With Purpose Success, part 37

Robert Chambers and Katie Ginsberg, whose mission statements you read in the last chapter, looked better than they felt. They weren't unhappy, to be sure. In fact, life had been pretty good to them both. But they were cruising, and they knew it. They were on that life path known as autopilot, which the folks in my Sage Project so earnestly warned about. They were leading a good and successful life-from the outside looking in. But, like Eric Clapton unable to coax just the right tone from his guitar, they expected more of themselves. They did not feel successful- from the inside out. "If you ever get a second chance in life for something, you've got to go all the way," Lance Armstrong, the heroic cyclist and cancer survivor has said. Well, Chambers, an ordinary car salesman nearing sixty, and
Ginsberg, a stay-at-home mom nearing forty, did just that. At midlife they set a new goal and decided to pursue a new dream, and each was able to ignite a passion and discover meaning by building on the skills and wisdom they had acquired in their life. They found a bigger reason to be alive, and it changed everything for them.
Selling Cars with Purpose
Serving on the USS Kitty Hawk during the Vietnam War, Robert Chambers got his first good look at poverty while stationed in the Philippines- and it left him shaken. "We could read it in the papers and we could see some pictures," he recalls. "But really seeing kids begging, not having enough to eat; how skinny they were, how unhealthy they looked just left a deep impression on me." Those images stayed with Chambers over the many decades of his postmilitary life, when he earned his keep as a computer specialist for a phone company, then for a bank, then for an affiliate of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and finally for his own firm serving several banks in New York City.
But when the stock market crashed in 1987, Chambers's small operation was left in shambles. He shut it down and moved back to Hanover with modest savings and little income (but where he still owned some property) to contemplate what would come next. Could he afford to retire? Perhaps-but he'd have to phase into it with part-time work.
That's when a friend convinced him to go into the car business.
As a car salesman, Chambers became reacquainted with other peoples' poverty in a visceral way. The lot where he worked served many low-income car buyers, which Chambers and other salesmen knew from experience tended to be unsophisticated about car values and loan rates. "I got sick of watching guys high-five behind glass walls" after they had bullied someone "who probably makes $10 an hour" into overpaying for a gas- guzzling jalopy, Chambers recalls.
Such buyers almost always assume they do not qualify for a new-car loan, which isn't the case. New fuel-efficient cars are often available to even low-income households through an attractive manufacturer-subsidized rate. Those are the kind of deals that Chambers tried to find for his clients. But he couldn't control the other salesmen, who led their low- income lambs to the slaughter-taking them directly to the oldest cars on the lot, which also happened to be the most profitable for the dealer.

With Purpose Success, part 36

I am a terrific car salesman who values giving people a fair shake and matching them with a car and a loan that they can afford and which fits their needs. In my life I have seen colleagues take advantage of unsophisticated, low-income buyers by selling them junk vehicles and placing them in high-interest loans to maximize their own income. I will start or join a nonprofit that evaluates the purchase price of a used car on behalf of the working poor and arranges affordable, low-interest car loans for them. 

I am a loving at-home mother with deep concerns about humankind's ability to manage the planet. I see that my children are learning almost nothing in school about the tenuous balance between human activity and the natural world and believe that only through education can we secure our long-term future. I will encourage my school system to integrate sustainable-living lessons into their core curriculums and use that experience to develop a program that can be adopted easily by schools everywhere. 

By the way, these are real vision statements that have been put into practice by real people and with spectacular results. You'll meet Robert 

Chambers and Katie Ginsberg in the next few pages. Like their vision statements, yours should resonate with your core desires and fill you with excitement. If you pursue your honest-to-goodness passion you can find significance in your life that may or may not include a paycheck but will certainly fill you with purpose-and you just may have a blast in the process. 

I'll close this chapter with another quote, this one from a person who knows a thing or two about material success. Financier George Roberts, part of the Wall Street powerhouse Kohlberg, Kravis & Roberts, has an estimated net worth of $2.5 billion. Says Roberts: "I'm often asked by people, especially younger people, 'What do you have to do to be successful?' 

