Everyone wants long term success. But it is elusive for most.

Long term success is dependent on knowing where you are now and where you are headed. Then closing the gap. Frequently. Continuously.  Whether it’s your business, your career or your life at home., it’s easy to get off track, lose touch or get buried under. Without a true sense of where you are in the moment, it is impossible to realize your dreams or be a leader in your field.

Re-calibrate your profound knowledge

The only way we can take 100% responsibility for sustaining our success is to keep re-calibrating-in every aspect of our lives and organizations.

Key to successful recalibration is to acquire what my dear departed mentor, Dr. W. Edwards Deming, coined as Profound Knowledge. This umbrella phrase emphasizes understanding change and how to measure it, being aware of emerging trends and shifts, and learning how to apply this knowledge to leading and sustaining long term success.

Bottom line: If we don’t acquire Profound Knowledge we cannot know how to prepare for and leverage coming change, thus how to sustain our success long term.

Understanding change means understanding shifts in our personal world as well as tracking trends that capsize us, overtake us, or cause us to flounder.

Learning the Hard Way

Unfortunately one of my Gen X male clients learned this the hard way. A rising star in his field and recently married, he was planning far a great future for his kids, tons of time for fun and all the trappings of success. As if out of the blue, the rug got pulled out from under him. His “Happy Homemaker” wife fled, saying I’m out of here!

Somewhere along the way there was a breakdown or perhaps many small fissures below the surface. Had they been recalibrating an checking in with each other, communicating the truth of what was so for each of them…perhaps they could have saved their marriage…or at least ended it with love, grace, and forgiveness.

Even in the most secure relationships, unexpected change happens to ruffle our plans. A recently returned to work mother of teenage kids reported that her new career is now going gangbusters and she no longer worries about the empty-nest . But, the new ripple in her life is that her once very successful husband, in his late 40’s, now faces an unknown future. Surprised by the shifts in his industry, “suddenly” he and his business partner are facing the probability of closing their doors. What once appeared to be the sure path to their dreams, is no crumbling beneath them.

Change is inevitable. If you can learn what Profound Knowledge is and apply it you can avoid these same pitfalls and NOT LEARN THE HARD WAY!

What steps are you going to take to future cast your long term success?

I have to admit it. I am one who likes the familiarity of my comfort zone. After all, its called a “comfort zone” for a reason – it’s comfortable there. However, it can also be a deceptive trap that turns “living” into mere “existence.”

Comfort zones are full of routine; you know – the same-old, same-old. Comfort zones develop slowly – almost imperceptibly. Soon, the air in the comfort zone gets stale, the “flow” of life begins to stagnate, and personal growth comes to a gradual halt. In some cases, personal growth can even shift into reverse.

So, if you’re stuck in a comfort zone, ignore that inner voice that vibrates within every fiber of your being saying, “Stop! Danger beyond this point!” Try these eight “steps” to start really living and moving forward again:

1.  Step inward. Reconnect with your spiritual side of life in whatever way you find fulfilling. Go back to your place of worship if you’ve been away for a while. Learn how to meditate and practice it every day whether that be before you start your day or at its end. Your spiritual life is there waiting to be developed into a spiritual muscle that will serve you and others in times of need and, of course, in times of thanksgiving.

2. Step forward. Volunteer to help your favorite charity or cause. There are many nonprofit organizations that rely heavily on volunteer support to provide badly needed services. Find that new job you dream of and quit the one you hate. Move from survival to significance.

3. Step more. Get physical and feel stronger. Make it a point to get that 30 minutes of exercise a day, five days a week – even if it’s in 10-minute increments. Move! Feel your body come alive in its movement. Dance! Feel the grace and exquisite motion that your body is capable of. Stretch like a cat and wake your body up from head to toe.

4. Step outward. “The best way to make a friend is to be a friend.” – anonymous. Be a friend! Do things together and for each other. Go places and share memories. Learn about the variety of personalities and the ones you “click” with and those you don’t. As for the ones you don’t, Abraham Lincoln said, “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”

5. Step outside. That’s right. Open your door and go outside. Smell the fragrances in the air. Close your eyes and listen to the sounds of nature. Fill your lungs with fresh air and use your outside voice. See the colors of nature from brilliant sunrises and sunsets to the deep purples and greens of the forest. Wonder at the nighttime sky. Awaken your senses in the world outside. It awaits just outside your door.

