A Signpost on the Road to Significance

This past weekend, after giving a talk on thinking through how each of us uses our money, I found myself in a very strange conversation.  A woman came up to me and asked to speak with me.  I assumed she was going to discuss the topic of the speech.  I challenged the crowd to think through how they use their money.  I suggested that there were three ways to use money:  Share it, Save it or Spend it.  I encouraged the audience to make their first priority sharing, because no matter how bad things were getting, there were others around the world who had it much worse and could use your help.

I figured she wanted to tell me about how hard it was for her to prioritize sharing as she had so many bills and really needed to save some money for the future before she even considered sharing.

Well, I could not have been more wrong.  In fact, she spoke to me more as a prophet than as a person.  She challenged me with a word that has played over in my head ever since…”Rectify”.

She told me that my message and my words were impactful and that they needed to be heard.  But she also looked into my soul and said that I need to rectify my soul with my heart and my head.

How did she know?  How could she tell that as passionate as I am about living a life of significance, more often than not, my heart, my head and my soul are not fully rectified.  Often my head wants to travel the road of success.  Go back to building my kingdom and building up my bank account.  I often figure, “What the heck, everybody else does.”  At times, my heart wonders why should I sacrifice for others, isn’t better to just take care of me and my family and not worry about the rest of the world.  My soul is the only constant; it is in the service of others that true living begins.

For the past several days, I have wondered how many other people live a life that is not internally rectified.  Do we all live a life where our hearts and our minds are conflicted with our souls?  Does your mind continuously fight with our heart?  I know for me, this has been a battle that rages on a daily bases.  In fact, a lot of my energy is spent in fighting this battle. 

For me it is the battle of success vs. significance: a battle of self-focus verses others focused, a battle of my kingdom or a kingdom greater than me.

What is your internal battle?  What needs to be rectified in your life?

Maybe it is your desire to be a loving husband or a caring wife, but your actions just do not seem to match your heart.  Maybe you have longed to be an involved parent, who has time for your children, but day after day, you find no time to spend with your kids and the years seem to pass by without anything changing.  Maybe you have been thinking about getting involved in a philanthropic cause but have yet to pull the trigger.  You keep saying that service is on your heart, but work and making money has crowded out everything you have ever dreamed of.  Maybe you have wanted to support someone who has decided to make their life about serving the poor and they need your help but you just can’t seem to write the check because you are worried about the future of the economy.

What ever it is, I believe that we all need to get to a point where we rectify our hearts, minds and souls.  I know for me, I would eliminate so much anxiety and save so much energy if my daily life was rectified with who I hope to be.

Now I am not deceiving you or myself by proclaiming that this is easy.  But then again, the road to significance is not easy.  Just like all roads, there are signposts that we need to pay attention to.  This weekend, I ran into a bright neon sign on the road to significance, it was disguised as a woman in the crowd, it has continued to flash in my head…RECTIFY.

 

Highlighting Significance

No matter what side of the political isle you may be on, the last 4 years, or maybe even 8 years, have been frustrating to say the least.  Just about every news report that has come out of Washington has highlighted all of the problems we have had as a nation and as a government.  It has felt like everything we have done, as a nation, has been a failure.  Our success rate seems to be at an all time low.

 

Well, this past Monday, I had the privilege of sitting in the audience as President Bush was interviewed on the 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day.  Rick Warren, the author of A Purpose Driven Life and the pastor from Saddleback Church, was talking with President Bush and First Lady, Laura Bush, about the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).  Now I have been around developing world health care and initiatives since 2004, and although I have heard about PEPFAR, I cannot remember a signal news report or telecast about the effects of the program.

 

As I sat in the audience, I was amazed to learn that, because of the generosity of the American people and the initiative of the Bush administration, more than 2,000,000 people in Africa are receiving antiretroviral (ARV) medication and more than 10,000,000 people have benefited from this unprecedented commitment to global health and the AIDS virus.  As I sat and listened to the President of the United States who has been criticized at every turn (often well deserved criticism), I wondered when did we become a society that only highlights exorbitant financial success or the failure of any kind. 

So far, any and all of the news coverage coming from the event has been negative.  Some have used the opportunity to blast the Bush Administration one more time for its policy on Iraq.  Others have done their best to belittle the award and completely avoid the purpose of the PEACE award, to celebrate the great work the US has done in the fight against AIDS.

Why, as a country and a culture, do we always look to turn something good into something bad. Why do we not highlight and celebrate the significance that our lives and our actions have on the rest of the world.

PEPFAR is probably one of dozens of significant initiatives and programs that our government is engaged in and although the Bush Administration has plenty of things we can be upset about, both democratic and republican led endeavors that are changing the world and making it a better place to live are almost always un-noticed or even neglected by our press, by our public and by our citizens.  I am as much to blame as anyone.  Even as a person with a personal interest in Africa and health care in the developing world, I have never taken the time to learn about what our government or even our citizenry is doing that makes a difference.

If we are going to travel on the Road to Significance, we are going to have to start to highlight the significant efforts that we are all making, including our government, our corporations and our families. 

