With Purpose Success, part 28

Things are different today. Most adults own a house or condo. Who doesn't own a car-maybe even two? Global prosperity has heaped material things upon us in abundance. Heck, even if you can't afford a summerhouse, a Jaguar, or private jet, for relatively little you can time-share such things and give the impression of material success beyond your means.
But here's the thing. Increasingly, as people reach their forty-fifth or fiftieth birthday they start to think about success from the other side- not from the outside looking in but from the inside out. It's not about the material things I can show the world, but about how I feel about the work
I do; it's about the relationships I have and the love I share.
Not long ago I was watching Larry King interview the rock-and-roll legend Eric Clapton on TV. At one point King began to carry on about how Clapton, in his heyday, was hailed as a guitar god-the best ever.
It must have been an incredible high and extremely gratifying to be so highly regarded, King noted to Clapton. In journalist circles this kind of flattery is known as lobbing a softball. It gives the person being interviewed an easy thing to talk about. But Clapton wouldn't swing at it. His response was impressively self-reflective.
No, the rock legend said, that was not such a great period in his life.
Even though others saw him as on top of his game he was not able to play the way he wanted to play, make the sounds he wanted to make. Sure, he had lived up to other's expectations of success. But from the inside looking out, he had disappointed himself. He was not yet what he wanted to be, and that was an urgent matter to him-no matter what his fans thought.
One last thought on this kind of success. Some years ago I was helping Jimmy Carter gather his thoughts for his book The Virtues of Aging, and at one point I said to him, "President Carter, I have a crazy question for you. I'm about the age now that you were when you were president.
Have you come to any new perspectives about what matters in life, now that you're older?" His answer was to the point: "Earlier in my life I thought the things that mattered were the things that you could see, like your car, your house, your wealth, your property, your office. But as I've grown older I've become convinced that the things that matter most are the things that you can't see-the love you share with others, your inner purpose, your comfort with who you are."
President Carter's words sent chills up my spine. It may make perfect sense to dance to society's beat for the first fifty years of your life. You have physical and material needs, and to get them a certain amount of conforming and practical thinking is required. But in this next stage of life things are different. You have the opportunity to reflect on what really matters and move your measuring stick for success-from the outside looking in, to the inside out.
Beyond Maslow
There's a third version of success in today's world, one that comes far closer to hitting the significance mark but that falls short nevertheless.

With Purpose Success, part 27

Bigger Is Better. The late U.S. senator Everett Dirksen once noted that "a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money." It wasn't his intent to glorify the more-is-better model of success. But that is the lesson you might walk away with after reading those words, and it is precisely the kind of thinking that dominates free societies in the world today. Yet, as we've seen with the recent collapse of numerous financial markets, this model is seriously flawed.
Consider this puzzle: in surveys, the impoverished people of Calcutta, India, living in crude shacks and with little access to clean water, register about even with Americans on the happiness scale-and well ahead of the Chinese, South Koreans, and Japanese. Meanwhile, relatively poor
Puerto Ricans and Colombians, according to surveys, appear to be among the happiest people on the globe. It may well be, as Edith Wharton said, that "if only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time."
How else can we explain the life satisfaction of people of such modest means? Cultural differences explain some of this conundrum. Asians, for example, seem to value understatement and are least likely to show off or express contentment, while Americans appear to expect so much that they are easily disappointed.
But underlying these thought-provoking results is the simple fact that more is not necessarily better when it comes to enjoying life and feeling satisfied. More may be more, but it is never enough. We're caught up in the myth that by achieving and going up the ladder and having more stuff we'll feel full inside. Yet it isn't so. Certainly, money can make a difference for people who have none. Studies by Ruut Veenhoven, a sociologist at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, show that the extremely poor-those earning less than $10,000 a year-may be rendered unhappy by the relentless stress of poverty. Yet his work shows that after a poor person's income exceeds that level there is no further correlation between money and happiness. After a certain level of income, typically enough to meet basic expenses, money ceases to be a factor. I'm not saying we should all live in tents under the freeway or go back to a natural life and give away all material possessions. It's great to work hard, achieve material success, and feel good about it. But that is not how you reach the Promised Land.
The Success Mirage. Another popular notion of success is that you've hit your mark when you measure up to other people's ideals. Again, this notion is firmly planted in our psyche but represents a hollow version of happiness, one that is certain to disappoint in the end.
You may have parents or grandparents who grew up in the shadow of the Depression. Life was terribly hard then. People owned relatively few things. They were frugal. They didn't splurge. The name of the game was just getting by, and to a large extent success was measured from the outside in. What few nice things you did own you might display, and those became symbols of achievement. There wasn't a lot of self-reflection during this period. The feeling was that if you could afford a car, a house, or some jewelry you deserved it. There was a sense of pride and accomplishment that came from showing these things to others.

With Purpose Success, part 26

1. Denmark 8.2 $ 37,400
2. Colombia 8.1 $ 6,700
3. Switzerland 8.1 $ 41,100
4. Austria 8.0 $ 38,400
5. Iceland 7.8 $ 38,800
6. Australia 7.7 $ 36,300
7. Finland 7.7 $ 35,300
8. Sweden 7.7 $ 36,500
9. Canada 7.6 $ 38,400
10.
Guatemala
11.
Ireland
12.
Luxembourg
13.
Mexico
14.
Norway
15.
Netherlands
16.
Malta
17.
United States
18.
Belgium
19.
El Salvador
20.
New Zealand
21.
Germany
22.
United Kingdom
23.
Honduras
24.
Kuwait
25.
Saudi Arabia
26.
Cyprus
27.
Italy
28.
Spain
29.
Argentina
30.
Brazil
31.
Dominican
Republic
32.
Singapore
33.
Venezuela
34.
Chile
35.
Israel
36.
Slovenia
37.
Uruguay
7.6
7.6
7.6
7.6
7.6
7.5
7.5
7.4
7.3
7.2
7.2
7.2
7.1
7.1
7.0
7.0
6.9
6.9
6.9
6.8
6.8
6.8
6.8
6.8
6.7
6.7
6.7
6.7
$ 4,700
$ 43,100
$ 80,500
$ 12,800
$ 53,000
$ 38,500
$ 22,900
$ 45,800
$ 35,300
$ 5,800
$ 26,400
$ 34,200
$ 35,100
$ 4,100
$ 39,300
$ 23,200
$ 27,400
$ 30,400
$ 30,100
$ 13,300
$ 9,700
$ 7,000
$ 49,700
$ 12,200
$ 13,900
$ 25,800
$ 27,200
$ 11,600
38. Indonesia 6.6 $ 3,700
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
France
Czech Republic
Greece
Nigeria
Philippines
China
India
Japan
Taiwan
Uzbekistan
Kyrgyzstan
Vietnam
Iran
Peru
Portugal
Croatia
Poland
Bolivia
Korea, South
Bangladesh
Senegal
Hungary
Morocco
Montenegro
Slovakia
South Africa
Lebanon
Algeria
Jordan
Kenya
6.5 $ 33,200
6.4 $ 24,200
6.4 $ 29,200
6.4 $ 2,000
6.4 $ 3,400
6.3 $ 5,300
6.2 $ 2,700
6.2 $ 33,600
6.2 $ 30,100
6.2 $ 2,300
6.1 $ 2,000
6.1 $ 2,600
6.0 $ 10,600
6.0 $ 7,800
6.0 $ 21,700
5.9 $ 15,500
5.9 $ 16,300
5.8 $ 4,000
5.8 $ 24,800
5.7 $ 1,300
5.7 $ 1,700
5.6 $ 19,000
5.6 $ 4,100
5.5 $ 3,800
5.5 $ 20,300
5.5 $ 9,800
5.3 $ 11,300
5.2 $ 6,500
5.2 $ 4,900
5.2 $ 1,700
69. Turkey 5.2
70. Bosnia and
Herzegovina 5.171. Estonia 5.1
72. Serbia 5.1
73. Uganda 5.1
74. Romania 5.0
75. Azerbaijan 4.9
76. Macedonia 4.9
77. Mali 4.9
78. Egypt 4.8
79. Ghana 4.8
80. Iraq 4.7
81. Latvia 4.7
82. Lithuania 4.6
83. Albania 4.4
84. Angola 4.4
85. Russia 4.4
86. Pakistan 4.3
87. Bulgaria 4.2
88. Georgia 4.1
89. Belarus 4.0
90. Armenia 3.7
91. Ukraine 3.6
92. Moldova 3.5
93. Zimbabwe 3.3
94. Tanzania 3.2
$ 12,900
$ 7,000
$ 21,100
$ 10,400
$ 900
$ 11,400
$ 7,700
$ 8,500
$ 1,000
$ 5,500
$ 1,400
$ 3,600
$ 17,400
$ 17,700
$ 6,300
$ 5,600
$ 14,700
$ 2,600
$ 11,300
$ 4,700
$ 10,900
$ 4,900
$ 6,900
$ 2,900
$ 200
$ 1,300
Despite this evidence most people still judge success in superficial terms.
***

