With Purpose Success, part 85

He argues that "every act of goodness toward another person is a combination of altruism and self interest." Still, there are those rare people who willingly give without regard for themselves. Consider Wesley Autrey, the construction worker who was christened the "Subway Superman" after his split-second decision to dive onto the train tracks in Harlem and rescue nineteen-year-old Cameron Hollopeter, who had stumbled in front of a train. As Autrey lay on top of Hollopeter, holding him in place, a train roared overhead so close that it left grease on his cap. Autrey said later: "I don't feel like I did something spectacular; I just saw someone who needed help. I did what I felt was right." That was Autrey's reward- he felt good about doing what was right. 

I can't resist pointing out that Autrey's act of unusual selflessness paid off in very material, yet unexpected, ways. He received: $5,000 in cash for him and $5,000 in scholarships for his daughters from the New York 

Film Academy, where Hollopeter was a student; $10,000 from Donald Trump; a $5,000 Gap gift card; tickets and backstage passes to a Beyonce concert; season tickets to the New Jersey Nets and a signed jersey from Nets star Jason Kidd; a new Jeep Patriot and two years of car insurance from Progressive; a one-year free parking pass for use anywhere in 

New York City; new computers for his daughters every three years until they graduate high school; a year of free subway rides; and a weeklong trip to Disney World and tickets to see The Lion King on Broadway. Finally, 

Mayor Michael Bloomberg presented Autrey with the Bronze Medallion, New York City's highest award for exceptional citizenship. Said the mayor: "Wesley's astonishing bravery-saving a life in the face of an oncoming subway car-is an inspiration not just to New Yorkers, but the entire world." 

Do the rewards of altruism often bear such tangible fruit? Of course not. Do good Samaritans anticipate payback before helping others? Probably not. But that's not what giving is all about. If you do it for the right reasons, it usually comes back to you somehow. It just does. 

Make a Difference. When you really dig into why people give it's pretty simple most of the time. They want to bring some sense of meaning into their lives by making a difference to someone someplace in the world in some small or large way. In an AARP survey of people forty-five and older, half of all respondents called making a difference "a very important reason" to volunteer or donate money. Making a difference, especially one you can see, feels good. That's why Sir Tom quit sending out checks for causes he was unfamiliar with. It was unfulfilling. 

Most people looking to make a difference try to tie their efforts into a cause near their heart. Think about Augie and Lynn Nieto again. Their drive to search for a cure for Lou Gehrig's disease started when Augie was crushed with the illness. It's not uncommon for the families of cancer victims to adopt cancer research as their pet cause. Maybe you know a battered or abused victim and want to fight for tougher laws, or have seen school kids sharing books in poor school districts and want to lead a book drive. If you are searching for a place to make a difference, the first things any good charity or wealth adviser will ask you are, "What have you seen that bothers you? What would you like to fix? What do you care about?" 

When you can answer those questions, I assure you that you'll be able to find related organizations in need of your time and talent, or money. 

With Purpose Success, part 84

Exactly why and how people choose to give is a complex equation. But it's clear that giving can be very, very good for you-so good for you, in fact, that through time philosophers and others have wondered if giving might not just be among the most selfish of all acts! De Tocqueville, for one, described philanthropy as "self-interest, rightly understood." The Chinese 

Zen master Chuang-Tzu as far back as the fourth century bc, argued that most philanthropy is meant to further one's personal, business, or social agenda. Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (who viewed charity as demeaning to the recipient) worried that people of wealth exerted too much control over society through charity that mostly furthered their own interests. Scandals erupted in England in the 1950s over the tax- exempt status of mammoth charitable foundations run by families like the Wellcomes and Nuffields. 

Philosophical questions linger today. Would the public missions that philanthropists take on be better left to government? When Bill Gates directs his foundation to buy millions of computers for public libraries in poor neighborhoods is he being generous, or furthering his own business interests? Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr cynically summed up such concerns like this: "The effort to make voluntary charity solve the prob lems of a major social crisis results only in monumental hypocrisies, and tempts selfish people to regard themselves as unselfish." 

I readily concede that there is a selfish element to giving. Yet, to me, it seems silly to attack generous acts on that level, especially in the realm of 

Everymanthropy, where what you give most of is your time and energy.

So what if you get something back for your efforts? Doesn't that just lead you down the path of more giving? Embrace the rewards. It's OK. Generally, these rewards can be lumped into eight basic categories. You may experience all of them, or just one or two. At some level, though, when you give it's because you seek to gain one or more of the following eight benefits: 

Do the Right Thing. The highest level of giving is altruism, generally defined as an unselfish act for the welfare of others without regard for oneself. 

Altruism is a core teaching in most of the religions of the world. In the Jewish Torah and Christian Gospels, for example, there are many references to loving your neighbor as you love yourself. Yet, unfortunately, true altruism is extremely rare. Even people of faith will admit that in treating their neighbors as they would treat themselves they hope to gain everlasting benefits-like, say, entry into heaven, which is no trifle. 

Dwight Burlingame, professor of philanthropy at Indiana University, has said, "It is nearly impossible for someone to act with pure altruism." 

With Purpose Success, part 83

House number 1 was proceeding so fast that by the third day all eyes were on us. I was fascinated that our pace was being driven by an "old" man who said so very little. It became clear to me that Carter's leadership style did not involve barking at people or being critical, but making everybody on the site want to work to keep pace with him. 

Wade and Shalina Gibson, the young couple who with their three children were going to live in the house, worked with us. You could see it dawning on this low-income African-American couple that they were soon going to have their own house, and that it was being built by a former president! While on the site I liked to ask my fellow volunteers why they were taking part in the build. Almost everybody had the same answer: They didn't feel whole inside unless they took some time to help others. And for this group it wasn't about writing a check; it was about giving a chunk of their life. 

