Systems for Success

How Mothers Shape the World

Both our married children recently had their first babies—two beautiful girls! As I've watched these new mothers learning to lead our precious granddaughters, it caused me to ponder the power of a mother's leadership to shape our world.

In our society, we don't always think of parents as being equivalent to "leaders." Leaders, we believe, are heads of state, prime ministers, elected officials, CEOs of powerful corporations, media personalities, and others. Those people, we think, are the real movers and shakers of society.

Are they? In the organic cocoon of the family and home, character forms. And the character of each individual forms society. The person who makes decisions on war and peace in a political leadership position, the person who makes decisions that build or destroy companies comes from a home which shaped him or her. More specifically, that person came from a mother.

One thing all human beings have in common is that we all had mothers. Our mother might have been great; she might have been terrible. She might still be our foremost fan and source of emotional support, or she might have abandoned us at birth. She might have helped or harmed us, or done both, but we simply wouldn't be here if it were not for mothers. Mothers are, at the very least, a biological necessity for the continuance of humankind.

What is more, for good or ill, mothers have tremendous impact and influence over who their children become. While mothers cannot take full credit or full blame for the way their children turn out, they are undoubtedly significant contributors to those outcomes. Hence, they shape society.

A mother forms a child's first impressions of the world, even while the child is inside the womb. Some research shows the neurological influence the qualities of a mother's thoughts and emotions have on a child. Common sense tells us that a tense and anxious mother or one exulting with the joys of laughter and song has an impact on the person in her womb, even if only at the level of unhealthy or healthy heart rates. Of course, what a mother ingests also impacts her child, sometimes for life.

In that sense, mothers are the first leaders we ever encounter in this life. The way they lead their lives starts settling into the folds of our brains early on to mold us into the people we are.

Abraham Lincoln, considered one of our greatest presidents, said, "All that I am, I owe to my angel mother."

Even in eras where women had far less power in the voting booth and the marketplace, there was a saying: "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." Mothers exerted enormous influence over society by raising the children who would become tomorrow's adults.

Motherhood is vital for the existence of society in both biological and non-biological ways. Yet motherhood is rarely honored or as highly esteemed in our society as a position of leadership. Our culture gives off endless signals that the commitments made by mothers are not that important compared to what women may do in professional roles outside the home. Motherhood is not recognized as a world-influencing profession, a role of genuinely heroic proportions that propels society forward in innumerable ways.

One of the reasons for the devaluation of motherhood is that there is no economic value attached to it. Yet mothers provide services of high economic value. To purchase all the services a mother provides for a family would amount to about $143,102 per year, estimates Salary.com. This estimate is based upon the market value of replacing a mother's services by hiring a cook, a maid, a driver, a bookkeeper, a childcare worker, a laundress, a shopper, and probably a psychological counselor too.

That's just for a 40-hour work week! Mothers often work long into the evening and through the night. They are at work before office hours too.

Of course, we all know that mothers contribute things that cannot be measured in dollars, invaluable things that humanity cannot do without. Yet we often hear in our culture, when someone is even willing to admit it: "I'm just a mom."

Just a mom? Actually, a society-shaping leader!

As a society, we do women a disservice not to support the life-altering leadership role they play as mothers. Raising children is something all of society should be interested in and supportive of, for mothers are helping to create the future.

Moms are foundational to healthy and happy families, which are the building blocks of safe and prosperous communities and societies. An important part of motherhood is creating an environment in which the family can thrive--providing healthy food, cleanliness, cultural knowledge, pleasant words, a soothing voice, peace, and support. Creating a haven for her family is valuable opportunity for a mother.

Some people remember the comforting and reassuring smells and tastes of their mothers' cooking long into adulthood. They gaze with fondness over dilapidated decorations their mothers put up to celebrate important traditions. A compliment or a "word to the wise" from Mom can stay with and direct a person's entire life.

A mother can create an atmosphere in a family where the members feel accepted and safe. Creating a welcoming, cozy, and warm home can create refreshment of body and soul after being out in a world that can be very harsh and rejecting at times. It is immeasurably valuable to have that safe haven.

A dedicated mother gives each child the individual attention he or she needs to flourish. She is the one who notices the drooping lip, who listens and offers counsel and help. She is the one who notices the hot forehead and gets out the thermometer. A loving mother is the one who points out, "You love to draw. Do you think you could draw a building?" or "Let's spend some extra time together on your math skills," or "I notice how much you like to help people. That's a wonderful quality in you."

A loving mother is the one who knows you best and always has your best interests at heart. Where can you find someone else like that?

The classic Disney animated film Peter Pan had a homesick Wendy contemplating mothers in song. Part of the lyrics of "Your Mother and Mine" are:

"Ask your heart to tell you her worth.

Your heart will say, 'Heaven on earth.'

Another word for divine: your mother and mine."

Moms also give emotional cues to relating to others. She reinforces the family by showing how much she values each member from young to old through her care and appreciation of each. She demonstrates manners and how to form good relationships with others, acting on and instructing children in the power and value of close connections with fellow human beings. These connections are not only vital to human health and fulfillment, but they also help people succeed in the workplace as well, demonstrating emotional intelligence.

The power of a mother to help a child learn to attach to other human beings is very real. If it doesn't happen in this relationship, it is vitally important for those deprived to seek neuro-emotional therapy; there is definitely help out there for learning to attach to others in healthy ways.

Mothers offer companionship. They can be wide-eyed explorers along with their children, making life together fun and exciting and reinforcing the joys of collaboration.

Mothers need to be resourceful; they make the best of what they have. When the children are bored, the creative mother comes up with ways to productively occupy the hours. In the traditional home, the man brought resources in, but it was the woman who made the best out of those resources, no matter how scarce or abundant they were. She made new curtains out of an old table cloth or a delicious stew out of odds and ends. She made a rainy afternoon a joyful discovery of the frontier as she put up a makeshift tent and taught her children about heroic explorers.

In modern culture, there is a constant pull for both parents to work full-time to bring in more resources. Yet isn't utilizing existing resources one of the most important parts of any economic system? Every enterprise needs to maximize its resources since resources are, by definition, limited.

In all cultures, in all societies, the powerful results of motherhood are being experienced right now, shaping our world. How much does it cost society in health care dollars, rehabilitation, and social welfare programs to make up for the actions of people who grew up without adequate mothering? Billions! Training kids to be benefits to society is an immeasurable contribution to society. What high costs to society if mothers are not able to raise their children well because they feel pressured into the workplace or unsupported in this vital role.

Mothers are the most influential people in history as they shape and empower their children. Mothers, grandmothers, and mother figures have molded society by producing functioning, positive, productive human beings.

The following is a sample list of what I would consider good motherly qualities. It is clear that these are the qualities of a good leader:

• Artful management of a facility (the home) and the people in it (family members)
• Resourcefulness
• Ability to multi-task
• Consistency
• Steadfastness
• Empowerment
• Encouragement
• Actions taken in the best interests of the whole
• Toughness
• Resilience
• Creativity
• Wise counsel
• Listening skills
• Trustworthiness

Wouldn't you vote for someone who had those qualities? Wouldn't you endorse a person like that to lead a company or world enterprise?

Children may not grow up to be famous people or heads of companies or countries. Still, they will be influencers and leaders. They will have an impact in their private and professional relationships and through their public personas. If mothers can raise children who add value wherever they go, who are benefits to themselves and society, then mothers lead the way in shaping society to create a better future for all.

Thank you

Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. We'd also really appreciate any feedback or questions that might guide what we talk about in future episodes.

Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and we read each and every one of them.

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The Busy Executive's Magic Elixir

Exercise is one of the greatest systems for increasing your effectiveness as a leader in business and/or family. Exercise is so powerfully beneficial in multiple ways that it can be said to be the mother lode, the fountain of youth—the magic elixir.

Physical activity helps you in body and mind. It is clinically proven to reduce depression. It brings clarity of thought and reduces stress, energizing you to function at peak performance. It can even improve your sex life! What's not to like?

Apparently, quite a bit, if we judge by the all-time high epidemic of inactivity in our world today. Physical inactivity is now one of the leading causes of death worldwide. The situation is grave.

Yet we all know that getting enough exercise is challenging. Most of us sit for hours at a time each day: at a desk, behind the wheel, or on the couch in front of a screen. Even when we are away from work, we spend many waking hours in sedentary screen-facing as we entertain ourselves with Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Netflix, TV, and messaging.

Fortunately, increased physical activity is available to all of us for the taking. It's free. It costs nothing. Exercise doesn't need to be complicated or expensive; you don't have to join a gym or buy new workout clothes to become more active. This key to a better life is entirely voluntary and readily available to just about everyone.

First, we'll take a look at the serious toll inactivity is taking on our health. Then we'll provide some tips on how to build exercise into daily life, how to design a successful exercise plan, and how to incorporate three types of exercise into your busy schedule.

The Toll of Inactivity

Let's take an unflinching look at the downside of inactivity. The news is increasingly bad.

Research has linked sitting for long periods with many health concerns. These concerns range from obesity to increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist, and abnormal cholesterol levels. Prolonged sitting also seems to increase the risk of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Some experts say that inactive people have a 147 percent higher risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke. World Health Organization studies show that physical inactivity contributes to over three million preventable deaths worldwide each year (that's around six percent of all deaths). Outside of infectious diseases like AIDS, inactivity is the fourth leading cause of death.

