The American Dream: Hummingbirds or Eagles

I see it all the time now.  The hummingbird effect.  Hummingbirds flap their wings up to 70 times per second to stay in the air.  70 times a second.  Whew!  Eagles on the other hand don’t flap much at all, yet they can fly up to 80 miles in an hour.  Their secret is they surf the wind.  They catch currents and thermals and just zoom.  We’ve become a nation of hummingbirds.  It’s what happens when stress overwhelms us.

We now know a lot about the physical, emotional, mental circus that noisily plays inside us when we are under constant, unrelenting stress.  We either start flapping our wings frantically like a humming bird trapped in a glass room smashing ourselves against windows that look like a way out but aren’t, or hide in our nest.  Unending stress makes us feel powerless.  At first this makes us angry, then sad, and ultimately hopeless.  Desolate.

This is what I see in America’s workplace.  Frantic wing-flapping or hopeless disengagement.  This recession has, to use a phrase of my mother’s, knocked the stuffing out of us.  Let’s face it.  The last ten years have been a whopper.  8 million of us lost our jobs and many of those jobs are permanently gone.  We’ve been rocked by the dot-com bust, Enron, World Com, subprime defaults, foreclosures, Wall Street casino games and oil spills.  The suffering of 9/11 has become a never-ending ache of Iraq and Afghanistan.  And all of this is being narrated by an apocalyptic media who merchandise fear, anger and despair like 31 flavors of imminent personal catastrophe.

All of this might be livable if we simply shut off the noise, but the biggest stress has seeped under our doors like toxic smoke.  It’s the sinking fear of economic starvation that drives our work life.  All of us know people who have lost their jobs and haven’t found a new one.  All of us know people who have been forced to move in with others.  Most of us still juggle debt we thought we could handle.  And many of us work for companies, even good companies, that have laid off too many people and pushed the extra work around the way a farmer spreads manure over a garden patch.

Layoffs and trying to bloom through a new layer of fertilizer has happened many times before.  But not like this.  The economists who track the numbers say the past two year’s rise in worker productivity is the greatest in history.  But worker productivity is basically a measure of revenue divided by worker pay.  Thus if managers can fire workers faster than sales decline, productivity magically goes up.  Profits too, at least temporarily.   But real life is not found in spreadsheets.  And in real life all I see is hummingbirds.  People flapping their wings to the point of exhaustion.  Literally.

Last month, a sweet woman who recently found a new job told me that in her previous job at a large company a close colleague was so stressed out over wave after wave of layoffs that she began to suffer form fainting spells and heart palpitations.  This is what happens when our hormones trigger biological responses that constrict our blood vessels.  She refused to take time off or go to the doctor because she feared she would be singled out as a weakling or worse a health care risk.  Her husband had already been laid off so her fear was not unwarranted.  One morning she started to have a panic attack.  She refused to let her friend call 911, said she would be fine and would go lay down in an empty office.  Her friend called the sick woman’s husband and then went down to the darkened office.  She was dead.  A heart attack had stolen her life.  Sadly, I am not making this up.  Are we really working ourselves to death?

This is more than sad.  It’s tragic.  And it’s driven by, as Einstein said, counting the wrong things and not counting the things that should be counted.  Firing people and forcing the survivors to do more work is not leadership.  It doesn’t create more value.  Value is created when we innovate and invent.  These are creative acts that arise in positive work environments where the rhythm of human life is respected.  The invisible air currents that help us soar at unthinkable heights are not sensed when we are madly flapping.  Those opportunities only come when people have the calm to see what was previously invisible.  Work environments that create conditions for human innovation or extraordinary value are drying up, so we must create them ourselves.

The original American Dream was driven by the ideal of self-sufficiency.  Brave nation builders came to our country willing to clear a field of rocks and stumps so they could plant.  Today our farms are our minds.  It is over-time to take the rocks out of our heads and plant for a more secure, self-determined personal economic life.  We must learn how to become extraordinary at what we are passionate for.  We must learn to be economically literate and create a sustainable lifestyle.  We must find time to rest our wings and find ways to soar.  It’s possible.

Last evening we were walking through our neighborhood and ran into Jake.  He’s a young-in-his-30’s, constantly smiling, life-loving, neighbor who we originally met when he was waiting tables at a local pizza place.  He learned to use a video camera making movies of local skateboarders.  He talked himself into a local skateboard manufacturer as their performance team manager and videographer.  The company has exploded with growth (Who would have thought?) and Jake told us he was on his way to Europe for a month, Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, to compete as a member of their high-speed downhill demonstration team.  I know…Jake is an example of a guy who lives near the beach in one of the most ideal communities in the world getting paid to ride and film skateboarding around the world.  It may not be your dream.  But it is his.  Jake will not die in an empty office.  And neither should you.

What’s the best thing you can do?  Don’t leap.  Wisely plan to take control of your economic future.  Choose, adapt, live.  Really live.  This week we celebrate our independence.  Be  sure to celebrate yours!

