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?

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.

One of the most prevalent stereotypes about aging is that we become sexless beings. This is akin to the invisibility we feel, experience, or fear, especially women, as we face the years ahead of us.

This invisible sexuality is particularly ironic with leading edge Boomers, the generation that brought the first sexual revolution. Are we prepared to start the next one? To spark not just a revolution but an evolution in how we embrace our sexuality at every age and stage?

Not only do the current generations have a very different mindset toward sex than past generations—we are also living longer healthier lives than ever before. This puts us in the unique position to redefine what it means to be sexual beings and to change the way the world sees and limits sexuality.

Our sexual health is an important part of our holistic health—physical, emotional, mental. The forms our sexuality takes are far more varied than our society and media portray, and this is true at every age. Our sexuality is as unique as our personality, differing from person to person and even differing within an individual at various ages and stages and in different circumstances.*

But sexuality is itself ageless, an ever-present part of who we are as human beings, one of the many forms of our creative energy and our bodily expression.

To deny this in ourselves or in others is to deny an important part of our humanity.

It’s long past time that we began demanding a change in our portrayal in media and advertising, as well as in the multigenerational conversations we have. This demand can take the form of choosing to use our significant spending power with companies that recognize our full humanity, including our sexuality.

It can also take the form of speaking out about our sexual health concerns just as we do about other aspects of our health. We deserve to have them taken seriously in medicine and in society, for women as well as men, addressing the real needs and desires we have, not just the oversimplified male-focused needs that can be addressed with a pill (see, for example, “Owning Our Bodies, Our Businesses”).

Our sexuality is more than that. We are more than that.

This Valentine’s Day, I invite you to step out from behind closed doors and embrace your sexuality visibly, however you express it and define it. The revolution begins with us. It always has.

*If you’re looking for ways to explore your sexuality at every age, I highly recommend the work of sex educator Betty Dodson, one of the visionary women I interviewed in my book Visionaries Have Wrinkles. Check out my book and her website with Carlin Ross at dodsonandross.com.

Featured image courtesy of On the Issues Magazine, creative commons license.