With Purpose Success, part 25

Of the three, Seligman says, pleasure (the one most closely linked to material gain) is the least consequential, a finding that has been reaf firmed in numerous follow-up studies. For example, Edward Diener, a psychologist at the University of Illinois, and another leading light in the study of happiness, interviewed members of the Forbes 400, the richest
Americans, and found that they were only marginally happier than the population as a whole. Those with wealth often feel the most envy and stress, Diener concluded. Sociologists call this type of jealousy "reference anxiety." But you will know it for what it is-keeping up with the
Joneses. People don't usually ask, "Do I have enough to meet my needs?" They ask instead, "Is my house nicer than my neighbor's?"
Money and happiness really do not go hand in hand-at least not in the manner you would expect. Canadian researcher Elizabeth Dunn found in a series of studies that how much money you have is inconsequential to your happiness, but how you spend what you have is critical.
In her study she looked at workers who received bonuses of varying sizes and discovered that those who spent at least a third of their bonus on others were measurably happier than those who spent all of the money on themselves-no matter how much bonus money they had been given.
In polls taken by the National Opinion Research Center, about one- third of Americans say they are "very happy," and that rate has been fairly constant for decades. Yet over the same time frame wealth in the United
States has increased dramatically, and by the way so has the incidence of clinical depression, which is as much as ten times more common than it was two generations ago. One out of every five women in America is on antidepressants, and each year six million more begin taking them.
The World Health Organization predicts that by 2020 depression will be second only to heart disease in terms of the global burden of illness.
Greater wealth hasn't made us happier; it may even have contributed to greater amounts of stress.
The World Database of Happiness presents one of the most interesting examinations into whether or not money buys happiness. This database is an ongoing register of scientific research on the subjective enjoyment of life. It brings together findings that are scattered throughout many studies and provides a basis for synthetic work. Overall life satisfaction is assessed by means of numerous surveys in general population samples worldwide including data from 1995 up to and including 2005.
The scores are based on responses to a question about satisfaction with life and perceptions of personal well-being, the answers to which were rated on a numerical scale ranging from dissatisfied to satisfied. Rating scales ranged from 0 to 10.
As you can see from the following list, when you place each country's GDP per capita (in current U.S. dollars), there is only marginal correlation between how much money people make and how happy they feel. For example, Guatemalans have the same happiness score as
Canadians, although their income is only one-eighth as much. What does tend to reliably correlate with happiness is the quality of relationships with family and friends and a personal sense of belonging to one's community.
Happiness and Money?
Country Happiness Score GDP

With Purpose Success, part 24

That's the way Randy Pausch saw things when he learned he had invasive pancreatic cancer and less than a year to live. He stopped and reconsidered everything and in a matter of months was able to reach millions of people around the world with his inspiring message of hope, patience, and no regrets. You may already know the Randy Pausch story. He was a popular and energetic lecturer at Carnegie Mellon University who shared his vision of a life worth leading with four hundred teary-eyed students in what became his last campus lecture, which he delivered in the fall of 2007. The great irony of Pausch's lecture was that it was scheduled as part of a "last lecture" series in which professors would pretend this was their final time at the dais and impart their most significant lessons. For
Pausch, a young man with small children, it was no mere exercise.
In a gutsy presentation he waxed on for a mind-boggling hour-plus of wit, charm, and humor, and invaluable life lessons. The circumstances and the freewheeling manner in which he spoke lent a gravitas to his wisdom. Loyalty is a two-way street, he said. Never give up. Accept help, and give it. Tell the truth. Apologize when you screw up. Focus on others, not yourself. Don't bail. Don't complain, work harder. Shut up and listen.
Be good at something because it makes you valuable. Work hard. Be patient and you'll find the best in everybody. Dream. Be prepared.
Pausch spiced his lecture with personal anecdotes and offered his words with the ease and calm of one who had found his place, found his version of success in the wisdom he was imparting-wisdom made all that much more dear because he would not be there to repeat it. There is something sacred about a dying person taking the time to make an impact on those around him. He had nothing to gain. So you knew it was coming from the heart; you know it was the truth and that it was priceless.
The earnestness of his words-and his obvious sense of purpose-is what made them special. "As you get older, you may find that enabling the dreams of others is even more fun" than realizing your own, he said.
This lecture, designed for just four hundred students (cmu.edu/uls/ journeys/), ended up riveting the world as a viral video on the Internet, where it was viewed tens of millions of times. It was later turned into a book. In one brief and shining moment of significance, Professor Pausch reached more people than he had in a career on campus. Pausch never lacked for purpose. Indeed, he seemed to find more of it with each passing day and, ultimately, came to view success not just as a full and rich life, not just as a life worth leading, and not just as a life of helping others-but also as a life that would serve as an enduring example for all. He seized on his life change and used it as a stepping-stone to personal greatness.
You Only Think You're Happy
There is an avalanche of new research in the areas of success and happiness.
Perhaps the leading light in this field is Martin Seligman, a University of Pennsylvania research psychologist, who in the last few years has coaxed his profession into going beyond the mere study of what makes people depressed and leads to their neuroses to a more uplifting place- to the study of what makes our heart sing and what might be done to improve our level of satisfaction. In his book, Authentic Happiness, he boils down true happiness to three components: pleasure (things that feel good), involvement (being immersed in things like family, work, and hobbies), and meaning (using personal strengths to serve a larger end).

With Purpose Success, part 23

She loves athletics and swims with dolphins, rides on the back of a mo torcycle, and has hobnobbed with presidents and other heads of state.
Friends describe her glowingly as "an international curiosity," "utterly fearless," and "one of the planet's true treasures." They say she was bold at an early age, not wanting to attend Wellesley College because it was a family tradition (but ultimately relenting) and "picking up" her husband, the internationalist and onetime U.S. ambassador to Switzerland, Shelby
Davis, by making the first advance on him while traveling by train from
Geneva to Paris.
Davis has a doctorate in international affairs and honed her interests in global issues and activism as a young child, when she traveled with her parents extensively and at the age of four marched with her mother during the suffragette movement. Later in life, she helped found a group that promoted greater communication between the U.S. and Russia in hopes of lessening the likelihood of nuclear war. She has devoted much of her life to improving American understanding of world culture and politics, with Russia and eastern Europe as a central focus. For many years, she lectured before educational and civic groups on India, Russia,
China, and Switzerland.
Throughout her life, Davis has been a major supporter of arts, education, science, and environmental conservation. But global peace initiatives have always held her highest interest. "There will always be conflict," she says. "It's human nature. But love, kindness, and support are part of human nature too." One of her goals at this late stage of life is to foster ideas that will wipe out armed conflict as a means of settling state disputes, just as duels to settle personal disputes are no longer tolerated.
That's a tall order, one that she hopes her student funding will play a role in filling. Yet even if the program ultimately proves ineffective in this regard, Davis's example is a shining light to all of us to do something for others for as long as we may breathe. "We don't always know what tomorrow holds," Davis says. "So let's take advantage of today and be as useful as we can be." A phrase she uses often sums up her view of life neatly.
There are three basic stages, she says: "Learn, earn, return."
Dying to Make a Difference

With Purpose Success, part 22

They lobby government for change. Some start their own nonprofit and target causes that for one reason or another are special to them. Sure, these young people may not attract as much attention as Paris Hilton. Shame on us!
Many student groups are becoming active in the search for global peace, thanks in part to philanthropist Kathryn Wasserman Davis's Projects for Peace program (www.kwd100projectsforpeace.org), which grants a hundred student-led grassroots peace initiatives $10,000 each in annual funding. The idea is to bring new thinking to the global peace process.
Ursula Devine and Joseph Campo at the University of Oklahoma are using their grant to produce a documentary film that explores the life of ordinary people in the world's five most peaceful nations, as ranked by the Global Peace Index (Norway, New Zealand, Denmark, Ireland, and
Japan)-hoping to learn and illustrate what helpful practices might be transferable to other cultures. Fallon Chipidza, a student at Hamilton
College in Clinton, New York,, is using her grant to build a self-sustaining chicken farm at St. Theresa's preschool and orphanage in Zimbabwe. She hopes the chicken business will generate enough ongoing revenue to pay for the children's school fees. Eric Harshfield and Ana Jemec, students at the University of Virginia, are using their grant to build a sustainable water filtration system using abundant local resources in poor sections of
South Africa.
These programs and these kids are an inspiration. Many of them are taking advantage of a major life shift-graduating from college, or from high school-and using that moment as a stopping point to consider what good they might bring into the world before they press on with their daily affairs. Can you approximate, or even best, their example by using retirement or disability or the death of a spouse or becoming an empty nester or mailing in the last mortgage payment as the stopping point in which you redefine success and consider your potential to live a life of purpose?
Davis is herself an inspiration. A world-class philanthropist, political figure and international dignitary for much of her life, only on the eve of her one hundredth birthday did she hatch the Projects for Peace program, which may end up as her signature and most enduring legacy.
The project, in just its third year, is an invitation to undergraduates to design grassroots projects that they develop over the summer. Those judged most promising and practical get funded. The idea is to encourage today's youth to create ideas for building peace. "I want to use my one hundredth birthday to help young people launch some immediate initiatives-things that they can do during the summer-that will bring new thinking to the prospects of peace in the world," she said upon committing $1 million to the effort in February 2007. She regarded the students' peace projects that summer as so inspiring that she has continued to fund the program.
Davis is outspoken and surprisingly spry, in defiance of her age. An avid painter who likes to finish her pieces in less than three hours, she laughs while admitting to leaving the wrinkles out of her self portrait.

