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’ve talked before about the ongoing trend of women leaving the corporate world to start their own businesses. This is no surprise considering the glass ceiling is still unbreakable in many companies throughout Corporate America.

Many women, especially women over 50, who have spent their working lives climbing the corporate ladder are faced with the difficult choice between leaving to start their own businesses or staying with their company and striving to be one of the exceptions, perhaps fighting to change the system from the inside, like such notable women as Virginia M. Rometty, IBM’s next chief executive, or Anne Mulcahy at Xerox, Indra Nooyi at Pepsi, Peggy Foran at Pfizer, and Sarah Teslik at Apache Corporation, who led their companies to sign the Aspen Principles, by which companies, investors, and corporate governance professionals agreed to commit to long-term value creation over short-term profits.

The question is, with the Great Recession and the worldwide Occupy protests against corporate greed, fraud, and environmental destruction, will we soon see a shift? Will we collectively force the hand of Corporate America to recognize that transformation begins with visionary leaders who understand how to do good while doing well? Are we on the verge of seeing the collapse of the old corporate culture, and if so, will we also see fragments of that glass ceiling among the debris?

Some would say only time will tell, but that view discounts the power we have to change our own future. Time may tell us what has worked, and what hasn’t, in the past. (For a fascinating and timely look at the past and present of corporations, I highly recommend the film The Corporation). Time may tell us when we are repeating history, and what we can learn from how we have reacted or responded to epochal change in the past—conservative and restrictive, wild and revolutionary, consciously evolutionary, or downright transformative.

But time doesn’t tell us everything. Time doesn’t have a voice. We do. We can’t predict the future, but we can lead the way toward creating alternative futures that transform the world as we know it.

Whether you are a career professional or a new or seasoned entrepreneur, you cannot afford to ignore the opportunity we have right now to step up amid the chaos and lead the way to a greater future—not just for women, but for the world. Protesting is powerful, but it’s not enough. We can’t just decry the problem. We have to step in with solutions.

Now is the time to listen to that visionary voice inside you. No doubt the world chaos has stirred her. The world is literally crying out for creative disruption of the status quo, for new ideas to change business so that it reflects our values, honors our responsibility to each other and to our planet, and capitalizes and strengthens the interconnected global society we have become.

How do you want to see the future of business, big and small? When you envision the ideal marketplace, what do you see specifically? What are you going to do today to start making that vision a reality?

Always Add Value is one of my 52 Quintessential Principles of Greatness codified to keep us moving from great to greatness.

I forget to apply this principle myself every once in a while. In fact, just last week I was asked to by a really sharp associate leader, “what value will you bring to my membership?” What caught me most off guard was that the Value Added editorial thrust of this issue was already in the works.  Here I was being confronted with having lost sight of this very principle.  Will the learning ever stop?  Nope.  I sure hope not.

These on-target questions inspired me to re-think how I add value by what I do.  I responded that her high achieving and accomplishing members match the profile of my clients.  They are successful in their chosen field; they want to expand their referral network and are seeking to improve the results.  Coaching entrepreneurs, family firms, executives and professionals, I appreciate their business challenges and professional concerns.

All of these movers n’ shakers want to improve the performance of their firms, attracted new and maintain current revenues and customers. But that’s not all.  What I’ve learned is that these truly accomplished folks relish the opportunity to fine-tune and to stretch. Even more so, they know that becoming a better communicator and a leader ensures that they will thrive in these challenging times.

I also added that we all aim to keep our personal and professional lives in balance.  It’s just such a struggle when buffeted constantly with destabilizing sound bites and constant emails announcing disruptive shifts in our world and demands on the personal front. Add that to having to deal with the pressure of invigorating a work life, keeping the home fires burning and just having fun. Whew! That’s why powerful people look for coaches who add value by moving them to greatness and to building legacies that are unforgettable.

I could have kept riding my dead horse, not “hearing” what I was being asked. Instead, I took in the question and changed my language so that I could add greater value, On the other hand , if my response fell on deaf ears, then I would need to change horses by seeking out another grouping of people who would be more in sync.