The Mayo Clinic did an analysis of thirteen studies of sitting time and activity levels. They found that those who sat for more than eight hours a day with no physical activity had a risk of dying similar to the risks posed by obesity and smoking.

However, there is no need to despair if you are stuck in a desk job! Mayo's analysis of data from more than 1 million people found that sixty to seventy-five minutes of moderately intense physical activity a day countered the effects of too much sitting.

Exercise is preventive of sedentary lifestyle problems, and it is also curative when a sedentary lifestyle is necessary for significant portions of the day.

What's more, too many people suffer from hip, joint, neck, and lower back pain. These kinds of maladies can be alleviated by getting up and moving around instead of sitting for long periods.

Human beings are built to stand upright, stretch, and move. Our heart and cardiovascular systems, as well as all the other systems in our bodies, seem more to function more effectively with that kind of stimulation. The human body is designed to move, to be active, to optimize its functioning through exercise.

When we are physically active, our overall energy levels and endurance improve. What is more, our bones and muscles become and stay strong. This is important because both muscles and bones lose density as we age. Exercise sends blood to weakened areas and strengthens cartilage and increases bone density, making physical activity a leading prescription for arthritis and bone mineral loss.

Choose to Move!

Many people find the idea of a regular, rigorous exercise regimen daunting. Yet there are simple ways to pack more physical activity into daily life.

• Stand rather than sit whenever you can.
• Rise from sitting at least every thirty minutes.

Watching TV? Get up in the middle of a movie to do stretches, crunches, or lift weights. Jump up during commercials to do household tasks; don't flip to another channel. You can walk on a treadmill or pedal a stationary bike while watching TV too.

• Get a desk you can stand at, or build yours up so it is standing level height.

• Take a walk with someone as a substitute for a sit-down meeting.

• Position a work surface, including a computer screen and keyboard, above a treadmill to walk throughout the day.

• Walk or pace while talking on the phone.

• Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Walk on the moving stairs of the escalator.

• Park farther away and walk more. This has the added benefit of losing the stress of finding a close parking spot.

• Do squats while brushing your teeth.

• Rather than sitting down to read, listen to recorded books while walking, cleaning, or working in the garden.

• Stand up on public transport or get off one stop early and walk to your destination.

An Exercise Regimen: How Much Do We Need?

There's no single workout routine or type of exercise that works for everyone. The most important thing is to find an activity that you can do consistently, either because you like it or because you like the results it gives you so much that you're willing to do it regularly. This could be anything from walking to swimming to taking a dance class.

In general, thirty minutes of physical activity, five days per week, will serve a person well. In general, between two and a half to three hours of intentional physical activity a week is good. If you do a lot of sitting, though, you need more.

If thirty solid minutes of exercise doesn't appeal to you, know that you can be active for ten minutes three times a day, and you will achieve the same goal. A simple breakdown of this would be a ten-minute walk before work, another ten minutes of activity during the lunch hour, and another ten minutes after dinner. That is very do-able for most people.

What is the biggest reason people don't exercise? "I don't have time!" Yet there is a way to maximize the effectiveness of exercise so that you save time but still get the benefits.

The guidelines say that seventy-five minutes of vigorous activity per week is equivalent to 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity per week. A recent study also found that as little as one minute of all-out sprinting, along with nine minutes of light exercise, leads to similar improvements in health and fitness as a fifty-minute workout at a moderate pace when done three times a week for twelve weeks.

The Three Types of Exercise Needed

Ideally, we would all get three types of exercise: Aerobic, Strength Training, and Balance and Flexibility Training.

Aerobic activity is the kind we often think of when we think of exercise—that is, strenuous activity like running or biking, breathing hard and dripping sweat. This kind of exercise is critical to boosting fitness. Yet the two other types of exercise—strength training and balance and flexibility training—are also important.

Dr. Edward Laskowski, the co-director of the Mayo Sports Medicine Center, says that aerobic exercise, while necessary, is "not as effective for overall health" on its own without the other two types of exercises. Doing all three types of exercise maximizes fitness and prevents injury.

Strength training makes muscles stronger, which in turn helps to support and protect joints— and this could help prevent injury during aerobic exercise. Balance exercises use muscle strength in a coordinated way to stabilize movements and can also reduce the risk of injuries like ankle sprains. Flexibility reduces injuries and improves the range of motion around the joints. All three types of exercises support one another's benefits, so it is important to find ways to incorporate all three into any workout system.

Let's look at the three types of exercise in more detail.

Cardiovascular Aerobic Exercise

This is repetitive, rhythmic exercise that increases our heart rate and requires us to breathe harder, using more oxygen. It is often called "cardio" for short.

• Running, swimming, dancing, brisk walking, playing a sport such as tennis, soccer or basketball, doing chores such as raking leaves or mowing the lawn

• Activates air and blood efficiency in the body
• Strengthens the heart so it pumps blood more efficiently
• Lowers our overall resting heart rate
• Increases levels of "good" cholesterol and lowers levels of "bad" cholesterol
• Makes daily activities such as mowing the lawn or climbing stairs easier

You never know when you may need the power this kind of exercise gives you! While many of us may not have to run for our lives like Jason Bourne, being fit can come in handy. If your connecting flight is about to take off when you land, you might be able to run the terminal race to your next gate without keeling over!

Strength or Resistance Exercise

This is the process of building and maintaining muscles in the body by using progressively heavier weights (or resistance).

• Resistance training, weight lifting, toning, or body-building, including push-ups, sit-ups or even intense gardening like digging or snow shoveling

• Develops, maintains or prevents loss of muscle mass throughout your lifetime
• Maintains or lowers body fat percentage
• Strengthens bones and reduces the risk of osteoporosis
• Increases lean muscle mass, which is crucial to burning more calories for weight control
• Makes daily activities easier, like lifting a carry-on bag into the overhead bin of an airplane, carrying groceries from the car, and picking up bags of mulch for the garden

Strength exercises should work all of the major muscle groups in the body over time—legs, hips, back, chest, abdomen, shoulders, and arms with a few sets of at least eight to twelve repetitions of an activity (like lifting a weight). To get the most benefit, each set of repetitions needs to work the same muscle to the point where it's hard to do another repetition. Rest a minute or so between sets and then repeat another set of resistance repetitions working that same muscle. Do this for three or four sets of 8-12 repetitions of the same exercise working the muscle group you are focused on for that day.

When you first begin a strength training regimen, start with a light weight then gradually increase weight or resistance over time as muscles gain strength. Don't exercise the same muscle group two days in a row because muscles need time to recover. They are rebuilt during the recovery time.

Flexibility and Balance Exercise

Flexibility exercise is exercise that stretches or lengthens our muscles.

• There are two types: static stretching, where you stretch a muscle without moving, and dynamic stretching, which combines stretching with movements. Many experts advise doing dynamic stretching as part of a warm-up before a workout and static stretching after a workout. For static stretching, we should hold each stretch for ten to thirty seconds.

• Helps us become more limber, which makes certain activities of daily living easier
• Helps prevent injuries when you're performing everyday body movements and especially during exercise
• Reduces muscle tension, increases circulation, and improves posture

Balance exercises improve our ability to control and stabilize our body's position. This type of exercise is particularly important for older adults because otherwise, balance tends to get worse with age.

• Shifting our weight from side to side
• Standing on one foot
• Using a balance board or stability ball
• Doing tai chi, yoga, or Pilates

Ideally, we should include all three of these exercise types in our workouts. Does that mean three separate workouts?

No. You can combine some exercises together, like strength and balance training. You could do bicep curls while standing on one leg. Some workouts, like yoga, include strength, flexibility and balance exercises.

Your workout might include running or walking briskly for thirty minutes for aerobic exercise, then doing strength and balance exercises combined, with static stretches at the finish.

Developing Your Own Exercise Routine

Some people find that the momentum of routine and habit help them to maintain a self-designed exercise program. Others find doing the same thing week after week very boring! Some find it helps to get into an exercise routine by exercising with a friend. Choose a buddy who can encourage you or do it with you at regular appointed times. An alternative is to get a personal trainer to hold you accountable. In both cases, you're a lot less likely to miss a workout because you have someone waiting for you.

A general rule is to start out low and progress slow. This means starting with a level of activity that's fairly light and gradually increasing the duration and intensity.

Experts emphasize that if you're just starting out, low-impact types of exercise are best. Walking, swimming, biking, or using an elliptical machine are good ones to try. Low-impact exercises are best for beginners because they're easy on the joints and muscles.

If people go from zero to one hundred, they're not going to stick with the system. It's better to start with small chunks of exercise and add in gradually to the point that it's part of your lifestyle.

What system will you start with? Make a plan you think will work for you, and write it down. Revise it as you find what works best for your body and your lifestyle.

Making the Time

The biggest reason (or excuse) people give for not exercising is that they don't have time. Exercise is important enough to our lives and well-being that we should make time for it. What's more, even as little as ten minutes of physical activity can be beneficial. This can be as simple as getting up ten minutes earlier to do something vigorous.

Some people are motivated by setting a specific exercise goal, like running a 5K or improving running time or achieving other milestones.

If you want to feel better, have more energy, add years to your life, and increase your effectiveness in leading your family and business, just exercise! Create a plan, get a buddy to support you, and start doing something consistently, every day, to increase your physical activity. It will improve your life and be well worth the time you make for it.