And I assume they're asking not what you have to do to make money, but what do you have to do to be a successful individual. You've got to work hard, set goals, be prepared to be disappointed, keep a sense of humor, keep a perspective of what's really important, and lastly, help others that are less strong and less fortunate than yourself, because you will get back many, many, many fold what you have done for yourself." 

Dreams and Goals Aren't for Kids-They're for the Kid at Heart 

Just because I'm old doesn't mean I don't have dreams.

-John Glenn 

The comic Billy Crystal made us laugh years ago when, on Saturday Night Live and in other appearances, he would impersonate the actor 

Fernando Lamas as a talk-show host interviewing celebrities. "Dahling, yooouuuu look mahvelous," he would gush, and then famously conclude that "you know, dahling, it's better to look good than to feel good." Crystal's exquisite timing, his inflections, and his expressions made the lines hilarious. But there was a real joke buried in there too; it is, of course, much better to feel good than to look good. At some level, we all know that or Crystal's laugh lines would have bombed. 

With Purpose Success, part 35

You may be surprised to discover that the things that you've done that have made you feel most significant were the simple things that brought a smile to someone's face or improved their life in some small way. You may not even have recognized this joy at the time. Yet upon reflection you find that the service aspect is what lit your fire.
Search Your Youth. Now apply the same exercise to your earliest years.
Take a minute to think back to your childhood. What did you dream about doing with your life? Write down everything you remember about those dreams and ask yourself how you may have kept them alive in your work, hobbies, or recreation. Although your joys may have evolved, many people find this exercise to be a powerful starting point for recovering their core strengths and passions. Remembering the first things you wanted to do with your life and the first things that made a lasting impression on you can provide invaluable insight, especially if you feel that your dreams have been obscured by the struggle to survive and raise a family over the past thirty years.
Study People You Admire. You do it all the time in other parts of your life. If you see someone who seems especially well put together or confident, you may take note of their clothes or hairstyle or how they speak.
If someone beats you at tennis every week you may observe their serving technique or when and how often they come to the net. At work, you may take note of fellow workers who always seem to have the boss's ear and try to figure out what they're doing to get that recognition.
It's natural to study things that impress you and try to learn from them, and you can go about your search for new purpose the same way.
Find role models and try to identify what makes them so special. Is it their honesty? How carefully they listen to others? How they respect old people or relate to young people? How they care for an aging parent or sick spouse? Do you admire their commitment to their religion or a community project? Write it all down, and after you've studied three to five role models find the traits that appear on your list most often. Look for ways to practice those traits in your life.
Craft a Vision Statement. Key to unlocking your strengths and vision for the next phase of life is making the effort to think things through. Once you've reflected on the meaningful points of your life, use them to mold a vision statement. Your vision statement doesn't need to be longer than one paragraph, and it should summarize what you are good at, where your core strengths and passions lie, and how you plan to fuse the two.
Here are two sample vision statements:

With Purpose Success, part 34

Yet serious reflection is more art than science. You may not know how to get started. So let me offer a few techniques for discovering your core strengths and what kind of giving, or significant experience, might be a good fit for you.
Write It Down. Start with a pen or pencil and a blank sheet of paper.
There's nothing like reducing your thoughts to words on paper to help you focus. You're searching for a form of contribution that will bring meaning and excitement to the next phase of your life. So start by making a list of all the meaningful and exciting moments you can remember from your adult life. These may naturally center on family and work but may include extracurricular moments like playing in the tennis or softball league or with the local theater, or volunteering with the parks department or in a political campaign or mentoring a child or visiting regularly with an isolated elderly neighbor. As a starting point, a simple list of family, work, and "other" will do just fine.
Search your memory from age eighteen through today in each category.
What were your great moments at home? Maybe one was the birth of your first child. What feelings did that evoke? Sharing? Responsibility?
Commitment? Selflessness? Possibly another was a conversation with an aging grandmother. Why did it leave such an impression? Were you moved by her wisdom? Was it a sad moment? Why? Reflecting like this can give you clues to your core strengths.
Go through the same exercise at work. It's OK if "made a lot of money" finds its way onto your piece of paper. Income and the benefits that come with it may have been a critical part of your life. But try thinking harder about your work-related moments of meaning. Money may have been the result and the thing you can quickly identify. Yet think about what happened that led to the promotion or payday you have in mind. Odds are there was something inherently satisfying about the work, and that is what led to your material success. You may discover that it wasn't really the money that satisfied-but the joy of certain aspects of the job, like overcoming a challenge or learning something new or teaching something to a young colleague.
Now search your leisure hours. Think about what motivated your interests to begin with and what parts you've most enjoyed. Look also at your spiritual and social lives and your friendships. Sometimes how you pray and play tells as much about your true self as how you work and connect with family. What kind of people have you most enjoyed spending time with? What kinds of contacts have been most satisfying? What activities and events have you most enjoyed? If you were part of a team, what role did you play? Were you the captain, or did you prefer to be the scorekeeper? What skills and personality traits came alive during these endeavors? Did you take risks, did you venture into something new, did you master a skill that had previously intimidated you, or did you demonstrate courage or persistence?