In the process of re-stating my value added, I was reminded that more and more of us are wanting to realize our vision for a better and sustainable futures for ourselves, our loved ones, our workplace, community and our planet.

What I’ve found is that today’s vanguard leaders are seeking to make meaning as well as money, and build legacies as well as bank accounts.

What’s become paramount is that if we are to reach our greatness, we are must take a good look at our lives, our leadership and our relationship asking the probing questions:

Am I in the right tribe?  Am I adding value in all do?

I’ve talked before about presence, what it is and why it’s important to develop, (see “Unwrapping Your Presence”). The first steps in developing this presence are asking the right questions, then opening yourself up to listening to the answers from the visionary voice inside you. These answers (or more and better questions) might come from within, but they can also come from messengers and symbols in your outer world that resonate with that voice. The important thing is that you open up as many conduits for that voice, for these messengers and symbols, as you possibly can, preferably with guidance from other visionaries. (Read more about this in “Stop, Look, and Listen.”)

This process is holistic, bringing together your body, soul, and mind in synchronicity. Presence is itself visceral. It isn’t a head trip but a physical embodiment of your Soul Speak. Even the visionary within resides in your body, connecting soul with its vessel. When you start hearing that voice and seeing messengers and symbols all around you, don’t be surprised if you feel the truth of what you’re receiving deep in your belly. There’s a reason for the saying “I feel it in my gut.”

That’s the inner feminine rising within you, the intuitive wisdom that your visionary voice embodies. Women and men have this aspect, but in women, it’s closer to the surface and often easier to access. But the inner masculine plays a role in this process as well, supporting the inner feminine, again for both women and men. (For more information about these aspects and archetypes, see Carl Jung.) As you work on asking the right questions and opening your soul and body to the answers, to that visionary voice, you can take the next step and start opening up your mind, gathering the knowledge that will feed the insight you gain.

Begin doing your homework, the research in the outer world that your inner world needs to process for you to ultimately make your vision reality. If you are focusing on your career or business, research the market, emerging trends, new business models and practices, technology, visionary leaders and companies, and gaps in what the world needs that business has yet to fulfill, or fulfill adequately.

If you are focusing on reinventing retirement, research what others are doing and where, flexible arrangements with companies or nonprofits that enable you to focus your energy and time the way you want, or entrepreneurial opportunities that would enable you to fulfill your soul’s purpose and make a difference, while still making a profit.

If you are seeking to make changes in your personal life—a move, a renewed focus on relationships, more travel, or more time and energy devoted to new or neglected meaningful pursuits—research places, social opportunities, logistics, and personal growth resources (such as this blog!). For all of the above and more, consider what skills you will need to learn and develop to make the most of whatever opportunities you will eventually pursue.

Now is not the time to draw definite conclusions or make decisions. Not just yet. The purpose of this information gathering is to give your visionary something to work with and to fine-tune the messengers and symbols you receive. Continue the inner work of asking questions and developing conduits for your visionary voice. By consciously getting your inner feminine and inner masculine to work together, you are on the path to creating a future that works—for yourself, your community, your world.

What knowledge do you need to gather to feed your visionary voice?

A colleague of mine, another coach and consultant, recently talked about why people so often do not take that next step and act on their vision. He said they are fearful, and those fearful thoughts bring them nothing but things to fear. There is some truth to this. Perhaps you’ve heard it phrased another way, made popular recently by The Secret (although the concept has been around for much, much longer): Our thoughts create our reality.

The truth, of course, is much more nuanced than this—and much grander.

For one thing, the universe is a pretty big place. Earth alone, although infinitesimal in the scale of the universe, is itself an elaborate and complex entity. Did my thoughts create the increasing hurricanes, earthquakes, and tornadoes sweeping the globe? That’s a little arrogant, don’t you think? Billions of people on Earth, and my thoughts are producing large-scale weather events?

On the other hand, our collective actions have certainly contributed to the climate changes that have led to these events. Their general occurrence was predictable (and predicted), even if the specific times and places were not. Not to acknowledge this would also be a little arrogant.

