The M.A.P. Maker

When crisis strikes, ask, "What matters?"

When I look back over the years at the significant growth and positive change I have experienced, much of it has come from times when life has sent me tumbling ass over tea-kettle. They have been things that sucked to go through, but that ultimately planted the seed for something really positive in the long run.

This morning I ran across an interview with Rachel Remen MD, author of Kitchen Table Wisdom (a book I highly recommend). In it, she echoes that experience, pointing out that sometimes it's the negative experiences that jolt us into a life worth living. She says:

Very negative experiences, including anxiety and fear, have the potential to cause us to question the way we've been living. They're a wake-up call. They make people think more deeply about things and ask themselves questions like: What's important? What really matters? How do I want to spend my time, my money, my energy? How do I live more deliberately according to the things that are important to me? Just a very simple two-word question—"What matters?"—can change your life and the lives of people around you.

Such a short question, and yet so powerful. Yet too often we end up so immersed in the minutia of our day-to-day lives that it takes some kind of significant negative experience to shock us out of auto-pilot.

Finding the answer to that question can do two things as you grapple with your challenging situation. First, it can focus your attention on the things that are truly important in your life. It helps you keep from over-focusing on the negative and put your focus instead on what feeds and energizes you.

And second, it can plant the seeds for a long-term positive goal, putting your immediate situation in perspective and giving you something beneficial to focus on and move towards.

Even if you don't find yourself confronting a crisis right now, answering that one little question - what matters? - is one of the best investments you can make.

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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

How to turn hope into reality

For the last few months, I have had two pairs of words written on my whiteboard:

• Hope & possibility
• Growth & transformation

Those four words are my guideposts for what I want to focus on in my life, both personally and professionally.

Last night, as I watched the election results, I was struck by how relevant those four words are for us as a society as well. Barack Obama has inspired millions with his message of hope and positive change. Now, as we turn our attention to what that hope might bring, it’s time to start building a bridge between that inspiration and the real world.

“We can what?”

The well-known catch phrase of Obama’s campaign is, “Yes we can!” Whether you’re an Obama supporter or not, I want to plant the follow-up question to that… “We can what?”

Today, as you turn your eyes to the future, ask yourself, “What can I do? How can I have a positive impact on the world? How can I make the world a better place? How can I make my world/country/city/neighborhood/home (take your pick) a better place to live? How can I plant the seeds for a better tomorrow?”

In short, how can you start building the bridge from hope & possibility to growth & transformation?

Change is up to you

Do you want real change? It’s not going to come from a politician. Politicians can help the process, to be sure, but real change happens when each of us steps up and says, “Yes, I can.” And more importantly, “Yes, I WILL.”

Every day when you get out of bed in the morning, remind yourself that you have the potential to make the world a better place by the time you go to bed.

It doesn’t have to be big and dramatic. It doesn’t have to be covered by the nightly news. It might be something as simple as remembering to tell your children you believe in them, or stopping and having a real conversation with a homeless person rather than hurrying on by and pretending they’re not there.

It might be stepping up and volunteering for a cause you care about. Or you might take it a step further and create something yourself.

It might mean getting involved in the political process in your community. That could be something as simple as regularly letting your elected officials at all levels know what you think, or as involved as running for office yourself. 

Whatever that positive change looks like, one thing is sure. It’s NOT going to come if we all sit and wait for someone else to do it. It’s not going to come from waiting for our politicians to come riding in and wave a magic wand. It happens one step at a time, one person at a time.

What will you do? How will you be the change?

Questions to ponder

Here are some questions to help prime the pump as you explore the potential for positive change...

• What difference do I want to make?
• Who do I want to help?
• How am I well-positioned to help (what skills, resources, etc. do I have)?
• What volunteer opportunities do I have?
• What choices am I making? How do they affect my family? My community? The environment? Others?
• If I had to pick a positive change theme for my life, what would it be? What would I focus on?
• What legacy do I want to leave?
• How do my interactions with others affect them?
• What am I ignoring that needs attention?
• What values do I want to live? How do I act if I’m living my values? What choices do I make?
• What small step can I take today?

The bridge from hope & possibility to growth & transformation is built one plank at a time.

And it is built by you.

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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

Bill Gates: We need more creative capitalism

When I look around at the world, one of the things that gives me great hope is the fact that more and more people are waking up to the fact that business, the markets, capitalism, etc. has the potential to be a force for tremendous good. Social entrepreneurship, corporate social responsibility, socially responsible investing, etc., all have the potential to make a significant positive impact.

