by mass marketers that reduced our vision to a McMansion, a new car and a platinum credit card is up in flames. Many more of us are focusing on improving more than our material standard of living. It is time to create a standard of life that we are willing to pass on to our children. It is time to stop arguing over trivia and stand for our ideals that will inspire future generations.

In the best possible society, everyone can enjoy their Life and their Liberty and pursue real Happiness. We can literally save the future if we act on our beliefs and change our behavior right now. As we change, our institutions change. When we lead, our leaders will follow. We must take the lead. If we hope to change the world, we must change our world first.

It matters. The American Dream will only be reclaimed one dream at a time. Only when enough of us stand up for our real dreams of a sustainable future will the entire energy of our culture rise up to transform the world. Only our noble vision will save our future. All we have to do is start right where we are. Today.

Economies that favor the Middle Class — The Path Forward?

I grew up in a pretty conservative family.  We were ranchers after all.  We weren’t rich but felt strongly middle class.  We had a pickup truck and a station wagon.  My mom bought clothes for us children twice a year.  Once for school and once for summer.  My play pants sported patches to go with all the grass stains.  Oh yes, we were happy.  One reason was all our friends were pretty much in the same boat.  The middle class society of the 50’s and 60’s didn’t happen by chance.  It was the direct result of public policy that made bank deposits safe, state college education free, 30-year mortgages available, a GI bill and a manufacturing economy that made the best stuff in the world.  It turns out these middle class building public policies were very good for society.  Now we know.

The Economist magazine, capitalism’s public voice, recently reported research that economies that favor the middle class are not only the healthiest economically, they are the most free and democratic.  They report that where government policy helps the growth of the middle class through education, affordable health care, infrastructure and access to capital we see an increase in tolerance, a reduction in violence, more free speech, religious freedom, free press, equality under the law, a concern for the environment and more happiness and optimism.  Period.  (A Special Report on the Middle Class). Not only that, middle class societies also create more jobs and invent more useful technology.  What’s insightful about the research is that it’s not capitalism that fosters freedom; it’s middle class building.  The Economist also advises us that America needs to change course because our real middle class has been shrinking since 1979.

That’s right.  According to the OCED America has the smallest per capita middle class of the 20 most developed nations except Russia!  We’ve pursued policies that have created a bipolar society not only of rich and poor but also of asset owners and debtors.  And it’s getting worse.  The children of the wealthy usually start adult life without college debt, a free car and a big down payment on a house in a nice neighborhood.  The rest of our children have a very difficult time ever catching up.  So wealth turns into privilege and privilege into political access and influence, which becomes aristocratic power.

This is not new.  Policies that are designed to create a stratified society that concentrate wealth and power at the top and also suffering and fear at the bottom have been around since the invention of government.  In our nation’s history the competition for policies that promote the middle class versus an aristocracy of wealth was the driving force of our first American Revolution.  Consider this:

1.    During the first American Revolution the focus of the wealthy and the powerful mostly supported the English rule of America.  These were Tories who were in cahoots with the English industrial cartels who corrupted the British monarchy to keep the colonists peasants and the slave trade booming.
2.    After the American Revolution this group of bankers and city living industrialists supported the policies of Alexander Hamilton who insisted our national security demanded strong centralized power, a national bank and little true democracy.  He was adamant that the smart guys with all the money should run things because they were sure that common farmers were too stupid to.
3.    On the other hand, Thomas Jefferson valued equality, liberty and democracy over a monied aristocracy.  He saw virtue in the common citizen and the promotion of opportunity as great new American values.  He envisioned a great middle class of farmers instead of a bipolar society of rich industrialists, banks and plantation owners ruling over masses of ignorant factory workers, dirt farmers and slaves that knew no better.
4.    Lincoln believed passionately in ending slavery and creating universal opportunity by establishing free land grant colleges and large public works projects of roads, bridges, and railroads to spur mobility and commerce.  He was vigorously opposed to industrialists who wanted financial monopolies by building profitable toll roads but leaving out the rural farmers access to eastern markets.  He opposed the monied class who considered freeing the slaves confiscating wealth.  (That’s what you think when people are considered property.)  These voices also fought against universal education as a waste of taxpayer money and cried that the end of child factory labor would destroy our economy.
5.    Most people today forget these same Herbert Hoover loving industrialists who ran America after Teddy Roosevelt attacked Franklin Roosevelt as a socialist.  (Later these same people claimed Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist.)  These neo-aristocrats said famine relief and unemployment insurance in the Great Depression would turn America into a country of freeloaders and that regulating Wall Street would destroy both capitalism and personal freedom.  These attacks were vicious and unrelenting
6.    So today these same voices, these descendants of early American Tories who financially benefited from the concentration of power and wealth, are suddenly screaming for fiscal austerity and further tax cuts.  They claim that tax cuts for the wealthy and for big business will create market solutions to our collapse (caused by unregulated markets!).  These are the same table pounders who spent a trillion dollars on non-strategic war and played with our nation’s bookkeeping worse than Enron’s off-balance sheet debt and championed a bank bailout that was little more than welfare fraud of America’s richest bankers are now sanctimoniously calling for financial conservatism.