For the busy executive or family leader, exercise can be the fountain of health, youthfulness, and optimal life and work. We've found the magic elixir. Let's stop making excuses and start moving more!

Thank you

Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. We'd also really appreciate any feedback or questions that might guide what we talk about in future episodes.

Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and we read each and every one of them.

JOIN THE SYSTEMS FOR SUCCESS COMMUNITY!

• Subscribe to the Systems for Success Podcast on IOS or Apple Itunes.
• Subscribe to the Systems for Success Podcast on Android or Windows OS.
• Enter your email in one of the email opt-ins on this site for regular emails from Lonnie Gienger or the Gienger Family on additional Systems for Success.
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What Will Your Family Look Like Seven Generations From Now?

I was really on the hot seat. I felt like I was being interrogated! Almost a hundred people were staring at me as I stood under the bright lights. One after another they bombarded me with deeply personal questions like: "What is your deepest fear in regard to this?" and "What is behind that fear?" and "Isn't this really all about you wanting control?"

I had to answer too. Was I sweating it out!

The scene of my mental torture was a conference in Miami for families and family business owners. The facilitator of the conference had asked me that morning to volunteer at her session if no one else did. I had easily agreed. I am not uncomfortable on stage. I figured I'd be up there for a couple of minutes and that would be it. Simple. Yet the hour-long grilling was so intense, I wished I had never agreed to be a guinea pig!

The facilitator has a proprietary system for how to solve problems by asking effective questions. The questions were effective all right--effectively making me wrack my brain to come up with answers to things I never thought I would be asked in public.

At the beginning of the session, the facilitator had asked everyone in the room to write down their current most pressing issue or concern in their family or family business. I had known instantly what mine was. My son and daughter-in-love had recently announced they are having a baby girl, and the thought had hit me as a stunning reality on the flight to the conference. It was happening; with the second grandchild coming soon, we were really a three-generation family; a new era was already dawning. This was real.

When asked, I read this pressing concern out loud at the conference:

"What do I do now to help ensure that our family legacy, especially our values and purpose, flourish in the third to seventh generations?"

The audience had promptly asked: "Why seven generations?"

I explained that it was based on the seventh generation principle of the Iroquois. It comes from their constitution, a model for our own very successful Constitution. Iroquois leaders of tribes and families are to consider how their choices will affect seven generations. Talk about forward thinking!

The history of the Indian nations shows that it is only those families that rigorously maintain this seventh generation thinking that actually reaches the 7th generation and beyond to actually become a tribe. And I'd like to think that maybe something our family is doing in this generation could eventually result in a tribe that will have a specific impact for good on this planet 200 years from now.

The World Will Get Better When We Do Family Well.

I found the Iroquois perspective very compatible with my own ideas of leaving a lasting legacy to future generations. I believe the future of our world will be dictated by the progressive health of families and businesses in society. There is an undeniable rule of progress that any time you can build on the failures, successes, and learnings of something that happened before, you are more likely to have a better outcome in the next iteration. Unfortunately, the prevailing paradigm is that somehow families are the one exception to that rule. We have come to believe that each generation is supposed to stand alone, that there is no need to build on the successes, failures, and learnings of prior generations. But the way the world will get better is when we do family in a way where each generation builds on the shoulders of the prior generation to become increasingly more successful…however that family intentionally defines success.

After all the pointed questions from the audience, I was required to write down all the solutions offered and commit to doing three of them. One of them was to have an open conversation about this with my family, which I did. The results are in the Systems for Success podcast, episode 24. You might want to have a listen.

The eight members of my family going back and forth about this was easy in comparison to the probing questions of that audience! Still, my adult children are autonomous, critical thinkers and they did some ferreting out of their own. I am grateful that they agreed that leaving a lasting legacy to future generations was a worthy and valid goal.

First, we went back and forth about what success in that would look like. Next, we came up with ways to make it happen.

Success in families and/or in business doesn't just happen. It has to be intentional. The right systems and processes have to be conceived and put into place. Many people think success is a matter of something that just happens if you are lucky or work hard enough. On the contrary, we believe that behind every success is a system in action. The magic is in the system.

How many people are systematic about how they approach their family's legacy? They may be very systematic about bequeathing money and property. But what about the non-material legacy? What's the plan for passing that on? What will success in that look like and what should be implemented in the present to make it happen in the future?

Affinity - A Common Thread

My family and I agreed that a minimum baseline of success would be a clear bond of affinity throughout our extended family seven generations from now. We looked at one definition of affinity that seemed to resonate with all of us: "Close connection marked by community of interests or similarity in nature or character"

Seven generations from now, we wanted our relations to feel an affinity with their extended family, including us. Beyond this, in our maximum vision, their individual and family compasses would contain some reflection of our current generation's values, mission and vision. Was it realistic, we asked ourselves, that our seventh generation descendants would share "a community of interests" with us? No; we doubted our descendants were all going to play instruments or like backpacking and skiing like we do. What we hoped was that there would be a "similarity in nature or character…or value set" or, as we put it, a common thread.

We decided that our main common thread as a family was spirituality. We hoped our descendants would share that. This doesn't mean being the same religion. It shouldn't be rigid, and it has to encourage the creativity and expansion of future generations, including people who would marry into the family from differing backgrounds. Even now, in our family, we have different approaches as to how we live out our family values and mission statement. Yet spirituality binds us together; it is our main common thread. If our descendants shared that, it would be a marker of success.

But how to pass down this and other parts of our family mission vision?

A Tangible Legacy

We thought it could help maintain the philosophical legacy if we could also leave some tangible legacy, like books that were important to us, documentation of past goals and accomplishments, documentation of individual family values and visions, videos of important family moments, memories and stories, maybe even some physical memorabilia that represent things that are important to the family. We talked about our ancestors' journeys from Europe to America and how we wanted to pass down their stories through an oral tradition, but that we should also document our lives well.

I told them about the office of a family business in Minneapolis, a national company in its seventh generation of family ownership. In the center of their office, they had dedicated a small little museum area to the family--all the generations from the 1800s. There were artifacts of the family's projects, interests, and milestones--even old love letters!

They had the first generation's copy of Poor Richard's Almanac, open to things he had marked as important: values and principles related to money and good business practices. The family still tried to align their business with those values and principles.

From that, we realized that we had to document our lives with what we wanted future generations to know about us. We needed to leave tangible items that told our descendants who we were and what we stood for.

Individual Yet Part of the Whole

Then we tackled the question of how to create and preserve a family legacy but to allow for new interpretations and variations on the themes because of people's individual personalities, interests, and approaches.

Here the married among my adult children made large contributions. They had already faced the fact that they wanted to be loyal to the family's values and vision but that they also needed to create their own unique family identity. We decided that the best way to describe it would be that each new family would have its own "flavor" (and that prospective mates would probably be attracted to members of our family because they had a similar "seasoning" in their backgrounds).

We realized that without extension and creativity, without each generation adding to and expanding the vision through their unique interpretation and bringing their own strengths to it, the family legacy would be weakened over time. Also, we decided we would not want future generations to think they had dishonored the family name because they had their own passions and interests, and their own autonomy.

My wife Shelley summed it up: "If you guys did not expand beyond what dad and I originally taught and instilled in our family, I would feel like we would have failed. No parent wants to see their kids be stagnant but to be leaders of change and good in the world."

Timeless Values

I had done some study on lasting family businesses and families. I had discovered that some families could flourish to the fourth generation by luck or by accident or because of common interests. Other times it was because they all lived in the same part of the country, or because of the sheer force of the strong personalities of the first generation. Yet none of that was enough to carry to the seventh generation. To last to the seventh generation, something had to withstand the test of time. There had to be timeless values.

Love and acceptance, we decided, would have the strength to permeate and unite seven generations. With love and acceptance, even during the messy process of growing and changing and being different, things would hold together. Relationships were more important than being "right."

To last to the seventh generation, something must withstand the test of time.

Maybe, we speculated, it would boil down to a few broad words like leadership, health, love, service and family. Those simple words and concepts have been honored in every society, in every generation. It is hard to imagine a future society where courage is not admired, friendship abandoned, service and leadership de-valued, or family ties completely dead. Timeless values stand the test of time. They traverse generations.

Your Seventh Generation Descendant

Now I'm going to ask you to imagine your seventh generation descendant. He has your eyes, Uncle Larry's voice, and your granddaughter's lithe physique. He plays a mean piano, just like your Great Grandmother Lucie.

What else do you want him to have in the fiber of his character that can see him through the challenges of the 23rd century? What ancestral whisper do you want to come to him as he faces life? Courage? Family? Service? Leadership? Total acceptance and love?

What can you build into the spiritual DNA of your family now that will strengthen him, that seventh generation iteration, who is a lot like you and plenty different? What lasting legacy can you give to him so he can steer straight in a world that will undoubtedly be very different from our world today? What can you give him that will be a lasting legacy?

It's worth thinking about. It's worth being intentional about, and it's worth fighting for now.

After all, he's family.

Time is precious in our high speed, high-pressure world. We want to achieve more for ourselves, our families, and maybe for our communities. In order to do so, we need time, and we need to look for ways to maximize that scarce modern commodity: time.

We often try to beat time by spending less time resting. We eke out one more hour of watching a late night show or using social media. We fuel our tired selves with caffeine.