6. Step deeper. Listen to your feelings. Share them with a trusted friend or relative. Life has its ups and downs and having someone to share them with helps us work through the emotions that are involved. Talk to a professional if you’ve been feeling down. Emotions cannot be ignored any more than pain in your chest.

7. Step upward. Stretch that intellectual muscle by learning something new. Take a class at your local college or through community education, usually connected with the school system. Read! Find a mentor who can teach you something new.

8. Step gracefully. Let your innate creativity flow out of your calling. Paint beautiful paintings, write inspirational words, dance the dance of your life. Enjoy the talents of others. Remember healthy family traditions and values and teach them to your children. Venture into the cultures of others different from you. Enjoy their food, learn about their values and traditions. Appreciate the diversity in life and celebrate it in all its glory.

If you try any of these eight steps to break out of your comfort zone, you are awakening the seven dimensions of wellness in your life and becoming refined by age. Go on. Get out of that puddle of a comfort zone and into the fast flowing river of life and wellness.

Reprinted with permission from refinedbyage.com

A Guest Post by Kathy Sporre

I have worked in the aging field for over 28 years, serving on initiatives at the national and international level. I want to help people become Refined by Age by encouraging them to age intentionally through developing the Seven Dimensions of Wellness in their lives: spiritual, emotional, physical, intellectual, social/cultural, environmental, vocational. I also want to help people become aware of age discrimination – a form of discrimination that is entrenched in society.

Oprah Winfrey 

Integrating the inner feminine with the inner masculine is the third (R)evolutionary axiom that is essential to greatness. 

There is no stronger force in nature for softening the hard edges of stone than water. In the same way, no influence is more healing in taking away the edges of living in a high-pitched accelerated world than that of the Sacred Feminine. The traditional masculine qualities of competitive achievement, hierarchical organization, and goal-orientation have been at the foundation of our institutions and our very way of life. Both men and women who are successful have to internalize some or all of these values in order to succeed in the mainstream. 

As more and more people feel their lives out of balance, they yearn to integrate their masculine qualities with the inner Sacred Feminine: that which is intuitive, connected to body and nature, the Soul’s access way to the transcendent, and which allows a softer way of living. As people quest into the Canyon of the Soul, they often discover their own Sacred Feminine waiting for them like a pool of still water at the heart of fallen stone or the transformative waters of a tsunami eroding what no longer works, leaving a sculpted, newly revealed essence. By connecting to the Sacred Feminine in all her qualities, we forge a more balanced life and a more collaborative, unified way of relating to the earth and ourselves. It is through the Feminine in us all that we discover an innate wisdom that sees connections in all things and the longer view. The Sacred Feminine is rooted in our bodies as is the Soul—what Jung called the Inner Feminine, or Anima. Body, Soul, and Earth, the Sacred Feminine returns us to our sacred roots. 

Listen to the voice of the Black Madonna, for she is also part of the archetypal Sacred Feminine and has many faces that emerge across the world. Renowned Jungian analyst and prolific author Marion Woodman tells us of the Dark Feminine, “her darkness is associated with the unknown, repressed side of our femininity” and appears all over the world as Sophia, Shekinah, Lilith, and Kwan Yin. Her truths are uncompromising, and when we listen to her, and voice her discerning truth, the world will change. 

Not only are we being called to connect to the Sacred Feminine within ourselves— men and women alike—but we see an increasing emergence of women leaders who are blazing the trail. Conferences, workshops, books, and associations are appearing throughout the country because women are taking on new leadership. Unlike years past in which women tried to lead like men, these new leaders are encouraging a more sustainable and long- lasting view based on feminine principles. Greatness is not possible without the Sacred Feminine; only through the marriage of the Inner Masculine and Feminine polarities can we evolve as individuals and as a society. 

Don’t you agree? If not, why?

