Jolt! (7 page)

Then, begin connecting potential dreams and goals to the appropriate skills and talents you possess.

Karen was raised in an environment where people told her she would never achieve anything significant. She was never encouraged or allowed to excel in anything and grew up believing she was worthless. She was an excellent math student in school, but her parents never paid any attention to it. It never crossed her mind that math was something that would help her beyond high school. Right out of school, she married a man who was no different from her parents, and she spent the next seven years being berated, criticized, and humiliated. When he unexpectedly died of an undiagnosed heart problem, she was forced into the job market, having no idea which direction to go or what career to pursue.

She tried a series of jobs—housekeeping, retail clerk, and factory worker—but was miserable at each position. One day at the factory, she was having lunch with an assistant bookkeeper who mentioned how far behind she was with the latest sales figures. Karen offered to help after work, and the minute she started adding up the figures, a light came on. She suddenly remembered her gift for math and plunged into the task with an excitement that amazed her friend. Karen finished in half the time it took her bookkeeper friend and so impressed the factory manager that he offered Karen a job in the accounting department.

Today the company is paying Karen to take night classes toward an accounting degree. For the first time in her life she feels as if she has a purpose. She loves her job and can't wait to get to work each day. The possibilities are wide-open for Karen. Because she decided to make the necessary changes in her life to go back to school and finish her degree, she will have the credentials to move into accounting, engineering, or anywhere else her passion for numbers can take her.

It's about connecting the dots, so stop dreaming and start connecting. Take your list of skills, gifts, and talents, and start connecting them to your dreams and goals.

The next step is to decide what really matters.

REVIEW
Jolt Your Direction

The time to change is now. List anything that is stopping you from making changes in your life today. Then answer the following questions.

1. What changes in my life need to be made?

2. Are there areas in my past I need to leave behind?

3. Do I need to forgive anyone in order to move forward with my life?

4. What is my destination?

5. At the end of the change process, what type of person will I be?

6. As a result of this book, what three major goals do I want to set for my life, and/or what three major changes do I want to make?

JOLT
WHAT
MATTERS

» Jolt #6
JOLT YOUR PRIORITIES
Taking Control of What Is Important

We do not have a money problem in America. We have a values and priorities problem.
—MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN, FOUNDER OF THE CHILDREN'S DEFENSE FUND

If your agenda is set by someone else and it doesn't lead you where you want to go, why is it your agenda?
—SETH GODIN,
LYNCHPIN

T
oday we live in an oddly conflicted world, with a confused moral map. On the positive side, I bought a cup of coffee this morning from a national coffee chain that donates a portion of every sale to help the rain forest. My wife buys groceries at a store that only sells food produced in ways that help the environment. Office supply stores feature recycled paper, printer companies recondition print cartridges, and even mechanics now dispose of oil and grease in ways friendly to the environment.

All is well in the world.

On the other hand, in the age of Bernard Madoff, corporate corruption seems to be at an all-time high, the public trust of religious, media, and political leaders at an all-time low, and cheating on university campuses is almost becoming commonplace.

Even Martha Stewart did hard time.

OUR INTEGRITY NEEDS A JOLT

For an earlier generation, criteria for morality and behavior were pretty standard. There was a common moral framework in America, and it wasn't difficult to see where people stood. My dad was a pastor, and even people who never darkened the door of a church respected him and what he represented. In those days we didn't need movie ratings, we never had to view sex or profanity on television, and parents rarely worried about the safety of their children at school.

Certainly, there were distortions. Ricky and Lucy Ricardo slept in separate beds, even though they were married, and June Cleaver always cleaned house in high heels and a dress.

As a result of those types of distortions, the disillusionment of the sixties, and a cultural drive to break free of restraint, we plunged headlong into a moral chasm with little knowledge of where we would land. Yes, perhaps things are more relaxed and tolerant now, but we've paid a high price for the journey. Today we live in a world where children can access hard-core pornography at the touch of a computer keyboard, schools are rife with violence, and saying a prayer in class can get you suspended from school.

This book isn't an exploration of our national morality, but we do need to recognize how much the culture has changed in the last fifty years and understand the importance of moral courage.

I define moral courage as a set of personal principles you live by that are unchanging. Some people would call them moral absolutes, but however you choose to name them, they help create a life of moral purpose. Without moral purpose you will never reach your full potential.

The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.
—WILLIAM COWPER, POET AND HYMN WRITER

In another generation, moral courage would be discussed only in religious terms, but today even secular corporations are embracing the concept. I believe it's because after fifty years of moral drift in this country, we are just beginning to see the damage from the pursuit of unchecked sexual freedom, rampant cheating, and a culture of “me first.” Check out the self-help section of the average bookstore and note how many titles focus on
me
. What's in it for
me
, what do
I
get out of it, and do unto others before they do unto
me
.

Jonathan Last, in the
Weekly Standard
magazine, noted the impact of the Internet itself on the culture of narcissism when he described attempts to create video games for social change:

The central conceit of the Internet: that you can change the world without having to actually do anything. Want to change America? Download the [President] Obama app. Want to fight the Iranian mullahs? Turn your Twitter icon green. Want to bring human rights to oppressed peoples? Play a video game about it. Because what matters isn't fighting autocrats or feeding the hungry or improving the conditions of Haitian farmers. What matters is knowing that you care about such things.