Become Whole–Become Part of The Integrity of Everything

I have been off the grid.  I went surfing in Southern Nicaragua.  The waves were big.  Overhead everyday.  Powerful.  Awesome really.  I surfed 5 to 6 hours a day.  That’s possible for me only in warm tropical water because it soothes my old muscles lengthening my greybeard stamina.  As inspiring and joyful as the surf was, I was surprised to be more inspired by two books I found myself reading.  The first is Einstein’s God by Krista Tippett who has a regular podcast called Speaking of Faith in which she interviews certified brainiacs, mostly scientists, who have deepened their spiritual faith and continue to seek for ultimate answers even as they discover the immediate workings of our material world.

The other book I discovered on the bookshelf where I was staying was called Essential Spirituality by Roger Walsh, MD, PhD.  Walsh’s book is a guide to spiritual exercise found in all major religions that can lead us to insight and take us to the essential virtues of a well-lived life.

So I found myself alternating between warm water waves washing away the accumulated stresses of 21^st century life and the waves of new implications of wisdom.  I found myself washing away my frustrations of doing much but accomplishing little. Daily, I struggle to do more…not by doing more, but by doing better.  It is a continual question of what to cut out and where to go deeper.  The quest is always for a higher level of integrity.  Not just with myself but with “all that exists.”  I find myself bouncing between the emotions of outrage at the outrages of our time and the wiser emotions of focusing on the things over which I have some control.  My time in the waves left me with a conviction that it’s desirable to embrace all my emotions as long as I don’t become them.  Authenticity requires that I feel my feelings while wisdom informs my choices of how to act or not act.

Let me get back on track with some cool things I learned or relearned that are already helping me choose where to put my energy.

Albert Einstein explicitly wrote about two realities.  One dimension is the one we live in consciously.  It began with the big bang 13.7 billion years ago where an atom of hydrogen exploded into what’s become our world.  It’s a dimension of time and space.  Einstein wrote that the other dimension has neither time nor space.  Just a constant now.  Of that we know little except that it must exist for our dimension to exist.  Science focuses on explaining our time/space reality but has nothing to offer in terms of describing the timeless (spiritual) dimension.  He wrote of a transcendence being a consciousness beyond “the vanity of human desires.”

In his autobiography, The World As I See It, Einstein wrote of his endless curiosity toward “a knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty.”  Einstein was continually amazed at the mathematical elegance of the universe feeling like mathematics revealed the thoughts of a universal creative force.  Einstein believed in the indestructible nature of energy and comforted the Queen of Belgium who was grieving the death of a loved one writing, “There is, after all, something eternal that lies beyond the hand of fate and all human delusions.”

Einstein, like all of us, asked the question as to whether the universe has a point.  Or even more personally, does our existence have a point. The nearly universal answer is that the question of all questions can only be answered by direct experiences that create a personal connection between our time dimension and the timeless.  These are not irrational experiences.  They are trans-rational.  In rational-materialism only the strong and powerful thrive.  In this “objectivist” delusion compassion, kindness, and reverence for the lives of others seems irrational.  But experiences in the timeless dimension let us know that virtue, empathy, and love matter most of all.  It’s this spiritual-timeless energy that motivates our aspiration for moral order and civilization that reveres both moral and social order.  This is our impulse to transcend self-interest and see all of existence as a connected system of energy.  Life and non-life connected.  It’s in moments of transcendence that we release ourselves from our self-obsessions and become fearless in serving others through our talents, skills, resources and the sheer force of our creative will.  This is the beginning of integrity.

How do we become members of both the time and timeless? This is what Roger Walsh writes about in Essential Spirituality.  What it takes is a commitment to spiritual fitness as strong as our physical fitness.  Our door to the timeless is to focus more frequently on the richness of what is happening now.  Brain research confirms practicing being fully present creates new neuron networks that move our mental energy from our fear-reactive limbic brain center to our wiser reflective pre-frontal cortex.  It’s literally these neuron networks that give feelings of well-being and opens our minds to see opportunities instead of problems.  These are the brain centers that dissipate stress and deepen contentment.  Here are three simple exercises:

1. Deep Mindfulness.  Taste your food.  One time each day eat something and focus your entire attention on the taste and texture of your food.  Narrate these sensations in your mind.  Listen to music.  Once a day listen to a piece of music while trying to identify each sound with its source instrument or voice.  Listen for feelings instead of content.  Once a day listen to someone with your whole attention focused on what they might be feeling instead of just the content of their words.  You will feel love.
2. Practice Learnfulness.  Once you actively, purposefully adopt the inner belief that you can benefit from anything that happens in your life you will fear less.  This is the trigger to contentment.  Once, when I had gone through a very rough patch of major disappointments a friend said, “Well, the worst happened and you’re still okay—so there’s nothing to ever be afraid of again.”  I reflect on that whenever I’m afraid.  We can become wiser from all experiences.  In the timeless dimension we have nothing to fear.  Nothing.
3. Paradoxical Gratitude.  Once we accept that our life purpose is centrally about learning all that we can learn from anything, even personal tragedy, we are free to be grateful.  This exercise is one in which we say, “I am grateful for this and it’s opposite.”  I am grateful when the sun shines; I am grateful when it rains.  I am grateful when I am with friends; I am grateful when I am alone.  I am grateful when I have extra money; I am grateful when I don’t have enough.  Huh.  I know it sounds as stupid as Paris Hilton’s dog, but don’t take my word for it.  Try it.  Right now.  See what your “mind” tells you about why you can be grateful for rain, aloneness, or being short of cash.  I think you’ll be surprised.