With Purpose Success, part 33

Psychologists believe it is possible to raise your happiness quotient by taking specific steps. For starters, do things you enjoy more often. That might mean taking a walk, sleeping late, or calling your sister without a reason. Try becoming more involved in everything you do. In other words, don't mail it in. If you're coaching a Little League team get to know your players and help them with their weaknesses. Try to have an impact at work. Trying a new recipe? Don't take the easy way out and leave out an unusual spice. Go to the store and get the correct ingredients.
Make the effort. Find ways to make your life more meaningful.
This is often achieved through volunteer activities and other endeavors that help others and contribute to your personal growth.
Psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky at the University of California- Riverside has studied what she calls "happiness boosters." One of the most effective is what she calls a "gratitude journal." Taking the time to write down what you are thankful for once a week can increase your overall life satisfaction in less than two months, she found. Counting your blessings may also improve physical health, raise your energy level, and relieve pain and fatigue. This is no joke. Happy people generate 50 percent more antibodies-a huge amount-in response to a flu vaccine, researchers have discovered. Studies have linked hopefulness, optimism, and contentment to less risk of cardiovascular disease, pulmonary disease, diabetes, hypertension, colds, and upper respiratory infections. According to a Dutch study of elderly patients, the happiest subjects had a 50 percent less chance of dying over nine years.
Laughter also makes a difference. In one study, ten volunteers gave blood before, during, and after viewing a one-hour comedy. The stress hormone cortisol was significantly lower at the end of the video. Another major happiness booster, Lyubomirsky found, was doing acts of altruism or kindness that may be as simple as calling a grandparent or praying for a friend. The more acts of kindness, the quicker and more lasting the boost.
Professor Seligman's research at the University of Pennsylvania found that the single most effective way to supercharge your happiness is to make a "gratitude visit." He suggests writing a testimonial thanking a teacher or workplace mentor or dear friend, and then visiting the person to read them the testimonial. People who do this just once are measurably happier a month later, Seligman says. He also says that lasting happiness requires you to find your core strengths and figure out how to deploy them. He defines core strengths as generosity, humor, gratitude, zest, and capacity for love. So one of the most effective happiness inducements you can concoct might be as simple as making someone laugh or painting your team colors on your face and going to the game with equally zestful friends.
Find Your Purpose
In my view, the whole point of living longer is to have time to discover your purpose and replant your wisdom. "Baby boomers have always been in the how-do-I-find-meaning business," observes Howard Husock, who directs the Manhattan Institute's Social Entrepreneurship Initiative and each year offers prize money to retirement-age men and women who are doing something novel or important to help others. Now, he says, with many boomers reaching fifty-five and sixty and sixty-five and expecting to live another twenty or thirty years "they have the luxury of being able to reflect on what meaning is, and having the time to act on it."

