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?

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.

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?

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.

If so, you’re a lot like my clients.

One woman client, Ms.Clio, recently did something extraordinary. I know you’ll enjoy reading about what she did to take my breath away.

It’s mid-afternoon on the day of the once in a lifetime (every 99yrs) seen Solar Eclipse over a wide swath of the U.S.A. I was in total awe witnessing this cosmic spectacle unfold.

To maximize my experience and its impact on my psyche, I read both astrological and mythical interpretations of this cosmic event. What I gleaned is that whatever comes up during the darkening phase is to be released as “completed forever more.”  Equally vital to contemplate, is that whatever shows up as the moon’s shadow moves over and away from the sun to reveal its brilliance, a new phase begins, heralding new opportunities for months and months to come.

Long ago I embraced the mysteries and gifts of messengers and auspicious events.

Just as I looked away from the darkening sky, my cell phone pinged. To my total shock an incoming email with the subject line: “57 Greene Street Soho” showed up. I read the “out-of-the-blue” message just as the moon’s shadow moved out of darkness into its last phase of the solar eclipse. It was a message from a female client, Ms. Clio, who I hadn’t seen or heard from in 42 years! As Clio reminded me, she came to work with me when she was desperately in a need of a lifeline. It was the ‘70’s when American women were birthing the 2^nd women’s movement. American Feminism was taking hold. Not all of us were “bra burners”, but all of us were seeking emancipation, our place at the boardroom table, and equal rights and pay.

She wrote:

 It‘s been so many years, but I am sure you will remember me.
I was so frightened of where I was going, and you seemed so sure, I fed on your strength and grew strong. It was a very transformative time in my life, thanks to you, a very positive experience that put me on the right path. Your words still guide me today.

I am so glad that, so many more women, are being given the opportunity to be guided by you, into a more enlightened way of living and being.

With love and appreciation, “Clio”

Reading these unsolicited words moved me deeply…they brought me to tears of release and joy, rooted in times long past. The timing of her outreach is auspicious.  I, like the sun, am moving out of the shadows of my late middle years, now moving further into my last phase of my (working) life.

After being off-road for a couple of years to write The Ageless Way (now a #1 Amazon Best Seller), the timing of the eclipse message of “letting go” and “closure,” better yet, “completion,” could not have come at a better time.

The generosity of my long-ago client and mentee to chose to reach out across the decades to express her thanks was more than enough to keep me keepin’ on.

Just in case I didn’t get the complete message of the solar eclipse, with great grace Clio took me back to a time long ago that had drastically changed my life and my family’s forever more. True to the interpretation of the meaning of the Solar Eclipse is that it’s now time for those heart-wrenching challenging years to be completely released…with gratitude, grace and generosity.  

I’m so grateful that Ms. Clio reached out now, right smack in the middle of the Solar eclipse!

I raise my glass to Ms. Clio! Life well done. She truly embodies generosity, gratefulness and grace to the max, along with the necessary amount of grit essential to making dreams come true. Thank you Clio for allowing me to help you along on your journey, and for mirroring back to me the transformative shifts I have been blessed to catalyze for you…and for so many others since those many years ago. xo

Now as the Solar eclipse recedes from my top of mind, I am filled with continuing awe and immense gratitude for the fulfillment of the “promise” of the Solar eclipse which heralded the many new opportunities emerging from the shadows. Now new and long ago clients are returning to brighten my landscape just as did the sun as it moved from the darkness of totality to re-emerge brightly.

What showed up for you during the Solar eclipse? Did you have the sacred opportunity of releasing or arriving at completion of something from long ago? Post eclipse are you experiencing new opportunities coming your way? What role have messengers played in your life and work? Are you open to their appearance? What’s happened when you have paid attention versus when you have blown them off? Who do you need to reach out to so you shine the light on their gifts to you when you needed a lifeline?

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.

“I want to make every moment count.”

“Life is short.”

“It’s got to matter or why bother?”

One of my clients exclaimed during one of our recent sessions, “Oh my G-d, I just got it… I have less time before me with my wife than we have behind us. We have got to change how we are doing things!”

By the Year 2025, there will be more than 1 billion people age 60 or older. Three quarters of them will be in developing countries. And many of them right here in the United States. By the year 2020, 76 % of Americans will be 50 years or older.  With age comes many challenges but also a heightened appreciation for life and a greater thirst for meaning in work and relationships.

Psychologists Jung, Erickson and Neugarten left us developmental models to track our growth as we move through our life course. Anyone 38 or older is in what Erikson described as the “last two seasons of life.” Since most of, much of our citizenry in developed countries is over 35, this is important in understanding our times and what moves us to action.

Research confirms that accomplished and affluent Americans and Europeans in the post-9/11 and -3/11 era have become more intent on adding value, seeking meaning and significance in their lives and work. Wisdom comes with greater reflection.

Each of us is age-appropriately seeking “significance.” The highest rung on psychologist’s Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is “Self-Actualization.” With our basic needs met, we yearn to reach for more…for transcendence.

Most of our leaders, at the helm of our most powerful corporations and governments are in midlife, in one of these last two seasons. Here lies a monumentally rich possibility: We in these last two seasons can fuel the movement towards meaning, significance as well as both midlife and later life greatness.

We need a new paradigm as well as tools for midlife course correction. Baby Boomers always drive change. Now they drive a shift to lives filled with significance.