Let me finish with a famous quote by Albert Einstein:

“A human being is part of the whole called the universe…He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest.  This delusion of consciousness is a kind of prison restricting us to personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.  Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

This is the essence of morality.  It is the foundation of sustainability.  We become whole when we become part of “the integrity of everything.”  In Save the World and Still Be Home For Dinner I write about living in integrity.  To fulfill our Promise by making our difference.  So often we find ourselves distracted working hard to achieve other people’s goals or working to pay our debts often accumulated by selling our peace of mind for things that offer little enjoyment and less joy.  I am convinced we cannot live our dream until we awaken from the life that happens to us and live the life our higher self wishes to engage in.  Even if we are “successful” by the definition of people who do not understand us, that success is an anchor rather than a sail.  To find the wind I have found that connecting to the timeless gives energy and direction to my time.  And there are moments of beam-reach when the vessel and wind cut through the waters of life without friction.  These are great moments.  But they are appreciated because of all the other moments of tackling against the wind or hunting for it.  Good sailing to all.

Building Trust in an Age of Distrust

We swim in a sea of cynicism.  We wonder if anything is what it appears to be.  Everyone seems to be trying to talk you and me into believing his or her promise.  It seems that everyone has an idea about how to make our lives better.  They promise if we believe what they believe, vote for who they vote for, buy what they buy, we will be happy.  Tens of billions of dollars and a gazillion work hours are spent coming up with ways for someone to get their ideas in our minds, their brand in our hearts and their hands on our wallets.  All of these relentless sophisticated attempts to persuade us to do what they want us to adds to our exhausting way of life.  It’s stressful defending ourselves against all these unwanted attacks on our attention.  That’s why connecting with people who have no agenda for us other than helping us get clear on what we want is like breathing oxygen in an otherwise toxic smog of mass manipulation.  And it’s the pure oxygen of mutual service that human beings long for in all relationships whether it’s a marriage, a parent-child or a 10-minute relationship with a customer.

Years ago when I was helping Stephen Covey build our leadership practice I did most of the selling.  He told me, “Don’t sell; just seek to understand and help them find a path to get what they really want.”  So I’ve spent the better part of my professional life studying how to coach people to make their best choices.  It’s called motivation theory, and it’s a field chuck-full of fascinating research about why we do what we do and also why we often don’t do what’s best for us.  Here’s what I’ve discovered.

1. Our power to change minds principally comes from our own sincerity. If we are focused on the interests of those we’re seeking to help rather than our self-interest, our positive intentions will be felt and trust will spout.
2. Control and manipulation are trust killers whenever we try to control others’ choices, and when we manipulate to motivate we are poisoning the relationship. Manipulation is psychological poison that like a snake biting itself will eventually drain us of our life energy.  And there will be no mirror we will wish to look at.
3. Help others harness their self-determination to choose what they most desire. We are much more likely to follow through on choices we freely make.  The reasons we don’t are most often confusion because our choices aren’t clear.  Deep trust is built with people who help us get clear on what we want and why we want it.  This elevation of self-determined choices increases the motivation to follow through.
4. Helping others gain the confidence to choose what’s best is our best gift to them. The greatest hidden reason we don’t choose what’s best for ourselves is that we often lack the confidence that we can do what needs to be done to get the result.  So we act like we don’t want to learn to play the piano, learn a language, use technology, or seek a new job when it’s our fear of failure that keeps us from choosing what we really desire.
5. The most powerful way to build confidence that we can choose what we really want, learn what we need to learn and do what we need to do is to identify with stories of people just like us who were successful. This last point is critical to help people change their behavior.  By telling stories of others who are just like them who have made successful choices, people’s fear and resistance recedes and their motivation to act rises.  Stories are narratives that reveal how people overcome obstacles and conflict to achieve their dreams.  Stories inspire our minds to find new paths around brick walls.  New brain research suggests there is nothing more potent than a story to open a closed mind.

All of us have times where we desire to have a positive impact on others.  Now psychological research confirms what wise people have known all along.  We have the most impact when we genuinely care for people enough that our agenda is simply to help those we serve achieve their agenda.

Dear George…It’s No Time to Be Stupid

It’s No Time To Be Stupid

A lot is being written about how radical Conservatives are pushing out center-minded Republicans from the party.  This couldn’t come at a worse time.  Recently I read an alarming editorial by a conservative columnist, George Will, whom I usually respect for being thoughtful rather than extreme.  His column, If VAT, Ditch the Income Tax, however, was a decidedly right-wing rant accusing liberals of everything bad and offering nothing except business-as-usual as an alternative.  As an Independent, it upset me.  We need more from Conservatives than table-banging.  It seems like they have lost their ability to reason, and that’s a huge loss.  So this is the email I sent off to George Will.

Dear George,

George, what is going on?  I’ve always considered you a common sense Conservative, yet your recent column was an angry screed accusing President Obama of “creating the financial crisis” so he can make government bigger.  Finally you propose that “all taxation diminishes freedom.”  Are you sure?  It seems to me that some taxes assure freedom.  The taxes that pay for national defense, the courts and the police assure me that I have the freedom to own and enjoy my property.  Taxes that pay for roads and airports contribute to my freedom to travel and engage in commerce.  And instead of taxes being as you claim them to be, “the confiscation of our time,” maybe they are our investment in the common good.  At least they can be.