With Purpose Success, part 21

But be certain of this: success in your life going forward will center on purpose. It is critical that you find your purpose and pursue it with the same ambition and energy that has led you to material or social success the last few decades.
It's time to get going. As a generation, we have a lot of ground to make up and we're in some danger of being lapped by those who are much younger than we are. Success of the type I am writing about is already being experienced on a massive scale by schoolchildren who regularly hold a car wash or bake sale to raise relief funds after a natural disaster.
When she was just five years old, Katherine Commale of Hopewell, Pennsylvania, used an old pizza box and her dolls to build a simple diorama of an African family at sleep in their hut. Using a small plastic bug and a piece of fabric, she developed a short skit showing how a mosquito net could save the lives of poor villagers by guarding them from malaria as they sleep. Katherine and her mother still take the skit to area churches every Christmas and raise thousands of dollars to buy mosquito nets, which they send overseas.
This kind of success is built around purpose and empathy-and action-and it's being incorporated into many younger people's lives as a matter of course and education. Giving back isn't just something you have to wait to do after age fifty or sixty. More than three million college students in the United States volunteer each year. That's nearly a third of the university population, and this cohort's volunteer rate is growing faster than any other. Some sixteen million teens in the United
States participate in some kind of formal volunteer work and contribute more than 1.3 billion hours of service, according to the Corporation for
National & Community Service, a federal agency that promotes volunteerism.
That's an amazing 55 percent volunteer rate. Much of this is arranged through schools, but only 5 percent of teens say they volunteer because it is a school requirement. Many students were stirred to action by the events of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina and have flocked to rebuilding programs. But others were already taking an interest in mentoring younger students.
In recent years, more high schools have begun to introduce a service obligation as part of their curriculum, and the hottest trend these days in college spring breaks is a vacation that may include tilling the fields in a poor farm community or tutoring migrant workers. Through an organization like Teach For America (www.teachforamerica.org) many thousands of newly minted college graduates sign on for a two-year stint to teach in poor rural or urban neighborhoods in an effort to spread educational equality.
Campus Compact (www.compact.org), a coalition of 1,100 public and private universities, is another student-focused organization that has taken wing. Through it, some twenty million young people have volunteered in thousands of communities around the world. They tutor at-risk youth, help build homes in poor neighborhoods and care for the sick and hungry.

With Purpose Success, part 20

I often think of the glossy photos of moguls and celebrities that regularly grace the covers of magazines. These men and women are promoted as the very definitions of success-captains of industry, fashion trendsetters, daring newsmakers. They live in large houses and drive-nay, are driven-around town in their Bentleys. Yet I have my own take on this picture of success. I landed on the cover of Inc. magazine in 1989 and at the time regarded it as a badge of honor, my ticket to an exclusive and desirable club of highly successful individuals. When your mug shows up on a magazine cover a funny thing happens: other cover boys and girls invariably seek you out. So I began to befriend other "success" stories, and it turns out that more than a few of them had been divorced several times; more than a few of them had kids in drug rehab; and more than a few of them hadn't talked to their living parents for more than a decade.
Some of them seemed to have mortal enemies around every bend. Were they really successful?
Unfortunately, we've created a society where we too often define people as successful even though we don't like them, even though they may be horrendous human beings, even though they haven't done anything that we truly admire. Sure, these so-called successes may have created the next widget and made their stockholders billions of dollars. Maybe they have the latest hairstyle, buns of steel, and a fancy car. But the rest of their life might be a wreck. We have allowed the notion of success to become inextricably tied to material gain and outward appearances, and this definition is a sham and will not serve you well in the years ahead.
It's time to rewrite the rules of success. You are entering a time of life when your innate longing to share what you've learned may be just beginning to flower. Success at this time of life will be very different for different people. Aristotle equated success to happiness and wrote that "all men desire happiness, but each man has a different idea of it." Plato struggled with the concept as well. His view was that life's finish line- true happiness-is a moving target. You never actually get there. At different ages you have different ideals, and you think if you could just have what someone else has you'd be happy. But when you get there you find you're then operating from a higher base and with a higher standard for what would make you feel successful.
As a child you felt successful if you scored good grades, got along with your friends, and made Mom and Dad happy. As a teen, success was about excelling in a sport or artistic endeavor, going to the prom with a "dream" date or getting into a good college. As a young adult, success was about getting a job, pleasing your boss, starting and raising your family, keeping a tidy home, and optimizing your earning power. It's at this time of life when you generally begin to define success by position, wealth, or fame. In fact, one dictionary definition of success is "impressive achievement, especially the attainment of fame, wealth, or power."
We are practically bred to embrace that model; it can be difficult to break free from it. The reality, though, is that you must decide for yourself what defines success in this next stage of life. If you rate yourself against someone else's definition, you will never know the kind of success that
I'm talking about.
I submit that true success is probably a little like pornography: it's difficult to define-but, in the immortal words of Supreme Court Justice
Potter Stewart, "I know it when I see it." Perhaps you cannot see it yet.

With Purpose Success, part 19

McDonald. This was the father of famed singer Joe McDonald of Country Joe and the Fish. At Woodstock, Country Joe was the poster child of youthful rebellion after he led the Woodstock masses in the famous cheer that began "Gimme an F." Well, Pop McDonald was equally colorful. His chart contained many highs-but it had even more lows. "Unbroken happiness is a bore," wrote the seventeenth-century French playwright Moliere. "It should have ups and downs." Worden McDonald and I might agree-but only if there were significantly more ups, which does not appear to be the general experience. On average, these sages in their eighth or ninth decade of life reported that around one-third of their waking time on earth had been spent above the success line. Low points outnumbered high points two to one. Each of them had known joy and fulfillment; they just hadn't known how to make the moments last.
The sages' peak moments revealed a pattern. They tended to cluster around three types of success- rich personal relationships; accomplishment or personal growth of almost any kind; and activities that transcended their own self-indulgences and made them feel their life had meaning. I didn't have an inkling of what I'd tripped on back then. But all the latest research on happiness falls right in line with those rough findings of thirty-plus years ago.
A particularly noteworthy outcome was the abject disappointment the sages registered with respect to the great amounts of time they had spent going through life on autopilot, doing what was expected-as so many of us do almost without thought. I learned that when you do things because other people think it's the right thing to do you inevitably end up disappointed. Don't be driven by external goals and objectives. "Peace comes from within," noted Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, some 2,500 years ago. "Do not seek it without." Some part of you ought to be constantly looking ahead-to when you'll be looking back at the decisions you made along the way.
When you were a kid your aunts and uncles and grandparents used to comment how it seemed like just yesterday they were your age. The sages made the same comments, and what struck me was that this wasn't just some cute thing that old people say. This was the truth. Life is a blink. It's a fast ride. You have to make every moment count. I have tried to live my life with that in mind. When I turn eighty-eight or ninety-two I'm sure
I'll have regrets. But those regrets won't include spending too little time with my family, or pursuing a career that I didn't feel passionate about, or focusing so much on me that I failed to see the needs of others. These are things that have a purpose. At the end of the day, these are the things that count.
Success Redefined
So the concept of success needs an overhaul for the next phase of your life. Maybe it shouldn't be about money and advancement; maybe it should be about personal growth, contribution to the greater good, warm relationships, genuine happiness, and finding purpose in everything you do. Maybe it should be about self-fulfillment or honorably overcoming a handicap or hardship, or about generosity of spirit. "The cynical and indifferent know not what they miss," said John McCain while running for office in 2008. "For their mistake is an impediment not only to our progress as a civilization but to their happiness as individuals."