By twilight on the fourth day, we were laying sod and planting trees, then finally installing carpets and appliances, and at 3:30 pm on Friday- right on schedule-we were finished. President and Mrs. Carter brought us inside the house for a ceremony, and as our group of forty coworkers and new friends stood together in a circle holding hands it hit everyone pretty much at once that we had just done a wonderful thing. 

Exhausted and filthy but with full hearts, we huddled as President Carter said a prayer and turned to Wade and Shalina and gave them a white linen-covered Bible-the first book for their first house. The gesture was so powerful; the emotional intensity in the room went up a notch, if that was possible. "Do you know what Jesus did as a young man?" President Carter asked. "He was a carpenter; he worked with his hands. By allowing us to build your house, in a small way you've allowed us to do the work of the 

Lord." Although three hundred pounds of muscle, Wade started to cry like a baby, as did Shalina. Pretty soon we were all crying. It didn't even matter what particular religion any of us subscribed to-the feelings we all shared were deeply spiritual 

Before our group broke up President Carter urged all of us who are fortunate in life to never forget those who are not. He spoke of the blessing of giving, how the harder he and Mrs. Carter work the more blessed they feel by the results. 

I just find Carter's thinking on the subject so compelling that it bears frequent mention. Giving of himself, the president has told me, makes him stronger. "Every time we thought we were making a sacrifice for others, it has turned out to be one of our greatest blessings," he said. "In other words; we have gotten more out of it than we have put into it. 

You just try it, even if it's nothing more than going to a public hospital and rocking a baby for two hours a week. It's an expansion of life, an encounter with new people who are potentially friends. And so, it's a learning process, an exciting process that gives new and expanding life experiences." 

What We Get When We Give

With Purpose Success, part 82

For me giving is both routine, and it is not. That is, I'm always searching for the next way to contribute a little something-yet I have a few special causes or steady habits that I stay with year after year. This keeps the mix varied, my options their widest, and allows me to keep learning about new things and meeting new people. At this point in my life (I'm approaching sixty), I don't yet have as much time as I'd like for giving back. Not yet retired (of course I may never retire), my central focus is still my career and my family. But now that Maddy and I have just become empty nesters, we can envision expanding our volunteer efforts in our personal quests to find purpose by doing things for others. And in a few years, I think I'd like to cut back my workload to about 50 percent -providing even more time to do all sorts of new things with my time and with my life. Lots of us are in this phase of life, and it sure doesn't hurt to start thinking now about the possibilities for when that day arrives and you have a little-or, conceivably, quite a lot of-extra time. 

A Dear Old Friend-and Role Model 

I briefly mentioned my affection for Habitat for Humanity. Let me explain where it comes from. A few years ago I went to Houston to take part in Jimmy Carter's signature annual home-building project. The experience was unusual in ways that I would never have imagined. I'd gotten the idea to join the Habitat build through my meetings with President 

Carter in Atlanta, where he had invited me to help him brainstorm the topics for his The Virtues of Aging book. 

It was a steaming Sunday in early June when Maddy and I arrived alongside some five thousand other volunteers. I was naturally anxious; other than a bookshelf or two I had never built a thing with wood. 

During the orientation that day we learned that the plan was to build a hundred houses in just five days. There would be about forty people on each house. The rest-some one thousand volunteers-would cook meals, run errands, and haul trash. 

President Carter respectfully reminded everyone that he was there to work, not to socialize, and it soon became apparent that he meant it when he told the gathering, "I have a job to do." Like all of the volunteers, 

I had brought my own tools and paid a $250 fee to be part of this unusual experience. Each house had four adept crew leaders, ten to fifteen construction pros, around ten somewhat handy volunteers, and another ten or so folks who were like me-pretty much unsure which side of the hammer to hold. 

Anyway, we showed up at 6:30 am on Monday and Maddy and I were thrilled to learn that we'd be working on house number 1 with Jimmy and 

Rosalyn Carter. Our team gathered in a circle. President Carter offered a short prayer and we got to work. Early in the morning it was already so hot and humid, within an hour I felt like I was going to have a stroke. But 

I put my discomfort aside and joined the torrent of hammering, lifting, and nailing that had commenced. Remarkably, near sunset the entire frame was in place. I, however, was ready to go AWOL. It was now over a hundred degrees, and my arm ached from swinging a hammer all day. I glanced at the seventy-something former president. He was banging away like a pro, and I wondered how long he could keep it up. 

After another work break, I was spent. But the president was still pounding away. First thing the next morning, we had a lot of wood that needed cutting. But with only two power saws on the site, some would have to be cut with a handsaw. You guessed it-President Carter stepped up and had hand-cut twenty two-by-fours in the time it took me to cut ten. By 4:30 pm of the second day, the crew was spent. Nearly all my fingers were damaged and bleeding. Carter kept right on toiling, well past the dinner hour. 

With Purpose Success, part 81

You don't have to soullessly give on command at the office, or only support your place of worship. The nonprofit world teems with organizations that can use your donations of time or money for specific purposes that you care about. We're way past the days of large charitable organizations with mostly soup-kitchen roles to offer. Such volunteers are still needed, of course, and quite valuable. But you might get a lot more out of dreaming up a charity's new slogan or rescuing injured wildlife in the mountains-or using your business skills to make an organization run more efficiently. 

In the Dychtwald house we give in various ways, and much of it is so enjoyable that we don't think about what we're doing as a service to others. My wife, Maddy, contributes untold hours at school. She coordinates team dinners, supervises training sessions, and has driven a lot of other parents' kids along with our son to distant water polo matches. 

