It doesn’t exist.
There are no maps, no step-by-step set of instructions that can help you live the life you deserve.
Instead, follow a compass.
One that points in the direction of what you fear the most.
Oxygen doesn’t seem all that valuable until you can no longer breathe.
And clean water doesn’t seem that important until you can’t find a source.
We take things for granted–all the time.
We think if something is ubiquitous it must not be that important, until it’s scarce again.
(Or worse, we forget that not everyone is born with the same access to essential resources.)
Marketers have done an incredible job to blur these lines, to create urgency.
The industrial world has made stuff cheap. We no longer live in a world of scarce everyday commodities.
What’s scarce in our post-industrial world is leading, leaping, initiating, solving interesting problem, standing up, standing out…
What we need is more people with more guts to make things happen.
A year? A month? A week? A day? An hour?
“I don’t have any good ideas.”
Well, do you have any bad ideas?
In order to have good ideas, you have to start with bad ideas. Lots and lots of bad ideas. Eventually, some good ones will surface.
The problem is, we think an idea has to be perfect in order to present it–that every ‘what if’ scenario needs to be played out.
Ideas don’t start perfect, they become more perfect with input, feedback, testing, measuring and implementing.
Here is the good news: ideas are cheap. Cheaper than ever before. You can have a 3D print, a website, a mock-up done in a couple hours.
Plant seeds and watch which ones will grow. Develop a posture of asking What if?
Forget about perfect ideas. Perfect is the barrier that separates us from deterioration to creativity.
In the Navy, it is tradition for a new captain to walk the deck for several weeks before making any significant changes.
You learn the names of everyone on the crew, examine the ship, understand the daily routines…
Acting as if we know better than everyone else–without making any attempts to walk in someone else’s shoes–does little to enroll the people around us.
It is highly unlikely you will make great change happen on your own. Instead, go together.
Make time to make observations.
Alex Meade is an artist, not a painter.
Painters put paint on a canvas. Often with great detail.
Artist, on the other hand, use emotional labor to make a connection.
The first time Alex painted a human being was when she graduated from college.
She didn’t have any formal training. She didn’t spend years copying the pictures of other greats. She didn’t even use a canvas.
Instead, she took a chance. With one foot out the door for Capitol Hill, she changed her plans:
She followed the work, not knowing what was going to happen next.
Could Alex bring joy and meaning to her live and those around her behind a desk in government work?
Perhaps. But I suspect we would have never heard of her if she did. I don’t think her impact would have been as wide-spread.
Now, her contributions inspire us to challenge the status-quo.
Anyone could have decided to put paint on a human, it was right there all along. But no one had. And she did what only she could.
180 degree turns are not easy. Sometimes the opportunity presented isn’t the path we intended.
It takes guts to turn around, to admit we were wrong, to venture into the unknown…can you?
[The field for becoming a professional painter (or an office manager or a coder…) is shrinking. The good news is that the world is in short supply of artists–those who are willing to bridge the gap of how things are and what could be.]
Deviating from a fixed course isn’t easy but it’s better than spending too much time calling mediocrity greatness.
Change is an inevitable force. In nature, only the ones that choose to evolve will be the ones that survive. We also see it in our economy and culture.
The music industry changed. Almost overnight, music became free. And while the record companies were busy insisting the world stay the same, they marched into a slow death. Same could be said about Blockbuster and Toys “R” Us.
You can’t pretend forever. Delaying difficult decisions don’t make them go away.
[Click here if you would like to throw your money away to save Toys “R” Us. I guess it’s easier to ask for someone else to open up their wallet then it is to have the executive team open up theirs. The biggest toy store in the world is gone and it isn’t coming back. Unfortunately, it is working people that will pay the price. Change is hard. Closing doors is even harder.]
The Acumen Fund was created by Jacqueline Novogratz in 2001.
You’ve probably never heard of her or Acumen. Most people haven’t.
She has also made the lives of 200 million people better. A lot better. And not just anyone. The poorest among us.
She deserves a Nobel Prize, whether she gets one or not, doesn’t matter.
Of course, she didn’t single handedly help 200 million people. What she did was open doors for a few, who turned around and opened doors for others.
It’s easy to confuse the idea of popularity with impact, that somehow being well known will increase the difference we make.
Popular is not the same as important.
No matter how big your splash is, not everyone is going to know who you are. But it doesn’t mean you can’t be popular and important to someone.
There is never a short supply of opportunities to make the world a better place.
What the world needs is more generous people to fill them.
Every year five people are killed by sharks. In contrast, every year people kill over 100 million sharks.
Why?
Because of fear.
Fear is irrational. It doesn’t play by our rules, it plays on our emotions. It is reactionary. We are programmed to eliminate other possible threats/predators. This is how we survived.
The facts are clear: You are 250 times more likely to be killed by a deer in a car cash than by a shark.
No one is afraid of deer. It’s not a threat. I guess that is why no one has made a movie of killer deers but plenty have been made on killer sharks.
Fear controls so much of what we do in our everyday decisions. We don’t need to be afraid of sharks, bears or saber tooth tigers anymore. Predators are no longer the problem. Getting out of our way, developing a posture of courage, getting past the default setting of fear is the new challenge of our day.
When seven and half billion people make a knee-jerk reaction, what happens next?
[Fact: there are more gerbil attacks reported in New York in one year than shark bites in Florida.]
Arches National Park was once a multi-day adventure to see natural wonders. Now, it only takes a couple of hour to drive through.
Conveniences of the modern world have saved us tremendous time.
The question is: what are we doing with all this time?
We are always doing something but not enough of something worth doing.
The thing is, by lowering the bar for the masses, you now have the problems of the masses to manage.
Conservation and preservation at its core is an issue of access. The more difficult the access, the less a site is disturbed. The funny thing is the easier it is to see something, the less we appreciate it.