With Purpose Success, part 18

The first to speak was Herb, who was eighty-one. Herb was a lively sort. He had been married for many years and was successful in his line of work. He seemed content; certainly he was not unhappy. To our spectacular surprise, though, his chart was mostly below the center line and rose above it only sporadically. By his own judgment, he had lived vast parts of his life below what I'll now call the success line. Sure, there were great moments, he told us. Those generally centered on his career and children-having them and then watching them do well. But overall he felt his life had been a colossal disappointment. He hadn't loved his job, though he'd stayed with it for decades. His long marriage was
OK, but he felt he had let his true love get away when he was a young man.
Until this exercise, Herb had never faced the critical decisions he'd made in his life. But here they were summarized, clear as day, in a chart that he had produced using his own criteria for what it meant to lead a successful life. Needless to say, Herb was not pleased. His life had been wasted in many ways, he realized, and it was too late to do anything about it. He wished the insights he had gleaned from the mapping exercise were visible to him when he was younger. He would have taken more risks and focused on more meaningful pursuits, he told us, rather than have led his safe, largely routine, and relatively unsatisfying life.
This was a supremely poignant moment. Herb wasn't in tears. At some level, he knew he had played it safe and done mostly what was expected of him-not what he might have preferred to do. Herb was OK. But I was fast becoming a mess. This wasn't fiction. Herb was a real person and here he was owning up to a lifetime of insignificance and regret.
Herb said that if he had it to do over he would have focused far more on the people who mattered to him. He would have switched careers at an early age. He would have taken more risks and pursued his passions. He would have spent more time helping others. Our discussion was a cathartic moment for Herb, and it reminds me of the Argentinean poet Jorge
Luis Borges, who in his classic Instants laments a lifetime of safe choices."If I were able to live my life anew," Borges wrote, "I would try to commit more errors . . . not try to be so perfect . . . relax more . . . I would run more risks, take more vacations . . . I was one of those who never went anywhere without a thermometer, a hot-water bottle, an umbrella, and a parachute; If I could live again . . . I would contemplate more dawns, and play more with children . . . But already you see, I am 85, and I know that I am dying."
One by one, each of the elders in the Sage Project shared their life chart and their deepest thoughts, and like Herb, expressed tremendous remorse over time wasted on things that did not bring joy and purpose to their life.
One sage, Vivian, displayed a largely flat line across the page. She said there were entire decades in her life that she barely remembered because nothing special had taken place. Among the last to speak was a man named Worden

With Purpose Success, part 17

More than thirty years later I still recall most of the names and faces of our initial fifteen volunteers, who met with us two times a week for several hours over a twelve-month span. We regularly assigned homework to our subjects-journal writing or certain physical exercises including yoga and the Chinese movement meditation tai chi-and then tried to assess which had been most helpful in turning back the aging clock. It was exciting work. There were no formulas. This was new research. We could let our instincts lead the way. Working with older men and women in the areas of personal growth and preventative health wasn't done back then, at least not on a noticeable scale.
Before long we could see that we were engaged in something special. If life is a learning process where each day we uncover one more meaningful tidbit and hope eventually to come to a full understanding of who we are and what our purpose is, then just imagine the advantage of old age. In this view, through time and experience we can become truly knowledgeable.
Now, imagine being able to coax decades of wisdom from the elderly and then to apply it to your life today. It was during the Sage Project that
I came to believe (and still do) that we can all be wise beyond our years if we simply take the time to listen to people who are in their twilight years and have climbed the proverbial mountain. I was awestruck by my elderly subjects' ability to reflect honestly on their good and bad experiences, and speak coherently about what they had learned from them.
Yet a disturbing theme emerged in our research, and that theme is the whole point of the story I'm now telling. In one assignment our fifteen initial subjects were asked to chart the highs and lows of their life on a single sheet of graph paper. It was up to them to decide what that meant.
There were no required inputs such as income, career advancement, mar riage, children, or social status. We simply wanted to know when and for how long they felt good about themselves. We asked our sages to draw a line across the center of a page, section it off by half decades, and then map a line above and below for all the years of their life, much as you might chart a stock price, monthly rainfall, or spotted owl sightings.
Above the line were periods when the sages enjoyed their life; below the line were periods when life didn't measure up to their expectations. They could draw way above the center line or way below it as a measure of how strongly they felt about a particular high or low point.
We had no idea what to expect and, frankly, worried that most of our sages would paint the rosiest possible picture of their life; by engaging in a little revisionist history they might end up drawing a chart that had them living consistently above the line. But that is not what we got. On the day of reckoning, when our group met to discuss the charts, we gathered in a circle on comfy pillows on the floor with a breathtaking view of the San Francisco Bay. Perhaps it was the relaxed setting that led to their candor. But we had no trouble pulling sincere and thoughtful comments from our subjects.

With Purpose Success, part 16

Yes, you can change the world. It may even be your calling at this new stage in your life. Finding the right mix of earning, saving, spending, and giving isn't easy. You'll have to experiment. And don't be discouraged if what you try at first doesn't quite fit. There is a lot of trial and error in this endeavor, as with most pursuits in life. Heck, even Match.com gives you six months for one fee, realizing that a good fit takes time to find. You'll have to stay with it. But in the right situation, giving of yourself could very well provide your path to a life with purpose.
Try to clear out some of life's trifles that might be clogging your agenda and make service a part of your life-be it an hour a day, a week, or a month. This trail has been blazed; you have role models. President
Clinton may be the quintessential example of a young retiree reinventing himself and finding meaning through his efforts to make the world a better place. He is now focused on his work for the Clinton Global Initiative, an annual international superforum where he brings together those who have resources to contribute and those who could benefit from their contributions. "I wanted to use my time, experience, and contacts to help in saving lives, solving problems, and empowering more people to achieve their goals," Clinton says in Giving. He speaks for many of us. The meaning and purpose of civic responsibility is being rediscovered.
As you emerge from your householder phase, a long period where you have been overwhelmed with duties to your employer and family and probably consumed with material gain, you will rediscover that doing more meaningful things with your time and helping others is the way to bring your life into balance and achieve a higher state of existence.
Modern psychology teaches that ultimate fulfillment is about exploring oneself; success in that vein is self-awareness. You've hit the jackpot if you become comfortable with who you are. But I believe there is more to fulfillment.
We are not islands. We live together, and when you die you leave a legacy for good or ill. At this stage in your life you've got to think in bigger terms-about your moral commitment to leave the world a better place than you found it. Only in going beyond self-awareness-to legacy and giving back-is true fulfillment possible.
What You Think
You Know about Success- and How You're Wrong
I get up every morning determined to both change the world and to have one hell of a good time.
Sometimes, this makes planning the day difficult.
-E. B. White
When I was a young man and had barely begun what would become a huge part of my life's work-the psychology of aging-I had the great fortune to be invited to Berkeley, California, to partner with Dr. Gay
Luce in an innovative research program that came to be known as the Sage Project. Our goal was to examine how the bodies and minds of men and women past the age of sixty might be refreshed so that they could continue to contribute to society or, at least, remain sufficiently engaged to enjoy their later life. This was long before yoga and meditation became popular. Indeed, it was the first major late-life preventative health care study in North America. The Sage Project helped lay the foundation for the work of Andrew Weil and Dean Ornish and others in the field of self-healing.

With Purpose Success, part 15

York Times wrote. With that currency Bono has helped convince the developed world to forgive Third World debts-where nations are now spending their windfall on medicine and education. He's almost singlehandedly steered the debate on how to help poverty-ravaged Africa. The
Times calls him "the most politically effective figure in the recent history of popular culture."
OK, that's Bono. He's a superstar on a global stage. But think of the impact you could have in your community if you gave a fraction of his effort. Those who get involved almost invariably say giving back provides genuine rewards. For example, it's a great way to stay engaged and relevant. "Retirement is a totally false concept," says Gerald Chertanian, a dot-com millionaire who quit his for-profit ways and started the Boston- based nonprofit Year Up, which counsels urban youth on business basics. "It's about finding the next challenge."
Speaking in the months after 9/11, President Bush called for a commitment of at least two years from every American "to the service of your neighbors and your nation." Five years later, the most stirring part of Bush's state of the union speech came near the end, when he noted that "the greatest strength we have is the heroic kindness, courage, and self-sacrifice of the American people." At that instant, the spotlight shone on three individuals who achieved inspirational significance by doing for others.
In the balcony that night were basketball star Dikembe Mutombo, who grew up in Africa and returned to build a hospital in his old hometown;
Julie Aigner-Clark, founder of Baby Einstein Co., who after selling her company to the Walt Disney Company began producing child safety videos for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and called it "the most important thing that I have ever done"; and Wesley
Autrey, who jumped onto the tracks at a Harlem train station and rescued a man who had fallen. Said Autrey: "We have to show each other some love."
There's nothing unusual about a president calling on citizens to serve.
But President Bush actually did it often and, building on initiatives begun by former President Clinton (Americorps.gov) and adding a few of his own, has helped set up a vast volunteer infrastructure through his
USA Freedom Corps.(www.usafreedomcorps.gov), a White House office that he organized in 2002 to promote service and volunteerism around the world. The office keeps an exhaustive database of some four million volunteer opportunities at www.volunteer.gov, promotes emergency preparedness volunteerism at www.citizencorps.gov and international volunteerism at volunteersforprosperity.gov.
Just months from the end of his administration, Bush reiterated his call for all Americans to spend at least 4,000 hours-two years-"to serve our nation through acts of compassion." Two years during a lifetime is a lot, he conceded. "But the truth of the matter is, citizens who do give realize that they become enriched just like those folks that they're helping."
We-Not Me