You see the voices of neo-aristocrats always say the same thing.  We can’t afford it.  We can of course afford wars, no-bid contracts and corrupt sweet heart deals made by multi-millionaire former Congressmen lobbyists, but we can’t afford to invest in our real future.  When these strident voices of fear are asked what policies created our current collapse they change the subject.  You see the theory of “trickle down” economics has little basis in fact.  Instead healthy, free and vibrant societies get that way by “move up” economics driven by high quality, universal education, good health care a strong infrastructure and reasonable access to capital.  These in fact are the public policies that give us the platform of life, liberty, and the opportunity to pursue happiness.

Does this mean the far left whose bleeding hearts and victim-centered view of reality have the answer?  Absolutely not.  In many cases they are as corrupt as their opponents.  Too often they indulge mediocrity and perpetuate dependence.  The ideologies of right and left are simply out of step with our future.  But in America’s great moments of crisis there has always been a higher middle way.  A way up that brings more.  Both more genuine opportunity and more responsibility for all.  If we want a sustainable future we must pursue a society that is both fair and wise.  One that works on the basis of common sense and uncommon morality.  Corruption, greed, fear and selfishness have brought us to where we are.  As long as “me” is enthroned above “we,” we will suffer.

–Will Marre, Founder American Dream Project & ThoughtRocket/REALeadership

So what’s the best we can do? Be a voice for common sense.  Be an advocate for the common good.  Don’t become fearful because of the shrill voices of the extremes.  So what do you think?  Am I right about the neo-aristocrats?  Do you support Obama’s vision? Do you believe it’s an investment in our future or a futile waste?  Or some of both?  Where do you find hope today?

The Meaning of Life

We have begun a new year, and the milestone that marks the passing of one and the beginning of another encourages us to look where we have been, and where we are going. Will we choose to live the New Year with purpose? Or will we simply walk aimlessly to some distant horizon? Why did you get out of bed this morning? Was their a purpose or was it just something you had to do?

As I look back at my own life and the year that has passed, I see both types of days. The interesting thing is that when I lived life with purpose and meaning, nothing could get me down. I knew why I got up in the morning, I understood the purpose to my actions, and everything I did meant something. When one chooses to live their life with purpose the distractions that drain of us of our life’s energy loose their power over us. When I have purpose I don’t get worked up if someone cuts me off on the freeway, says something I find offensive, or if someone doesn’t live up to my expectations. Why would I allow such a small thing to affect me when my life means so much more than such trivial distractions?

Stop for a moment and think about a time in your life when you felt truly driven. It needn’t be anything world changing or even life changing. Maybe it was a job interview that you felt really good about, or just a moment where you embraced life and enjoyed it.

I recently had such a moment on New Years day when a quick New Years jump in to the ocean turned in to a cold water endurance contest. For thirty minutes my daughters and I bobbed and floated in the surf without wetsuits, embracing the cold winter touch of the Pacific Ocean as it bit at our finger and toes. That simple act of embracing the experience turned something uncomfortable in to something joyful and filled with purpose and meaning.

One of the reasons that we frequently fail to find purpose and meaning in our lives is that we tend to look to others to find the meaning in our lives, when the meaning lies inside ourselves. How often do we suffer because some one fails to meet our expectations? This is what happens when we look outside to find happiness instead of finding it from within and enhancing it with the presence of friends and loved ones. It is unfair to burden someone else with the weight of all our hopes and dreams, and each of us must find the purpose and meaning inside of ourselves.