Our actions are a direct result of our thoughts, and even small actions can have a large effect. The Butterfly Effect is alive and well—one small action, the flapping of a butterfly’s wings, can cause a chain reaction of other small actions that build up into monumental events. Consider this as well: The absence of those flapping wings also has an effect. That particular chain reaction doesn’t happen, but another one does.

In other words, even our inaction has an effect on our world.

We all have a visionary inside us, but for some, it lies dormant in its chrysalis while their lives go on quietly around it. Imagine what the world would be like if we all completed our personal transformation, broke free from the chrysalis, and allowed ourselves to fly? What kind of chain reaction could we start with thousands, even millions of visionary wings flapping? Even the small steps we take toward reinventing our lives to have more meaning and impact could have a significant effect on our planet.

I think my colleague and The Secret have it half right. Our thoughts do create our reality. But we are complicated beings, with multiple voices giving rise to an elaborate web of thoughts. Before we start thinking our vision into existence, we need to make sure it’s the visionary within us who is dominating the conversation. Even then, all the visionary thoughts in the world do not produce change if we simply sit around thinking and waiting for change to come to us. When you think over all you’ve accomplished in your life, you know this is true. Your attitude and thoughts played a huge role, but you couldn’t have done any of it without one thing—action.

What keeps many of us from awakening that visionary voice and listening to it is that we are unsure of the actions we need to take. We want to make such a monumental impact on our lives and on the world that we can’t help but think every step must also be monumental—and that’s a little overwhelming. But that is where we’re wrong. Those first steps must be meaningful, but they can be as small as the flapping wings of a newly emerged butterfly. The results, if you just keep flying, can be nothing short of world-changing.

You are not alone in wanting to fulfill your purpose on Earth. The more of us who flap our wings, the bigger the effect we can have on our lives, the lives of our families and communities, and ultimately the world.

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.

Yet this impulse has a potential downside. Sometimes in our rush to do, we don’t stop long enough to just be, to truly figure out what matters and whether the actions we are taking will lead us toward our vision—whether the actions themselves are meaningful.

Consider the plight of many retirees, who suddenly lose their sense of self when they are no longer working. They are advised to keep busy, to do, but for many, this isn’t enough. Part of the problem is how they define who they are, but part of the problem is that just doing for the sake of doing is hollow. Doing is intended to be a means to an end, but at all ages in this culture, it too often becomes an end in itself.

Of course, taking action is essential to creating the future we envision, but ideally every action we take should be meaningful and completely in sync with our inner visionary voice. This isn’t possible if we don’t take the time to just be so we can center ourselves and listen to that voice without distraction. By taking time to be still, we can become more in tune with the flow of our lives, other people, and the world, and through this, we can develop the deep knowing we need to inform our next steps. With this knowing, the steps we take will leave a lasting imprint for generations to come. As Frank Sinatra sang, “Do be do be do.”

What can you do to incorporate time to just be in your everyday life and work?

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At one WFS meeting, Dennis Bushnell, a chief research scientist at NASA, discussed seven major and simultaneous societal issues, any one of which will greatly change society as we know it. “The impacts of all seven,” he said, “including potential synergisms, is approaching the unfathomable.” Number one on his list: climate change and energy shifts. Number three, very much linked with number one: water and food shortages and environmental issues.

He discussed several climate change impacts on our future:

• The arrival of ice in summer waters
• A greater projected rise in CO2
• The ocean rising faster and acidifying faster
• Fossil methane being release from tundra and ocean
• A reduced ocean CO2 uptake, which causes temperature increases, acidification, and algae reductions
• Offshore and near shore methane “burps” caused by ocean warming inciting undersea landslides, causing great tidal waves, which would lead to millions and millions of deaths
• Rapid glacial melting leading to many of the world’s rivers, which are glacially fed, to dry up, affecting 1/6 of the planet’s humans—soon

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates, based on solid science, that by 2100, world temperatures will be 5 to 6 degrees centigrade higher and that the sea level will rise a meter to 2.6 meters. The IPCC is cautious, even, because its conclusions are drawn from thousands of scientists. It’s possible that the situation will be much worse by 2100, with temps as much as 12 to 14 degrees centigrade higher. This would melt ALL ice, cause the ocean to rise about 75 meters, and directly affect over 2 billion people.