With Purpose Success, part 14

Countless studies have shown that as we mature, our fascination with the superficial naturally ebbs. Many of us are now discovering deeper feelings and seeking information and advice on how we can contribute something important in the time we have left. Slowly, the media is latching on to this shift in the public consciousness, breathing life into the giving-back phenomenon. The search for purpose is becoming part of pop culture- not just high society. Clinton's Giving was an instant best seller. Rick
Warren's The Purpose Driven Life has sold thirty million copies worldwide.
The Wall Street Journal began a weekly giving-back feature. Time magazine started a column called "Power of One," which reports on ordinary individuals making a difference.
Meanwhile, reality TV is morphing into charity TV. Call it "philanthrotainment."
In Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, good people who are struggling get their house remodeled for free. In NASCAR Angels, professional racers soup up the jalopies of financially strapped good Samaritans.
Such shows are even more popular in England, where they offer the likes of Fortune: Million Pound Giveaway, where a panel of rich folks decides who to give money to after a series of sixty-second pitches, and
The Secret Millionaire, where wealthy benefactors go undercover in poor neighborhoods for ten days to find worthy recipients. When the most highly rated TV program in America, American Idol, in 2007 decided to give something back through a telethonlike two-hour program, it raised $76 million and a similar amount in an encore telethon a year later.
In the past few years, financial firms have begun trying to hook new clients with an appeal to higher purpose. None have been more focused on this than mutual fund company American Century, which in its commercials asks: "What exactly is success? Is there a difference between making it big and making a big difference? Maybe wealth can be measured two ways-financially, and how we live our lives as human beings."
In another ad the firm states: "a successful life can be measured in two ways: by what you've gained and what you give back."
Luminaries like Bill Gates, who at a relatively young age turned his attention away from the business of Microsoft to become a full-on philanthropist and focus on his foundation's work, Warren Buffett, who is not only giving away his fortune but also setting an aggressive timetable for when it must be spent, and Bono, the rock star-turned-statesman, have made giving extremely cool and are helping to set a new moral tone for thinking people around the world. "Philanthropy is one of the great est pleasures I have," Gates says. Adds Bono: "When the powerful go to work for the powerless, amazing things happen." He's called putting every child in the world in a classroom "the moon shot of our generation" and has said, "I'm not asking you to put another man on the moon; I'm asking you to put humanity back on this Earth."
Bono works so tirelessly for his causes that it's strained relations with his U2 band mates. But his commitment has paid huge dividends and testifies to the power of a single individual. "He's a kind of one-man state who fills his treasury with the global currency of fame," the New

With Purpose Success, part 13

The notion of shifting your priorities from success to significance has immensely positive implications for the world. While dour economists and fatalistic policymakers have been wringing their hands over the coming retirement storm of boomers, I've been contemplating a more optimistic model. Might this massive generation, which has repeatedly reshaped society since birth, reorder the world one more time-with glowing results?
The worrywarts certainly have troubling evidence to cite. As I've previously written about in Age Wave, Age Power and Workforce Crisis, aging populations across the globe threaten to stretch our resources as folks quit work, stop paying taxes, and suck up pension assets and health care budgets. In the United States, one in four citizens will be sixty or older by 2030. In Japan, South Korea, Italy, Spain, and Germany at least 40 percent of the populations will be sixty or older by 2050. The oldest living human being (in Japan) just turned 112. Even China (with its one- child policy) has a fast-approaching demographic problem-one in three will be sixty by midcentury. So aging is a global event-and one that is normally referred to as "a problem."
But my own research tells another story, one of extended healthy living, employment, continued involvement, and ongoing personal growth and contribution that could make boomers in their later years net givers to society-not the fiscal drain that is widely supposed. In recent years, governments have begun to get serious about promoting productive aging-getting some kind of return on the accumulated wisdom and skills of people entering their retirement years. So far, the discussion has centered on how to keep people past sixty in the workforce, for two reasons-their retirement threatens to cause a "brain drain" that leaves companies groping for skilled labor and management, and most people that age are physically and mentally able to work much longer. Today's average sixty-five-year-old man has the same 2 percent chance of dying within a year as did the average fifty-nine-year-old man in 1970, notes
John Shoven, director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
Says he: "If you have a low chance of dying, you're not old."
Shoven believes the starting of pension benefits should be measured backward from how long a person is expected to live, not forward from how long they've been alive. By his calculations, counting back from the expected end of life would lead to reasonably delayed benefits that boost the labor force by 10 percent by 2050 and add 10 percent a year to the national output. If those who retire are encouraged to volunteer it could add another 5 percent to the gross domestic product (GDP)-and this is his point: such contribution from retirement-age people would pay for a lot of the government's promises. "Seasoned men and women," said David
Walker, U.S. comptroller general, "are the most underutilized asset in
America." Indeed, in the world."We're moving in the right direction, fitfully," says Marc Freedman, founder of Civic Ventures, a nonprofit focused on productive-aging issues. "But we haven't begun to see the kind of creative energy put into productive aging as we saw during the last fifty years go into leisure for the aging. We need our leaders to step up and create a new cultural paradigm.
We need a new vision for what success looks like in the second half of life."
Purpose Has Entered the Mainstream

With Purpose Success, part 12

Read with purpose. We all know that Hamlet, the brilliant story of an indecisive prince, teaches us much about a purposeful life and the universal struggle to separate good from evil. But Shakespeare isn't the only writer with a message. Choose novels and movies and lectures and art exhibits and columnists that make you think and will challenge your assumptions and open your mind to new possibilities. That is where self-discovery, tolerance, and new passions may be found.
Travel with purpose. I have a phrase that I use when traveling: get off the map. Just once during every trip I take I like to venture a little farther than the tour guide or trip planner had scheduled. I sometimes have to push myself; temporarily leave my comfort zone. But getting off the map leads to unexpected, joyful learning experiences-like a perfect cup of chocolate coffee in Torino or a personal tour through a small French vintner's cellars in Burgundy. Such unique and unsanitized experiences expose me to things I don't know and understand and help me define my place in the world. They are also a heck of a lot of fun.
Decorate your home with purpose. Most of us already do this. You hang up family pictures and post a good report card on the refrigerator. Don't underestimate the value of this expression of love. Everyone, and kids especially, need to be reminded of how much they are loved. But you can go further, especially if you have children at home. Let them decorate their room however they like. Heck, let them decorate the family room too. Frame a picture they took or one of their paintings and display it. If your kids are still young, let them write on the walls in their room. This feeds their creativity and reinforces your faith in them and helps them grow confident. You'll have plenty of time to wipe away their marks when they've gone. But they will never wipe away the positive marks you left on them.
Tip with purpose. You cannot believe the importance of an extra dollar or two for many people who work in a services field-cabdrivers, parking attendants, the person who brings you groceries or cleans your home, and of course the waitress at the diner. Some years ago I made a point of overtipping everyone in my life for a short period just to see how it feels. I was repaid swiftly with smiles and sincere gratitude-and I never had to wait for my car at the lot again! I soon found that I was not only helping people who have a little less in life but feeling better about myself as well, and this good feeling was influencing my other daily activities. I smiled more and often felt greater energy at work-all because of a small deed.
OK, you get the idea. You can bring responsible and generous behavior to just about everything you do, and turn simple things into significant moments that enhance your life. This is the essence of purpose, and it isn't all that hard to find. Try thinking about how you can bring more purpose to your life the next time you're walking the dog or running on the treadmill. You'll find that such reflection is far more invigorating than obsessing over a gray hair or perhaps your neighbor's new BMW.
Giving Back Equals Economic Gain