Maddy and I also mentor students learning to speak in public, and we judge school speaking tournaments. Some folks might call such gratis efforts a chore. The hours certainly can stack up. But we love watching all the kids interact and grow, and making new friends. We do it mainly for the joy it brings to us. 

The afterglow from helping a person or an organization that benefits from our contribution is a wonderful payoff. Although psychology and gerontology have been my fields of study, public speaking about these topics has been a big part of my livelihood. It's terrific and satisfying work. But it's not easy. There's a lot of preparation that goes into my presentations that no one but me sees. Still there are some groups that I just want to help at no charge because I'm interested in contributing to their mission or their future. For example, some years ago, I volunteered to help the Alzheimer's Association devise a new marketing strategy. That was work. But it gave me a great chance to make use of something I know a bit about for a cause that had captured my attention. I always keep some of my personal bandwidth in reserve for that kind of thing. Volunteering shakes me out of my rut and lets me express myself in ways that don't happen at the office. Everyone has skills and causes that speak to them. 

What are yours?

With Purpose Success, part 80

An interesting thing about Hunter is that when he got jazzed about philanthropy it reignited sparks in other parts of his life too. He redoubled efforts in his profit-minded investment firm, seeing the profits he would be earning there as a means to further his philanthropic ventures. "What I'm doing now is a bigger buzz than any business deal," Hunter says. "When we help farmers in Rwanda get a better price for their coffee, it's their success-not ours. We are just a catalyst. But you can see the results. When a farmer one year can barely feed himself and the next year he can feed himself and his family and take care of his kids because of something you did-that's a hell of a thing." 

Yes it is-a better-than-business buzz that Sir Tom playfully but earnestly chides Warren Buffett for missing out on. Are you missing out too? "Listen," Hunter says, "I'm not someone who wants to preach to anybody else and say you should do what I do. I just feel a bit sorry for those who don't give something back because they're missing out on the best fun of their life." 

Giving Isn't a Chore 

Forget for a moment that Sir Tom is a billionaire. The epiphany he experienced was real, and you can experience it too. You don't need boatloads of dollars. You just need time, desire, and compassion, and you may never have those things in greater abundance than you do right now. Perhaps your kids have moved out, or soon will. You are staring down the road at your empty-nest years, relieved of many family responsibilities. Retirement- or partial retirement-might beckon you. You are no doubt eager to explore the vast leisure opportunities before you. But you have the time and personal abilities to devote to a higher purpose too, and however you choose to give back you can be sure that in one way or another you'll get as much as you give. 

Don't undervalue the skills and connections that have come to you through your life experiences. Not everybody knows how to weld a pipe, run a procurement division, write a press release, raise money, give an injection, pilot a plane, interpret law, teach a class, organize a brainstorming meeting or fix a computer. Someone out there can benefit from what you know, and it can be a blast passing it on. Your personal skills and assets can help you launch out in new and exciting directions. Now is the time to step up and rethink how you want your life to function, and how you might fit service to others into it. You can choose how and when. You may choose to become a vacateer, mixing fun and adventure with personal fulfillment. Why not skip Club Med this year and sign up the whole family for a virtuous vacation with Habitat for Humanity? It's tough to connect with your kids these days, and you may just find that this kind of time is the most rewarding experience of your life. 

Giving isn't like a spoonful of castor oil, that notoriously ghastly cure- all that was so hard to swallow that TV's Little Rascals-Spanky, Buckwheat, 

Darla, Froggy, and the gang-were always comically scheming to avoid their dose. The horrible taste certainly loaned credibility to castor oil's perceived medicinal value. Anything that bad must be good for you, right? Well, too many people view giving the same way: the right thing to do, but painful. It doesn't have to be that way. 

With Purpose Success, part 79

Those pithy words hit Hunter like a bolt of lightning. After many long and intimate discussions with his wife Marion about what they might possibly do with the rest of their lives, they both began to feel energized by the idea of working as hard and as smart at giving their money away as they had worked to make it in the first place-for the betterment of others and their own fulfillment. 

To better understand the challenge in front of him, Sir Tom met in New York with the head of the Carnegie Foundation, Vartan Gregorian, who urged Hunter and his wife, Marion, to think about what they wanted to accomplish. Gregorian also gave Hunter a whole new way to think about his wealth. "He challenged me," Hunter says. "He said it wasn't really my money; I just held it in trust for the common good. That was a big shock for a Scotsman-being told my money wasn't actually mine." 

Hunter took those words to heart, though, and in 2007 announced that before he died he would give all of his money away. One of his principal benefactors so far has been the Scottish educational system, which in his view needs a dramatic overhaul to prepare students for draconian changes in the Scottish economy. Sir Tom became determined to introduce enterprise and entrepreneurship into school curriculums to prepare the nation's youth for the information-based world they would graduate to. He invested in pilot school programs that proved so successful that the government agreed to adopt and fund them. 

Hunter has other acclaimed philanthropic interests as well. For example, he is investing $100+ million in Africa through partnerships with the Clinton Foundation, UNICEF, and others. He mobilized popular support for aid to Africa and is committed to sparking substantial and sustainable economic growth there, beginning in Rwanda and Malawi, where governments have pledged their full support for his programs. 

Hunter's mission, in concert with the Clinton Foundation, is to develop programs that produce profits from agriculture and provide greater access for the poor to better nutrition and health care and clean water. In one year his efforts helped Rwandan farmers increase their crop yield by 240 percent. 

What's most fascinating and exemplary about Hunter is that while he has worked so hard to make his fortune, he doesn't simply want to give it away. Instead, he approaches all of his giving as an investment-not charity. 