Gaia is self-correcting. The question is, How big a catastrophe, and how many, will it take for us to reach our tipping point, to emerge from emergency and save our planet, our future, ourselves?

Even as the evidence of climate change and its effects has continued to mount, often tragically, and as an unprecedented number of scientists agree that climate change is a real, human-caused problem, naysayers continue to reject the science and our responsibility to act. A small number of vocal, politically and financially (not scientifically) motivated people claim that climate change doesn’t exist, or that it’s natural and not caused by humans, or that the Earth is actually cooling. They trot out the same long-debunked “evidence” and use scientists to support them, even though these scientists have no expertise in climate change, kind of like asking your vet to diagnose and treat your heart condition.

Yet here we are, still in denial, as the damage accelerates and grows. The latest in the long line of global-warming impacts is the increased chance of severe flooding occurring every few years along our coastlines, east and west, as a result of rising sea levels (“Rising Sea Levels Seen as Threat to Coastal U.S.”). We can even plug in our ZIP code at http://sealevel.climatecentral.org/ and assess the likelihood of flooding in our current or future dream location. But still, upon hearing this, many people are blowing it off: “Oh, well, we have to die sometime,” or “We can move again before it happens.”

These statements come from smart folks in their 50s and 60s who are planning to move as a part of downsizing. Yet anyone pouncing on the “deals” in the Hamptons, the shoreline of the Carolinas, Florida, California, . . . are going to be in deep trouble in the next few decades, before most boomers will pass on. This is a very real threat. To Coasters, it threatens their homes, financial security, and very lives. Why take the chance of having to rebuild your home and your life? Even having to sell and move again seems like a waste of time, in the years when we could be realizing our greatest visions yet.

In fact, this threat would hit all of us in the pocketbook, as taxpayers, not to mention the effects on the family members of those hit by disaster. Even those inland are likely to be cut off from services if a flood knocks out the coast, not to mention the effects a flood would have on food and water availability, and the ripple effect on the environment.

So what now? It’s time to reassess what truly matters. As you figure out what’s next for you, make a list of MUST HAVE criteria, then look at your options to see which ones intersect with your list. Of these options, use all tools and information available to you (like the ZIP code search above if your “what’s next” involves moving) to narrow down your list realistically.

Consider also how you can integrate your vision for the future with ways to work in your local community to improve the future for all of us. We are on the front lines. It is our responsibility to protect the future for the next seven generations. Even though places like New York are taking steps to protect the shoreline, just imagine what happens to the financial solidity of the world if Manhattan is deluged. We have to do more than just build a wall to cower behind. We have to do everything we can to stop, prevent, or reverse the causes of these floods and other natural disasters.

If we keep our heads buried in the sand, we won’t even notice when our future gets washed away—until it’s too late.

It was an ad for Cindy Crawford’s wrinkle-erasing skincare line.

False beauty, false youth, false advertising, really. I don’t know if I could think of a less meaningful definition of beauty if I tried.

Now, I’m not going to pretend that I have always embraced the changes in my appearance as I entered midlife and beyond. Looking in the mirror and seeing those first fine lines, then the deepening of those lines into wrinkles, along with the sagging and other changes in my aging body was never easy. The person I saw in the mirror didn’t match how I felt inside. That isn’t me. And if that isn’t me, who am I?

Who am I if I’m no longer young?

And that gets to the heart of what the anti-aging industry, from skin creams to face lifts, is really promising. A reprieve from having to ask that frightening question. The chance to be who we think we are for just a little bit longer. To be noticed, relevant, visible.

Yet answering that question for ourselves, figuring out who we are when we’re no longer young, can be the most meaningful, liberating, and life-affirming step we ever take. It can lead us to fulfilling our purpose on this planet, to awakening our visionary and creating the legacy we were always meant to create but couldn’t until we’d reached this point where experience, wisdom, and the search for meaning all coalesced. But we can’t create this future if we are focused on living in the past.

The anti-aging industry doesn’t offer meaningful beauty. It delays or even stops us from ever finding it.