Such a lifestyle, though, hurts us in both the short and long terms. Less rest has been linked to Alzheimer's disease and decreased longevity. Studies show that losing as little as three hours of sleep in a night can halve the effectiveness of the immune system!

Too little rest affects our minds as well as our bodies. It can result in depression, paranoia, and even hallucinations. What's more, we become irritable with those we love and work with. We lose focus. Creativity becomes just too big a hill to climb, subtracting from our joy in life and work.

Let's think about the flip side of this issue. What results do you want in your body and wellbeing? My wife, Shelley, is a professional health coach and she often talks about what she calls her five non-negotiable health results: brainpower, energy, motivation, calmness, sex drive. Who wouldn't want their life to be full of these five outcomes? Shelley goes to great lengths to help her clients understand that a lifestyle of appropriate rest is foundational to every one of these health results.

Let's start by talking about sleep. Research has shown that seven and preferably eight hours of sleep per night are optimal. Are you getting enough?

Reset, Rewire, and Refresh

During sleep, the body heals. It absorbs natural, soothing forces that energize it after the daily grind of use and abuse. It is similar to bodybuilding. Muscles are built after they are torn during the workout process. They repair and rebuild during rest. Similarly, we grow stronger through rest after the work of the day. Our bodies are revived, rebuilt, and strengthened at night.

A day's work expends a lot of energy, and that energy has to be replenished through rest. Your body recalibrates its systems for a new day. (Weight loss tip: we actually release body fat when we sleep!).

Our minds rejuvenate during sleep too. We dream out a lot of mind overload during sleep. It is similar to unplugging all electronic devices and letting them rest for a few minutes before plugging them back in. This clears up any signal jams. Good rest "unplugs" your mind and lets it reset, rewire, and refresh.

For maximum vitality and clear-headedness, rest is essential.

Ways to Get More Rest

• Try the app "Sleep Cycle".

This app tracks and assesses your movements during sleep. It will give you a baseline of your sleep percentage (deep, moderate, and light).

Don't stress if you don't sleep pristinely according to this app! Just use it to get a rough idea of your rest levels and to measure improvement.

• Use herbals.

Many mature men suffer from an enlarged prostate, which causes them to make several bathroom trips per night, a big sleep disrupter. Taking Saw Palmetto (readily available wherever vitamins are sold) helps balance hormones and promotes prostate health.

Drink few or no liquids after 6 p.m., and finish a light supper three hours before bed to prevent sleep-interrupting bathroom visits.

Other helpful herbals are:

• Organic, raw apple cider vinegar. Take a couple of tablespoons in a little warm water with a bit of raw honey just before bed. This stabilizes blood sugar and heals your gut while you sleep. Thanks to Tim Ferriss, Tools of Titans, we know that this makes the body more alkaline and rejuvenates hormones.

• 200-400 mg of L-Theanine before bed is very relaxing. L-theanine is an amino acid found in green and black tea as well as Bay Bolete mushrooms. It's also available in pill or tablet form at many drugstores.

• Ashwagandha root has been used for about 3,000 years as a natural stress-reliever; several studies show it lowers levels of the stress hormone cortisol. 500-1000 mg during the day helps balance cortisol and encourages sleep at night. It also supports energy levels, which in turn helps reduce stress and improve immune health.

• Seriphos or Phosphorylated Serine can be incredibly useful in cases of insomnia caused by elevated nighttime cortisol levels. If you have trouble falling asleep, get a second wind late at night, or wake up between 1 a.m.- 4 a.m. and can't get back to sleep, a cortisol imbalance may be the reason. One way to find out for sure is to get a cortisol test that will give you a snapshot of cortisol levels over 24 hours.

• Seriphos, an amino acid, acts to rebalance cortisol levels. Taking 1000 mg just before dinner and another 2000 mg by 10 p.m. on a regular basis is ideal. If you take it after 10 p.m., it may interfere with the morning cortisol spike that is your body's wake up call.

• Lavender essential oil, rubbed on the bottoms of the feet, will help you fall back asleep if you wake up in the night.

Four Facilitating Factors for a Good Night's Sleep

TIME

As breathing and heartbeat indicate, the body thrives on rhythm! Circadian rhythms are your daily bodily rhythms or your body clock. If they are thrown off, say by an international trip or a sleepless night, you may have a headache the next day or remain sluggish for hours.

People need deep sleep, known as Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, to repair body and mind. To make sure you get enough:

• Be in bed by ten p.m. or earlier.
• Avoid caffeine or at least cut it back after 12 noon. Caffeine wreaks havoc with your body clock!

LIGHT STATE

• Sleep in a dark room.
• Make sure there are no green or blue lights visible in the bedroom.
• Use light-blocking bedroom shades or a sleep mask.
• Shut off all electronic screens one hour before bed.
• Read a paper book before bed.
• Don't turn on screens if you wake in the night.
• Dim lights in the evening.
• Wear blue-light-blocking glasses in the evening.

NOISE

Noise bring us out of deep sleep or keep us from going into deep sleep. So monitor both sound noise and "electronic noise". A white noise machine can neutralize night sounds. Earplugs help too.

• Earplugs are especially handy if your bed partner or pet snores. Silicone ones work well. Pull the upper ear back and up to insert. If worn properly, you won't even hear the snap of fingers.

• Turn off your WiFi to reduce electronic noise. Four or five years ago, the University of Melbourne completed an extensive study on how electromagnetic field (EMF) radiation from WiFi networks affects the quality of our sleep. Our bodies sense EMF radiation as if it were light. Then the pineal gland reacts and slows down melatonin production, the hormone that regulates our sleep and circadian rhythms.

• Put your phone on airplane mode, unless loved ones may need to call. In that case, keep the phone 8 - 10 feet across the room to cut down on this electronic "noise".

STATE OF BODY and MIND

• Put your legs up the wall and/or do stretching yoga poses before bed.

• Exercise outside, even on cloudy days, to stimulate the neurotransmitter serotonin, which then makes more melatonin at night.

• To fall asleep or back asleep, take slow, deep breaths (4-5 count inhale, equal count hold, 4-5 count exhale, equal count hold, and so on).

Try one method at a time for a week or so and see what works best for you.

Rest without Sleeping

Sleep is the foundational daily system for rest. However, other avenues of rest are important too.

Daily Rest

Even a minute of rest here or there helps. You needn't go to sleep; you just need to go into a restful mode.

• Meditation and/or prayer in the morning can be vital to starting the day with a clear and calm mind.
• Go for a nature walk instead of taking a coffee break.
• Close your eyes for a moment or two and visualize a beautiful natural scene or revisit happy memories.
• Just breathe. Close your eyes and breathe deeply.

Weekly Rest

For one day a week, I stop doing things that I normally do to make money or accomplish things. Ceasing my own striving to succeed develops a trustful attitude and a sustainable lifestyle.

• Pursuing spiritual activities is a great rest from the hustle and bustle of the world. Take a weekly rest day and spend it doing soul-nourishing activities.

• Nurturing relationships with God and other people is restful and restorative. Good relationships are an important part of happiness and health; serving others results in a "helper's high" and the reinforcement of belonging. It even affects longevity!

• Reading things to edify the spirit is important instead of reading potentially stressful news items. I spend time reading Psalms, Proverbs, and the rest of the Bible. I also read self-help books. I find these books realigning and refreshing for my inner self.

• Take the time to exercise more on a weekly rest day. I know exercising more on your rest day sounds like an oxymoron but for most of us who live a fairly sedentary life during the week, this can be one of the most rejuvenating things for your body and soul. Your rest day is a good day for a nature hike or other outdoor activities.

• Enjoy the process of making a healthy, gourmet meal and eating it in a leisurely way.

Monthly Rest

Have you ever had the electricity go out for a day or so and found yourself feeling deeply rested and peaceful inside?

• Once a month, take a media break or fast for a day or two. This will give you deep, internal rest from the constant signals and stimulation of the electronic age.

Yearly Rest

• Be sure to take that annual vacation!
• Don't cram it so full of activities that you don't have time to get bored and laze around.

Vitamin N

We are part of nature; thus, nature gives profound rest to our bodies and spirits. We spend most of our week inside, in front of computer screens. We rarely get a chance to get out and see the sun or feel the wind.

Research shows that spending time in nature reduces stress and improves health. You will know by the sense of relief and liberation you feel once you are under that blue sky! So get some Vitamin N into your system!

• Go for walks or hikes.
• Cultivate a garden.
• Develop an interest in different kinds of trees, plants, flowers or animals.

Nature is deeply restorative.

Dr. Oz is more than a TV personality; he is vice chairman of the surgery department at Columbia University's medical school. He says, "When we put patients into nature after [surgical] procedures, they actually recover faster."

Rhythms of Rest

Never think that it is counter-productive to set aside significant chunks of time to rest the body, mind, and spirit. Medical science can track the benefits of doing this. Sufficient quantity and quality of rest pay dividends in better memory, healthier immune function, healthier weight, relief for depression, stress management, improved energy, longevity, and curbing inflammation that is linked to heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and arthritis.

Develop your own system for success in creating the rhythms of rest that will give you the health results you want. Make a list of a few things you're going to change, starting tonight. Enlist someone who will encourage you on your journey.

None of this is time wasted. When the body, mind, and spirit are rejuvenated, we are more effective. Some of the world's greatest discoveries have been made when someone took a rest! Rest was when it all gelled in the mind and the person had a Eureka moment. Rest reveals fresh perspectives. We are more productive when we are well rested!