He sets goals and demands measurable results, much like running a for-profit company. He says he would have cut off funding for his Scottish education initiatives had they not shown demonstrable progress. In this way, he embodies the new breed of twenty-first-century philanthropreneur, who seeks social change through targeted investments in people. 

You can be a philanthropreneur too-for as little as $25-through innovative organizations like kiva.org and microplace.com, which fund third world business start-ups. I'll talk more about those in chapter 7. 

With Purpose Success, part 78

In other words, if you'll indulge an American football metaphor, Buffett is the quarterback who drove his team to the goal line and then left the game, handing off responsibility for gaining the final yard-the toughest yard-to another teammate. Gates is no ordinary teammate, for sure. But Sir Tom's point is worth considering: Someone with unusual ability owes it to others to stay with the job until it is finished. In Hunter's view, making a fortune is the easy part; distributing it for maximum good (getting over the goal line, to complete the football metaphor) is the real challenge. "I really believe there's nothing that you can't solve with the right brain power," says Hunter. "I would love to get Warren Buffet's brain engaged in some of these challenges. And, by the way, he would also get so much out of it." 

Taking on Goliath comes naturally to the direct and enthusiastic Hunter, forty-seven, who enjoys playing drums with a local rock band and usually sports a "make poverty history" wrist band. His earliest role model was Wal-mart founder Sam Walton, and he later fashioned himself after a fellow countryman, Andrew Carnegie-whose name Hunter endearingly pronounces as only a Scot would, with the accent on the second syllable (Car-NAY-gee). 

Hunter is the son of a working-class grocer from the Ayrshire mining village of New Cumnock, about an hour south of Glasgow. After a bitter miners' strike in 1984 his father's business failed, which proved to be a valuable early lesson for Hunter in the importance of becoming self- reliant. He was an average student. But he developed a knack for buying and selling things and after college he went to work for a newspaper that he audaciously offered to buy after being there just a few weeks. He was fired by the enraged owner. 

But Hunter found his mark soon enough, striking riches in the global athletic apparel business. His company grew into the U.K.'s top sports retailer before he sold it for $600 million. He was just thirty-seven at the time, and soon after selling the apparel company he opened a private investment firm called West Coast Capital, which provides seed money to entrepreneurs. By age forty-five, Sir Tom had become Scotland's first- and wealthiest-homegrown billionaire. 

It was around then that his personal journey from success to significance took wing, springing somewhat ironically from a strategy to shelter his wealth from taxes. Shortly after selling his company, he established the 

Hunter Foundation with no clear vision of what it might do other than keep the tax man out of his pockets. From this bit of self-interest, though, emerged a new worldview. Hunter began to transform from driven businessman fixated on lavish living into devoted, roll-up-your sleeves philanthropist. "When I became rich, I found I didn't have anything to do anymore, which was kind of scary," Hunter recalls, after selling his company. "And, of course, as my profile grew so did my mailbag. People would write me and ask if I could do this or that for their football team, or their church, or their hospital. Some of the letters really pulled at my heartstrings. So 

I'd send them a check. But then that was it. I didn't know if the money had made a difference. I didn't know if it was even real, and it wasn't fulfilling. Who would have imagined that giving out money would be so boring?" 

He began to research ways he might give that would have more meaning and satisfaction for him and came upon Andrew Carnegie's famous 

Gospel of Wealth, which states that "a man who dies rich, dies disgraced."

With Purpose Success, part 77

Some years, we've concluded that everything is going just fine, while others require serious discussion-maybe even an argument or two- before we can align our needs and commitments again. We also have practical discussions of what our relationship needs more of or less of. 

As our lives have unfolded, these "pauses" have focused on everything from our anxieties over the impending birth of each of our two children, a few work failures and humorous successes, the death of Maddy's dad, and most recently, how we intend to cope with becoming empty nesters and the painful financial reckoning that has seized the world. This annual ritual has proven a great way for us to stay connected, and when the moment comes when we face each other and say "I do," it never fails to help us remember the things that made us fall in love in the first place while allowing us to take notice of all the reasons we love each other still. 

We try not to make a big chore of these occasions and have found that the simpler we keep them, the more we can focus on each other and on the continually evolving purpose of our bond. From time to time, when people learn about our remarriage history, they ask us why we would do something as odd as that. We simply respond, "You should try it! We bet you'll be moved by the experience." 

Giving-It's Also about 

What You Get

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it.

-Joseph Campbell 

In June 2006, Warren Buffett, the second richest person alive, pledged 85 percent of his personal fortune-$31 billion-to the Bill and Melinda 

Gates Foundation. The world of philanthropy had never seen anything like it, and Buffett was roundly applauded not just for his outsized generosity but his humility as well. He could have built himself a shrine in Dubai, or he could have established the world's largest foundation in his own name to live on forever as a monument to his riches. He could have pulled a Leona Helmsley and left $5 billion "for the care and welfare of dogs," or whatever his handpicked goals might be. But Buffett chose otherwise; he handed his money to a friend whom he trusted to more effectively distribute his life's accumulation. In the eyes of the world it was a singular act of selflessness, and a clarion call for others to follow his lead. 

So only a refreshingly honest and irascible Scotsman like Sir Thomas Hunter, a self-made billionaire philanthropist himself, could see Buffett's largesse as anything less than magnanimous. Buffett, argues Hunter, may have taken the easy way out. "If you've been clever enough to make $31 billion, you're wired differently from 99 percent of the population," 

Hunter explained to me. "And I would love to have your thinking in trying to solve the world's seemingly intractable problems." 