His point is that the Internet itself is “all about you.”

Hopefully, that tide is changing. We're witnessing a wave of business leaders who are truly making a difference. Blake Mycoskie founded Toms Shoes in 2006 with the purpose of giving away a pair of shoes to a child in need with every purchase. Father-and-son team Philip and Jordan Wagner founded Generosity Water and, in their first two years of operation, funded 108 water wells in sixteen countries serving more than fifty thousand people with clean, safe drinking water.

Clearly these visionary leaders are resonating with millions of people across America. It's time to realize that without moral courage and purpose, we'll never live lives of significance, and we'll never make a real difference.

Set priorities for your goals. A major part of successful living lies in the ability to put first things first. Indeed, the reason most major goals are not achieved is that we spend our time doing second things first.
—ROBERT J. MCKAIN, MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER AND WRITER

The issue of moral courage is critical. It's the foundation for creating priorities. Simply put, priorities are what is important. But how do we know what our priorities should be?

We start by deciding what is important to us.

I'll never forget when one of my wife's best friends had a baby. She was a dedicated career woman who decided after a few nervous months at home that she would hire a nanny so she could go back to work and resume her career. Everything seemed fine for a while, until one day she came home from work to hear the excited nanny cry out in joy, “Guess what? Today the baby walked for the first time! You should have seen it!”

At that moment, the mom froze in horror. For the first time since her baby's birth, she realized that by going back to work, all the “firsts” in her child's life would be experienced by someone else. That jolt was like an explosion. She dropped her briefcase, called her boss, immediately resigned from her job, and never looked back.

At that moment she understood her priorities. She thought her career was number one in her life, but that day she realized her real priority was her family.

Certainly not everyone can afford to stay at home with his or her children, and each situation is different. But the point is, once you realize your priorities, everything naturally finds its proper position of importance in your life.

Strong lives are motivated by dynamic purposes.
—KENNETH HILDEBRAND, WRITER

Take out a sheet of paper and write down all the things that are important to you. Perhaps it's family life, personal integrity, your relationship with God, a new boyfriend or girlfriend, your reputation, or your career. Perhaps it's being a caregiver to a loved one in need, personal health, staying in shape, or personal relationships.

Don't get your priorities confused with your goals. Goals are what you want to accomplish. Priorities are what is important on the way to achieving those goals. For your life to change and your goals to matter, your goals must exist within your priorities.

For instance, if your goal is a career that requires a great deal of travel but your family life is a high priority, then the two might not be a good mix. If your goal is to be financially successful but your priorities are to spend most of your time hanging out with friends, then you need to reconsider one or the other. Or if a personal priority is honesty/integrity but your boss is trying to influence you to lie on a report or to “adjust” some numbers on the accounting statement, then you're going to have a problem.

What are your priorities? Let me show you a list to get you started. I've divided the list into two categories—personal priorities and business priorities. There are many more than these, but the list will help you understand what we're talking about.

There are plenty of others, and you'll no doubt have some that aren't on this list. I'm not as interested in your specific personal priorities as much as that you realize that the sooner you
understand
your priorities, the sooner you'll be able to move forward with real change.

Now that you have your priority list, use that list to filter all the changes in your life. Every job, every project, and every task you want to accomplish should fit within the framework of your priorities. Think of it as the boundary of integrity that surrounds your life.

Why? Because it keeps you focused on your goal and eliminates the time wasters in your life.

MANAGING YOUR PRIORITIES MEANS MANAGING YOUR TIME

At the highest levels of American business, time is valued more highly than money. That's why CEOs of major corporations have private jets standing by at the airport. With a private jet, they can leave at the last minute, bypass all the airport security checks and ticket counters, arrive at a meeting one thousand miles away, and be back home in their own beds that night, ready to be in the office first thing in the morning. If they took a commercial flight, they would have to leave the office much earlier, endure all the hardships of modern-day travel, possibly miss the last flight back, spend the night in a local hotel, and then miss half the next day flying back home.

It's all about time. The more time an executive can spend leading his or her company instead of sitting on an airplane, the more valuable he or she is and the more profit the company can make.

The Bondage of E-mail

Remember when we used to actually be productive? Now most employees spend their day managing e-mails. In fact, recent studies indicate that 40 percent of a typical employee's day is spent sending or receiving e-mail. I like writer Julie Morgenstern's advice: never check your e-mail in the morning. Julie discovered the incredible time-suck of e-mail and learned that when you check e-mail first thing in the morning, the next thing you realize is that it's lunchtime and you're still managing e-mail messages. She realized it's much better to focus first on the top priority of the day. You'll see your productivity shoot up.

The technology that was supposed to free us up has simply created handcuffs, especially when it comes to smartphones, iPads, and other handheld devices. I recently met three very successful business leaders for dinner in San Diego. Great restaurant, fabulous meal, engaging conversation—except for one thing. One of the guests simply could not put down his BlackBerry. In spite of the atmosphere, excellent dinner companions, and fascinating discussion, he was chained to the device and could only put it down long enough to occasionally take a bite of his steak.