So it was interesting to find an article in Time magazine by Bill Gates, talking about that very thing. His phrase for it is "creative capitalism." He notes that, while capitalism has had a substantial positive effect on the lives of many, far too many others have been passed by completely. One billion people live on less than a dollar a day, lacking nutritious food, clean water, and electricity.

As Gates sees it, for real change to occur, creative capitalism needs to be part of a whole system that includes government and non-profits.

...the world will make lasting progress on the big inequities that remain — problems like AIDS, poverty and education — only if governments and nonprofits do their part by giving more aid and more effective aid. But the improvements will happen faster and last longer if we can channel market forces, including innovation that's tailored to the needs of the poorest, to complement what governments and nonprofits do. We need a system that draws in innovators and businesses in a far better way than we do today.

Speaking of things that give me hope, Gates has this to say about the new generation of people in the work force...

There's another crucial benefit that accrues to businesses that do good work. They will find it easier to recruit and retain great employees. Young people today — all over the world — want to work for organizations that they can feel good about. Show them that a company is applying its expertise to help the poorest, and they will repay that commitment with their own dedication.

The piece that appeals to me most about all of this is, as Gates points out, the fact that positive change has the potential to "happen faster and last longer" when paired with the power of the markets.

Doing well by doing good fuels its own positive progress.

[hat tip to The Huffington Post's James Boyce for the link]

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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

Making a difference with your kids

If you are a parent, you have a powerful opportunity to make the world a better place through the values and beliefs you instill in your children. It's a world-changing role.

Every child has the potential to absorb the message that doing good is an important part of life. And for every child brought up not just to believe that, but also to act on it, the future gets brighter.

It starts with a conversation

One of the many things I have long admired about Kevin Salwen (you may remember him as co-founder and editor of the sadly departed Motto / Worthwhile magazine) is the way he and his wife Joan have focused on that very thing with their kids.

I remember one post on the Motto blog where he talked about a conversation his family had around the dining room table. "What if we suddenly had a million dollars to give away to a good cause? How would we spend it? Where would we spend it? What issues are important to us?"

I always thought it was a great way to engage the kids to really think about what's important to them.

Taking action (in a big way)

It was only a theoretical conversation to get them thinking, but something about it must have sunk in...and sunk in deeply.

Fast forward a couple years from that post, and you'll find the Salwens selling their beautiful old mansion (it's still on the market for $1.8 million) to move into a house half its size and half its price, and donating the difference to The Hunger Project. The idea was sparked by his teenage daughter, Hannah. They have a site detailing the idea called Hannah's Lunchbox.

You can see more about their project on these clips from The Today Show and CNN.

Something for everyone

What I love about the Salwens' story isn't the scale of it, though that grabs your attention, to be sure. It's the part that is available to each and every parent, whatever their situation. Playing out on a jaw-dropping scale isn't what's important. What's important is blending exploration, respect for the kids' ideas and opinions, and family action.

In a nutshell, here's what I took away from the Salwens' story (I should note that I have no kids myself, so this is purely from what I have observed and not from any personal expertise - for those of you parents out there, I would love to hear your take on it).

1. Engage in conversations: Having conversations about exploring what feels important and what feels meaningful is where any seed gets planted.

2. Give the kids a voice: The conversations about what's important aren't just about dictating values. They're an opportunity to really open it up for discussion and exploration. What do they think, and why?

3. Explore the possibilities: As you get a better sense for what feels important, you can use that to start exploring possible ways to make a difference.

4. Do it together: The last part of what I find so powerful about the Salwens' story is that it was a family project. Whatever difference you decide to focus on making, there is an opportunity to ratchet up the personal benefit as well by doing it together. Along those lines, here is an interesting study on the benefits of family volunteering (pdf file).

For those of you with kids, how do you engage them around the idea of making a difference in the world? I would love to hear your stories.

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Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

--

by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

VOA News launches "people making a difference" series

I'm a sucker for a good change-the-world story, so I was psyched to find that VOA News has started a new series profiling people making a difference in the world. From the VOA News blog...

“We hope to inspire those who see, hear and read about these people, who are making a difference against some terrific odds,” says Steve Redisch, VOA's Executive Editor. “Our audience will see that others are enduring problems and situations similar to their own, and yet finding solutions.”

The series premier is about Cynthia Maung, a Burmese doctor and refugee who established a health clinic in Thailand along the border between the two countries. Her work taking care of refugees has led the Burmese government to brand her a terrorist.