I often wonder…how would I bring up my grandkids today? Certainly differently than their parents when they were growing up in the 1970s and 80s. I parented them with optimism because the future showed so much promise and possibility. Only later on did I come to realize that I did my kids a disservice by not preparing them for the derailing truth that we citizens can’t always trust what our elected representatives say, much less those we trust the most.

As (grand)parents, we want to protect our kids’ innocence and teach newer generations to emulate leaders and ideal citizens…those who know what’s real and what’s not, who will stand up for what’s “right” and just, freedom, equality and opportunity for all – the basic tenets of the American way…

I clearly remember the day my son told me “I’ve seen the Wizard (of Oz)!” I knew instantly that his innocence was gone. Even as he brings up his young family now, he too carries the torch of hope and possibility for them but knows not to trust wizards.

And so it goes, we keep keepin’ on. Until one day when the Wizard is thrown out of the magical castle for being a fraud! It’s time we cleaned out all of our castles and towers. Don’t you agree?

A few weeks ago New York Senate’s Dean Skelos and his son were arrested on corruption charges.

In another notable failure of integrity and leadership, look to J. Dennis Hastert, the former elected official who, for eight years, held the title of Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives (third in line to the presidency, I might add). This current Washington Lobbyist was said to be an upstanding role model, yet has just been indicted by federal prosecutors on charges that he violated banking laws (and lied to authorities) in order to pay $3.5 million to an unnamed person to cover up “past misconduct.” Though innocent until proven guilty, reports suggest this was hush money paid to a man Mr. Hastert is alleged to have sexually abused decades ago.

Then there’s the unraveling FIFA disaster and the final shoe dropping with FIFA president Sepp Blatter resigning as its head after a 17-year career. That career has ended in infamy due to a U.S. Justice Department corruption investigation for wire fraud, racketeering, and money laundering.

The congressional castle is truly turning my stomach these days. It’s past time to vote out all the self-serving wizards choosing hatred and power abuses above actual leadership and democratic representation.

In late December, before heading into surgery, I heard the tiny news snippet that twisted up my insides: how at the 11^th hour the Arizona senators had slipped a mickey in our holiday drinks so those in congress and the country wouldn’t even notice their trickery.

Arizona has the second-largest Native American population in the U.S. with 22 sovereign Native American communities inhabiting nearly a quarter of the state’s land. As the longest currently serving member of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, Arizona Senator John McCain is said (on his own website) to have “tirelessly supported the bedrock principles of tribal sovereignty and Indian self-governance and self-determination.”

If I took those words at face value, I would automatically believe that this elected politician was an admirable American role model. A leader enabling the “American Dream.” A hero rectifying the wrongs done to a people who were the country’s original citizens who taught the “founding immigrants” how to survive and thrive on this land before being systematically undermined and devalued by those very same newcomers they had welcomed.

But actions speak louder than words.

As it turns out, Mr. McCain is one of several politicians whose behaviors have included sneaky actions that continue stripping Native Americans of sacred lands, areas of our planet they have sustained for centuries with reverence and care. Lydia Millet shares the latest abomination in her NY Times opinion article, “Selling Off Apache Holy Land.”

In December 2014, Congress promised to hand the title for land in Arizona to a private, Australian-British mining concern owned by the company Rio Tinto, who has coveted the area for the high-value ores beneath the land. “A fine-print rider trading away the Indian holy land was added at the last minute to the must-pass military spending bill, the National Defense Authorization Act. By doing this, Congress has handed over a sacred Native American site to a foreign-owned company for what may be the first time in our nation’s history.” Who slipped the giveaway language into the bill? Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona. At the 11th hour.

Millet further suggests “It’s worth noting that Rio Tinto affiliates have been McCain campaign contributors, and that Mr. Flake, before he made it to Congress, was a paid lobbyist for Rio Tinto Rössing Uranium” (a huge uranium mine in Namibia of which, according to The Huffington Post, Tehran owns a 15 percent stake). And, apparently, Rio Tinto “has been called out in the past for environmental devastation.” Taking local citizens’ lands and livelihood to personally benefit from a foreign-owned company with ties to Iran? Degrading the environment, which has unhealthy repercussions for us all?