Oh, don’t get me wrong, we still have an obligation to report on the mistakes of an administration or the errors of an individual, but what we decide to highlight and to bring to the forefront of our lives is what needs to be re-examined.  For me, I want to live in a world that is highlighting significance;  a place where the service of others is held in higher regard than the failure of some;  a country were our caring is more meaningful than our callousness;  a world were our significance is more important than our success.

I want to travel on the Road to Significance.

Welcome to the Road To Significance

Everywhere I turn, whether it is the television, the newspaper, the internet or a conversation, everyone is trying desperately to make sense of the current market meltdown.  As Wall Street unravels and the very core belief that success is at the center of our society begins to breakdown, I am taken back by the void that is being left in so many people’s lives.

Men and women, who just two or three months ago, seemed to have full control over their lives and a sense of dominance in regards to the world around them, have now been reduced to a bundle of fear and anxiety with no sense of stability or security.  Success, which had become not just their foundation, but their pedestal  and their stage, has quickly become their prison cell, their shackles, their ball and chain.

Back in 1995, the early stages of the economic boom that has, for the most part, remained in place until 2008, a man by the name of Bob Buford challenged me to reevaluate my life.  He asked a question that demanded far more than just an answer, it demanded an action:  “Is the rest of your life going to be about success or significance?”

You see at that time, I was a young man with tremendous early success in the business world.  Although compared to today’s wealth I may have seemed like a pauper, I was a 31 year-old married man who owned three different businesses, money in the bank and a future that seemed to have no boundaries.  Monetary success almost seemed like a given as long as I kept focused on the prize.  So when I was asked whether my life was about success or significance, my answer was both.  As far as I knew, success was significance.  The more money I made, the more significant I would become.  Success equaled money; Money equaled influence; Influence equaled significance; Significance equaled power.

Bob was very quick to set the record straight.  According to Bob, success was utilizing all of your God-given talents, gifts and treasures to build your own kingdom.  Success focused on the bigger house, the bigger bank account, the bigger title at your job and the bigger position in society.  It was all about serving you.  Significance, on the other hand, was taking the same God-given talents, gifts and treasures and focusing them on serving others well.  To building up the kingdom of others; to serving your neighbor, your community, your country, the world.  A significant life was a life of service, not a life of success.

As I look back over the past 13 years and I see the chaos today’s market place is causing, I can’t help but wonder what the world would look like right now if our society had been focused on significance rather than success.

First of all, would the collapse of the market place have even happened if the executives on Wall Street were not solely focused on success and returns that led to greed and over-exposure, but rather they focused on how their firm may play a significant role in serving not just their clients’ financial needs,  but the well being of their investors as well as the companies and organizations in which they invested their capital.   Imagine what Wall Street might look like today if CitiBank, or Goldman, or even Lehman Brothers had focused on building other people’s kingdoms as opposed to building the kingdom of Lehman Brothers, for example.

Now don’t get me wrong, we cannot only look to the leaders of the Wall Street firms and banks and blame them for this unraveling. We need to look at our own lives and our own decisions.  Our need to check the boxes of success that define us as a people:  The bigger house, the faster car, the expensive dinner, the private plane or the extravagant array of clothing.  We all got caught in the trap of success.  Let’s face it, success is just an illusion, because no matter how big you build your kingdom, there is always another addition you want to add on.

So here we sit, 13 years after I was first challenged to live a life of success or significance.  I have made some adjustments but still find myself straddling the abyss.  I conjure up an image of myself with one foot in the boat of success and one in the boat of significance and the current is forcing the boats to drift about.  It is time for me to decide which boat I am in, which boat will be my Life Boat if you will.

I have always wanted to say my life was about significance, but the fact is I really wanted to be in the boat of success doing significant things.  I think 2008 has made me realize that if we choose the boat of success as our vehicle to significance, in the end, we are really forced to prioritize our own kingdom because that is, after all, what keeps us afloat.  Therefore, when the rough waters come, like they have over the past several months in the stock market and the economy, we begin to fear that our boat will sink and we will drown because the success we believed in was not enough to keep us alive.  Yet, if we have made our lifeboat one of significance and the storm rages, we find there are more opportunities to serve others than ever before.  Suddenly our boat does not become a sinking ship but rather a rescue boat for others who have been lost at sea. 

As so many people begin to go down with their boat of success, I want to have a place where we all begin a new journey, a journey in a new boat, a boat of significance.  So as the pundits spin this economic collapse and try to figure out how to get back to success, I believe we need to abandon ship and begin the journey to significance by getting into a new boat, a boat that serves others well and builds a kingdom for us all.

Over the past 13 years I have learned one thing.  If success is the lighthouse in your life, there will be little or no room for significance.  Success is all encompassing, a moving target, an imaginary destination.  However, if the lighthouse of your life is significance, there will always be plenty of room for success.  The journey of significance is not an end place but rather a life better lived because we serve and love one another well.

Welcome to The Road to Significance.