Rest well to live optimally. More rest = more success!

With the start of another new year, many people find themselves making health goals, from fitness to diet, to sleep or earlier mornings. This fascination with health related New Year's resolutions may be the result of two back to back holidays when most people eat too much, do too little and feel too bad. Or maybe we all have the inherent conviction that the best way to improve our lives is to start by improving our health. And the start of a new year gives us the perfect launching point to begin new health journeys.

My wife and I have found ourselves focusing more on our daily health practices over the years as we need increased energy and effectiveness for our busy family and business lives. We've found that abundant health doesn't come from just focusing on one or two areas at a time but by making continual progress in 8 areas that foster wellness, vitality and ultimately effectiveness.

Prioritizing Health with a Busy Schedule

With busy families, businesses, jobs, social activities and causes...and through random unforeseen challenges that pop into our lives, it's easy to just get busy and accept what is as the way it must always be in our health.

Making health a priority starts with embracing how healthy practices make a visible and tangible difference to our lives and bodies. I know that when I make health a priority I feel good. I have energy and a clear mind. It takes less time to get more done. I see an increase in effectiveness and fulfillment in my family life and in my business life.

We are the architect of our own body's health. Without our health, we have nothing else.

At some point we need to acknowledge that we have significant control over our own health and that our actions can truly make a significant impact. Through acknowledgment of our control, we will find it easier to muster up the discipline to follow through on our system with daily and weekly actions, even when it's not easy or convenient. While we may not be perfect in practicing what we know is good for us, we can make it one of our top priorities to continue to make progress and to get back on track when life derails us from that next work out or getting to bed on time.

Don't Make Changes, Create Systems that Become Habits.

We often get those urges to change some health practice. Like saying, today I'm not going to eat sugar. But creating the long term results you want in our health happens best when we systematize our health practices using a process we've developed that works for our unique body, lifestyle and preferences. Find a set of regular health practices that work for you and that you can follow fairly consistently over time...even when you're traveling or in crazy busy seasons.

If you were to ask Shelley or me to create the perfect health system for you it probably wouldn't work. Why? Because what works for me is not likely to work for you. It may not get the results you need because your body and needs are different. Or it may get results but you may not enjoy the system enough to sustain it because it just doesn't work in your lifestyle or schedule.

Think about what you enjoy doing. Do you like walking your dog? Great, walk the dog longer or faster. Do you like making and eating stir-fries? Great, make more of them, put in more vegetables or make them all organic. If someone else lost 30 pounds eating a certain way, that's great for him/her, but that may not be great for you.

If you want to live every day like health is truly your priority, your personalized health practice must be full of actions you enjoy enough to sustain your unique system for health over time. I am only able to maintain my healthy lifestyle because I have created habits that I either enjoy or that produce results that I enjoy.

Our 8 Health Systems

We have found that it's helpful to compile all the processes needed to create our own personalized health system into eight categories. We've actually seen that every human being needs to pay attention to these 8 areas of life in order to optimize their health and wellbeing. If you determine what unique practices you need to regularly incorporate into your daily lives to progress in these eight areas, it is quite likely that you'll end up continually improving in health, energy and vitality.

1. Quality Rest

Our bodies need rest in order to function. I've struggled with getting the appropriate rest and it's on the cutting edge of my personal learning this year. Rest is the key to restoration in our bodies. Are you getting the right quality and quantity of rest? Do you nod off whenever you're not active, yawn during the day, just run low on energy, need multiple settings on your alarm clock to wake up, or sleep a lot longer on your days off? If so, you are probably not getting enough quality sleep.

1. Physical Activity

Our bodies were made to move and these days most of us spend a lot more time sitting than moving. We sit to work, watch, talk, drive, eat, etc. With all that sitting, how can we make our bodies move more? What type of exercise is best for you? How do you create a sustainable system for exercise that works for you over time? What's the balance between aerobic exercise, strength training and flexibility training that's best for you?

1. Pure Water

Our bodies are made of mostly water and yet most of us aren't very intentional about giving our bodies good, pure water. Our thirst is like the gas gage on a car. Our body runs on water but when the gas gage hits empty (when we get thirsty), we fill it with all kinds of other stuff besides water. Trying to run your body on soda is like saying I'm going to try to run my car on pop. Even if we drink enough water, it often has other pollutants and chemicals in it...chlorine and fluoride being the biggest offenders. If you put gas that's mixed with a bunch of water in your vehicle, it might still run if you have a great in line fuel filter to extract the water from the fuel your vehicle is actually designed to run on. We are fortunate that our body does have a great in line filter to take out the other "stuff" that's in the liquid we drink besides the water our body runs on. And our body filter is smart enough it actually tries to use whatever it can from what it filters out of the liquid we put in it. However, often the "stuff" that's in the liquid we drink just clogs our filters or worse yet, has toxins that destroy our body systems.

So how much water do you need, how often should you drink, how to you make sure what are drinking is really clean water and how does even the water you bathe in impact you?

1. Fresh Air

Fresh air is a key element for optimum health! Do you know the quality of the air you breathe both indoors and outside? How do you improve the quality of air you regularly breath? And how do you make sure you're getting enough air in your lungs? Many people go through an entire day and never fully fill their lungs with air. This would be like running a car always at idle and never revving up the engine. Optimizing your lung capacity and usage is really vital to optimizing your energy and longevity.

1. Nature and Sunlight

There is something very therapeutic about being outside. Our bodies are made to sync with the vibrations of nature. Have you ever gone on a walk in nature on sunny day at the beach or on a beautiful trail in the mountains and you just feel so refreshed? Unlike our ancestors, modern life keeps us indoors the majority of time. But regular time outside in nature is a key system for success in health. Even being exposed to sunlight brings many health benefits when we enjoy it in moderation.

1. Healthy Whole Food and Targeted Nutrition

Yes, we are what we eat. So what we eat is always important. Most people eat things because they like them. What's wrong with that? Shouldn't we like the things we eat? Absolutely! The question is what is your system to determine the food and nutrition your unique body needs to function at optimum health, energy, and vitality? What foods are best for your body? Of all the vitamins out there, how do you know what your body needs?

1. Self-Discipline

Self-discipline is foundational to maintain the other 7 systems for health success. We can have the best intentions in the world in all the other areas but what good is that if we don't have the personal discipline to do the right things our body needs for great health and wellness? It also takes self-control to practice moderation in those pleasures that may not be super good for you in excess but that bring you great joy. So what is your system to regularly foster your own self-discipline?

1. An Attitude of Faith

This one impacts every area of our inner life and therefore it impacts every area of our outer life, especially our health. Our state of mind has a major impact on our health. Faith is the ability to see things you want that are not yet there in reality as though they are already there. I also believe if we trust in a power outside ourselves, (what I call trusting in God) it is easier to see a better, brighter future for our life, for our family, for our business and for our health. My attitude is formed by my personal belief that there is a God who has good plans for me and for my health. What would it feel like if you were able to maintain an attitude that believes there is a better future ahead, that anything is possible and that you have access to power outside yourself to help you bring that desired future into the present?

Do Something to Improve Your Health System Now

I challenge you to do an honest assessment of your practices and outcomes in each of these eight categories. Rate yourself on a scale of 1-10 in each of these categories. Make a list of the practices you are currently doing that foster success in each of these areas then pick one category and brainstorm a few practices you could experiment with that would help you experience more of the success you want in that area. Over time, do this in all 8 categories to build your own unique health system for success.

Stay tuned for more podcasts and articles on our learnings and practices in each of these eight vital areas for abundant health!

THANK YOU!

Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. We'd also really appreciate any feedback or questions that might guide what we talk about in future episodes.

Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and we read each and every one of them.

JOIN THE SYSTEMS FOR SUCCESS COMMUNITY!

• Subscribe to the Systems for Success Podcast on IOS or Apple Itunes.
• Subscribe to the Systems for Success Podcast on Android or Windows OS.
• Enter your email in one of the email opt-ins on this site for regular emails from Lonnie Gienger or the Gienger Family on additional Systems for Success.
• Follow Systems for Success on Instagram @systemsforsuccess
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An inside look at what inspires us, what we are learning and how we're planning to support each other's progress in this new year. This round table discussion takes place right after we did our 2019 annual family goal setting retreat.

A Powerful Philosophy of Progress

Research shows that 80% of people give up on their New Year's resolutions by about the 2nd week of February! The reason? What most people call 'resolutions' are really just desires or fun things they wish would happen. The majority of people don't actually "resolve" or declare a new standard of intent that is backed with a specific plan to accomplish it.

Why do we make these new resolutions or goals at the beginning of a new year? Because the date on the calendar makes us feel like it is time for a fresh start. And it is a good opportunity to reflect on the last year and set some new intentions for the next year.

But what makes us happy is not setting new goals once a year. What makes us happy is the process of making regular progress on those things that are important to us throughout the year.

Accomplishing things and obtaining things, is not what makes us happy. Getting money, promotions or even a new relationship that you want is not what really makes humans happy. It is PROGRESS that makes us happy. The new year is a good opportunity to decided how in this year we want to improve, grow, make progress.

Progress is not the same as change. We don't have to work on change. Most things will eventually change no matter what. Change is almost automatic. But progress is not automatic. Progress requires clear intention for a new direction or improvement AND a specific process to head in that direction.