With Purpose Success, part 76

In fact, Maddy and I have found that to make our marriage work, we have to continually bring "purpose" to this relationship, just as we've been discussing with regards to work, or charitable involvements. I've come to notice that for so many people, their marriage can simply get lost within the pushes, pulls, and pressures of their everyday lives. It appears that many marriages wrongly assume that automatic pilot will keep things in place. I truly don't think it happens that way for most of us. In fact, I'm convinced that just as a garden regularly needs replanting or a business may need continual infusions of investment capital, our marriages also need to be refreshed-even rebooted-on a regular basis. There are lots of relatively easy activities that can help to refresh our romance: simple acts of kindness during a stressful period, an unexpected gift, a playful dinner for two-and so on. 

However, one of the key ways that we repeatedly remind ourselves of the sacredness of our bond is by getting remarried every year-again and again. Yes, that's right. Maddy and I have gotten remarried every year on or near our anniversary for twenty-five years-and counting. When we originally married, on Thanksgiving in 1983, we had such a great time at the ceremony and on our honeymoon that I asked Maddy if she'd consider remarrying me every year. And, to add a bit of spice to this ritual, we set the rules that we would do so in a different religion and in a different location each year. 

We haven't missed a year yet, and so far, we've been remarried in a castle in Bath, England, by an Anglican priest; in a Hopi ceremony in 

Sedona, Arizona; and at Marie Antoinette's Chapel of Love in Versailles, France. We've been married by the skiing judge of Vail on the high slopes of Vail mountain; in a tai chi ceremony (followed by a nude soak in the mineral hot springs) at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California; by a tribal chief and his toddler grandchildren in a Navajo ceremony in Tucson, Arizona; and by the ship's captain while cruising through the Sea of Cambodia off the coast of Thailand. We've recited our vows in Grace Church in Greenwich Village; in a Buddhist ceremony in Berkeley, California; in a Mayan wedding at the top of the Chichen Itza pyramid in the Yucatan; and, of course, at the Chapel of Love in Las Vegas (and I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I was dressed in a white Elvis jumpsuit with red trim-gold medallion and all). We've even been "married" twice by our children-once in Zihuatanejo, Mexico, and a few years later on a secluded beach on the remote island of Anegada in the British Virgin 

Islands.

We also had our kids perform a formal remarriage ceremony for my parents in celebration of their sixtieth anniversary at our home in California. 

When my dad strolled down the aisle in his white dinner jacket arm in arm with my beaming mom and then our kids launched into the service that they had written together, it was an incredibly powerful moment in all of our lives-for every reason you can think of. 

For Maddy and me, getting remarried each year is definitely a lot of fun. But we also have found that these occasions are like valuable sanctuaries when we can look critically at the year that just passed and openly discuss what went wrong and what went right. These moments have become punctuation points in our relationship when we can stop the train, take a deep breath, and rechart our course. When I was younger, I believed that the nouns and verbs of our lives were what mattered most. 

Maddy and I have both come to appreciate the special importance of the punctuation points! 

With Purpose Success, part 75

People like Michelle Mundy, Mark Goldstein, and Gerald Chertavian have enormous impact, and so could you by finding a group like theirs, or starting one, and coaching someone who might benefit from your interests, experiences, or particular set of skills. And as each of them points out-you'll benefit too from fresh perspectives that can only come from people who are not part of your age or economic or ethnic demographics. 

The Win-Win 

I've described mentoring as a two-way street, and it really is. You get as much as you give. I recall a project decades ago when I was asked to teach a group of elders how to take better care of their health. I would engage them in yoga and meditation for a while, and afterward we'd just sit and talk. These elders loved the time they spent regaling each other-and me-with tales from their younger days. It was a joy for them to voice their memories. 

The strange thing was that the more I indulged them the more I found myself enraptured by what they had to say. I often felt that what they had to say to me was far more interesting than what I had been teaching them. They had so much stored knowledge. When I got beneath the surface-to their stories and insights, and the moments that had changed their lives-there was so much for me to learn from them. 

Experiences like that are what propelled me into the aging field.

Today we have a society groping for wisdom and guidance, as illustrated by the explosion of self-help books and self-appointed media gurus. 

Yet it may be the person living in the apartment next door who has the answers you really need. By not seeking that person out; by not setting up mechanisms for that kind of exchange, collectively we're letting some of the greatest wealth of our time go to waste. Meanwhile, as individuals we're failing to explore a gold mine of potentially transforming yet-to-be relationships. 

A Confession 

OK, so even though the title of this chapter suggests that our marriages might not be the most important relationship in our lives, the truth of it is-in mine it is. That might be the case for you too, if you are married or have a longtime partner. The title is not to be taken literally. I'm just saying you need to shake things up and keep pursuing other relationships even as you take care of this paramount one. Over the long haul, there's no question that my connection with my wife, Maddy, ultimately towers over all other relationships in my life. But this special quarter- century love affair doesn't always just "fall into place," and there are times when we're ready to strangle each other or when it feels as though the other activities of our lives have formed jungle vines that threaten to cover-or even bury-our connection. 

With Purpose Success, part 74

These kinds of transitions from the for-profit world to the nonprofit world are becoming common and have immense value. In Mark's case, the skills and knowledge he brought to his faith-based consulting wouldn't necessarily strike anyone on Madison Avenue as earth-shattering. But within this particular nonprofit sector they just didn't have his level of sophistication. What he brings to them is enormously valuable, and 

Mark's profound sense of contribution provides incalculable satisfaction.

Civic Programs. Nondenominational mentor programs also abound.

Again, they tend to have a strong focus on youth and fall under a national organization like the Foster Grandparent Program (www.seniorcorps. org), Boy Scouts of America (www.scouting.org), Girls Scouts of the 

USA (www.girlscouts.org), Girls Inc. (www.girlsinc.org), National Black Child Development Institute (www.nbcdi.org), Kids and the Power of 

Work (www.kapow.com) and YMCA of the USA (www.ymca.net). The central aim of these types of programs is to impart skills that will help kids throughout their life. 