Your edgy, divisive tone is the opposite of what is needed by Conservative voices today.  The unholy trinity of Limbaugh, Palin and Beck arouse desperate passions that are little more than the propaganda of the rich telling the financially stagnating middle class that what’s good for the rich is good for the non-rich.  But clearly it isn’t.  The financial life of the middle-class has gotten steadily worse since 1980 even as the extreme wealth of the top 5 percent has ballooned.  The rich don’t need health care reform, access to quality public education, credit card regulation or a living wage.  That’s what single mothers need.  Conservative’s manipulation of people’s emotions is rampant today because the repeated assertions broadcast by multiple voices that say every attempt to broaden the opportunity for a decent life is an assault on our individual freedom.

But George, we don’t ride the range with a six-gun on our hips the way my great-grandfather did.  We have a very large-scale society with at least 330 million diverse people who all want a chance at a decent life.  Our government has been corrupted by special interests who get tax breaks, subsidies and sweetheart contracts while the rest of us make our living the old fashioned way.  Our country was founded to break away from the control of an aristocracy that united the English nobles with corrupt capitalists.  James Madison, as well as Thomas Jefferson, wrote and spoke frequently of the evils of the concentration of wealth and land in the hands of a new aristocracy.  Surely Conservatives must have more to offer than rebooting a long political history fighting any bank regulation, antitrust laws, workplace safety regulations or more outlandish the end of slavery, child labor, or racial segregation.  On the political tension between human rights and property rights, Conservatives should move to higher ground.  Conservations need to be more than the voice of the status quo saying, “I’ve got mine and I want more.”  More critically it cannot allow itself to be the advocate of the rising tide of armed groups posing as state militias or white supremacists.  But when a prominent conservative sums up her platform as “give us our constitution, our guns and our religion” as Palin does, Conservatives seem content to build a brand without real solutions only friends and enemies.

What we need is a thoughtful, common sense voice that has real ideas on how smaller government can create a better society.  We know, for instance, that at least 1/3 of the federal budget is wasted, but how can we strategically reduce the waste?  We know that federal employees are now paid more than their private sector counterparts.  That can’t be wise.  What I believe most Americans want is not a redistribution of income but a fair re-distribution of opportunity.  That requires high quality universal education, ample access to capital, a robust infrastructure, and smart ways to insure safety of products and services that can harm us.  That requires public policy innovation, not just the tired sound of table-banging “no.”

The famous economist John Nash won a Nobel Prize using Game Theory to prove that healthy human systems thrive when people maximize their own interests by ensuring everyone else’s interests are also maximized.  This is the mathematical proof that enlightened self-interest is more than selfishness.  Conservatives need new thought leaders.  And they need established ones like you to lead them upward rather than backward.  We are still waiting for the 21^st century alternative to big government to show up.

If you have any new ideas, I’d love to hear them.  The last time conservatives ran the country the government wildly expanded, we spent nearly a trillion dollars on a war that hasn’t stopped terrorism, and we borrowed ourselves collectively into a bankrupting recession.  If the Mad Hatters who guide the very strange Tea Party represent  your best ideas, our country will be left with only the left because most all of the people who want to join the Tea Party already have.  Surely someone over there has both a brain and a heart.  It’s time to start using them.

Make Your Free Throws

So close.  So very close.  Every underdog in America was rooting for tiny, unheard of Butler University’s Bulldogs to somehow beat mighty Duke in the NCAA National Championship game.  David versus Goliath.  It was crazy, like Amherst playing Alabama in a title football game.  No one gave Butler a chance.  Most report’s experts predicted it would be over by half time.  Duke by twenty.  Instead Duke won by 2, barely.  Butler played with great energy, smarts and discipline.  They could have won.  In fact they should have won.  And it wasn’t fate that they lost.  It was missed opportunities.  It wasn’t that Duke was too much for Butler.  Rather it was that Butler didn’t take advantage of the easiest shots in basketball, the free throw.  Butler missed nearly 30% of their 18 chances.  That’s not unusual, but for an underdog in a title game, it was fatal.

Free throws are uncontested.  No one is in your face.  In fact, no one is moving.  It’s just you, the ball and basket.  With practice and focus otherwise average players can sink close to 9 out of 10 free throws.  I had a friend in high school who practiced continually, trying to make 100 in a row.  He never quite made it, but he was deadly in games.

The point is in a David and Goliath game a free throw is like getting a free shot at the giant’s head with your best rock.  And whenever a team loses by one or two points we can’t help but wonder what if a few of those missed free throws would have been sunk.

The problem we all seem to have is that unless the free throws are at the end of the game, they don’t seem all that important.  But as it turns out, a point scored in the first half counts just as much as if it were scored in the last five seconds.  A point is a point.  And that is the point.  All of us have free throws in our life.  Lots of them.  Free throws are all the things we do control.  All the choices we make that are uncontested by others.  We have lots more free throws than we often consider.  And how we do on our free throws has a big impact on whether we win our game of life.