With Purpose Success, part 32

Things may not be perfect, but they are going well. This doesn't mean you are complacent. In fact, growth and challenge in your life might be part of what makes you so satisfied. -25 to 29. Things are going well. This isn't a bad place at all. Life is enjoyable, and things are just fine in the major domains of life-work or school, family, leisure, and personal development. -20 to 24. This is the range that most people in developed nations fall into. You are generally satisfied but have some areas where you very much want improvement. You may fall into this range because you are mostly satisfied with most of your life but see a need for modest improvement in all spheres, or because you are quite happy in most areas of your life but feel a need for dramatic improvement in just one or two places. You probably have that gnawing feeling I wrote about in chapter 1 and are ready to take action to feel better about yourself. -15 to 19. You can see a need for modest improvement in just about all aspects of your life. -14 and under. You are not happy. This may be the temporary effect of a death in the family, a divorce, a job loss-and things will get better with time. But if this state is chronic, big changes are in order.
To help understand your life-satisfaction score it is useful to understand the components that go into most people's view of happiness. One of the most important influences on happiness is social relationships. People who score high tend to have a family and friends that are close and supportive.
Work or school, or performance in an important role such as homemaker or grandparent, is another critical area. When you enjoy your work, be it paid or unpaid, you tend to feel needed and productive, which adds meaning to your life.
Another important aspect of happiness is a sense of satisfaction with who you are. Some religious affiliation definitely contributes to feeling good. So does a good marriage, learning and growth, health, exercise, and adequate amounts of leisure time. But for many people, Diener concludes, "It is important to feel a connection to something larger than oneself."
I can't say it any clearer than that. The path to this fulfilling state of engagement often lies in the direction of doing something to try to make the world a better place. You don't even have to succeed. Just trying makes a difference. "There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy," said Robert Louis Stevenson. "By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world."
Sources of Happiness
Relationship with Family Friends and Friendship
Contributing to the Lives of Others
Leisure Activities
Relationship with Parents
Religion
Physical or Sexual Pleasure Exercise and Physical Well-Being
Job and Career Amount of Money Earned
0% 20% 40% 60% 80%
One thing you may notice about Diener's quiz is that there is no mention of age. A lot of people consider old and cranky words that naturally fit together. But that's not the case. More people in their sixties and seventies report being happier than people in their forties, according to a survey spanning twenty-one countries conducted for bank HSBC. Laura
Carstensen, director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, has researched happiness in people ages eighteen to a hundred, and she too has found that people get happier as they age. They may have reservations about the way they've spent large parts of their life, as was the case with my sages. But on a day-in, day-out basis, as you age the frequency with which you feel angry, sad, disgusted, envious, or contemptuous declines. When these feelings do occur they don't last as long. One survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that people ages twenty to twenty-four are sad 3.5 days a month; people sixty-five to seventy-four are sad just 2.3 days a month.

With Purpose Success, part 31

Psychologist Erik Erikson, the father of adult development theories, echoes this reasoning. "I am what survives of me," he said. Others have weighed in as well: "The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it," said the American philosopher and psychologist William
James more than a hundred years ago.
Mold a Version of Success That Suits You
So what makes your heart sing? What does success mean to you? In a moment I'm going to give you a strategy to help you figure that out. But let's start with a simple quiz to measure just how happy you are. This isn't my quiz. It's the brainchild of professor Diener, who came up with it in 1980. It's brilliantly simple. It's been widely published, including in
Time magazine, and it's been used all over the world. If you want a second opinion or something more complex there are any number of happiness quizzes on the Internet. There's one at www.iVillage.com that's pretty good. So is the one at psychologytoday.com. You can even take Diener's test on the Web at www.time.com/time/2005/happiness/graphics/quiz .html.
But there is no reason to rush to a computer. The quiz is so simple you can do it in your head. Here it is:
Below are five statements that you may agree or disagree with. Using a 1 to 7 scale, where 1 means strongly disagree, 4 is neutral, and 7 means strongly agree, indicate your agreement with each item by placing an appropriate number on the line preceding that item. Be reflective and honest, or the exercise will prove meaningless. ___ In most ways my life is close to my ideal ___ The conditions of my life are excellent ___ I am satisfied with my life ___ So far I have gotten the important things I want in life ___ If I could live my life over I would change almost nothing ___ Your life-satisfaction score (total of above)
Here's how you rate your life, and what it means:-30 to 35. Good (and perhaps obvious) news: you love your life.