There are also many locally operated nonprofit mentor programs run by a highly energized founder, which makes them fun to work for if you are a volunteer. The key is matching your passion with the right organization. 

Helping Inner-City Youth 

A longtime supporter and mentor through Big Brothers Big Sisters, Gerald Chertavian wanted to step up his service commitment after striking it rich during the dot-com mania in the late 1990s. He never forgot the essays he wrote to get into Harvard Business School, where he later graduated with honors. He had espoused on the need to teach low-income young adults basic business skills. "So I decided it was time to make good on those essays," he says. 

Chertavian, forty-two, grew up in working-class Lowell, Massachusetts but enjoyed a successful career on Wall Street before starting a software development company that, when sold in 1999, put $27 million in his pocket. Long active in Big Brothers Big Sisters, he turned his thoughts to the four million young adults aged eighteen to twenty-four who, he says, are disconnected from society because they've never been given a chance. "That's totally unacceptable," says Chertavian. "This is a solvable problem." 

In 2000, he launched Year Up, a nonprofit that gives disadvantaged young adults one year of training in what Chertavian calls ABC: attitude, behavior, and communications. This interpersonal training is complemented with technical training, usually in computers. Students are paid a stipend of $180 a week and get docked if they're late for class. Some 85 percent find meaningful work directly out of his program; 60 percent of those who enroll have been referred by former students. 

Wilfredo Pena came to the States from El Salvador as a teen refugee, went through the Year Up drill, and found work in the back office at Fidelity 

Investments. "He's now finishing college and has bought a house," says Chertavian. "He's living the American dream." 

Year Up now has seventy employees and an annual budget of $13 mil lion. It operates in four cities and graduates five hundred a year. Chertavian, who just began taking a salary at the insistence of his board, is now raising $18 million to expand into four more cities. "This is incredibly satisfying to me," he says. "I have a real desire to mentor and see other people reach their potential. I'm so blessed. I get to find meaning in what 

I do every single day."

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Program (www.seniorcorps.org). Senior companions serve adults who need assistance to live independently. They offer companionship, assist with simple chores, and provide transportation. Generally, senior companions are sixty or over and must commit to at least fifteen hours each week. Some training and expense reimbursement is available. But the real benefit to the volunteer is the joy of helping others. 

Here's John Glenn on the subject of retirees giving back: "When I was in space the second time, I was seventy-seven. When I came back I heard from every old folks' organization in the United States. Most of them were just congratulatory things but some of them wanted advice, and my best advice is, I think you do better when you wake up every morning with something you're looking forward to, something productive. Older adults sometimes just sit and do nothing, and I think that's the worst thing they can do. They've had a lifetime of experience. They've had education. They've had on-the-job training. They've been business executives. 

They've been farmers. They spend a lifetime learning how to do these things. I don't think it has to end. At the least we can have people who take these experiences and use them to mentor young people, advising and counseling them so that maybe they don't have to make some of the same mistakes we made in getting through our own lives. "A mentor gets a lot of satisfaction. They're doing something constructive, so they feel good about that, and when they see the results with the young people they're working with it's very, very rewarding. 

Also, they have a feeling that their own experiences aren't just ending because they're old. They're able to sort of provide a new base through their own experience; they provide a new base for a young person to start from and that gives you a great deal of satisfaction." 

Faith-based programs. Religious organizations account for 43 percent of all volunteers who mentor youngsters and thus are a major force in this movement. Much of their effort centers on spreading their philosophy and reinforcing their values. These can be gratifying outlets for folks who share the same religious zeal as the organization. 

Some years ago one of my former executives at Age Wave, Mark Gold- stein, rediscovered his faith. Mark is a terrific public speaker with a deep understanding of how to craft marketing plans to appeal to maturing boomers. But his life changed after his mother's death. He began attending temple more regularly and started requesting private visits with his rabbi. While attending these sessions, he couldn't help but notice that the services and programs seemed to be out of touch with the middle-aged men and women in the community. One day he was asked to speak at a gathering of Jewish leaders, and he talked about the fact that many boomers were turned off by organized religion and how congregations might approach this generation to reengage their faith. The audience loved him, and now he spends most of his time counseling Jewish leaders on how to better appeal to a new generation of congregants. He has become a marketing guru for a nonprofit sector, all based on the knowledge and skills he learned during the course of his primary career. 

With Purpose Success, part 72

Sounds pretty darn easy, doesn't it? If you still have doubts, take this fifteen-question "mentor quiz" designed by Peer Resources. Award 5 points if your answer is yes; 2 points if your answer is sometimes; and 1 point if your answer is no: ___Do you know what it's like to have worries, frustrations, and concerns about your work? ___ Do people seek you out to talk about their worries, frustrations, and concerns? ___Is the amount of time you spend listening significantly greater than the amount you spend talking? ___ Has anyone ever helped you uncover a feeling or talent that, before then, you hadn't recognized in yourself? ___ Has anyone ever inspired you with a famous quote that influenced your thinking or behavior, and that you have since passed on to others? ___ Has anyone ever prodded you to an "aha!" moment that enabled you to grasp the core of meaning of some event, or a deeper understanding of yourself or someone else? ___ Has anyone ever helped you gain knowledge about how things work, about how to get things done? ___ Has anyone ever encouraged you to find a way to deal with challenges in your life or work? ___Has there ever been anyone in your life who had a profound positive effect on you, but you didn't realize it until much later in your life? ___ Has someone in your life provided just the right help to you at just the right time? ___ Has anyone in your life helped you to grow and deepen your character, moral or ethical integrity, or gain a stronger commitment to your values? ___ Has anyone inspired you to shift the direction of your life in a constructive way? ___ Have you ever reached out to a person in need, and made a difference? ___ Do other people reach out to you when they have important life or career decisions? ___ Have you ever felt a profound change in your values and goals after pondering something you observed, read, or experienced? ___Your Mentor Score 

Now add them up. If you scored 60 to 75 points you not only have great potential to be a mentor but probably are also already acting in that capacity for one or more people. If you scored 45 to 59 points you are clearly a valued person in other people's lives and have what it takes to be a great mentor. If you scored 30 to 44 points you may have core mentoring strengths that likely will blossom through experience. If you scored below 29, you may still be right for this type of giving, but you may need some training. 