I’m outraged, horrified, and ashamed. Who are these elected representatives representing?

One last word on words… Corrupt political-speak isn’t the only way in which falsehoods are propagated. In my work transforming how we approach aging, I often address the language we use to describe being and growing older (e.g.: past blog posts Language Matters, Deactivate Office Ageism, and Words are Power). It’s important that our actions match our words. Just as essential is knowing that what we say and how we say it matters.

I’m stymied about what to do to reverse the rider other than venting and spreading the word. Do you have any ideas on how we can make this happen?

We know it’s not all bad news…what examples of integrity (and situations in which carefully chosen words were followed by matching actions) have you recently witnessed or been a part of?

Clearly Global Warming is not a hoax. Even current POTUS finally admits, sort of, suggesting on 60 Minutes that we may actually have a BIG problem on our hands all around the globe!

Clearly his is not a dress rehearsal.

A Science (STEM) educator in my youth, I railed about “Greenhouse Gases”.  Now we find ourselves here. We are almost out of time to reverse. 10 yrs is a best case scenario before its catastrophically too late to reverse significantly?

Tell then why all this push to invest in fossil fuels (coal, fracking, drilling in National Lands, etc.) Only answer that makes any sense in light of science and

Human observation, is unadulterated greed and corruption.

It would cost us a lot less to retrain all our fossil fuel related workers to Green Energy related opportunities instead. Clearly a win-win-win for us all…around the world.

How about we plan for everyone’s greater future by investing in retraining our workers in tech and other higher skilled work, as well as repurpose those who

Are needed but need basic retraining from shop floor to a new use of their talents

And the best of the best we can tap and provide leadership development programs, plus ongoing professional development. Doing this will make us great again as a Nation (and the world) even in our tumultuous times.

I’ve always been an optimist. But when it comes to Global Warming, I am an educated pessimist.

A systemic breakdown does not automatically become a breakthrough. Only you and I must choose to ensure that out of these chaotic fast-paced times that we will not dissipate into the ethers. Rather that our whole system will evolve to a higher level of development into in to a coherent whole. What I coned as CoHERency.

Here in America our Mid-term elections have started, which will determine the fate of our democracy for a long time…for generations to come.

The new reports coming out recently and topped by this one today, tell of the drastic current and future impact of Climate Change – reads like straight out of a Cinemax horror documentary.

So for anyone to blow off, try to skirt around and outright cover their prior words about Climate Change being made up is denial and avoidance for green, power or both.  So the totally slim possibility that the severe weather striking worldwide isn’t caused by humans, per Marco Rubio, is absolute insanity mixed in with saying anything to hold onto his seat.

Trusting politicians is deadly. Trusting science in this case is our only real savior!

Whatever party affiliations you have, on this one issue of planetary survival, we must all agree to VOTE to turn out those uneducated Climate Deniers and/or those Deniers who know better.

Our current raft of Carpetbagger deniers in the GOP and with DJL leading the White House, EPA and Dept. of Interior clearly must want to party it out before its their end time. I guess they don’t worry about their legacy to ensure their kids, and grandkids have a planet to call home.  Why else then are they pursuing in earnest to accelerate the destruction of our planet?

VOTE like your life matters, cause it does! Vote like our Mother Earth matters, cause it does!

Our current leadership prefers seeking out other planets or other solar systems and galaxies to live on. All the super powers are now in a race to conquer yet again.  I ask, but for whom? Most of these old white conservative guys are too old to benefit from further space exploration!  Yet off theses carpetbaggers go, like some evil enterprise threatening the StarShip in a Star Wars megawar of the world!

Let’s replace these old white conservative guys who clearly have an axe to grind and are are hell bent on the destruction of what was great about America.  Distrubtion is great for technolocy and innovation, but it appears to suck royally when applied to governance. What we need now is new leaders who know that we are at a planetary turning point on every plane of our very existence.

So let’s put all we’ve got into retrieving our own planet first!

If beer is going to guide you when you VOTE , then so be it! 

Let’s raise our beer bottles to toast on this!