Future profiles include those of an Ethiopian man who travels by donkey to remote villages throughout the country distributing books to children; a day in the life of Dr. Robert Gallo, including reflections on his groundbreaking discovery of and research into HIV; and a close-up look at a retired Liberian priest who teaches people how to type in order to make a living on the streets of the country's capital city, Monrovia.

[Hat tip to DarynKagan.com for the heads-up.]

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What difference can you make today? Tomorrow?

One of the driving forces behind what I do, a concept that inspires me to no end, is the degree to which each of us has the potential to make a positive impact on the world around us.

Professionally, I happen to be focused on the choices that people make in their careers. My work involves helping people create careers where the work itself energizes them and the difference they're making with that work inspires them.

But that's just one slice of the pie when it comes to the potential for making a difference with our lives. Every day we're presented with countless opportunities to leave the world a little better than we found it. While some of them are big and dramatic, most of them are smaller and subtler.

You've no doubt heard the idea, "What you focus on grows." What if you focused on the question, "What kind of impact am I having?" What if every day you asked yourself that question, and went out of your way to make sure you had an answer?

That's what the folks who write The Impact Blog are doing (or at least they were before their posting activity dwindled). While many of the posts read a little bit like, "Dear Diary, today I...", I love the idea behind it.

I love the idea of shining a spotlight each and every day on the positive ripples we're able to make. I love the way that could raise our awareness, and get our minds in the habit of looking for opportunities, big and small, to make a positive impact. 

Most of all, I love the idea of the cumulative potential of a whole bucketload of people getting into that habit.

Like the idea? Why not start right now? Do a quick scan of your day. Have you made a difference? Have you helped someone, even in a small way? Have you smiled at someone when they looked like they needed it? Have you given someone words of encouragement, or shared your insights or advice?

How about tomorrow? While you get ready in the morning, why not plant the idea in your head that, "I'm going to look for ways to make a positive impact." Maybe you'll actually do all of them, maybe you won't. But the more you habitually notice opportunities, the more potential there is for you to follow up on them.

And the more potential there is for the world to become just a little bit better because you live in it.

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Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM

Small things / Big impact

It's easy to get caught up in thinking that the only way to make a positive impact in the world is with big goals and big actions. When we do, we forget that every day carries with it countless opportunities to make a difference - often in ways we would never expect.

I was down in San Francisco this last weekend for the wedding of my closest friend, Misa, who played a significant role in the growth (both personal and spiritual) that paved the way for my shift from an ill-fitting career path to my Passion Catalyst work.

I could probably fill a book with the ways she has had an impact on me, but one thing in particular springs to mind because of the way it planted the seed for the meaning element in the M.A.P. concept. It wasn't big. It wasn't the result of a deep conversation. It was a random comment she made while we were out on a walk one day several years go.

As we walked along, she bent over and picked up a piece of trash to throw away when we got back. "Leave the world better than you found it," she said with a smile.

She wasn't telling me that I needed to do that, she was just expressing her own philosophy. No preaching. No agenda. It was a small, off-hand comment, and the conversation quickly moved on elsewhere, but it penetrated deeply into my view of the world, and that comment has become a cornerstone for what I want to achieve in my work, and my life.

Misa wasn't trying to change my world. All she was doing was living and sharing her own values. She had no idea that it would become such an important part of my journey, but it did. It was the right comment at the right time. It was a tiny action, but it has rippled out through all the lives I have touched with my work.

As we go through our lives, small comments or small actions can reverberate in ways we would never anticipate. That could be either positive or negative (for example, the kid who is told he can't draw, and gives up any creative endeavors as a result).

The more our voices and actions align with our values and the world we want to create, the more potential there is for the small things that come out of our day-to-day existence to have a big impact on the people we encounter.

An often-cited quote from Gandhi goes, "Be the change you want to see in the world." And sometimes that is as simple as picking up a scrap of garbage. Or making a point to tell someone how fabulous you think their idea is, or that you believe in them. Or making a positive observation about something that might have gone unnoticed.

So here's a thought for you as you start off your week. As you go through each day, ask yourself, "What seeds am I planting with my words and actions? Are they the seeds I want to plant?"

You never know what good might grow from it.

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Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM

What is a social entrepreneur?

I've been having a lot of conversations lately about social entrepreneurship (not least because I've been talking to a lot of social entrepreneurs). I'm really psyched about the positive potential as more and more people explore the possibilities i n that arena.