Your Mentoring Choices

The vast majority of community-based mentor programs are geared toward at-risk youth, those teens and preteens who come from poor and often split families and are most vulnerable to dropping out of school and getting into trouble and living a life of low expectations. Yet there are ample opportunities to mentor all kinds of kids through athletics, tutoring, and programs like Junior Achievement (www.ja.org). You can mentor youngsters with disabilities, those wishing to learn a hobby or play an instrument, or how to write or take up a cause. 

Mentoring opportunities extend beyond kids and the physical limitations imposed by geography-to virtual and professional communities of folks around the world with whom you share a value or experience. 

That might be your alumni association, a national civic group, your tribe, fellow ex-pats, activists, or coworkers. 

A woman I know who recently retired from her entertainment law practice is putting together a group of retired Hollywood cameramen, newscasters, screenwriters, producers, actors, and actresses-to travel to third world nations and teach teenagers all how to envision and produce world-class media. Imagine their impact? A troupe of highly skilled com munications professionals heads off to, oh, Kenya to share their skills with people who are just developing their ability to publish local newspapers and film documentaries-and who can really benefit from this type of knowledge. Being a mentor in this more flexible, modular world outside your own immediate community can be both satisfying and liberating. 

Whatever you try, give it time. The fit may not always be perfect at first and it will take time to work out the kinks. But don't be afraid to move on if something doesn't feel right after a few weeks or months. 

Mentoring should be an experience you enjoy. Give yourself permission to explore various options until the right connection falls into place. 

There are formal mentor programs geared toward seniors too, who may be struggling with finding new friends, a purpose, or a pastime and who may be encountering aging issues like immobility, medical care, loss of a spouse, financial difficulty, or loneliness. Such people can benefit from a surrogate child or grandchild. But often the best mentor for a senior is another senior who's already faced one or more of the same issues. One organization making such matches is the Senior Companion 

With Purpose Success, part 71

Mentoring programs come in many forms, and there is a place for you.

I guarantee it. "At any one point in time, I have three, or four, or five people that I am acting as a mentor for," says Deepak Chopra. "And 

I listen to them mostly. I listen to what's going on in their life, what's going on with their friendships, in their relationships. To be a mentor you need to understand what's going on in a person's life and you just want to have an internal dialogue that says, "How can I help? Because 

I really care."

When I asked Jill Godsey, marketing director of Big Brothers Big Sisters, how a person could tell if they were cut out to be a mentor, it was almost as though she didn't understand the question. "Do you like to watch movies?" she responded. "Do you like to play video games? Do you enjoy shooting hoops? Those are the kinds of things that our Big 

Brothers and Sisters do with their Little Brothers and Sisters. It is simple and fun, in addition to rewarding." 

With Purpose Success, part 70

Over the years Wilborn's grandmother relocated a few times, usually within an hour of Austin. Mundy worried that the sudden departures would cut her off from Wilborn, so she and the child agreed to stay in touch via letters and the telephone. Mundy occasionally drove to wherever the family was staying in order to take Wilborn out to lunch or shopping. 

After Wilborn's grandmother moved back to Austin while the girl was in fifth grade Mundy decided that the official mentor designation was too restrictive. For example, she was limited to visiting only during school hours and on school grounds. So she chose to take a more active role in Wilborn's life. 

Mundy began to take Wilborn shopping, to amusement parks and ball games, and out to eat. "I took her out to eat a lot because she never had that opportunity before," says Mundy. "Her family just didn't have the money. I'll never forget taking her to a restaurant. She had never had fajitas, which is unheard of for a fourteen-year-old Texan. When those fajitas came out sizzling in front of us, her eyes just got huge. It was such a simple pleasure for me to watch her experience something new that most of us take for granted." 

Mundy opened up Wilborn's life in more meaningful ways too. She not only encouraged her to stay in school as a teen, but also helped her study and earn grades that would get her into college. She showed Wilborn, who had never been out of Texas, that she could go anywhere she liked-and even helped her fill out the college applications and loan and grant documents. 

Now, when Wilborn visits Austin she stays at the Mundy home and babysits for Mundy's two children. She calls Mundy "Mama-Shell" (instead of her first name Michelle). "By the time I was in eighth grade she had taken the role of my mom," says Wilborn. "The mentor thing stopped. She became my mom. I needed school supplies, they were there; money for school clothes, it was there. If field trips came up I didn't have to worry about how I'd pay for them. She made sure I attended-if my grades were good. She made sure that I was in band and in basketball and active in school. It was awesome. When I introduce her to friends I say, 'This is my mom.' " Without Mundy, says Wilborn, "I'd probably be back in Austin doing nothing. I'd probably be a bum." 

Yet this has been a two-way street. Mundy says that Wilborn's response to her efforts has given her confidence in her ability to be a good mother. She values the exposure her own children have had to a child born with less. It has kept them grounded and forced Mundy to answer some tough questions about life and fairness and materialism. "Our relationship shook me out of my little bubble world," says Mundy. "I can't imagine my life without her. She exposed me to things outside my world and opened my eyes; she put things in perspective for me. I have learned that no matter how bad a situation is you can always see the good in it. 