So what are our free throws?  To begin with…what we eat, how much sleep we get, our frequency of exercise, all the personal choices we make to enhance our health and energy or erode it.  Second, we have free throws concerning our thoughts.  Are we grateful, empathetic, and optimistic?  And certainly our education.  What do we choose to learn, to invest ourselves in?  Do we choose enjoyable hobbies, soak in the spectacular beauty of nature and art?  And do we choose friends who enrich us, help us laugh, and comfort us?  As I think about it our free throws pretty much determine our happiness and contentment.  Of course it doesn’t seem that way.  Mostly we are sidetracked by the things we don’t control.  Illness, job loss, breakups.  These things are huge.  They are like a 7-footer’s slam-dunk in our face.  They are violent and emotional.  But…at the end of our lives these ferocious points do not determine who wins.  In the end it’s our free throws.

So what free throws are you being given today, right now?  What choices can you make that score points for your health and happiness?  We might not make every choice the best one.  But with clear self-reflection and mindful practice we might make 9 out of 10.

If you have a story of choice that changed the outcome of your game, we’d all love to read it.

We Can Create Our Future

I love to surf. I talk about it all the time. It’s not that I am a great surfer. Far from it.  I am one of those journeyman surf dudes who “mind surfs” much better than I actually surf.  But as they say, “Only a surfer knows the feeling.”  The feeling is everything.  The ocean, the porpoises, and the screaming sensation of speed when you’re in the right place on the right wave.  But I am also 60 years old.  Damn.  I’ve noticed that this winter I have been more tentative than ever to take on bigger, overhead waves.  I’ve been super careful not to paddle into anything I didn’t have a 95% chance of riding well.  That’s being too careful.

I began to notice that when I saw a set of waves coming and I was paddling outside to either catch it or get over it, my mind was telling me fear stories.

“Don’t even think about it.  It’s too steep.  It will close out for sure.  It’s going to pitch…Ah!”

When my mind is going off like that I can feel the fear rise from my toes to my newly freaked out face.  Then all I want to do is survive.  Not surf.  Survive.  So what happens is I let too many perfectly good, potentially thrilling waves go by.  Then I sit outside in the calm water silently cursing myself.

“You wimp.  You old, clumsy sorry excuse for a surfer…”  No I am not kidding.

The reason my mind hits the fear button as soon as I see anything out of my comfort zone is logical.  I’ve had a few bad wipeouts and hold-downs earlier this winter.  In I went pin-wheeling head-over-heels down the overhead wave face and was rag-dolled under the water until my lungs were burning for air. That makes an impression. But the real risk is minimal. I surf deep-water breaks, which means I won’t hit the bottom.  I’ve got a new surf leash so I won’t lose my board, and if I did the swim in is easy.  I’m not afraid of the real risk.  I just hate the few seconds a violent thunderous wipe generates and the “I blew it” self-talk that rings in my head.  So I started playing it safe.  Way too safe.  Then I had a breakthrough.  A life lesson.

I was talking to the renowned sport’s psychologist Dr. Jim Loehr. According to Dan Jansen, the former Olympic speed skater, Jim’s coaching was essential to him finally winning a gold in his final Olympic race. Jim has coached 16 #1 athletes in the world. He’s the real deal.  So Jim was telling me about the power of asking yourself the right questions to take charge of your private voice.  He’s found that for anyone in stressful situations from elite athletes, Special Forces soldiers, to CEOs facing a crisis our private voice will determine success or failure.  And one the easiest ways to take control over the script our private voice is speaking is to change the questions we ask ourselves. In my case it was as simple as changing my voice from “No way” to “How?”  He suggested the next time I find myself paddling furiously outside to meet an oncoming bomb I simply ask, “How can I catch this in the right spot?” “Yea, whatever,” I thought.

So three days later on a bright, glassy Southern California morning the waves were pumping.  A storm in the Gulf of Alaska had sent a vigorous impulse down the coast and solid ten foot faced waves were pumping through with an occasional rogue a bit bigger.  It was crowded.  Many of the young, hot, zero body fat guys were ripping the break apart. I was paddling up and down the reef as usual in frantic search for solitary waves.  Then it happened.  (Of course this story has a happy ending.)  I was already sitting outside when a dark green extra large wave popped up on the horizon.  I started paddling.  I was the only one who had a chance of getting out deep enough to spin my board around and stroke into it.  But I felt Mr. Panic crawling up my legs to my stomach.  Suddenly my mind shouted, “How?”  Just how.  I immediately adjusted my line of paddle slightly to the left, calmly turned, two stokes and I was in.  The wave face suddenly got bigger and steeper as I dropped but my fin and rail bit into the wall and I slung myself under the feathering lip and there in front of me was a watery, green highway.  For nearly 100 yards I turned up the face and back down gathering and scrubbing speed in a primal rhythm that simply stokes your mind, body and soul.  I left the water as one giant human smile.

What a lesson. Since that mind-bending wave I’ve given several high-risk speeches and sales presentations.  I now prepare with “How can I help the people I am talking to?”  That question, “How?”, tied to a motive of service is emotional liberation for me.

All of us deal with our inner voice.  And Jim’s point is to “own it.”  Become the positive narrator of your life by listening to that fearless inner essence that is the “who” that answers the question, “Who am I?”