With Purpose Success, part 11

Colin Powell once said. Let's praise anybody who lifts a finger or donates a dime, because small deeds and small amounts matter. As it turns out, the very rich are not even the most generous. Giving does increase with income-up to a point. But one study found that households with an annual income of $100,000 to $200,000 gave less proportionately than those with an income of $50,000 or less.
I'll look more closely at the ripple effect of giving in chapter 8, where you'll learn about the modern pay-it-forward movement and meet an extraordinary family that lost one of its own in the Columbine High School shooting. This family now travels the world teaching students about the beauty and art of chain reaction kindness through a program known as
Rachel's Challenge. So when I talk about moving from success to signifi-
Average Annual Donationas a Percent of Total Income
5%
4%
3%
2%
1%
0
Under $20,000- $30,000- $50,000- $75,000- Over
$20,000 $29,999 $49,999 $74,999 $100,000 $100,000
Source: 2000 Social Capital Community Benchmark Surveycance I'm talking to everyone. I'm talking to you. Being significant isn't only about moving mountains; it can also be about moving handfuls of dirt. Anyone can do it. To quote Mother Teresa: "We realize that what we are accomplishing is a drop in the ocean. But if this drop were not in the ocean, it would be missed."
Purpose in Your Daily Routine
There is probably nothing more important to your daily well-being as having a sense of purpose about everything you do. It's an attitude, and you can adopt it-and find it in the simplest routines. This may sound trite. But I assure you that it is possible to contribute something to the world and feel better about yourself through the most basic everyday acts.
For example, you can:
Eat with purpose. I'm not kidding. You can make a difference simply by thinking about the food you put in your mouth. At a recent high school commencement, the actor Sam Waterston implored graduates to go out into the world and put their mark on it. But even if you have not yet discovered your special gifts, he told them, just be smart about what you eat. Waterston, a longtime activist for preserving the oceans, told the kids they could make a difference that would be felt around the globe simply by avoiding seafood that is overharvested-like certain halibut and cod, shark and chilean sea bass. Stick with farmed mussels, clams, oysters, and char, and mackerel and striped bass, which are more abundant. Farmed salmon may be cheaper than wild Alaskan salmon, but the farming takes a far greater toll on the environment because of pollutants and the great amount of wild fish that farmed salmon are fed.
Eating responsibly, Waterston said, can literally save the oceans. How's that for purpose in a daily routine? For a pocket guide on ocean-friendly dining, go to www.blueocean.org or www.oceana.org. And don't stop at the shoreline. Why not get smart about everything you consume? Go to www.erasemyfootprint.com to learn how you can offset all of your carbon-producing activities.

With Purpose Success, part 10

Seeking a meaningful life is part of what makes us human. It's why volunteers drive ambulances and fight fires, why donors give blood and pledge their organs, why moms and dads coach Little League and serve on community boards, why professionals mentor those learning their trade or craft, why you may work at the soup kitchen or raise money for your place of worship. Happily, there is no imperative to be rich, or even religious, before stepping up to a life of purpose.
I have had a long relationship with Habitat for Humanity. Years ago I had the good fortune to work on a build with President Jimmy Carter, whose greatest work has come after his presidency and has been mostly centered on giving back to the global community. Carter has become the face of Habitat since his first involvement in 1984. He raises funds and awareness and once a year takes part in the Jimmy Carter Work Project "blitz build." In 2006, for example, Carter and two thousand volunteers built 101 homes in impoverished Lonavala, India. Why did I get started with this group? Helping people rebuild their lives after a natural disaster, or simply build a life after being born to disadvantage, just feels good inside.
Too many people think they have to be wealthy to make a difference.
When I first began to explore the transition from a focus on personal gain and career success to a focus on becoming significant-the kind of person who does good things for others and lifts them up in some way-I encountered plenty of resistance. Isn't that something you do after you've worked forty years and provided for your family and have saved enough money to give it away or can afford to quit work for pay and become a volunteer?
A good friend of mine, Jay Ogilvy, who has a Ph.D. and is a philosopher and author, and who has long given of himself in the nonprofit world, put it to me this way: "Ken, you know I'd like to make the reverse transition-from significance to success!" Jay may not be rich, but the idea that he isn't already a huge success is flat-out ridiculous. His success is measured in his happy family, high academic standing, and obvious sense of self-fulfillment. Through his work he's been lifting people up for most of his adult life. Lots of ordinary people are doing it too. Re-
Donna Rodgers, a runaway at age fourteen, fought her way through college and while still a young woman launched a nonprofit in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, that teaches urban youth basic business skills. Paige Ellison in Anniston, Alabama, took $20,000 from the sale of her home to start a nonprofit that builds temporary but secure playgrounds and day care centers at disaster sites so that "kids could go about the business of being kids" while their parents got back on their feet.
Let's dispense right away with any thought that only the rich make a difference. Sure, it's easy for Bill Gates with his extraordinary wealth to write a check to the University of Manitoba to start an AIDS prevention program in India. But it's just as easy for folks with ordinary income to read to a child at school one hour a week. And here's the thing-it's just as potent, when we act en masse. "Let's not just praise billionaires,"

With Purpose Success, part 9

What I want to know is this: how do you intend to use your life?"
I wasn't sure what she meant and asked, "You mean in terms of what I'm going to make of my career?" "No." "Do you mean in terms of the books I may write?" "No."
I thought something was lost in translation. What did she mean?"Ken, how will you use your life?" she repeated.
Remember, I was just twenty-seven. My mind was stuck in concerns over my emerging career, celebrity, and hopes for a family one day. How would I use my life? I was going to make some money and have a couple of kids, I said to myself. Yet I knew she was getting at something deep, and at that time the meaning of her question didn't sink in. I fumbled for an answer and ended up telling her that I wasn't sure; I'd have to see where my career took me. We finished our lunch and then parted ways, and I couldn't help but feel that I'd betrayed shallowness in my approach to life and that it had disheartened her. Her question-how will you use your life?-haunted me for many years.
With time I came to understand Dr. Mueller's point. I had one life to live. There might be fifty years of it or eighty or a hundred. But it's one life and it can have a higher purpose. In fact, it must have a higher purpose in order to be a life truly worth living. Only now, as I complete my sixth decade of life, do I fully grasp what Dr. Mueller was saying to me back in Copenhagen: How might I pursue my interests and career-and utilize whatever abilities I had-in a way that helped others and might redefine success for me, not in terms of how much money I make or how many books I sell, but by the way I bring meaning and purpose to everything
I do and the impact I have on others? That question looms before me still. And so I will ask you-how will you use your life? It's never too late to begin to figure out the answer.
Roll Up Your Sleeves
Significant acts are all around us, from ordinary people mentoring a child at school to Warren Buffett pledging $31 billion to the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation, a charitable enterprise with the not-so-modest goal of wiping out disease around the world. The Gates Foundation is on the leading wave of new-style charities headed by "philanthropreneurs," who seek not just to alleviate pain and suffering in the world but also to make certifiable progress in destroying the root causes, and who roll up their sleeves and get involved. This movement is just now taking wing and promises to finally make a dent globally in problems like poor health, poverty, and illiteracy. It's the new thing in giving-generosity combined with personal involvement and linked to businesslike management and performance measures. You can be part of it too.

With Purpose Success, part 8

Clinton, Tony Blair, and Bono, the rock star. Others on the program included Shimon Peres, Al Gore, John McCain, Malcolm Gladwell, and Vinod Khasla. Session topics ranged from international terrorism to global warming to the role of the media in the Internet era. So here I was speaking in a room full of hard-nosed media executives and bona fide dignitaries and stars, and when I inserted the idea of moving from success to significance, I saw it again-those same tilted heads and smiles.
After the speech, Jane Friedman, then the CEO of publisher Harper- Collins (a News Corp. division) and who's been called the most powerful woman in publishing, grabbed me by the arm and said she thought the timing was perfect for a book on the subject. "The idea of making the transition from success to significance," she said, "is the most powerful thing I've heard here." And the rest, as they say, is history.
How Will You Use Your Life ?
So now let me ask: when is the last time you did something significant, did something for someone else or the greater good and didn't expect a thing in return? Most of us can identify with modest good deeds, mostly for family. We willingly give our time and counsel and often our money so that those closest to us can gain whatever edge we may be able to offer in ways big or small. Helping this way is among the most basic of human instincts. But when goodwill and purpose extend beyond family, their healing power is both a wonder to behold and, in large enough numbers, a potential elixir for many of society's worst ills.
As a young man years ago, I experienced my first jolt about the importance of leading a life of purpose. I was on a book tour through Denmark in 1977. I was only twenty-seven years old and had just published my first book, BodyMind, which achieved unexpected sales success in
Denmark, where it was a national best seller for more than a year. So I was something of a young phenom in that far-off country and had been invited to give a series of lectures on holistic health and self-actualization.
Shortly after arriving in Copenhagen I got a call from the offices of Denmark's renowned octogenarian geriatrician, Dr. Esther Mueller, who was a highly respected physician and philosopher in her home country.
This was all new stuff for me. My book was in the window of bookstores throughout the city. Newspapers were covering my lectures. On top of that, an esteemed doctor and scholar had asked me to lunch. Wow.
My life was really taking off. I loved it. I was flying.
Then, with a single question, Dr. Mueller brought me back to planet Earth. At lunch, we exchanged the usual small talk. Soon enough our conversation turned to professional concerns and issues. She wanted to know about my insights and research on preventive health, aging, and human potential. I was interested in her views on health care and medicine in Europe. Things were going well, and then out of nowhere-here's the jolt-she hit me with a guilt bomb. "Ken, you're obviously smart and ambitious," she started. "You have a keen interest in what will become a hugely important field as the global population ages. You have a hit book and can command a fair amount of attention through your lectures.