A fulfilling life is about making progress you have determined is important to you.

But progress doesn't happen just by stating the new results you want to produce in your life. Progress requires the right process or inputs to create the desired result.

In our apple orchard, how much good would it do if I just declared that the trees should produce better fruit? Not much.

Here is a true saying. "A good tree produces good fruit. No good tree bears bad fruit."

So what does it take to make a good tree? It takes a consistent set of processes working right for that tree to be a healthy tree that produces good fruit. A bad tree can say I want to have healthy food all it wants, but if it doesn't have the right nutrients or the right temperatures at the right time of year…the right type of pruning, the right type and amount of water and sunshine, the right photosynthesis happening in the tree… then it will not produce good fruit. No matter how much the tree wanted to produce good fruit, it won't produce good fruit if the tree isn't in a process of getting healthy. That process is different for each type of fruit tree in each type of climate. It is not a one process fits all formula for success for trees or for people.

This time of year we set intentions for the kind of good person we want to be, the kind of good life we want to have, the kind of good impact we want to make on this world. If those intentions are just resolutions or wishes without a specific set of processes to produce those good outcomes then it's like a tree saying I just want to produce better fruit but not having the right processes in place to make it a good, healthy tree.

Because of this, we like to set New Year's intentions or objectives that are supported by specific goals, processes, habits or routines that are likely to create that desired outcome.

Sometimes the specific outcome we set out to achieve does not happen. Or it doesn't happen in the time frame we had planned. But the processes we put in place to pursue that outcome will always produce some better outcome…some progress…sometime, somewhere. It may just prepare us for some other type of unanticipated outcome that we didn't even think was possible.

Resolutions sound like one-time events. You say it, and it is supposed to be done. Although stating our intention is important, success is more about the process of building a strong life…getting a little bit better each day. Life is about making progress.

A famous leadership coach named Jesus said, let me tell you what it looks like when someone listens to the good things I tell them to do and actually does them. It looks like someone who builds a house on a good foundation. And when the storms come, that house stands strong. If you dig down deep and build a foundation, when the storms come you can stand those storms.

So don't let your New Year resolutions become mere wish lists. When you truly resolve something you declare this is how it is going to be. You set a new standard. We get our standards. We get what we believe about who we are and what we deserve. We don't as often get our wishes. We get what we believe must happen to align with our beliefs. We don't get what we think should happen. Burn the bridges on the past and commit to pursue your new standard. Combine this level of commitment to a new standard with a creating and regularly updating your action plan, routines or systems and you will make exhilarating progress toward the new standards you set for your life.

THANK YOU!

Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. We'd also really appreciate any feedback or questions that might guide what we talk about in future episodes.

Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and we read each and every one of them.

JOIN THE SYSTEMS FOR SUCCESS COMMUNITY!

• Subscribe to the Systems for Success Podcast on IOS or Apple Itunes.
• Subscribe to the Systems for Success Podcast on Android or Windows OS.
• Enter your email in one of the email opt-ins on this site for regular emails from Lonnie Gienger or the Gienger Family on additional Systems for Success.
• Follow Systems for Success on Instagram @systemsforsuccess
• Follow Lonnie Gienger on Instagram @lonniegienger

Realizing Dreams: Reality Show Round Table

Our family is launching an experiment called Fulcrum, a business that we think will make a difference in our city. We thought we'd share a bit about it with you and most importantly give you an inside scoop into the process as we will be on a learning curve and we hope that this will encourage some of you either as individuals, as families or a group of friends to dream great dreams that you think will make a difference in your world, your community and your city and take action to start pursuing those dreams.

Overview of Fulcrum

Fulcrum is a movement in the city of Yakima that we hope will bring creative people together to live, to work, to learn, play and build innovative solutions that will benefit our city and our county and ultimately the world.

• Fulcrum is a movement in the community of Yakima that brings creative people together to live, work, learn and play while they build innovative solutions that will benefit our valley and the world.
• The Fulcrum building will be an inspiring space where people can dream together, learn together, work together, eat together and do life together.

The vision of Fulcrum Yakima is to be the catalyst that helps us unleash our collective creativity as a town. We are launching community and a space where young and old alike come together to dream again and leverage our collective resources and talents to accomplish those dreams.

We are excited to be doing this as a family along with many other friends and community leaders. This is not a just a Gienger Family project. Our family may be pivotal in launching this, but are engaging many others.

The Beginning of a Vision

This idea came out of a discussion we had about a year ago about a brain drain trend we noticed especially within the younger people of our city who we found were wanting to get out of our city as soon as possible. By the time they turned 18 the first thing they wanted to do was leave because they realized that Yakima didn't hold much economic opportunity our vision is to change that. Right now there isn't a lot happening in town because the members of community who could bring the economic growth back are facing outwards, our goal with Fulcrum is to hold hands as a community, young and old alike, face inwards and make our city an economic hub, where people can activate their potential and unleash the collective creativity of the city. The Fulcrum building will be a physical space to house and cultivate this new innovative mentality and economic success for the city.

When we had our first gathering in the Fulcrum building, our goal was to open up the conversation with the community about what we are creating and how we will all have a part in it. We spent the much of the time hearing people's stories and their passion for our city and the differences they'd like to see. We also had the opportunity to share our vision for Fulcrum. This is a community project and we hope that a lot of people will be getting involved over time engaging the best and brightest minds of people in Yakima who are dreamers to come alongside and help foster great things in our city.

As you've been listening to this podcast, you know that we're big on the value of developing businesses and the value that can bring to the world. The last episode talked about the value of the free enterprise system in America and my concern that not everybody is appreciates the value it truly brings to this world in building healthy societies. You can go back and listen to that episode if you'd like.

What we're doing in Yakima is a bit of a case study, an illustration of the expression of what a lot of us care about. We'd like to foster some startup businesses that have creative ideas, innovations that we think could make our city and ultimately our world better. So that's what we're setting out to do here. With that background, we thought we'd just have an open round table discussion on what we're developing.

Seeing A Need

All great endeavors start with some idea to bring value somewhere and usually that value you want to bring aligns with your passions or skills or personal interests. So think of something that you'd love to do, that you're passionate about and that could add value to your world. Then find a specific related need and dream of how you could potentially fill that need.

Creating A Vision and Researching

Last year in January Chelann and I started talking about about the concept of a co-working space and business incubator or innovation center and what that could do for our city. Clearly a trend in this around the world. There was over 14,000 co-working spaces that started in 2018 alone worldwide...a huge trend that is clearly meeting a need. There's a big rise of independent freelancers, and in the number of new entrepreneurs which fosters the value of co-working and co-living spaces. The desire for a place where you can live and walk right down the hall or just right outside your room and have access to co-working space. The value of a space to live, work, eat, play all in one place. I think it's also meeting a need in the world where social media tends to make us a bit isolated from face to face personal interaction. Places like this create the opportunity to fill the need people have for more personal interaction.

Developing Your Idea

When you have an idea, you will have to throw it out on the table and watch it develop. Our idea started out as something more like co-working space and a business incubator and it's now morphed into something that's not really about a business incubator or just co-working opportunities. Instead, it's morphed into something much bigger and now something we're all very excited about. After our first official meeting as a family to brainstorm on this project, we started thinking about the possibility of taking this into multiple cities and we all got pretty excited about the impact something like this could make for small and large communities around the country. All of us became even so excited about it that we are willing to shift some of our priorities, businesses commitments and schedules to start focusing on this.

Find Someone to Support You and Your Vision

The next step we took was asking our family and others: "Who wants to be involved? What would you like to contribute?" After that, we had our first meet up within the community and had a turn out of 30 influential community leaders which just solidified our initial excitement for this project. It was energizing to hear from 30 influential community leaders who showed up and matched our excitement, letting us know they were behind us, giving us their cards and offering to help in any way they could. When you are able to engage everyone and delegate different roles to people who see the vision and share your passion it solidifies the emotions that you feel about your own project.

I believe that through this process God has really opened the doors in a way that seems he already planned to do something like this and we're just tagging along. It has been as if all the stars aligned...from searching for a building, finding the ideal space and getting it under an agreement, to being blessed with a seller who is also very passionate about the vision of this project.

Creating a Name and Mission Statement

We got to the point with our project that we were calling it so many different things that we sat down and said we've got to figure out what to call this so we don't call it something different every time we talk about it. When we started the process of selecting name we got input from several people. We made a list a half dozen of the top names and sent them out to several dozen people in our target audience. When you have a vision and as soon as you start crystallizing some things, start getting feedback from your target customer as soon as you can about everything you can, as early as you can. We eventually chose the name Fulcrum because that was the most popular and fortunately it's got a great meaning to it because we think this is going to be like a tipping point for our city to change the culture and the economy.

The next step we took, which is something you do early in start ups is to start getting clear about the mission, vision and values. What's the purpose behind this thing you want to do, what's the real cause? What will it look like when that cause if being achieved. And what are the values, the non-negotiable principles that will guide how we do what we do in this enterprise? We all got together just started spitting out different core values that were important to each of us and compiled them all into a google doc. From there it is a process of elimination of what will represent our vision and values best. What will resonate with people and give them a clear image of what we were all about about and what we're creating here?