She does. Little things in my world that I used to see as a big problem I now see much differently." 

Do You Have What It Takes?

With Purpose Success, part 69

Each school setting has its own vibe. A child could be highly successful and active in elementary school but lose that in a middle school that is four times larger. The issues only compound as kids work their way to college. "They may be going from a position of being well known and active and energetic and highly integrated socially to one where they know very few people," says Carr. "Now they're faced with a lot of older kids who might push them around or just make it more difficult for them to feel like they're part of things. By establishing a mentoring program to help with the transition you increase the likelihood that they're going to continue to be productive and get the grades that they need, and reduce the likelihood of social problems, particularly those associated with alcohol and drugs." 

Whether at work, at school, or in your family or community, I'll bet you have skills and experience that others can learn and benefit from- and which will help you form mutually beneficial connections to folks outside your generation. The National Mentoring Database (look them up at www.mentoring.org) lists 4,100 organizations that specifically support youth mentoring programs. It is estimated that some three million adults in the United States have formal one-to-one relationships with kids who are not their own, and in polls virtually every last one of them say they would recommend to their friends that they become a mentor. These relationships last, on average, for nine months but many go on for years- and keep enriching all the parties involved. They need your help. 

Making a Lifetime Friend 

Michelle Mundy, thirty-eight, was in her first job in the advertising department at Texas Monthly, a magazine, back in 1992 when her employer decided to partner with Communities in Schools, a national mentoring organization. Mundy, who lives in Austin, Texas, thought it would be a good way to give something back. So she signed up to mentor a bright- eyed five-year-old with absentee parents, Angela Wilborn, who was being raised by her grandmother, and the arrangement flowered into a full- fledged friendship of seventeen years-and counting. "I will never forget our first meeting," says Mundy, who was just twenty-two at the time. "This little kindergartner had the biggest smile. 

She was so excited to meet me, and that made me excited. There was definitely a connection for us right away." It doesn't always work like that, 

Mundy says. Years later, after her formal mentorship with Wilborn had ended, she tried again-twice-but never felt the same kind of connection. 

But with Wilborn it seemed natural, and the relationship ultimately brought meaning and perspective to both of their lives. With invaluable guidance from Mundy, Wilborn became the first in her family to graduate from college (with multiple job offers)-and Mundy was proud to be at the commencement with her own daughter at Johnson & Wales 

University in Providence, Rhode Island, to help celebrate.

It all started when Mundy began meeting Wilborn as a very young girl once a week to help with schoolwork, or eat lunch, or play jacks, or just listen. "She really looked forward to my visits," Mundy says of Wil born. "If I had a conflict and couldn't make it, it was a really big deal to her and that made it a big deal to me. I had to show up." Says Wilborn: "Every Friday she'd show up no matter what. She'd congratulate me on my grades or talk to me if I was in trouble. Later, she motivated me to stay in school. There were times I thought I'd quit. But she wouldn't let me." 

With Purpose Success, part 68

Then I met Maggie. We attended many of the same conferences, worked together, and often spoke from the same dais. She was a phenom known as "America's wrinkled radical." She was in her seventies, but she was beautiful, brilliant, and outrageous. She was in the media all the time at protests and sit-ins. She was on Saturday Night Live. She was a force, and she believed that what the aging field needed was a Paul Revere to ride in and sound the warning about how an aging population would change society. This rider would have to be young, she believed, so that young people might pay attention. 

Maggie thought I just might be that person. She encouraged me to aspire to the role of social revolutionary. I'm not sure I'll ever live up to her hopes for me, but the thought of being influential, a change agent in my area of expertise, has been my personal North Star for decades. It's what got me thinking about the enormous social, political, and economic impact of aging-related issues and making the field my life's purpose. It's probably the reason I'm writing this-my sixteenth-book. It's partly because of Maggie. She made me think big. She told me I could. She believed in me. 

The Coach Next Door

Mentors come in all shapes and sizes. Some like my parents are there for a lifetime; others-like Eugene Kleiner, for me-for just a day. Some are aligned with charitable groups like Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and the Boys and Girls Clubs of America (www.bgca.org); others are simply a friend, relative, neighbor, teacher, or employer with time, insights, wisdom, and guidance to share. Informal mentoring is by far the most common dynamic. But formal youth-oriented programs are rapidly expanding at schools and through national organizations like America's 

Promise-The Alliance for Youth (www.americaspromise.org), Save the 

Children (www.savethechildren.org), and Mentoring USA (www.mentoring.org). Meanwhile, executive-to-protege coaching programs are proliferating in the world's largest corporations, bringing even more visibility and momentum to the concept. 

Rey Carr is a Canadian who latched onto the mentoring movement early, and since 1975 has built his life around coaching others and helping others find coaches in every aspect of life. His firm Peer Resources (www.peer.ca) is the ultimate guide to understanding the movement and getting involved-whether you're seeking to be a mentor or looking to find one among your peers or superiors at work, school, or in the community. Carr's mission is to provide training, educational resources, and consultation to any person or organization that wants to establish or strengthen peer support, peer mediation, peer referral, peer education, peer coaching, and mentor programs in schools, universities, communities, and corporations. 

A scholar with numerous degrees, including a doctorate in philosophy, Carr loves horses, chocolate, cycling, and Mexican food. He believes strongly in the value of humor and laughter-and the value of coaching at all levels. "When you look at the most successful companies, they are the most likely to have a mentor program, and when you look at the least successful companies, they are least likely to have one," says Carr. 

Likewise, he says that student mentors provide invaluable service to other students by helping with a variety of things that they've learned through their own experiences. One big one is transition.