There is a difference between wanting to enhance our beauty and wanting to change who we are to feel beautiful. I love finding flattering clothes or getting a new hairstyle that makes me look and feel great while expressing my personality. I am not going to pretend that I don’t. In fact, I am totally drawn to the promise of smoother skin, fewer wrinkles, and a more youthful looking body. This is not a condemnation of that desire or of the women who act on it. I think we all have it to some degree and always will. We all struggle with where to draw the line between enhancing our appearance and accepting ourselves as we are.

But let’s not pretend that we are going to find meaning in that jar of eye cream. The less time and energy we spend distracted by the promise of holding on to our youth, the more we can focus our time and energy on what really matters to us, to the people we love, to the world. The more we make the effort to find actual meaningful beauty in ourselves, in who we are now, the closer we get to fulfilling our greatest vision yet.

After all, what kind of vision can we have if we don’t even see ourselves in the mirror clearly?

Most of us are asking the same life-altering questions as we find ourselves standing at the precipice of change: How do I make decisions now since I don’t know who I’m going to be . . . or what the world will be like by then?

The “then” timeframe for some encompasses the next 2 to 5 years, and for others, 10 to 15. But what is the same for all is that these midlife questions range from the more profound, Why am I here? Is this all there is?, to the more fundamental practical decisions about where to go from here in our personal and professional lives.

• When do I step down and pass the baton?
• What’s my new passion?
• Should I join some company boards, or rev up and start a new business?
• Can I afford to downshift?
• Is this the relationship I want now?
• How do I turn my empty nest into a launching pad?
• How do I make a lasting impact?

The clock is ticking louder and louder. Just as in adolescence, most of us are teetering between in control and out of control. Each What if? requires a multitude of compromises and leads to more complicated scenarios without obvious answers. Caught in the race against time, we are confronted with the tremendous terror of not knowing. The million-dollar question is: How do we live in between?

We have to stay in the center of time and wait it out. We have to sit in our worst fears. I know that if I resist, my fear manifests even more. Instead of staving off the fear of the unknown with my favorite numbing tricks (filling myself with extra helpings of carbs, obsessing over roads not taken, buying something I probably don’t need), I must instead find a safe middle ground. A place within where time doesn’t exist, where it’s okay to not know . . . yet. That’s where real clarity is birthed.

But while I wait, my task is to keep striving for greater consciousness, stretching to unleash my greatness and to re-awaken the visionary within.

Now more than ever, it is critical that we remain flexible and adaptable, making friends with change, with not knowing . . . with certain uncertainty! This is our time to tap our resources—within and without. Seek the counsel of friends, family, colleagues, and coaches, as we prepare for a new phase or a totally new cycle. Now is the time to invite change and embrace transformation.

We must create our own eye in the storm of time, a place of inner calm, where we look objectively at the possibilities around us instead of being pushed relentlessly forward by the ticking of the clock, which inevitably leads us in haste to make the safe decisions, but not necessarily the right ones.

Once we find that center, that space between time and timelessness, we must anchor ourselves with proper assessment tools and the knowledge and experience of every resource available to us. With this anchor in place, we can move forward with purpose, passion, and profit, toward what matters most to us, to our communities, and to our world.

The future of our economy lies in our ability to innovate, connect, and work together in new ways: “When everyone has a laptop and connection to the world, then everyone owns a factory. Instead of coming together physically, we have the ability to come together virtually, to earn attention, to connect labor and resources, to deliver value.”

Seth is right. The Industrial Age is over. In its place is the potential for us to create a new age, what I call the Age of Greatness. In this new economy, we can reinvent ourselves and how we work and play so that we do well while doing good for others. We have the opportunity to be forerunners in the new way of working, to create businesses, lives—futures—that combine profit with purpose, creativity with cooperation, consumer value with our core values.

With every momentous change in our lives as individuals and as a society comes the opportunity for us to answer the call to Greatness, to listen to that visionary voice inside us that will not only lead us into the new age but will enable us to lead the new age. But the future won’t wait for any of us. Now is the time to map out how you plan to reinvent yourself and your world. You don’t have to go it alone. This new future will depend on developing connections and working together like never before. Start now by finding like-minded members of your “tribe.”

The more voices joined in answering the call to Greatness, the louder our voice for change.

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