Creating Organizational Structure

One of the first things we did to create an action plan was just by asking how are we going to organize this project from a big picture perspective. And we ultimately concluded that we're going to have three different sets of entities/companies to make this all happen. One set of companies has to do with the operations of Fulcrum, what happens on a day to day basis to facilitate all of these good things happening in the space and in the community.

The second set of companies we'll need to establish will be the entities that won the real estate (the building and land and parking lot). Right now the real estate is under contract to purchase in the next 6-12 months. By the time we purchase the real estate and start doing the renovations, it will be owned by a single purpose entity (company) that will probably have multiple investors/owners in it.

Once we get up and running and see some Yakima grown innovations turning into businesses that need funding, we'll have a third set of companies that venture capital investors can invest in and that will then be invested in some of the start up businesses fostered by Fulcrum. We plan to facilitate a process that will bring funding to the best ideas and the best businesses that start as a result of this process. There are a lot of venture capital investors who are excited about investing and startup businesses that have the potential to make a strong positive impact on this world. So we hope to attract investors like that invest in a fund that will invest in some of the businesses that start in Fulcrum.

So, bottom line there will be three different sets of entities (or companies), operations, property ownership, and then venture capital funding.

Clarifying Roles and Responsibilities

The next thing we did is to get clear on roles and responsibilities. Who's going to lead what in these three different companies? We started discussing the passions and skills and potential matching roles and responsibilities of each person on the founding team. We then decided that one of the first roles we needed is an executive director for Fulcrum. Collectively we developed a written job description, and then an advertisement for that position based on that job description. We spent some money posting ads in places like ZipRecruiter. So this went out to many online job boards and we received a bunch of resumes. Then we went through a process of screening the resumes based on what we had in writing. This is a classic system for success in recruiting. You define a position, write down the job description, develop accurate advertisement for the position, get the word out in multiple ways trying to get as many applicants as you can then screen the resumes down to a small number that you think are qualified based on what you see in writing. And then the next step is to do phone screening interviews with those that look like they might be qualified on paper. So we offered the opportunity for top candidates to schedule a phone interview. And then the final step to do in person interviews with your top 2-4 finalist candidates that make it through the phone screening interview process. So we followed this whole process for the Fulcrum Executive Director position. We even had a final interview committee that comprised more than our family and included someone with experience in hiring and managing for this type of position in another business innovation center in a different city. We're excited to announce the Chelann Gienger ended up being the top candidate and was selected for this role.

Establish a Specific Timeline for Your Project

The most recent thing we've done is to establish an overall project plan and timeline for turning this dream into reality. Following is what we know about the timeline right now:

When will Fulcrum open?

• The Fulcrum movement (or experience) starts now. We are in the process of building the most important aspect of Fulcrum as we speak and that's the CREATIVE COMMUNITY.
• The physical space that will help foster the Fulcrum experience is targeted to open in late 2020.

2018

Q4 – Free community events start (Monthly Fireside Chats)

Build volunteer team. Raise donations for seed funding

2019

Q1 - Architect model finished

Q2 – March: First weekly Coffee and Concepts:

Secure capital for project

Q3 - Start construction

Q4 - Construction, start accepting first members

2020

Q3-4 - Grand Opening

How can I get involved?

Join our Facebook group, Fulcrum Yakima, to stay in the loop with future events, volunteer opportunities and all things Fulcrum is up to!

THANK YOU!

Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. We'd also really appreciate any feedback or questions that might guide what we talk about in future episodes.

Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and we read each and every one of them.

JOIN THE SYSTEMS FOR SUCCESS COMMUNITY!

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Hi Systems for Success Family!

Well we just finished the 2018 midterm elections and it seemed there was more focus and more debate generated by these elections than any I remember in many years. And some of the conversations and debates around this have made me want to address something in this episode that I think is really important to the future of this country.

I had a conversation with one millennial recently who was really frustrated with some of their friends for thinking they could just not vote and still complain about the way things were going…or that other of their friends could vote for politicians and policies that focused on increased government control, taxes and redistribution of wealth and still expect to see the same abundance for their kids as they experienced.

Then there was a public opinion poll from Harvard's Institute of Politics, that came out right before the elections that said likely voters claimed to favor socialism over capitalism by something like five points, and the majority supported things like single-payer healthcare, federal job guarantees, and free college. According to Harvard's new poll, millennial Americans have grown to distrust capitalism and free enterprise.

There was also a Fox News poll earlier this year that showed an uptick to 36 percent of the people polled who had the view that moving away from capitalism and toward socialism would be a good idea. The article I read said that Historical surveys from the late 1930s to the late 1940s show that only a tiny fraction of Americans embraced the socialist label. And now 36 percent are in favor of heading that way? What's up with that?

Let me be clear, this isn't about the voting that happened last week. I think everyone should get out and vote their conscience. This is not a political commentary podcast and I'm not trying to turn it into that.

What I'm talking about here goes way beyond political viewpoints. I'm talking about a system for success that built this country and I think really built our world…a system for success is now at risk. Political victories are temporary bandages over what I see as severe national threat posed by the revival of historically discredited systems like socialism as the system for success in societies.

Somehow there have been all kinds of purveyors of global capitalism, from free-trade champions like Bill Clinton to way right-wing leaders like Paul Ryan, have failed to persuade young Americans that the free market has been significantly responsible for global income per person increasing tenfold--that the free enterprise system has been responsible for eradicating poverty for hundreds of millions of people around the world, and a massive increase in both the length and quality of life. Many people, especially it seems in the younger generation, have begun to imagine that a fatally flawed system of having government control of who gets what will create long term success in societies.

So in this episode, I want to share with you some thoughts about what I think is the antidote to that flawed system. Let me tell you what I love about the system for success of a free market economy. I share some of these thoughts in my book, Beyond Business, that will be published the last week of November. So if you want more inspiration on how business shapes our world, you can get that on Amazon soon.

So here's what I love about the free enterprise and why I think it is the best system to shape healthy societies. I love that it is a system where money is earned by serving someone else well. It's a system where there is a built in incentive to serve someone well enough to make them happy with what you provided. If I paint your house, fix your car, make a certain tool that you need, you give me money. That money is in essence a certificate proving that I served you. With these certificates of service that you have given me, I can then go online and order some new tool I need from Amazon that some other business leader made well enough that others traded their certificates of service for it and were served well enough that they gave it a five star rating.

Essentially, Amazon says, "When you place your order, you're making a claim on something that some other business leader created. You're asking this other business leader to provide value to you. But first can you prove that you provided value to someone else?" And I say, "Of course I can!" Amazon essentially says, "Prove it." So I enter my PayPal account linked to my reservoir of certificates of service and prove that I have provided enough value to others to receive the value of this new tool I am buying for myself.

Commerce is really an exchange of value. Money is just the symbol of value exchanged.

Obviously, some people are more effective at creating value for society than others. Is it magic that they receive more certificates of service (make more money) than others who provide less value? Think about Bill Gates, for example. Why is his income so much more than mine? It's because millions of people use the software his business created. I'm using the software he created right now as I type this manuscript, because it makes me more productive than just writing it all by hand. The mission of Microsoft is to empower every person on the planet to achieve more. Their mission is not to make money. Their mission is to serve people by helping them achieve more. I pay hundreds of dollars a year to the company Bill Gates started because it empowers me to be more productive. People pay me less than they pay Bill Gates because I haven't provided as much value to as many people as he has.

There are some who would say it is not fair that Bill Gates makes so much, especially compared to others. They would even cheer the government on in trying to take more money from him (and other wealthy people like him) and give it to others. In doing this they are basically announcing to the world that they don't agree with the deliberate decisions of millions of people to give Gates's company their hard-earned certificates of service. They are negating the decisions of millions of people who felt they were getting more value than they were giving up when they bought the products and services of his company. Instead, they are suggesting that we should use the arbitrary control of government to nullify all of those deliberate, independent decisions and redistribute those certificates of service without regard for the value created.

Just as an aside, when you think through this lens, it almost appears that income redistribution is just a government-authorized version of what a robber does. They take what rightfully belongs to one person for the benefit of someone who didn't actually earn it.

Free Enterprise Is a Gift to Humanity

Think about the self-perpetuating system of positive regard for humanity that is built in to this free enterprise system of business. There is a built-in incentive to provide value to others before I receive value myself. There is a built-in system to reinforce the positive principle that the greatest servant will become the greatest success. There is a catalytic mechanism to encourage the Golden Rule of doing for others as we would want done for ourselves.

Harvard Professor Steven Pinker says, "Commerce, trade and exchange . . . mean that people try to anticipate what the other guy needs and wants. It engages the mechanisms of reciprocal altruism."

That, in a nutshell, means that business makes people want to serve others' needs. That sounds to me like a real gift to humanity!

Now think of the alternative. For the sake of contrast, let's talk about socialism. A socialist economy can essentially say, "Lonnie, you don't have to provide value to other people in order to deserve the value that someone else produces. As long as you're a member of our party, we will take what your fellow man produces and give it to you based on equality or need rather than based on what you produce." This system has been well proven throughout history not to create sustainable success in relationships or true abundance in society. When it comes to relationships, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a Soviet dissident who won the Nobel Prize, said that the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republic was a government at war with its own people. The very nature of the socialist system diminishes the dynamics that cause sustainable success in relationships. Peace and prosperity for societies have not resulted from such systems; quite the opposite.