While the idea has gotten a lot of play in the media of late, I've also found that there is no single tidy definition of it. With that in mind, it was interesting to find this collection of social entreneur definitions over on PBS' Enterprising Ideas site. They give their own definition first:

A social entrepreneur, in our view, is a person or entity that takes a business approach to effectively solving a social problem.

They then go on to offer definitions from a variety of organizations:

Social entrepreneurs...

Are individuals with innovative solutions to society's most pressing social problems.
Ashoka

Act as the change agents for society, seizing opportunities others miss in order to improve systems, invent and disseminate new approaches and advance sustainable solutions that create social value.
  PBS "New Heroes" Program

Are driven by a social mission and a desire to find innovative ways to solve social problems that have been neglected by either the market or the public sector.
  Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership

Are pioneers of innovation that benefit humanity.
  The Skoll Foundation

Use the disciplines of the corporate world to tackle daunting social problems.
  Fast Company

Recognize a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change.
  Wikipedia

Social entrepreneurship is...

The art of "simultaneously pursuing both a financial and a social return on investment (the double bottom line)."
Institute for Social Entrepreneurs

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Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM

 

What's your Big Why?

Let's face it, however much you love your work, there will always be times when it will be complete crap. Maybe things go wrong and you have to deal with it, or you have to buckle down and do something that isn't all that much fun but needs to be done. Whatever.

If you rely entirely on the Whee Factor ("Wheee! I can't believe I get paid for this!") for the energy in your work, it can be challenging to get through those stretches, because the Whee Factor is missing.

That's one of the reasons a focus on making a personally meaningful difference (in addition to the parts that make you go whee) can be so beneficial. It gives you a bigger context beyond just what is happening to you day to day. When you put your passion to work towards something greater than yourself, there's a difference that inspires you that pulls you forward. 

I've been thinking a lot about this lately for my own journey. I call it The Big Why. Why am I doing this? What is it that I ultimately want to achieve? What is my big dream when it comes to the difference I want to make in the world?

I'm still working on turning my Big Why into actual goals, but the spirit behind it is, I want to help people put their passion to work to make a difference that inspires them, in a way that lets them thrive.

Basically, I want to tap into the incredible power for positive change that comes when people are on fire about what they're doing and why they're doing it. And for each person's efforts to be a long-term, sustainable thing, they need to thrive.

So now I look at everything I do in terms of that Big Why. What are my opportunities to take what lights me up and put it to work in service of my Big Why? Doing that provides both an additional source of energy and a cohesiveness to what I'm doing and the direction I'm going.

What about you? What's your Big Why?

 

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Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM

 

Sir Edmund Hillary: My kind of hero

One of my heroes, Sir Edmund Hillary, has died.

It wasn't so much the fact that he was the first to summit Mount Everest that made me admire him, though that was certainly impressive. What made him hero-worthy to me was that he always stayed humble and unassuming, and used his fame to do good in the world. Here's a snippet from an Associated Press article...

"He inspired people to climb, but he also inspired people to do more than just climb," said Francis Slakey, a physics professor at Georgetown University who reached the summit of Everest in 2000 and was married at the Thyangboche monastery. "He used his world stage to actually improve the lives of people throughout the Khumbu. It's impressive."

...Hillary was a model for other climbers to try to follow. It took decades for others to catch up to his class act. Where many climbers left behind trash, Hillary left a legacy of education, health care and bonds of friendship.

Here's a paragraph from an article in Time describing his efforts to make his world a better place.

Beginning in 1962 he began working with the Nepalese sherpas who had so often helped him. Raising funds through his Himalayan Trust, he helped install bridges and pipes, built nearly 30 schools, two hospitals, 12 medical clinics, two mountaineering clinics, restored monasteries and planted more than a million seedlings in and around the towns of the rugged and poor Solu-Khumbu region of Nepal. Much of the last years of his life were dedicated to the work of the Trust, which opened offices in New Zealand, the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Germany. Even into his 70s Hillary spent an average of five months away from New Zealand every year raising money through lectures and visiting the projects in Nepal. He still felt uncomfortable with his knighthood and fame but realised their advantages and the obligations they brought. "I would like to see myself not going [to Nepal] quite so often," he told TIME in 1996. "But at the moment... the responsibility is there. It has to be done."

Sir Edmund Hillary, thanks for all the good you did, both directly and through the people you inspired. I hope when it's my time to check out I can say the same, in some way, about my life.

 

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Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM