“To every man there comes,” said Winston Churchill, “…that special moment when he is figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a special thing unique to him and fitted to his talent. What a tragedy if that moment finds him unprepared or unqualified for the work which would be his finest hour.”

We were born for greatness. But how do we prepare for it?

Through years of tireless, thankless, recognition-less goodness.

Mother Teresa was an unknown nun in India who humbly served the poor, sick, orphaned, and dying for 29 years before her goodness was recognized with a Nobel Price in 1979.

George Washington transcribed his “Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior” as a teenager and strove to live them for years until he eventually was called to become the revolutionary general and later our nation’s first president.

Rosa Parks was little more than a good woman, a domestic worker virtually unknown to the world. Until one day, on an obscure Alabama bus in 1955, she sat down, tired, and felt a soft tap on her shoulder.

True greatness cannot be achieved in the absence of goodness. More precisely, sustained goodness is the only reliable foundation of and certain path to greatness.

As Aristotle said…

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In a previous article I explained how your path to mission is illuminated by what angers you and what you fear.

But there’s a deeper principle at the heart of those two clues.

Those two clues shine light on the path. But they are not the path.

The path is bliss.

It’s ironic, I know. But think it through.

Underlying what angers and scares you is what brings you the most rapturous joy.

Anger is a manifestation of passion. Passion is the fuel of purpose. And living on purpose is sheer bliss.

Swat your butterflies and push through to the other side of fear, and waiting for you is ecstasy, euphoria, exultation.

Follow your anger and fear to discover your path. Then walk the path by following your bliss.

The scholar Joseph Campbell happened upon the power of bliss by studying an ancient Sanskrit word.

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“Your mission in life,” taught the Buddha, “is to find your mission in life and then to give your whole heart and soul to it.”

You were beamed to earth, “trailing clouds of glory,” for a purpose.

You have something noble and profound to accomplish. None other can take your place.

“Let your light shine,” commanded Jesus.

Your unfulfilled mission is a gaping black hole of squandered potential. Statues will be erected to honor your name when you fulfill your mission.

The challenge is that finding mission in the first place is usually tougher than actually living mission.

Continue Reading on Life Manifestos »

In early 1970, a man named Muhammad was a Bangladeshi economist at Chittagong University.

After a devastating cyclone, bloody war of independence with Pakistan, and severe famine, Bangladesh was suffering deeply.

Muhammad was heartbroken over the poverty he saw, knowing his academic economics were doing nothing to alleviate it.

In 1974 he visited a village to learn directly from the people how to help.

He discovered that women creating handcrafts were paying local moneylenders interest rates as high as 10 percent per week.

He began loaning these women money from his own pocket, starting with just $27.

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My thoughts on the presidential election: Barack Obama was never the problem. And getting rid of him was never the solution.

Mitt Romney was never going to save America. You and I are.

For further explanation, here’s an essay I wrote shortly after the 2008 election, and which I published in my book, Uncommon Sense. It’s more relevant than ever:

Obama is here to Stay

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” –Barack Obama

The presidential election has come and gone. I, like so many others, have ached for a different result.

How I long for statesmen and stateswomen who understand the proper role of government.

How I wish we had leaders who knew the difference between a republic and a democracy and acted on that knowledge with courage.

But we don’t. Not enough of them, anyway. So what should we do about it?

We can fight the President-Elect. We can dig deeper into the trench of opposition in a fierce effort to bring Obama down.

Judging by the amount of anti-Obama emails and videos I still see circulating rampantly, many are attempting to do just that. Freedom-lovers are striving to raise awareness and illuminate the flaws of Obama’s thinking and policies.

America, drowning in apathy, needs this fresh breath of passion. I wonder, though, if this passion could be better spent. I don’t say this because I think I’m uniquely qualified to pass judgment on people acting from conscience — I’m not. I don’t say this because I wish to discourage patriots from fighting the good fight — I surely don’t.

I say this because of a simple conviction I hold dear, borne of my own recurring mistakes. Stephen Covey articulated my conviction well when he wrote, “Any time you think the problem is ‘out there,’ that very thought is the problem.”

Every time I see faults in others, every time I try to “fix” people, my efforts are broken as I fall into the disturbing crack of my own faults. Every time I spend time and effort on things beyond my control, the things within my control lay fallow from neglect.

This conviction has illuminated something to me, which is that Barack Obama isn’t the problem. And neither is getting rid of him the solution.

Obama Isn’t the Problem

Obama is the product of a society which has forgotten its heritage. We can no more blame him for the election and America’s decline than we can blame a child for being born.

A child results when a man and a woman join in reproduction. The seed of Obama was planted when American citizens began “[valuing] their privileges above their principles,” to quote President Eisenhower.

We’re only harvesting what we ourselves planted. We’ve given birth to the illegitimate children of selfishness, apathy, and forgetfulness.

Obama isn’t to blame. We the People have only ourselves to blame. As my friend Thomas Dyches frequently says, “We the People. We the problem. We the solution.”

And if Obama isn’t to blame, then it will do little good to get rid of him — he’ll simply be replaced by someone as bad, if not worse.

So What Should We Do?

First and foremost, we must shift our focus away from things beyond our control and toward the things within our control. Sir Thomas Browne wrote, “We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.”

By the same token, we carry within us the flaws we see without us.

We must stop trying to tear down and get rid of Barack Obama. Rather, we must tear down the walls of our own faults and eliminate our own fear, anger, selfishness, ignorance, and apathy.

We must do things that are much harder than political activism. These things are hard not because of difficulty and physical effort, but because they’re seemingly not as obvious and pressing as politics and elections. They’re hard not because they’re hard to do, but because they’re hard to see.

Specifically, we must become educated. Simply put, we must read and study classics more. As Oliver DeMille wrote in his essay, The Calm Before the Storm:

“Despite a hectic and challenging world…we are today in a relative era of calm…Arguably, the most important things we can and must DO in the calm before the storm is to prepare. Secondly, no type of preparation is more important than character and knowledge preparation—both of which are impacted by reading, writing, discussing and studying. Reading, studying, writing and discussing is doing something. At certain times in history, it is the most important thing.”

The rise in our education and dedication will be accompanied by a decline in misguided politicians and bureaucrats. We can only eliminate the wrong leaders by becoming the right leaders ourselves.

We as individuals have very little control over who gets elected. But we have ultimate control over how we spend our time and how we prepare for leadership.

Barack Obama isn’t going anywhere. So what are we going to do about it?

If you haven’t heard yet, I’ve officially launched my new company Life Manifestos.

Check out our selection of manifestos, and be sure to subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

A “life manifesto” is a clear, concrete, and compelling declaration of your most cherished values and highest ideals.

It is your planted flag, your line in the sand, your standard held high.

It is your constant reminder to do, be, and live better.

Display your life manifesto prominently in your home or office. The more you read it, the more it permeates your subconscious, influences your speech and actions, stretches your vision, purifies your desires.

It is a beacon of hope through storms of emotional turmoil.

An idealistic manifesto is not ignorant of excruciating realities.

It is not a naïve and fanciful expression of lofty intangibles.

It is a gritty, gutsy proclamation grounded in the recognition of disturbing imperfection, yet driven by the certain knowledge that progression is possible through choice.

As William James wrote,

“The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.”

A life manifesto is your planted flag declaring:

I choose to rise above my past, my pain, my limiting beliefs.

I choose to drag myself from the canvas every time I’m knocked down.

I choose to never give up striving for the ideal.

I choose to live from the space between stimulus and response.

I choose to live from a vision of joy, rather than wounds from the past.

I choose to be governed by love rather than pain.

I choose to be a victor, not a victim.

Make your choices easier and better by purchasing manifesto posters.

I guarantee they’ll help you bounce out of old ruts and break bad habits. And your life will never be the same.

You’re enmeshed in tubes, breathing shallowly, preparing for the bright light.

Your teary-eyed children shuffle into the room.

You have one final chance to convey the most valuable lessons you want them to remember.

What would you say?

That’s the scene I envisioned when I wrote the “Live Extraordinary” manifesto.

“This, my dearest children, is how to live the masterpiece life. This is how to look yourself in the eye without regret at the end of each day.”

Don’t wait for your deathbed to inscribe these consequential lessons into their souls.

Purchase the 16″ x 20″ manifesto now and display it prominently in your home.

Let it saturate their subconscious mind. Watch with pride as it manifests in their actions.

Product Details:

The typographically-designed print is printed on high-quality, non-coated poster paper and fits a 16″ x 20″ frame.

Money-Back Satisfaction Guarantee:

Dissatisfied in any way with your print? Return it for a full, no-hassle refund.

Complete Manifesto Text:

“Trust your flashes of intuition. Ignore the clamoring of crowds. Don’t
drudge through a job. Devote yourself to a Mission. Make every day an adventure. Don’t be a slave to unconscious reaction. Consciously choose your actions. Keep your word, no matter the cost. Who you become tomorrow is determined by the books you read, the friends you keep, and how you spend your free time today. The time to be most vigilant is when no one else will ever know. Privately fix your own heart before marching in public protest. Plant seeds for others to harvest. Choose long-term growth over immediate gratification. Your character is revealed by how you treat those weaker than you and from whom you have nothing to gain. When you’re discouraged, forget yourself and uplift others. Don’t gossip about people. Discuss great ideas. Be an initiator, not a criticizer. Be a player, not a spectator. Above all, keep moving forward, no matter what.

(© Copyright 2012 by Life Manifestos, LLC.

Shun mediocrity. Live with extraordinary passion, principle, and purpose.

And teach your children to do the same by displaying the “Live Extraordinary” manifesto in your home.

As I was watching the movie “Sarah’s Key” tonight (which I highly recommend), this question settled on me like grim ash from Auschwitz:

Who’s more culpable and responsible: the Nazis, or common citizens who stood by and watched the Nazis rip their neighbors away without saying or doing anything?

I think it’s easier to bear the guilt of a perpetrator than of a bystander.

Bystanders will watch atrocities, and try to convince themselves that they’re good people.

Right.

That’s exactly why they’re more culpable than perpetrators — they know better.

Why can’t the freedom movement seem to get any traction?

Why have we lost battle after battle for at least the past century?

It’s because we tend to make the good the enemy of the perfect, the pragmatic the enemy of the ideal.

To be clear, it’s because the most passionate among us have adopted a rigid, dogmatic, uncompromising “either-or” stance in the fight.

Rather than winning hearts and minds in the trenches inch-by-inch, we drop rhetorical nuclear bombs and make enemies of potential supporters.

There’s one critical distinction that explains this tendency and, if understood, can overcome it and make all the difference to our success:

Do we view the fight for freedom as an election-cycle battle, or as a 100-year war?

These vastly different mindsets generate completely different strategies and tactics and produce completely different results.

If we view the fight as an election-cycle battle, the battlegrounds are primarily political and governmental.

The tactics include:

• Public, energetic, and angry marches and demonstrations
• Passionate, vitriolic, and partisan commentary that preaches to the crowd and riles the base but fails to win new supporters
• Literal, logical, and personal argumentation
• Directing energy primarily at getting individual political candidates elected

But in a 100-year war, the battlegrounds are cultural and educational, and the short-term tactics above shift to the following long-term strategies:

• Personal, lifelong, classical education in the quiet of our homes
• Respectful, thoughtful, open-minded discussion with people across the whole spectrum of belief, with the intention of winning hearts and minds, rather than simply spewing passion or proving how smart and “right” we are
• Symbolic, metaphorical, and artful story-telling and persuasion
• Directing energy toward reforming education, building families and communities, and becoming successful entrepreneurs (see the three choices in FreedomShift by Oliver DeMille)

In a 100-year war, we moderate our passion and smarten our strategy.

We heal the roots of our demise, rather than hacking at the symptomatic leaves.

We work from love, rather than anger.

We reform from the outside-in and bottom-up, rather than the top-down. In other words, we focus on fixing ourselves, rather than Washington.

We understand that studying Montesquieu in our homes is far more effective than waving banners in the streets.

We spend our time and energy teaching the rising generation the depths of freedom and political philosophy, rather than debating opponents in chat rooms and on radio and TV shows.

We build successful small businesses, rather than complaining about losing jobs overseas.

In a 100-year war, idealism and pragmatism aren’t mutually exclusive. We’re more concerned with direction than destination.

In other words, we don’t reject particular policies because they’re not ultimate, black-and-white ideals.

Rather, we judge them based on whether or not they take us closer to the ideal, however slight the progress.

In a 100-year war, we learn and teach principles, rather than fight candidates.

To be perfectly clear, we don’t waste time forwarding mass emails about the status of Obama’s birth certificate.

Most importantly, in a 100-year war, independent freedom lovers create an inclusive tent, rather than an exclusive club.

For example, many conservatives denigrate environmentalists, or as they’re disdainfully labeled, “tree-huggers.”

But many of these environment-conscious, thoughtful people are also highly-conscious and passionate about local, organic food production and sustainable agriculture — which is a primary battleground for freedom.

So rather than building on common beliefs and bringing these people into the tent of freedom, many conservatives banish them with narrow-minded labels.

The Occupy Wall Street movement is also a favorite target of many conservative commentators.

But wise freedom-lovers would do well to harness their energy.

The truth is that they raise a critical point that most conservatives fail to see: Vast inequities in wealth distribution and power are, in fact, killing America — every bit as much, if not more so, than governmental wealth redistribution from rich to poor.

The government does favor those with capital over those with little or none, big businesses over small businesses, which creates these unfair and unsustainable inequities.

We don’t have to occupy Wall Street with them, but we can at least be wise enough to recognize where we agree in order to work together toward a more free, just, and sustainable society.

We can start winning more friends and creating fewer enemies. We can be pragmatic coalition-builders, rather than dogmatic clique-builders.

I’m as passionate about freedom as anyone — freedom is my mission.

But passion alone isn’t going to win the fight for freedom.

The war will be won through wisdom.

“We know more than we know we know.” -Michael Polanyi

Feeling overwhelmed by cultural, political, and economic forces beyond your control?

Dismayed that we’re rapidly losing freedom?

Want to make a greater difference?

If so, your power and answers lie in the right hemisphere of your brain, waiting to be activated.

If you’re stuck in left-brain mode, you’re getting left behind.

Read on to learn how to become a more effective social leader, prosper financially, and move the cause of liberty.

1 Brain 2 Brains, Left Brain Right Brain

In 1981, neuropsychologist and neurbiologist Roger Sperry won a Nobel Prize “for his discoveries concerning the functional specialization of the cerebral hemispheres.”

Before Dr. Sperry’s “split-brain experiments,” it was commonly thought that the left hemisphere of the brain was more important than the right.

Dr. Sperry shattered this false view and revealed stunning new insights into how the brain works. As he put it,

“The so-called subordinate or minor hemisphere, which we had formerly supposed to be illiterate and mentally retarded and thought by some authorities to not even be conscious, was found to be in fact the superior cerebral member when it came to performing certain kinds of mental tasks.”

The left brain is linear, logical, objective, verbal, and conceptual. The right brain, visual and perceptual, reasons holistically, recognizes patterns, and interprets emotions and nonverbal expressions.

The left brain is scientific, the right is intuitive, artistic, creative, imaginative. The left brain craves order, the right feeds on chaos.

The left brain demands everything to be literal, while the right brain is electrified by symbols, metaphors, art, and abstractions.

The left brain sees a sentence like “Her heart soared to the heavens” and smirks, “What a load of crap.”

The right brain gushes, “Wow! Cool! Can I soar, too?”

“Good poets make extensive use of ‘right-brain language.’ Forget that sensible, linear, factual, left-brain speech. The language of the right brain is a horse of a different color. A riot of imagery, a cascade of connections, sensations, and associations. The right brain speaks in metaphors, juxtapositions, and similes, using a whole range of poetic devices to express the inexpressible and describe the indescribable.” -Robin Frederick

Clearly, both hemispheres are vital to success in any endeavor. Unfortunately, our society and educational system have traditionally placed way more emphasis on the left.

However, we’re engulfed in monumental shifts.

To navigate these shifts and leverage them to your advantage requires a much higher degree and depth of right-brain thinking than most people are used to.

“Employers are already saying that a degree is not enough, and that many graduates do not have the qualities they are looking for: the ability to communicate, work in teams, adapt to change, to innovate and be creative.

“This is not surprising…The traditional academic curriculum is not designed to promote creativity. Complaining that the system does not produce creative people is like complaining that a car doesn’t fly…it was never intended to.

“The stark message is that the answer to the future is not simply to increase the amount of education, but to educate people differently.” -Professor Ken Robinson of the 21st Century Learning Initiative, a group of neuroscientists, psychologists, and educators committed to educational reform

For social leaders in particular, cultivating your right brain is vital for at least the following reasons:

1. To make more money.
2. To increase your innovation and problem-solving skills.
3. To move the cause of liberty.

Right-Brain Economics

In his phenomenal bestseller A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, Daniel Pink draws from mountains of research to explain that we’re moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age.

“We’ve progressed from a society of farmers to a society of factory workers to a society of knowledge workers. And now we’re progressing yet again–to a society of creators and empathizers, of pattern recognizers and meaning makers.”

Pink cites three primary reasons for this cataclysmic shift:

Abundance

“Our left brains have made us rich…But abundance has produced an ironic result: The very triumph of [left-brain] thinking has lessened its significance. The prosperity it has unleashed has placed a premium on less rational, more [right-brain] sensibilities–beauty, spirituality, emotion.”

Asia

“If standardized, routine [left-brain] work such as many kinds of financial analysis, radiology, and computer programming can be done for a lot less overseas and delivered to clients instantly via fiber optic links, that’s where the work will go.”

Automation

“Last century, machines proved they could replace human backs. This century, new technologies are proving they can replace human left brains.”

To adapt to these forces, Pink offers six requisite senses for thriving in the Conceptual Age–all of which are right-brain aptitudes:

1. Design. Making things beautiful and functional.
2. Story. Appealing to logic and emotion.
3. Symphony. Connecting dots, seeing the full picture.
4. Empathy. As Daniel Goleman demonstrated in Emotional Intelligence, emotional abilities impact our careers much more than our IQ.
5. Play. “Play will be to the 21st century what work was to the last 300 years of industrial society–our dominant way of knowing, doing and creating value.” -Pat Kane, Author of The Play Ethic
6. Meaning. “Meaning. Purpose. Deep life experience. Use whatever word or phrase you like, but know that consumer desire for these qualities is on the rise. Remember your Abraham Maslow and your Viktor Frankl. Bet your business on it.” -Rich Karlgaard, Publisher of Forbes

Pink challenges individuals and businesses to ask themselves three questions:

1. Can someone overseas do it cheaper?
2. Can a computer do it faster?
3. Is what I’m offering in demand in an age of abundance?

He then concludes:

“Individuals and organizations that focus their efforts on doing what foreign knowledge workers can’t do cheaper and computers do faster, as well as on meeting the aesthetic, emotional, and spiritual demands of a prosperous time, will thrive. Those who ignore these three questions will struggle.”

Get Out of the Box

Change has never been more fundamental, rapid, and disruptive.

More than ever, today’s leaders must learn to recognize, trust, and follow their intuition to connect dots, predict trends, and adapt to new realities.

And where does intuition come from? You guessed it: the right brain.

Roy H. Williams, author of the legendary Monday Morning Memo and founder of Wizard Academy, explains:

“Intellect is linear, putting facts in columns and rows, while intuition is nonlinear, putting all the facts in a big bowl, then stirring them together like soup, watching to see what might ‘connect.’

“…Great leaders have intuition. Explorers have intuition. Inventors have intuition. It is intuition that tells them how to go where none has ever been.”

Accessing and cultivating intuition is how social leaders can successfully navigate change, overcome challenges, and solve problems.

To create different results, we need new ways of thinking, and left-brain thinking isn’t going to get us there.