Another reason we frequently fail to find the purpose and meaning in our lives is that we fail to see that meaning has it exists right now. What does this moment mean to your life? To see the meaning in the past is nostalgia, the meaning of the future a hope and a dream, but to see the meaning of now is liberating because now is when your future is created. One of the most influential books I have ever read is “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle which goes in to great depth on the topic. The meaning in our lives must be constantly renewed if we are to overcome the ups and downs that life brings.

There are many resolutions that I could pursue in the year ahead. I could lose weight, do a better job at managing my money, or just resolve to do something great. In the end however, I realize that understanding the purpose and meaning in my own life is the foundation upon which all of these things rest, and my resolution is to renew the purpose of my life and give it meaning each day.

What is the greatest thing you can do to live a meaningful life in 2009 and beyond?

Voting for the American Dream

This election has the promise to be truly future changing.  But only if the winner seeks a dramatic new course from the wrong-headed assumptions both parties have been operating under for a very long time.  Our nation is the first in human history founded on the ideals of a government designed to constantly promote life and liberty so that all our citizens could pursue genuine happiness.  This is the root of the real American Dream.

I was raised on a ranch where the ideals of rugged individualism and personal responsibility were emphasized.  Those principles are the engine of a strong productive society.  But it’s not all there is to it.  As I’ve spent the past three decades helping leaders and organizations link fundamental values to their decisions it has become clear to me that the questions of the purpose of life and society must be answered or our unbridled individualism will degrade into selfishness and yes, greed.

The idea that our society exists only to enable its strongest individuals to amass power and wealth is a new spin on history’s oldest story.  It’s always told by the people in power.  The higher ideal our founders fought for is a society in which our common responsibility is to help people we aren’t related to, don’t even know, or more importantly the unborn next generation.  It was based on the inspired belief that the best society is one in which all of us help ensure that the most people have a full opportunity to achieve security, dignity and contentment.  This is the vision that inspires me.

I believe that the American Dream has little to do with money.  The dream is not so much materialistic as it is spiritual.  By that I mean the promise of America is the promise of an equal chance to make something of our lives.  The freedom and responsibility to give our gifts and express our most noble desires.  If that sounds corny, maybe it’s because we’ve become so cynical.  That’s a shame.  Our founders were anything but cynical.  They were perhaps the greatest group of practical-idealists in history.

I was reminded of that when I read Dean Calbreath’s column in the San Diego Union Tribune titled “Spreading the Wealth.” Calbreath reminds us that Jefferson and Madison were insistent that significant financial inequality not become life-as-usual in America.  They were escaping a smothering aristocracy in Europe and England and they knew that if the wealthy interests controlled the government, the banks, and the land a new aristocracy would pass laws to insulate themselves from competition and protect their wealth and their children’s wealth in a thousand different ways that would cripple opportunity for the rest of us.  Neither Jefferson nor Madison were socialists but as Calbreath reminds us, Jefferson proposed “taxes could be used to reduce enormous inequality,” and Madison proposed policies to limit “extreme wealth” and promote a broad middle class.  Calbreath also points out that none other than Abraham Lincoln instituted America’s first income tax.  It only taxed the more prosperous.  And Teddy Roosevelt proposed a graduated income tax and inheritance tax.  The motivation of these great presidents was not to punish the hard working, inventive risk-takers and reward the slackers; rather it was to use the taxes raised to create a civil society where the infrastructure of universal education, roads, bridges, and later power, water, and communication would reinforce the force of liberty for all of us to pursue our own dreams.

Our great presidents were trying to create a society that presented the greatest opportunity for happiness and least avoidable suffering possible.  They realized that liberty is not simply an absence of laws and regulations, but rather it is a system of laws and regulations that promotes the common good for us.

Today, those who believe that the opportunities for a well-educated suburban high school student whose parents can help him pay for college, buy a car or a down payment on the his first home and the opportunities for a fatherless inner city girl attending a violence-drenched high school are anywhere near the same are simply ignoring another inconvenient truth.  And any self-made millionaire that thinks they achieved their wealth and advantage solely through their own hard work is as deluded as Donald Trump.