It’s crucial for all industries and fields to reach out to the 50-plus demographic; some of the most savvy are doing so. Higher education is no exception. Both Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter at Harvard and a spanking-new initiative at Stanford University are trawling for a new kind of student seeking to reinvent the next stage after midlife. Stanford openly espouses that it wants to attract proven leaders with twenty to thirty years of work experience on the hunt to reinvent their futures.
University and advanced adult education and professional development programs are the future. No doubt a proliferation of new higher education programs modeled off of the Harvard and Stanford programs will emerge over the next decades.

I’ve been known to get rather passionate when I speak about the paucity of career changers and younger generations enrolled or even interested in the field of aging. Both are leaving money on the table and growing opportunities in the dust.

I want to rant and rave that the aging field is not all about changing bedpans. Don’t get me wrong; personal care for the frail elderly and disabled is a critical task for one of the fastest growing careers today as a health care worker.

Rather, what I’m so excited about are the enormous possibilities for meaningful work in serving the maturing 40-plus market, and those succeeding generations who will soon be 40-plussers themselves. That’s why in this chapter I’m compelled to include the trend information relating to new careers in aging.

Yet we continue to read and hear from the media that Millennials have no opportunities before them, or that Boomers and Millennials will continue to fight for job positions. Give me a break! There are so many untapped career opportunities in the aging field (and it’s tangential fields) that no one needs to be out of work! That is, not if they are trained and skilled, especially those with a long career history.
Just take a look at the numbers: The United States Census Bureau and Civic Ventures project reports that by 2030, Ameri- cans age 55 and older will number 107.6 million, 31 percent of the population. Those over 65 will account for 20 percent of the total population. The Nielsen study reports that by 2017 Baby Boomers will control 70 percent of America’s disposable income. This is a market to be reckoned with, so it’s best to get on the new millennium job growth curve in the field of aging sooner rather than later. Otherwise, you may miss an incredible opportunity of these times for your career, your business, or your organization.

Please be advised that everything in the field of aging is morphing rapidly, creating an exciting plethora of emerging opportunities in a variety of specialty roles and services. Not only because of the swelling ranks of the over-50s, but because the field of aging is evolving at warp speed. It’s not just bedpans anymore.

My goal here is to make sure you stay with me and not get turned off to this meaningful, high-impact field as your possible “what’s next” or as your new marketplace to increase your market share. So I’m going to ask you to stay with me while I share an overview of the aging field’s history right up to today…and tomorrow.

As I write, there is a great deal of healthy Creative Destruction going on in the aging field. The new “older adult” demo- graphic of Leading-Edge Boomers is wreaking havoc on the longtime preferred and universally accepted disease model of aging that has long been the underpinning of the field.
I’m a rabid fan of transforming the language, symbolism, and narrative around aging. Our languaging, especially around hot-button topics, reveals what’s not being said out loud or what is still unconscious and informs how we perceive or imagine things to be. So let’s start off with the languaging, including commonly accepted definitions and how they are integrally entwined with the history of the aging field.

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Sacramento, Ca. – I love to remember the tiger lilies that grew in my granny’s Oklahoma red dirt. They seemed magical with their bright orange color and their black speckled petals. Every time I see one I’m reminded of the Oklahoma summers I spent playing with cousins and eating my granny’s wonderful cooking.  The ones I grow must be missing the red dirt of Oklahoma because they’re not as prolific in my Sacramento Valley dirt but they still remind me of my roots and my sweet granny.

Living longer and better requires a lot of attention to exercise and brain fitness. We all need exercise, fresh air and sunshine to maintain good health. Our brains also need to be exercised and experts agree that reminiscing can elevate our moods and flex our brains in many positive ways. One way to kill two birds with one stone is to grow a memory garden.

Our ability to smell is the strongest facilitator of remembering. Fragrant plants can take us back to our childhood or recall a day in the garden with a loved one. I especially like to grow the plants that have been given to me by family and friends. Roses are perhaps the most fragrant and are easy to share with others. Cuttings taken in winter can be rooted and gifted for summertime blooms.