(By the way, if you want to test your intuition, read this article and connect the dots between Oliver’s thesis and what I’m saying here.)

Fight for the Right

In his eye-opening — and highly intuitive — lecture “The Freedom Crisis,” Oliver DeMille declares that one of the serious flaws of freedom-lovers is that we tend to think and communicate very literally.

The problem with this, as Oliver says, is that

“Literal talk is not what sways the thinking populace. The thinking populace is swayed by symbol, celebrity, and poetry — poetry in the broad sense.”

Literal language is divisive. It repels people with whom we share common beliefs and goals. Symbolism and poetics, on the other hand, speak to universalities. They unite and inspire.

To change hearts and minds and win the freedom war requires us to be artful rather than forceful. In other words, passionate freedom-lovers must take a more right-brain approach to their struggle.

Oliver goes on to explain the difference between sensus solum and sensus plenior.

Sensus solum translates as “one meaning,” while sensus plenior means “multiple, or fuller meanings.”

Sensus solum — or literal — thinking has dominated mainstream education for decades. It trains the masses to think in terms of black or white, right or wrong.

Sensus solum thinkers read things to find the correct answer. It is rigid and, by definition, limited.

In contrast, sensus plenior education — of which poetry is an integral component — explores depth, nuance, multiple perspectives, and holistic thinking. It fosters creativity and innovation.

Bottom line: sensus solum is left-brain thinking, sensus plenior is right-brain thinking.

Which is needed to promote freedom?

Trick question — we don’t need either/or, we need both.

Just as those who cultivate both left and right brain aptitudes will have greater success economically, so will they have greater impact on the freedom movement.

Still, since sensus solum is the dominant perspective most of us have been trained in, it is vital that we cultivate the ability to think in terms of sensus plenior — which means specific and consistent right-brain training.

Get the Right Stuff

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” -Albert Einstein

This isn’t “touchy-feely, artsy-fartsy” stuff — the realities of right-brain thinking are tangible, practical, relevant, and vital.

Nurturing your right brain makes you more creative, imaginative and innovative, and better equipped to solve problems, overcome challenges, and make better decisions.

It helps you recognize, predict, and capitalize on trends. It helps you communicate more effectively and universally.

In short, it makes you a better entrepreneur and leader.

And it’s the right thing to do. Uh-huh.

10 Specific Ways to Cultivate Your Right Brain

1. Attend Wizard Academy courses.

2. Take art, music, acting, and/or dancing classes. Starve your inhibitions, gorge your imagination.

3. Visit art museums and galleries.

4. Practice writing short stories. One valuable and quick technique is to do what I’ve done on this blog. Another is “mini-sagas”–stories consisting of no more than 50 words.

5. Keep a notepad and pen on your nightstand and write down your dreams. Dreams are your right brain communicating to your left; it has no language functions, so it communicates through symbols. Record not only what you visualized, but also how it felt. Try to interpret the symbolism and apply your interpretations to practical things in your life.  Compare your dreams over time to recognize patterns.

6. Read more fiction, fantasy, poetry, and humor.

7. Listen to more classical music.

8. Play more. Seriously. Video games, sports, board games, concerts, leisure time. Intuition kicks in more often and more clearly when you have no deadlines or objectives. Simply play. If you think this sounds silly, consider that Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman was a huge proponent of play.

9. Meditate at least 15 minutes every day.

10. Read and listen to these books, articles, and speeches:

• A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink
• Free the Beagle: A Journey to Destinae by Roy H. Williams
• “The Freedom Crisis” by Oliver DeMille
• Drawing on the Artist Within: An Inspirational & Practical Guide to Increasing Your Creative Powers by Betty Edwards
• Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More than IQ by Daniel Goleman
• Accidental Magic: The Wizard’s Techniques for Writing Words Worth 1,000 Pictures by Wizard Academy
• “CEO Libraries Reveal Keys to Success”
• “A Liberal Take on Hiring”
• “What Would Plato Do?”
• “Think Your Liberal Arts Degree Won’t Get You a Real Job?”
• “The Liberal Arts & Business”