With Purpose Success, part 7

I decided rather quickly to donate all future earnings from the book to help rebuild New Orleans. This was no PR stunt. I didn't talk about it with anyone but my family. I wanted my teenage daughter and son to know that I stood for something bigger than a nice house near the San
Francisco Bay with a pool and a view. I wanted them to measure me not by what I said and wrote, but by what I did. So I went to an acquaintance of mine, Jonathan Reckford, the executive director of Habitat for Humanity.
Habitat is a fabulous organization that builds shelter for the needy across the globe, and I intended to make this group my primary beneficiary.
After telling Reckford about my financial pledge, he shared with me a simple, yet eye-popping observation: "Ken, I see and hear a lot of people your age [late fifties] going through what you're going through." "What do you mean?" I asked. "You know, you've got that gnawing feeling." "What gnawing feeling?" "You're trying to make the transition-from success to significance."
There was a long pause. I've enjoyed my accomplishments in my life.
I haven't done everything I've dreamed of. But I've done a lot. I have an enormous amount to be thankful for, and at this stage in my life it's beginning to matter less to me how much more money I make or how influential I am in my field. What's becoming far more interesting to me is finding fun, interesting, helpful, and personally rewarding ways to give something back. Sometimes you hear a clever phrase and it sticks with you for a while, and then dissipates. But "success to significance" has stayed with me as a powerful, lasting call to action.
I immediately began to insert this idea about what people might do with the second half of their lives into my speeches around the world and noticed a common response: people would cock their head, raise their eyebrows, and smile ever so slightly-as if a light in their brain just went on. When you speak to 10,000 people a month, as I usually do, and a line in your speech bombs-you know it. This line definitely wasn't bombing; it was striking a nerve. This idea went right through people's barriers, their business at hand, their BlackBerrys, their newspapers, their worries and hassles. It seemed to stir them.
When people approach me after my presentations I like to ask them what part interested them most. These days, nearly everyone says something along these lines: "You know, that concept of going from success to significance rocked my world." Well-just a few more words on this story-let me tell you what further rocked my world:
I've never been part of a more impressive speaking roster than one at a private conference titled "Imagining the Future," which was held at
Pebble Beach in 2006 for the very top executives at media conglomerate News Corp. I was one of four keynote speakers. The others were Bill

With Purpose Success, part 6

U.K.'s Third Sector. "Changes in amount and source of wealth are giving rise to a new type of donor," the Web site reports. "One who is younger, typically (but not necessarily) self-made and socially conscious. The new philanthropists want to be engaged in their giving, using their business experience and expertise to support the charity more closely. They also are willing to invest a significant amount of capital-including funding core costs-and take significant risks to test innovative ideas. Importantly, because they are private individuals, they are able to take risks that government and many foundations, who are accountable to other stakeholders, simply cannot."
Across the globe, a new generation of givers wants solutions, not Band-Aids, and they demand measurable results. Millions of common people-everyday philanthropists, or Everymanthropists-are striking out on their own in a downsized version of what titans are doing. They are using their smarts and energy to fund and launch personalized non- profits dedicated to causes that speak to their souls. Everymanthropists want results as well, and most want nothing to do with emptying bed pans and cold calling potential donors. They want to give back a talent, share what they've learned, and see the impact they make. Traditional volunteer opportunities do not cater to them. So they are crafting their own, a phenomenon that I will return to often throughout this book.
Success to Significance
The potential of a retirement revolution, where millions and millions of long-lived accomplished men and women offer their skills and time to the world, is nothing short of staggering. Yet not nearly enough is being done to harness this vast resource. In study after study people past forty-five indicate their willingness to give of their time-but don't follow through because they don't know how to get started. We squander a valuable asset by not finding ways to tap into this desire. "We in the government always think about the aging of boomers in terms of their departure from the world of work and contribution-to being recipients of entitlements," confesses Robert Reich, the former U.S. Labor Secretary. "We don't have it as part of our equation that they might be contributors, that they might be givers. Can we imagine an army of ten million or fifty million retirees contributing their skills, time, and energy to transform the world? That would be something."
So these were some of the many thoughts filling my head as we wound down our work on the book I mentioned and prepared for its launch in
September 2005. At the same time, though, I was ramping up to full prepublication mode, planning the book publicity tour and dreaming about how well the book might sell. Could it be the great book of my career?
Might it lead to fame and fortune? (Hey, I said I was dreaming!) Anyway, it was at this moment that Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, and I, like many
Americans, sat helpless in front of the TV for many hours, spellbound by the destruction and ruined lives before me. I was stirred by the incredible devastation being brought down on the city and dismayed by our nation's slow response.
How could we be living in the twenty-first century with all our advanced technology and just watch as the days unfolded and these good people struggled without relief? I still had the "Leaving a Legacy" chapter in my head and began to reflect: how did I, Ken Dychtwald, want to be known when my days ended? What would be my legacy?

With Purpose Success, part 5

2. Boomers are maturing. This large generation is by no means going it alone in the field of giving back. But boomers are now migrating through their "mature" years, and they will put their unique stamp on philanthropy as retirees-and rehirees. This generation is now entering the sweet spot in life, where their careers are becoming less important, their child-rearing obligations are receding, and they still have the energy and the desire to be engaged and productive. We are on the cusp of the largest class of retirees in history-a staggering legion of well-schooled and accomplished individuals who, if they stay true to form, will leave their mark on this period of life as they have on every other period that preceded it. Will boomers volunteer and otherwise give back in waves large enough to change the world? Only time will tell. But this generation has itched to make its mark on a global scale since the first Vietnam
War protest.
Despite their me-first reputation, boomers are a deceptively generous lot. A 2005 study by Craver, Mathews, Smith and Co. and The Prime
Group found that boomers gave an average of $1,361 annually to charities and political causes-compared to $1,138 for older Americans, including the so-called greatest generation. Boomers are also the most likely cohort to volunteer, and they compare favorably with older generations when they were at this same stage of life. It is now estimated that the number of older volunteers will increase by 50 percent as boomers reach maturity.
Typically, people who volunteer during their working years double their hours of service after retiring. So when boomers really do step back and ponder what's next they may finally have the cumulative impact longed for in the classic 1970s anthem by Ten Years After: "I'd Love to Change the World."
3. The world of giving has a revolutionary new face. The rich tradition of giving something back dates to prehistoric times and was first given form around 500 bc with Greek writer Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound.
According to Greek mythology, Prometheus stole fire from the gods and out of goodness gave it to humans. In so doing, Prometheus incurred the wrath of his less egalitarian superior, Zeus, who then bound him to a mountain for centuries. But Prometheus regarded the sacrifice as well worth the result. The act of selfless giving has inspired countless stories since, cementing philanthropy as a worthy endeavor in the human psyche.
Yet the social purpose of philanthropy has, like the institution of retirement, undergone profound change over the millennia and is today at another tipping point. Those who give their money or their time have become frustrated; despite billions of dollars given each year to eradicate poverty, illiteracy, and other blights it sometimes feels as if relatively little gets accomplished.
Big-money philanthropy increasingly is driven by the new-age rich, who earned their money as hard-driving entrepreneurs-not as the heirs of old-line wealth. Titans like Larry Ellison at the software firm
Oracle, Oprah Winfrey, Phil Knight at Nike, and Bill and Melinda Gates at the Gates Foundation are relatively young and bring an entrepreneurial zeal to the world of charity. There are many others, and they span the globe and include titans such as Hong Kong's Li Ka-shing, who has pledged to leave one-third of his $32 billion fortune to charity;
Anil Agarwal, who has committed $1 billion toward creating a new university in India; Malaysia's Leonard Linggi Tun Jugah, who puts his donations into preserving the culture of the Ibans, an indigenous group on Borneo; and Yang Huiyan, China's richest person, and her father,
Yeung Kwok Keung, who donated $32 million to charities in a single year.
Venture philanthropy is one of the top trends in British charity too, according to trackers at www.philanthropyuk.org, a relatively new and comprehensive clearinghouse of advice, information, and news on the