Who doesn’t have a planting of Hens and Chicks that someone gave us? My garden is filled with plants and flowers that my mother has given me. Most of them she dug up from her garden and that makes them more special to me.

My Granddaddy loved crepe myrtles. They grew all over the 160 acres where my father grew up. Their ruffled and papery blooms gave him so much pleasure as mine do for me. They also remind me of my grandparents’ old farmhouse and how excited I got as a child when we were close enough to see the windmill turning in the field. I can just see my granddad go out past the woods to find Goldie, my father’s buckskin mare. Crepe myrtles are planted at the head of my granddaddy’s grave. I took my own children back to the homestead while they were still little. The farmhouse is gone, the windmill is broke down and laying in the field, but crepe myrtles still grow next to where the front porch once stood.

My daughter hated gardening when she was a child. She would promise to clean the whole house if I just wouldn’t ask her to lend a hand in the dirt. Regardless of her complaining, I made her learn all the names of the flowers we grew. She was a quick learner and managed to only spend a short time in the flower beds. But one year I found a way to lure her into the garden. I planted a sunflower house with six different varieties of sunflowers and morning glories that climbed up the giant stalks. Every day she would go out to see the house’s progress. When it grew big enough, she would go inside and sit a while dreaming. She’s now a mother herself and now enjoys planting flowers and vegetables with her two sons. I try to grow sunflowers every year, mostly to remember the summer of that Tara took to gardening because of a sunflower house.

Gardening can be so beneficial for getting you in shape, exposing you to fresh air and it can be a social connector also. Whether you love to garden or just love someone who does, it gives you an opportunity to connect. Just ask that gardening friend or family member to show you their garden. Take them a small plant and you’ll be remembered for years to come. Chances are that you’ll come home with a memory plant of your own.

Karen Everett Watson is a certified gerontologist who lives in the Sacramento Valley just a mile from her parents who give her a constant flow of topics on aging. She enjoys her three children, 10 grandchildren, her chickens and two acre homestead.

In a blog post once by Seth Godwin, he makes an excellent point about why we sometimes don’t get very far in our endeavors, even when we are taking action every day. Often out of fear, our actions are either too small, too easy, to get us anywhere, or, out of our impatience, they are too big and doomed to fail. The secret, he contends, is to set difficult, but achievable goals.

This is an excellent point that we should all take to heart, but I’d like to take it a step further. Even difficult achievable goals won’t take us where we want to go, if we don’t have a clear idea of where we’re going in the first place. Without a big picture view, a vision, that ties together every action we take, we could end up at the wrong destination, the place where achievement and success ring hollow because we still feel unfulfilled. Worse, perhaps, is that our steps could lead us in many different directions, without reaching any destination, feeling scattered and overwhelmed, thinking, I’m working so hard. Why

aren’t I getting anywhere?

One of the first steps you need to take is to redefine what success means to you. (I talk about this in more depth in my post “Sustainable Success.”) Without a clear idea of how you personally define success—not how you used to define it, and certainly not how others define it—you won’t be able to map out the steps to get there, and you won’t be able to measure your progress along the way.

But even more important is a step many people leave out, even those with a big picture view, a vision, and difficult but achievable goals to get them there. It’s incredibly critical to periodically stop and reassess. Ask yourself these reflective questions with ruthless honestly. Are the actions you’re taking still moving you toward your vision, or have you veered off course? What have you learned along the way? Do you need to fine-tune your plan or even your vision? What creative insights can you gain from your mistakes or from results that didn’t turn out the way you thought they would, or even expected results that didn’t feel the way you thought they would?

This is a crucial step, but it’s also a fine line to walk. It’s easy to turn reassessment into second guessing, not based on continuous improvement, but based on insecurity and fear. You need to be brutally honest with yourself about your reasons for wanting to make changes to your game plan, as well as your reasons for not wanting to change. It helps to feed your intuition with facts, so that they work in partnership. Continuous improvement requires continuous lifelong learning, about who you are, what gifts you bring to the table, what knowledge and skills you need to acquire, and what the world around you needs and how your actions and vision intersect with those needs.

Staying in tune with the flow of everything around you, and adapting constantly to that flow, is the difference between having a vision and being a visionary.