To create our best society those of us who are blessed to have had responsible and loving parents, good teachers and a dose of good fortune have the responsibility to use our considerable resources and innovative minds to provide an infrastructure of education and opportunity for those who aren’t so lucky.  We all know direct handouts weaken and embitter the recipients of no-strings-attached charity.  But that’s not what the real American Dream’s promise is.

Our real dream is based on a mutual promise to give everyone an honest chance at a decent life.  But our pursuit of the common good has been lost in a chorus of “tough luck—it’s your own damn fault” social and economic policies.  I am not proposing we bailout irresponsible behavior of anyone, rich or poor.  Everyone should be responsible to clean up his or her own messes.  But the self-serving belief that wealth is a sign of virtue and that financial struggles are proof of laziness is obscenely wrong.  What kind of a society have we created?  For me what I see is a society that has parachutes and bailout plans for the rich and well connected while everyone else gets pushed out of the airplane and told to roll when they hit the ground.  This is not the best we can do.  We need wisdom, morality, fairness and dignity rather than slogans, selfishness, self-righteousness and nastiness.   To get it we’re going to have to vote for it, from the President to your City Council candidates.

When I look at the example of some of our best presidents, I am inspired.  Inspired by their belief that the best society is one in which those with the most advantages and resources help strengthen the means to rise up the opportunities of all.  For me that’s a renaissance of practical-idealism.  Isn’t our best society one in which the most citizens are empowered to do their best and be their best?  It’s time we vote for the American Dream.

What’s the Greatest Thing We Can Do? So what do you think?  What is the point of society?  Were Jefferson, Madison and Lincoln wrong?  How do we avoid turning a commitment to the common good into a welfare state?  What mutual obligations should we embrace? What can we do as individuals for each other right now?

The American Dream and the Pursuit of Happiness

The Pursuit of Happiness is the third pillar of the American Dream.  It’s the payoff for a secure Life and the benefits of Liberty.   Until recently, the “pursuit of happiness” sounded a little airy-fairy.  A little “let’s hold hands and sing from sea to shining sea.”

That’s because the idea of happiness has always been subjective.  It has meant different things to different people.  No more.  The past twenty years have produced mountains of worldwide research on human happiness.  Over 500 studies in the past five years alone.  We have also conducted our own research at American Dream Project. Now we actually know what happiness is and what produces it.  Understanding happiness is one of the great breakthroughs of the last decade.

Happiness is measurable, observable, and verifiable.  Through brain scans we now know that feelings of wellbeing occur when our left frontal lobes, found above our left eye, are stimulated  (Happiness: Lessons from a New Science by Richard Layard When we are anxious or unhappy, our right frontal lobes have their lights on and we are mentally “pacing our cage.”

Happiness is a persistent feeling of wellbeing, despite the challenges and the ups and downs.  Happy people remain generally content and optimistic.  Happiness also requires an absence of anxiety, stress and depression.

We also know that personal happiness has two drivers: inner and outer.  The most powerful is our own inner landscape.  How we think, approach problems, and bounce back from troubles.  But we don’t live in bubbles, so we are greatly affected by the outer “weather” as well.  Jefferson, Franklin, and Madison had it right; society and government have a big impact on how we pursue happiness.  It turns out the societies that have the greatest equality of access to health care, education, and economic opportunities are the happiest.

But, that’s not all.  Societies that have sticky social glue, meaning high family solidarity, low divorce rates, and broad membership in social and civic groups tend to be much happier. Belief in God, participation in religious organizations, and high optimism are also strongly tied to happiness  (Authentic Happiness and Martin Seligman).

The research comes at just the right time because, as a nation, with all our advantages, wealth, technology and power, we seem to stink at the Happiness game.  We’re not even in the top 20 on the first ever World Map of Happiness.

It turns out two of the greatest causes of unhappiness are divorce and job loss.  We are world class at that.  We’ve come to expect regular turnover in our jobs and marriages.  In fact, we now lead the world in those categories. We’ve been led to believe “creative destruction” is a good thing.  Evidently we’ve gotten a little carried away.  Trust, the measure of how much we can count on each other to keep commitments, is half of what it was in 1950. We don’t trust our leaders, our bosses, our government, our schools, our religions, our neighbors, our spouses, our kids, our working colleagues, or the evening news.  When trust in society is shot, social friction slows everything down, makes everything cost more and puts us on guard.  Distrust is the dance music for unrelenting stress.