If you have similar stories of personal liberation, we’d all like to hear them.  The mind is a beautiful tool when wielded well.

Gutless Leadership and Health Care Suicide

One of my close friends is a hospice volunteer. Lately he is supporting a vibrant, full-of-life 80-year-old woman who’s got a bad heart and who’s chosen to die as fast as possible. She’s in an independent care facility that costs a lot so she’s decided to voluntarily starve herself to shut off expenses so she can leave some money to her full-grown children. I know. He’s tried to talk her out of it, but she’s determined. She wants to die because she can’t afford to live. Welcome to America.

Meanwhile our leaders do anything but lead. The Democrats are sissies. The Republicans are bullies. I think most of us are sick of toxic, dysfunctional, ego-bloated politicians pretending to lead our nation.

As I have stated months ago, as well as many great comments from the rest of you, (see Outraged at the Politics of Health Care and Will Marre’s Radical Solution to Health Care) the fundamental problem with a financially unsustainable health care system is that the profit motive is its key driver. This creates a crazy maze of confusion, waste, cost, and suffering. Today’s price of health care is driven by cartels and rich interest groups who compete like Gladiators for a piece of yours and my pie.

1. Thanks to the near elimination of antitrust safeguards, 7 big private insurers control over 80% of health insurance in our nation. These companies are designed to take in as much money as possible from you and pay out as little as possible. They make the insurance claims process confusing and time consuming for patients and doctors, which increases costs and time. This also discourages many people and even physicians from making totally legitimate claims, which increases profits by tens of millions annually. Of course we also know that insurance company claims representations are rewarded for denying claims or finding unethical loopholes to deny payments for treatments to insured persons for trivial reasons causing systematic suffering and in some cases avoidable deaths. Lately insurance companies have been raising premiums in huge chunks to make as much as they can before they are regulated. The obvious conflict between investor interests and our nation’s health care is so great it is breaking our economy.
2. Drug companies have created a closed, unfree market in the U.S., which allows them to charge many times, often 10 times, more for a drug than it costs in other western countries. The idea that Merck drugs in Canada may not be as safe as the same drug in Minnesota is an insult to all of us. The argument that American consumers need to pay higher prices to support U.S. drug companies’ research is simply wrong. U.S. drug companies spend much more on consumer advertising than all of their drug research combined. If business believes in free markets and globalism, then let’s have it. Free trade and a common world price for all drugs.
3. The medical profession has too many incompetent doctors doing procedures they shouldn’t be doing simply because these procedures pay well. It has long been known that the most expensive and difficult procedures are done at the lowest total cost and have the best results when they are done in well-equipped hospitals that specialize in those treatments by doctors who do hundreds of those procedures per year. If you need a heart bypass, go somewhere where they do hundreds of them. These “Centers of Excellence” save money and lives. The medical profession also needs to do a much better job of getting rid of incompetent doctors that cause the majority of malpractice claims. It would also be wise to establish special health courts to curb the abuses of trial-lawyers who game the system to win big awards on the basis of emotion rather than science and responsibility.

I could go on, but who would listen?

The core solution I believe is a universal insurance exchange that is set up as a national non-profit co-op “owned” by all American citizens run by competent executives and properly rewarded employees who have one goal—make sure that the most people have access to the best health care. This can be done with excellence and efficiency. Employees should be rewarded for quality and keeping people healthy not for denying sick people coverage.

We need something more than the best we get from compromising with the huge health care industry that has spent $425 million lobbying against us in the past 4 months. There is a role for private insurance companies, but we must level the playing field by creating a force of citizen power to create realistic and sustainable economics for health care. (The rest of my proposals are in previous blogs.)

Today our health care strategy is a mess because we are trying to turn a rusting ocean liner into a rocket ship. No matter what modifications we make to the rapidly sinking boat, it will never fly.

We must have a whole new system. One that gives people choice and confidence. One that rewards people for healthy lifestyles. One that is uniquely American. Not run by the government but by well-informed citizens who can blend the best of our fierce independence, distrust of bureaucracy and our collective heart for our common good.

I do not claim to have all the answers. But I am disgusted with Democrats who turned what should have been a health care revolution into a poison stew of who-knows compromises. The “brand” of the Democrats is whiny, victim, poor me thinking. They are also ready to compromise because they have no visible backbone and few ideas they are ready to fight for. The Republicans sicken me. Their “brand” is arrogant know-it-alls who only want to lower taxes, fight wars, remove regulations and promote a new aristocracy. Their “I’ve-got-mine and no-one’s-going-to-tell-me-what-to-do” mind set is a cowboy philosophy completely at odds with the higher purpose of society.

As far as health care goes, I am most impressed with Jesus’ advice. When the Samaritan came upon an enemy who was left for dead by the side of the road, he didn’t say, “Well, he probably deserved it.” Instead he took him in and got him medical attention and paid his bills. It seems clear to me that moral maturity demands we seek to reduce all avoidable suffering. If that were our motive and we didn’t compromise with the moneychangers, we just might come up with something simple, practical and affordable.

I, for one, don’t want the status quo. I don’t want some two-bit, best-I-can-get superficial leftovers approved of by the special interests. I am sick of hearing what’s possible.