What big picture view ties together all your actions? Do you have periodic reassessment built into your game plan?

Amazon #1 Best Seller Author of 11 books including The Ageless Way, Gray is the New Green, Visionaries Have Wrinkles, The Greatness Challenge and more.

However, from the vibrating heart of our dissipating structures comes the promise of our true greatness: a greatness of awareness and action that will change the world. From the midst of the evolving Great Transition, we leave the Great Recession and the uplifting Obama era behind us as we enter an unknown, unchartered new cycle of populism and extreme radicalism ripping our valued democratic tenets to shreds and putting each of us on the line.  This Great Shift demands that we each unlock our potential for greatness which lives in each of us, and we are being called to make a difference. That is the premise of The Greatness Challenge, in which I offer a template for embracing and embodying our unique Signature Greatness DNA^SM to unleash our personal and collective greatness.

The Greatness Challenge is a manifesto for the growing wave of us who want to add value in all we do and who are being called to personal and collective evolution—from dentists to doctors, executives to engineers, artists to teachers and visionary leaders and futurists who are looking to redesign their lives so that every moment counts . . . for those of you who seek work that not only fills your bank accounts but your “values” bank as you yearn to do well doing good . . . for leaders who seek a pathway to visionary leadership, so the impact you have is of the greatest benefit for all.

To be one of the first to hear about The Greatness Challenge when it releases join us in the Secret Facebook Group here.

We can generally agree that telling the truth is the right thing to do in most situations. Yet often we hold back, saying what we think others want to hear, or simply holding back an opinion or idea when we suspect it won’t be well received. Of course, not all opinions should be shared, especially when they would have no possible positive effect. We don’t need to volunteer our opinion of a relative’s cooking or a co-worker’s fashion choices, for example.

But when the truth could lead to positive change—such as more efficient and effective business practices, more meaningful communication in a relationship, or even social changes that rely on speaking out against injustice—we don’t do anyone any favors by withholding the truth or saying something different than what we really think.

One of the barriers to telling the truth is societal. Many of us, especially women, are taught to be polite, that we are responsible for other people’s feelings. Truth telling might upset the status quo, and we will be responsible for the chaos, real or imagined, that will ensue. We fear the consequences, which are unfortunately often very real. Women who are direct and truthful in the corporate world or in politics are often labeled as bitches. Women and men who are willing to tell brutal truths often encounter defensive reactions and sometimes downright hostility. On top of this, when we are nearing retirement age or fearing outplacement, we don’t want to make waves.

Too often, however, we don’t tell the truth because we imagine these will be the reactions, even if this isn’t true, even if telling the truth could in fact build trust and transparency, and free others—our colleagues, our employees, our friends and family—to tell us the truth. Sometimes, we don’t tell the truth because we lack the communication skills to do so in a way that focuses on solutions, not problems, eliciting feedback and fostering collaboration instead of competition. When this is the case, we do experience negative reactions, which only seem to provide evidence that we should be more careful about telling the truth in the future, when actually,they are evidence that we simply need to approach our truth telling more skillfully.

And sometimes, of course, no matter how carefully we communicate, and no matter how much being a truth teller is an expected part of who we are, we still face consequences. In some cultures—such as in many corporations, academia, and other hierarchal organizations and institutions—where truth telling is not the norm, or where politics make truth telling risky, putting ourselves out there might not always have the intended effect—at least not immediately. But visionaries look beyond the immediate situation to the bigger picture. They see that the more of us who tell the truth, the more we create an environment where truth telling is valued, where others feel comfortable stepping up and doing the same. This is beautifully illustrated in the Occupy movement, as truth tellers inspire others to stand up across the country and around the world.

But those first truth tellers do take a huge risk, and that is why this is an attribute of a visionary, a person who is willing to face the consequences knowing that the consequences of not being truthful—on the organization, on other people, on the world, on themselves—are unacceptable.

What, if anything, keeps you from telling the truth?

Amazon #1 Best Seller Author of 11 books including The Ageless Way, Gray is the New Green, Visionaries Have Wrinkles, The Greatness Challenge and more.