We’ve been lulled into measuring happiness with a dollar symbol.  The quality of our society is now equated with the activity of our economy.  Our national policy makers worship at the altar of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP); our nation’s health is determined by dividing the total amount paid for all goods and services by the number of citizens.

As an indicator, though, the GDP is both amoral and illogical.  All expenditures are counted as good.  So all the costs of lawsuits, divorces, pollution and disaster clean up, car wrecks, crime, prisons, cigarettes, and even the price rise in health care, college tuition and gasoline add to our GDP.  Does that make any sense to you?  Or is the Gross Domestic Product as Robert F. Kennedy challanged just gross?

According to economists, our standard of living may be rising on paper, but our real standard of life is falling.  When we account for the true economic costs of environmental destruction, urban sprawl, depletion of resources, crime, poverty, illness and education failure, we find our per capita standard of living is declining.  That’s why we somehow feel poorer and more vulnerable even though our house prices have risen and we can buy SUVs with zero percent financing.  Our garages are full, but our souls are empty.

So, what’s the Greatest Thing We Can Do?  Everything.  Happiness is personal at its core.  So in spite of our stress-crazed society, we can all make individual choices that matter.  And these choices, our choices, will change the world.

Happiness and the American Dream

We can clearly see the sources of discontent that drive the 4th American Revolution when we take a closer look at the unhappiness of America today.  We all like to imagine America as the pinnacle of the good life, but Americans are not even in the top tier of world citizens when it comes to personal happiness. We now know this through global research studies performed by economists and psychologists.

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Taken from Will Marre’s,
The 4th American Revolution: What We Can Do Together

DOWNLOAD PDF: Happiness and the American Dream

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Americans are overworked, overstressed, and overstuffed.

• The average American man works 51 hours a week.
• The average working woman, 43 hours a week.
• 17% of us work more than 60 hours per week!
• On average, Americans work 7 weeks more each year than workers in most of the developed nations.  We even work more than Japan.  And that doesn’t include commuting time.
• For many Americans, the ride to work costs another 8 to 10 hours a week, or more.  Another 60 days a year.

Who takes real vacations anymore?  Who has time to be happy?  We swallow anti-depressants by the truckload so we can slog through another work-year.  This is the good life?  This brings happiness?

It’s not just the quantity of work that is killing us.  It’s the whole way we look at life.  Happiness research performed in over 46 countries combined with data from the World Values Survey and additional research performed by The American Dream Project indicates that our current version of the pursuit of happiness is out of gas.

• We’ve created a society that consumes 40% more than any other citizens of developed nations.  But by every other measure: debt, health, education, family, marriage, leisure and happiness…we are trailing.
• In 30 years among first world countries we’ve nearly gone from first to worst.  On average we have the most debt, worst health care, poorest education, most criminals, highest divorce rate, lowest leisure time, and least happiness.   I know this is hard to believe.  It was for me too.
• Thirty years ago we led the world in almost everything that mattered, including happiness.  Today, of the 19 most developed nations, we languish in nearly every category.  For instance, according to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, we trail Poland in education.
• We trail Iceland and Ireland and seven other countries in both adult literacy and life expectancy.
• And only tiny Aruba has a higher divorce rate.  It’s sad.  No wonder we’re not happy.

Increasingly our society seems to have no unifying “North Star.”  Our compass needle spins in a crazy free-for-all of frantic ambition, consumerism, and self-inflation.  If we are to believe the media, self-indulgence now seems to be the way to self-realization and credit card debt the route to the American Dream.  But as most of us know, external things do not buy happiness.

Andy Stern as posted on the Huffington Post on October 3rd, commented that:

“Neither you, nor I, nor many of those who voted for it believe that this bill is going to solve the pressing issues American families are facing: rising unemployment, stagnant wages, skyrocketing health care costs, a tax system that favors the wealthy over the workers. The enormous challenges facing American families are real and they aren’t going away. But when your ship is taking on water and starting to sink, a bucket looks pretty good.”

If self-indulgence has become our way to the American Dream…has anyone stopped to think that the root problem lies within ourselves… apparently the government can bail out banks, but it can’t bail out behavior!

Whats the Greatest Thing We Can Do?
Question #3: How can we get Americans to face the reality that the government can bail out banks, but it can’t bail out our collective behavior?