With Purpose Success, part 30

From there you advance to esteem, and here you seek self-respect, including such feelings as confidence, competence, achievement, mastery, independence, and freedom. Finally, you advance to the top of the pyramid-self-actualization, which is truly knowing yourself. The idea is that if you've lived long enough and had enough chance to reflect, enough learning, and enough development in your life, then you become truly in touch with yourself, familiar with yourself, and achieve a level of integrity and connection and alignment with who you truly are.
And that's it. Maslow's view, which still dominates thinking in the free world, argues that we should all aim our rockets at the ultimate prize of being self-actualized; the reason you went to college and then to work and developed your relationships has been to feel a sense of deep comfort with who you are and your feelings and your aspirations.
Well, at the risk of seeming disrespectful to a man whose work I greatly admire (and whose ideas have certainly shaped my own journey),
I think Maslow didn't go far enough. It's fine to transcend physical needs and move up through health, friendship, and self-esteem to self-awareness and understanding. Yet that model largely aggrandizes a self-focused mind-set and lifestyle. It might be fine if you're going to live fifty or sixty years and need almost all of that time to reach a final awareness of who you are. But longevity has changed the game. More is demanded of us if we're going to live into our nineties.
I've come to believe there are elements of psychological development where you go beyond self-awareness and are primed and driven to leave a legacy by sharing your skills, wisdom, and resources with those who are less fortunate. Seen from this perspective interdependence might be a higher level of aspiration than independence. So I would add a sixth rung to the top of Maslow's hierarchy, and call it legacy. At this level, rather than retreat and retire, you go beyond self-actualization to a state of rich engagement where you take the best of who you are and the best of what you've cultivated over your life, and bring about meaningful involvement in activities and pursuits that light up the sky for others-as well as for yourself. It's about being involved with people and situations where you can make a difference and reap the satisfactions that derive from those kinds of self-transcendent connections.
Self-actualization is far too oriented toward self-satisfaction; engagement is about going beyond that to generosity and giving back-to living and leaving a legacy. It's about moving from success to significance, and
I'm convinced that this idea resonates with people at a very deep level, even as it hints at a new model of psychological development in which the top of the pyramid is not me-but we.
German philosopher Erich Fromm said, "Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving, I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. This experience of heightened vitality and potency fills me with joy. I experience myself as overflowing, spending, alive, hence, as joyous. Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness."

With Purpose Success, part 29

This version is what psychologists call self-actualization. Let me dive into this theory a little deeper because, in the end, the point I want to make is that in terms of finding your purpose, self-actualization may fall nearly as short as "bigger is better" and the "success" mirage.
You're probably familiar with Dr. Benjamin Spock, who in 1946 wrote one of the best-selling books of all time, Baby and Child Care, and in it presented views on child rearing that have rarely been questioned and that have guided parenting throughout much of the world for six decades. Spock was a cultural force with few equals. But psychologist
Abraham Maslow, a contemporary of Spock's, was most certainly one of them. Maslow's pioneering work in the area of human behavior has dominated global thinking about happiness and fulfillment since the 1950s.
You can't help but have run across his name in any study of modern psychology.
But even if you know the name you likely do not appreciate the impact that Maslow has had on your life.
It was originally in 1943 that Maslow first proposed his hierarchy of human needs, a tome on psychological development and human potential that during the following decades revolutionized the field of psychology.
Maslow's idea was that there are five levels of psychological well-being.
The lowest rung must be fulfilled before you can move up a rung, and the higher you climb the happier you are. Each level is more challenging and complex, and you can't get to the next one without mastering the level below it.
Maslow's theories have come to form the foundation of policy in virtually every key institution in our lives-education, government, employment, media, and even, in some respects, religious instruction. It was his view that gave birth to the modern human potential movement and self-help revolution of the 1960s and even shaped a large portion of our culture, language, and music from that era.
Maslow believed that at the very basic level of human fulfillment are physical needs like the need for water, oxygen, protein, sugar, and salt. Without those, you can't put much thought into higher needs. So they must be satisfied before you can develop further. The next rung is the quest for security in your life. You become increasingly interested in finding safe circumstances and stability. You develop a need for structure and limits. Think about it. If you live somewhere where crime is rampant and you're always worried about your possessions and your personal welfare, how much time will you have for seeking more advanced needs?
The third rung of fulfillment is love and belonging, which usually begins in the teenage years as you begin to feel the need for friends, a sweetheart, affectionate relationships in general, even a sense of community.