With $10 Trillion in assets being passed down to Boomers and 50- plusers, they will hold financial control of the new paradigm. What a wonderful opportunity for the savvy leader and organization to leverage this knowledge! By championing greatness, Vanguard Leaders will trigger transformation and innovation the likes of which we have never seen… and desperately need.

Fostering greatness in our schools, at home and in the workplace, is what will empower us to stay ahead of the curve, to retain our lead as innovator and model democracy.

Our gray hair could be the start of a whole new revolution. What a fantastic opportunity for those at the helm.

Where will you start?

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.

By-Pass the System

 Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. Muriel Strode

When you look back at your life, will you be able to say that you lived in your groove, working and loving to the fullest degree possible?

Those who lead great lives have learned to bypass the system. That is, they are not afraid to go outside of whatever system they are in to effect change for the good of all. They have one foot in, and one foot out, living inside and outside of the box.

Look at politics, and you will see that Barak Obama worked the system but also worked outside of it to win the election.  He could bring a new visionary approach to campaigning while also playing the game.  He painted inside AND outside of the political lines.

One of my most successful clients is seeing the results that comes from bypassing the system. When he first started coaching with me, he was trying too hard to fit into the corporate culture where he worked.

But in a brief time, we got him on track by looking at what mattered to him and the ways in which his corporation did not support his most profound values—such as high integrity when doing sales. In a few months, he decided to walk his talk and be completely honest with clients, not compromising any of his convictions.

Guess what? His income nearly doubled from 180K to 350K in one year. He still enjoys playing the game, but he has fought for changes in the rules. And he is now seen as a leader and a winner…not a whiner. It’s all about bypassing the status quo, going beyond the rules of the system.

 If you want to live your groove more fully,

take these steps to BYPASS THE SYSTEM:

• Get clear about what you value and what your truth is.
• Compare your beliefs with those of the system in which you are working.
• Evaluate how you currently show up in YOUR way within the system. How can you be even truer to yourself?
• Start taking steps to live your truth and bypass the rules of the game, whenever it’s necessary, so you are bringing your great values and leadership to what you do.

If your organization will not tolerate your way of doing things, it is time to think about how you might bypass that system for good by creating your own business or finding a position with another company in greater harmony with your values.

Email me with the results. Are you creating your greater future today? How is greatness working in your life? What are you doing to make your future rock?

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.

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.

In decades of work as a leading GeroFuturist aiming to transform the story around our culture’s approach to aging, I have often spoken and written about this issue. I continue to assert that a large and vital part of our new boldly vibrant story is dependent upon the language we use to define and describe growing older — to ourselves and others, and by those who serve and market to us. When we change or redefine the terminology we use in those descriptions, we change the perception, truth, and dynamics of getting older across the lifespan (for twenty-year-olds, as well as centenarians – and everyone else in between…).

It may sound simple, but it’s not easy. So how do we integrate individual and cultural mind shifts in order to change the “languaging” around adult development and growing older? Something has to give! A perfect example of misplaced, yet commonplace, labeling as we grow older is referring to Baby Boomers as “seniors.” I can assure you that those of us over 40 don’t relate to that at all. In fact, it makes us cringe and run in the opposite direction. Yet, “senior centers” across the country continue to bemoan and wonder why Boomers aren’t banging down their doors for “senior” services and community-building.

We clearly need new terminology to help shift the paradigm. We need a full expression of the affirmative, powerful, and even juicy aspects of aging. Old dismissive stereotypes do not consider the reality of those of us entering or beyond midlife as capable of being fully active physically, socially, mentally and professionally (to say nothing of the fact that the over-40 crowd is the largest adult consumer demographic and, thus, worthy of priority marketing and product development focus). Manifesting such transformation, as with all vital historic movements, will take patience, determination, effort, awareness, intention, time and acceptance.

As is the case with so much in life, there is not just one way to think about growing older or the terminology around that process (a process which will happen to all of us lucky enough to live “to a ripe old age”). My vision for the new story of our times is rooted in an approach toward aging that is “Ageless.”  At this juncture, this word may mean different things to different people.

A retired literary professional recently shared with me that when she hears the term “Ageless” she thinks of it as dismissive of aging, since it seems to infer wanting to avoid looking or growing older. I see the term in a different way, as being age-affirming. Ageless, Ageless Aging, Agelessness (and timeless) to me are all about transcending age at any age… all while owning our chronological age …whether 30, 40, 70…101. Agelessness involves not being defined nor limited by our chronological age at the same time as welcoming/embracing whatever age we are.

Agelessness is about transcending our limited, dismissive and insufficient attitudes toward aging so that we see ourselves and each other as whole and precious parts of a larger evolution with many births, rebirths, endings and new beginnings…no matter what our age or life stage. This does not mean we deny our aging. Instead, being Ageless and embracing The Ageless Way is evidence that we, at every age, own the vitality of life within us and our value, and remove the limits culturally placed on our youth and our elderly.

I feel so strongly about the importance of boldly shifting our definition of the word Ageless (as it applies to Ageless Aging) and proclaiming it as central to our new story of what it means to grow older, that I have titled my upcoming book The Ageless Way.

So, together, let’s re-cognize the abilities inherent in growing from youth to midlife to becoming an elder. Rather than seeing Agelessness as working against the fulfilling life all of us can envision for ourselves, our communities, our world, we will move forward with that word as a testament to our ability to surpass the heretofore ingrained and perceived limitations of aging. Will you join me on that journey?

What does being “Ageless” mean to you and what is your reaction when you hear that word? What are some words associated with growing/being older which no longer have any bearing on the NEW story of our age?