With Purpose Success, part 4

I'm often taken by the wisdom and depth of thinking of Hindus, whose spiritual leaders have long championed things like service to others and leading a life of meaning. Among their more interesting rites and customs is a celebration they call Maha Kumbh Mela, which means grand pitcher festival. Every twelve years some seventy million Hindu pilgrims meet near Allahabad, India, for six weeks, where they dip, millions at a time, into the water where three different rivers converge-the Ganges, the Yamuna and, in lore, the Saraswati, which years ago went dry.
Hindu mythology holds that gods and demons once fought a war over the nectar of immortality and spilled some from a pitcher into the confluence of those three rivers. By bathing in them, according to Hindu custom, they heal their souls and may become free from the desire for material things, which leads to spiritual purity.
The massive gathering results in a temporary city of 50,000 tents, and the movement of millions of people into the waters at once is so gigantic that it is visible from outer space. But this ritual is more than just a spectacle of humanity. It's an enormous public profession that there are more important things in life than personal gain. Hindus believe that the world population is one large family, and there at the nexus of three great rivers, every dozen years they celebrate the simple holiness of doing good things for others.
That the festival takes place at the meeting point of three rivers is no accident. These waters flowing from the Himalayas have long sustained life in the region and are a symbol of great power-in this case, at least to Hindus, the power to become better human beings. Why do I mention this ancient rite? First and foremost, it speaks to mankind's innate desire to lead good and decent lives, which must include some higher purpose.
But I also like the image of three powerful currents meeting in one place, generating enough wattage to foment large-scale change. We are today at just such a confluence, not of three rivers but of three social currents that are coming together for the first time. As the Hindus believe in the magical convergence of the Ganges, Yamuna, and Saraswati, so I believe in the magic of these merging trends:
1. Retirement is being retired. As I've said, people today are living longer and are healthier than ever, and they want more than a daily golf game or round of pinochle to occupy their time. Today's retirees feel youthful and vital; they want to stay engaged and relevant. For some, that means staying at work longer. But for many others it means working at giving away their money in ways that make them feel good, or giving away their time, skills, and energy to further a cause near to their heart.
The days of accepting a gold watch and disappearing into a meaningless leisure-filled sunset for twenty or thirty years are coming to an end.
New generations of maturing men and women are coming to view their unprecedented longevity as a time to play, certainly, but also to share not just what they've earned but also what they've learned. Millions of people are now wondering what the most satisfying balance between leisure and legacy might be.

With Purpose Success, part 3

This view, I believe, is multiplying in the minds and hearts of people around the world, and not just adults on the crest of retirement, but students and young children as well. People of all ages are warming to the notion of giving something back and in their generosity discovering intrinsic rewards and possibly a whole new purpose to their life. What might it mean for the world and all its problems if an international army of volunteers would emerge, each individual determined to fix just one small-or large-problem?
Humankind's quest for a meaningful life is hardly new. Aristotle wrote volumes on the subject. Service to others has long been the backbone of the world's oldest and largest religions, from Judaism to Christianity to
Buddhism to Islamism. Yet in the modern world, with a pop culture that has become increasingly awash with superficial concerns, introspective questions as to what amounts to a good and decent life are rarely pondered outside places of worship or some random philosophy class at a university. That is, however, beginning to change. In the United States alone there are now more than a million registered charities-double the number in 2000. There are probably another million unregistered charitable organizations. Registered nonprofits constitute one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy. This movement is global. From nothing, in fewer than ten years some 400,000 charities have sprung up in Russia; 300,000 in China; 500,000 in India. The movement is especially strong in the U.K., which has a blossoming "Third Sector."
Former president Bill Clinton, in his book Giving, argues that this global outpouring is the result of three factors: the fall of communism and rise of democracies, which has created more opportunity for citizen activism; the development of global trade and information technology, which has provided the means for people to give both time and money; and the build out of the Internet, which has enabled ordinary people to find each other and coalesce around shared interests or causes.
Those are certainly valid observations. But in my view the primary force at work today lies in millions of people the world over reaching an age and a time in life when they'll have the opportunity to consider a higher purpose-and still have enough good years in front of them to act on their conclusions. No previous generation has had this opportunity; none had the experience of watching their parents and grandparents live so long and waste decades of extra years thinking that each day might be their last. Today we understand that longevity isn't a fluke; our lives will continue to stretch out, probably much longer-maybe very much longer, than you imagine.
Springing forth is a collective sense of purpose, a realization that individuals can do something worthwhile with the resources and extra time they're being given on Earth. The world has never been in greater need of kindness and selfless contribution. Hurt in its many forms retains an iron grip on the world-from simple crime and disease to poverty and illiteracy to the many problems associated with terrorism and the environment.
The combination of global need and an emerging army of educated, motivated, purpose-seeking volunteers with their own ideas on how to fix things is a potent mix. Their ultimate force is to be determined, but I believe that we are on the verge of a golden age of giving-and change.
Currents Converge

With Purpose Success, part 2

It is my heartfelt belief that living a longer life, as we certainly will in an age of advanced medicine and unprecedented information about healthy living, isn't simply a matter of playing longer or working longer-but of reaching a place where you have gathered enough life experiences and perhaps the financial freedom to dedicate the decades of life still before you to doing good things for your family, community, country, and the world. What use could you put your skills to that might give someone else, whether you know them or not, an otherwise missed opportunity to better their life? This was the parting challenge that we presented in our new way of looking at a reinvented retirement.
Not many years ago, when people reached their fifty-fifth birthday they were pretty close to the end of their days. They were concerned mostly with putting their affairs in order and maybe trying to have a little fun before their last sunset. But someone who reaches that age now can look forward to twenty, or thirty, or even forty more years of life. What might be the most satisfying way to spend all of that time?
We concluded that leaving a legacy-not necessarily the financial kind; but doing something memorable to lift others-would emerge as a retirement revolution. Today there are hundreds of millions of men and women around the world approaching a period of life when they'll have unprecedented amounts of discretionary time and are looking for a new challenge. Maybe they haven't achieved what they thought they might in their career and are now looking for someplace totally new to invest their energy. Maybe it's the opposite: they have achieved more than they set out to do and now find at age fifty-one or fifty-seven or sixty-three that they want a fresh purpose for getting up in the morning.
In my travels and conversations I don't often hear anymore about people in their fifties or older focused on making another $1 million.
Certainly, greed, deceit, and ambition haven't vanished from the globe.
Corporate scandals, glass ceilings for women and minorities, identity theft, Internet fraud, and other forms of lying, cheating, and stealing are as prevalent as ever. And a lot of us are still rightly concerned with making a decent, honest living and finishing the job of raising happy and prepared children. You may not be financially secure at this point in life.
Yet what I increasingly hear are people talking about what's next; about what's in store in the next stage of life. They wonder how they might get past their routines and do something that makes their heart sing, that reminds them of their humanity and gives them a chance to reboot from the hard-driving work and family pursuits that have preoccupied them for decades.
Life can certainly be draining, whether you are managing a career and paying the bills or seeing to your kids' health, education, and moral grounding-or, as is increasingly the case in modern societies, doing both. Past a certain age, though, you can loosen up on the reins and let yourself be led down unknown trails. This can be an exciting and liberating time as you begin to think about your life not as a mission accomplished-but as a time for finding a new purpose that will give your life meaning and just might become your most joyous and nourishing time on earth.

With Purpose Success, part 1

Are You Using Your Life- or Is Your Life Using You?
There are two ways of exerting one's strength:one is pushing down and the other is pulling up.
-Booker T. Washington
A few years ago I was winding down work on my last major book, The Power Years: A User's Guide to the Rest of Your Life, when a series of peculiar events, which I'll describe, overtook me. These events changed the way I look at the world and ultimately led to the book you now hold in your hands. But this book is not about me-it's about you. It's about why your worldview may be changing, how you can better understand the shift and find purpose in everything you do. It's about how you can finally set aside, or at least temper, your focus on personal gain in order to identify with a different kind of success-one that centers on meaning and satisfaction. It's about doing something significant with the rest of your life, something that will help others and at the same time fill a void you may not even be fully aware of. For many years I wasn't fully aware of my void. But I knew something wasn't right. So let me start by explaining what changed that.
The Power Years, which I coauthored with Daniel J. Kadlec, was a new kind of project for me. I've made a career out of studying the lifestyles, needs, and aspirations-and the related spending and savings patterns of baby boomers. For three and a half decades, I've been writing and speaking both about the lifestyle of maturity and about boomer habits and consulting with global companies eager to capture the attention of this highly influential and wealthy generation. In The Power Years we wanted to fast-forward to gaze into the future. So we set out to examine what boomer lifestyles might look like in the traditional retirement years, which were approaching fast. In the end, we attempted to put forth a groundbreaking vision for what people might become in their fifties and beyond. The message was fairly simple: later life is evolving into an extraordinary period of good health and extended opportunity for people to do whatever they want to do. So what would they do? I loved exploring the future of relationships, leisure, learning, and work, and making sense of how people are going to pay for it all. But for me, the heart and soul of that book was the final chapter, which was called "Leaving a Legacy."