What I want is a radically new way of looking at this challenge and the leadership courage to make our country a better place to raise our children.

How about you?

–Will Marre

Socially Responsible Leadership and Wise Leaders Who are Investing in the Future of Humanity

It’s easy to be outraged at the incompetence and greed apparent in business leadership. Titanic ethical failures like Enron, failures in judgment by General Motors and greed-induced insanity by our major financial institutions have caused millions to suffer. Leadership failure is so bad the Economist magazine reports that only 2% of consumers worldwide trust business leaders to do the right thing if it costs them profits. With business institutions having the most trans-global power on earth, that is breathtakingly bad.

But there is a strong minority of courageous and wise leaders who use their resources for much more than self-interest. More needs to be known about these wise companies who lead their industries, embrace sustainability and are investing in the future of humanity.

Take FedEx and Johnson & Johnson for example. They have partnered with Heart to Heart International, a health-based nonprofit whose main focus is to get life-saving medicine and supplies to victims in crisis. Their work has never been as important as now as they rush to get much needed supplies and medical support to help save Haiti earthquake victims.

Fed Ex and Johnson & Johnson make these efforts possible. Not only has FedEx provided significant financial support and transportation services to Heart to Heart, but they also have created Forward Response Centers—FedEx warehouses full of relief supplies that are ready to go to virtually any disaster zone in the world quickly and efficiently. These centers take up valuable space in FedEx warehouses, but they do it because they understand that business is about more than money. When the tsunami hit Thailand in 2007, FedEx planes were among the first to land medical supplies. These Forward Response Centers have made it possible for Heart to Heart to be among the first responders to the Haiti disaster.

Johnson & Johnson is one of the main generous providers of these supplies which include The Ready Relief Box, otherwise known as the portable pharmacy that contains such items as pain relievers, antibiotics, vitamins, first aid supplies and doctor’s essentials such as a stethoscope and digital thermometer; The Medical Surge Module, which can increase capacity at healthcare facilities by providing enough medical supplies for 2,000 patients; and The Personal Hygiene Kit, which provides hygiene care for up to two weeks and is vital after a disaster to prevent contagious diseases from running rampant.

And wise leadership is not limited to a few visionary corporations. Today the non-profit Grameen Foundation is focusing their efforts on economic recovery—both short- and long-term. In partnership with Sèvis Finansye Fonkoze (a Grameen Foundation microfinance partner in Haiti), the Grameen Foundation will build upon their existing efforts in Haiti of using microfinance and technology to help Haitians, especially women, move themselves out of poverty and build a more self-reliant future. The President of the Grameen Foundation, Alex Counts, states, “Please help us help the nation recover from this recent disaster and try, as hard as it may be to imagine, to help our local partners build a Haiti that is more prosperous than pre-earthquake conditions.”

So what’s going on with these enterprises? What drives their leaders to do what others refuse to do? In my 30 years of working with senior leaders I can only conclude it is, at its core, one thing. Wisdom. Plato defined wisdom as “a knowledge of the Good and courage to act accordingly.” He further described wisdom as the commitment to seek the right balance between “all that exists.” What we today might call sustainability. At the core, wisdom is moral courage. As philosophers from every culture, across time have noted, it is not enough to know what is Good. We must also act on that knowledge. The responsibility of today’s business leaders to act from wisdom is essential for our future. We are all increasingly connected and to act only on self-interest is poisoning the water that our children drink.

Sadly, nearly all leadership failure I have witnessed up close has been the result of many small decisions that compromise the wise choice into simply an expedient one. Too many leaders are driven by fear. Fear of being criticized by the Wall Street money-changers or fear of being second guessed by their own hard driving executive team. Fear makes leaders stupid. The neurobiology of fear literally extinguishes creativity, open-mindedness and moral reasoning. We need leaders who have the everyday courage to act on the “Good” as a way to create more value for all. When I counsel senior leaders I often ask them, “How much good can you do, right now? When I get a response I simply say, “Do that.” You see doing the best thing you can imagine in a sustainable, wise way always creates value that makes you and your enterprise stand apart. So it not only ends up being wise but also smart.

Most of the few great companies that are doing the most to restore environmental balance and benefit humanity don’t toot their horns about it. (Who knew FedEx planes were landing in Haiti full of medicine?) No, that’s not a good thing. In 2003, I founded REALeadership Alliance to do just that; help leaders and companies become clear on the good they can do. The wisdom of courageous leaders needs to shine as a beacon to inspire those who fear to wake up and get busy saving our world. It’s actually just wise business.

So what’s the best thing you can do? Transcend your own fear. We are all leaders. All CEOs of our own lives. Be wise. Stand for something that matters. Speak up every day for the best thing you can imagine. Everyday courage accumulates. Our consistent small acts of integrity change the future. We all need to lead.

21st Century Sustainability

Sustainability is a word that vibrates with multiple meaning. There are some who insist it is code for a green company to rip away our comfortable lives and force us into granola-eating consumers. For others it means eliminating waste from the way we make and consume things, reduce toxic pollution, wear clothes made of recycled plastic and drive hybrid cars. But increasingly it means something far more valuable to a new emerging group of business leaders, economists and far-sighted consumers. For them sustainability means a whole new intention of business leadership. When leaders decide they are going to harness the imagination of all their stakeholders to create as much value as they can, the world changes. It’s about time.

Who do you work for?

With the publication of my new book, Save the World and Still Be Home For Dinner, I’ve posted a survey at www.SavetheWorldBook.com to help you determine whether you work for an enterprise that is helping forge a sustainable future or one that is trapped in the dying ideas of business-as-usual.  Who we work for is important.  If we want to change our future we must lead.  There is plenty to be hopeful about, and I want to get a pulse on your experience of the employer you work for or the organization you lead.

Recently I was doing leadership training for the Gap at their San Francisco headquarters.  I like the people at Gap a lot.  They understand how their huge global business can be a force for good, and they are serious about using their economic clout, market reach and worldwide workforce to create a better future than the self-consuming dinosaur business model we’ve trapped ourselves into.

It’s true; we live in a time when confidence in business leadership is at an all time low.  Just look at these statistics:

• 94% of the public does not trust business to regulate itself (AccountAbility).
• 86% view business as negatively impacting the public good (Harris Poll/Business Week).
• 76% of employees have observed illegal or unethical conduct by their employer in the past 12 months! (Harris Poll/Business Week)
• 98% of the public don’t believe CEOs are very trustworthy (NY Times).

This is sad. What’s really sad is that most of us would nod our head in agreement with these polls.  Business is the most powerful institutional force in the world, and the world doesn’t trust it.  That’s because human history has proven it’s not smart to trust that someone else’s self-interest will benefit you in the long run.  The Great Recession has just made that crystal clear.  But there is good news.  It’s that the world has changed.  Citizen consumers and citizen employers have awakened to the fact that we must create a new sustainable future.  One that works for our children.  All our children.  Perhaps nowhere is this more clear than in the market place which is changing at a breathtaking pace.

As more and more consumers and employees have demanded greener, healthier products responsibly made, the number, choices, and quality of these products has skyrocketed.  For instance, every major auto manufacturer is now engineering hybrid models that will be sold in every country in the next few years.  China has adapted tougher auto emissions and mileage standards than we have.  But for some companies like Gap, it’s more than just making t-shirts out of recycled plastic or organic fibers.  Increasingly it’s about human sustainability.

For instance, in Gap factories in developing nations they’ve instituted a personal and professional development program called P.A.C.E.  It’s designed to help under educated young seamstresses strengthen their literacy, their health, their life skills and business acumen.  Gap’s corporate social responsibility is investing in poor women because they are society builders.  And Gap is not alone.  In company after company I visit I see a roaring torrent of programs to enable employees to volunteer for their favorite cause, to raise their business standards on environmental impacts, and to promote health and human rights.

But wait, you say.  Isn’t all this just a little “greenwashing” and image polishing?  After all, it’s corporations that tare down the old-growth rain forests, over-fish our oceans, pollute our air, water and earth, and strip-mine our world from its natural resources.  Exactly.  All of that is true.  But it’s also true that global corporations and fast acting enterprises are the institutions most able to drive fast positive change.  They operate across boarders without political inhibitions.  They must respond in real time to consumer and employee attitudes.  Corporations are self-interested, but consumers determine where that self-interest leads them.  As long as we escalate our insistence on sustainable, responsible products and processes we will get more of them.

And now there is something turbo-charging demand for business responsibility.  It’s a new generation of employees.  The flood of 20 to 30-year old practical idealists who believe we can reshape our businesses into a force of progress and sustainability is raising the tide of positive change.  The energy of sustainability and social good is contagious, and I am seeing an epidemic of virtue take over business-as-usual.

This is not my imagination.  As Gen X independent thinking pragmatists take over more leadership roles, they are more connected to sustainable innovation, cutting bureaucracy and re-inventing our future.  And the new workforce of Gen Y and Millennials (those 16-30) are focused on re-making business into institutions of global sustainability.  What makes this new generation of leaders so potent is their number (126 million—far larger than the 75 million boomers) and their newly developed social technology which is driving change, informing attitudes and creating new business models faster than at any time in history.

I am hopeful this is happening in the nick of time.  We have ignored our problems for too long.  We’ve let what were little brushfires turn into a raging wildfire threatening our heath, our environments, our peace and every other important asset to our quality of life.

What’s the best thing we can do?

Participate in the business revolution!  I am seeing global companies life Gap, Nike, FedEx, and Johnson & Johnson transform themselves at a breathtaking rate.  No, it’s not perfect.  It will take years.  But the speed of change is accelerating.  Just 5 years ago sustainability and corporate social responsibility was something tree huggers and hippies whined about.  Today it is driving corporate strategy.  It’s time to turn up the volume of our demands for business to use their power and innovation to create sustainable value.  It’s time for us, no matter where we work, to transform our daily jobs into a global force for change.  We are the leaders of the sustainability revolution.  You and me.

So who do you work for?  Please take this short 5-minute survey and find out.  It’s a way to amplify your voice by helping us build a database to influence leaders.

And one more thing.  What do you think?  Do you have positive stories of companies, non-profits or individuals transforming the future?  Do you have personal aspirations to do so?  Tell us about them!

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