Socialism has demonstrated fairly well that if you take away the free enterprise business system of profit for productivity, it is likely that the real wants and needs of people won't be met as effectively. In our generation, some countries that have historically been most deeply entrenched in socialistic and communistic systems are now becoming more capitalistic in their approach to commerce. They simply realize that this creates healthier relationships and stronger societies. China is a great example of this transformation.

When I started making regular trips to China a few years ago, I would have never even put "communism" and "capitalism" in the same sentence. Yet now that I have done a lot of business in China over the last three years, I can honestly say that China, while still clearly communistic in government, is one of the most effectively capitalistic in business. I vividly remember getting off a bullet train in Guangzhou, and my Chinese business partner mentioned that this was considered one of the wealthiest cities in all of China.

I asked, "How does the Chinese government measure wealth in cities?" I was thinking he would respond with measures like we use in America: per capita income or average household income, but no. He said with great clarity, "In China we measure the wealth of a city based on the number of new businesses that are being started and the success of those businesses in providing value to people in the city based on how much profit they make."

Wow! The Chinese government measures the wealth of a city based on these leading indicators of success rather than lagging indicators like household income. They clearly understand capitalism, maybe even better than some governmental systems in America. The rapid social and economic transformation of China over the last three decades has once again demonstrated the power of capitalism to improve societies.

In general, in a free market society, people who are wealthy have become so by providing substantial value to other people. I'll provide a few well-recognized and somewhat extreme examples to illustrate this point. Think about the extraordinary value these business leaders have provided to people that has enabled them to earn billions of dollars.

• Jeff Bezos, through Amazon's efficient shopping and data systems
• Steve Jobs, through Apple's revolutionary products
• Mark Zuckerberg, through making people more connected than ever before with Facebook
• Elon Musk, through developing Paypal to enable simple and secure online money transfers for people around the world and then creating Tesla's most energy efficient yet powerful luxury cars on the market
• The Mayo Brothers through developing Mayo Clinic as the number one medical clinic in the world solving health challenges no one else can solve
• Richard Branson, through his four hundred plus companies that provide products and services that improve the lives of people around the world

Branson says, "I've always seen business as a group of people trying to improve other people's lives." Zuckerberg started simply with a clear passion to help people be more connected. The Mayo brothers didn't intend to build the number one medical center in the world. They began with a simple radical vision to eliminate disease in humanity. Often, these titans of business begin with an altruistic vision to provide value to society, and society rewards them handsomely when they do.

Do we really mind that these iconic business leaders became very wealthy or that their companies made a lot of money? Do we really wish they had kept their ideas to themselves and not offered to sell them to us for an amount of money that would allow them to continue to make better products and services that we value? Do we begrudge them for making a lot of money? No, because they gave us so much "bang for our buck"! We're grateful to them!

When Steven Jobs died, a cartoonist showed him entering heaven as he was welcomed by Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison. Is there any doubt that these three people contributed more value to society than they received? Ben Franklin contributed too many inventions and discoveries to name. How could we ever repay Thomas Edison for lighting up the world? How could we ever repay Steven Jobs for putting the world of information in our hands in the form of smartphones?

These people gave more value than they received by far. Isn't that a beautiful and virtuous cycle that we would want to see continue, whether on a large scale or happening at your favorite small local restaurant that continually makes better tasting, healthier food served in a great environment that fosters relationships? What these business leaders do with the free enterprise system is truly a blessing to humanity!

Profit Perpetuates Customer Satisfaction

Whenever the profit incentive is missing, the probability that people's wants can be safely ignored is the greatest. This is because the ability of a business to make a profit depends on two simple factors. The first is whether the business is producing a product or service that society values enough to pay what they are asking for it. The second is whether that business is well led enough to use limited resources in a way that is efficient and effective enough to consume less resources than the resources others are willing to give in exchange for it. That's how profit is earned, and it makes profit dependent upon meeting people's wants and needs.

As I have mentioned, I have spent a lot of time in both the non-profit and the for-profit worlds. I have led boards in both worlds, and I can tell you that in general there is a higher degree of consistency in customer satisfaction in the for-profit world than in the non-profit world. Why is that? I believe it is because in a free market economic system, profit is a built-in catalytic mechanism to constantly encourage service and value creation as of primary importance. Capitalism is compelled by the profit motive to look for and respond to people's needs and wants.

I'm not saying that capitalism or the free market economic system always produces other-centered people or companies. Certainly, greed and corruption can and do enter in to this system just as they do in many other good systems. At the same time, this does seem to be the system that is most closely aligned with the principles of an ideal society where the one who serves others best becomes the greatest success. In a healthy free enterprise system, the pursuit of profit by serving people and the building of what some might call "God's kingdom on earth" are one and the same.

No one argues that the free enterprise system is perfect or free from abuses, but I believe it is the system that most effectively promotes the principles of God's ideal society where the greatest servant becomes the greatest leader.

So here's the question. Since free enterprise has proven to be a system for success that has build a better world wherever it is done well, what can you do to either spread the word or to actually get involved in free enterprise yourself. Do something that will put some heat around this topic and continue to raise the value and appreciation for free enterprise as a powerful system for success to build a better world.

How to Examine and Take Control Your Life

Most people begin their lives reacting to whatever life does to them. This may be okay for an infant. But as adults, it's important to develop the skills required to examine our lives, cultivate our personal values and make decisions that reflect those values. Many people find themselves reverting back to this reactive state in adult life because they aren't intentional about making decisions and evaluating the outcomes of those decisions.

I love how Tony Robbins explains life. He uses the metaphor of a raging river to describe life. You can read more from his book, Awaken The Giant Within. And this is what he said:

"Too many of us don't make the majority of our decisions consciously...in so doing, we pay a major price. In fact, most people live what I call 'The Niagara Syndrome'. I believe that life is like a river and that most people jump on the river of life without ever really deciding where they want to end up. So, in a short period of time, they get caught up in the current: current events, current fears, current challenges. When they come to forks in the river, they don't consciously decide where they want to go, or which is the right direction for them. They merely 'go with the flow'. They become a part of the mass of people who are directed by the environment instead of by their own values. As a result, they feel out of control. They remain in this unconscious state until one day the sound of the raging water awakens them, and they discover that they're five feet from Niagara Falls in a boat with no oars. At this point, they say, 'Oh shoot!'. But by then it's too late. They're going to take a fall.

Sometimes it's an emotional fall.

Sometimes it's a physical fall.

Sometimes it's a financial fall.

It's likely that whatever challenges you have in your life currently could have been avoided by making some better decisions upstream."

Why don't we always take the opportunity to take control of the future of our lives through our values?

Once we understand the circumstances and reasons that can throw us off track we can address the issue of living without critical decision making and how affects our personal values. While we are all individuals and can experience different things that can influence us to misstep, the most common factors that cause us to live unconsciously are:

• Distractions in the present time
• Your attention required in other areas of life
• Lack of intention in the decisions we make today and how they influence our future

As you can see, there is a theme with these three factors, attention and intention. That is why I like the analogy that Tony gives that life is like a raging river because it is. We become caught up in the rapids of doing the things that life seems to demand of us day in and day out.

Goal setting and evaluation are primary tools we can use to keep the raging river of life from sweeping us wherever it wills. Many people set goals. But not many have a disciplined process to evaluate their progress on those goals.

One of the questions I often hear is "what do I do when my family or team sets goals and forgets about them in a short time?" People set goals with the thought of the direction they want to go with their life, but often it doesn't happen because they get caught up in the river of life that just pulls them downstream wherever that river's going. The key to ensuring that we're floating on the right river in the right direction at the right pace is taking time to review the course of our life through regular examination of our progress toward living what we say is important.

Living an Unexamined Life

A quote that many are familiar with was uttered by Socrates right before his trial which ultimately led to him being put to death was "The unexamined life is a life not worth living."

Do you think is that true? And if so, why is that true? Why is the unexamined life a life not worth living?

Many don't realize the importance of self-awareness and of living with intention. But at some point, we will all arrive at the end and will have the opportunity to look back and reflect on where the time went and what we did with it. If that is the only time you examine your life, you'll probably be settling for the status quo, falling in with the herd mentality. The quality of our experience is determined by the focus of our attention. If our attention is fragmented, pulled in a million different directions, easily distracted, shallow and fleeting, then that is what our experience of life will be.

If we are not examining our life and revising our focus toward living our values and goals, we will get distracted and sucked downstream on the river life creates for us, caught up in the current of noise, circumstance, and unconscious decision.

If you wouldn't want to go out on a hike, without a trail, a planned route, and destination, why would you then want to go through life the same way?

A Philosopher's Lesson

I think staying true to our values, staying on our chosen path happens best through the discipline of intentional evaluation of our lives on a regular basis. We naturally tend to resist personal examination, because it brings back subconscious negative thoughts of examinations or tests we were given even in grade school days. We wanted to be right, to get the A, but we were often disappointed so why put ourselves through a self-examination. The possibility of failing makes us resist that opportunity to examine and reflect.

Socrates actually chose death rather than giving up his right to gain wisdom from examination and reflection. "The unexamined life is not worth living"

He felt obligated to live a life where he questioned not only what was going on in his life but also the rights and wrongs that happened. He would rather give up his life than not be able to question what was happening.

He was such a threat to the s0ciety he lived in because he was such an examiner. He valued the love of wisdom more than anything else. He ultimately was given the choice to stop seeking wisdom through examination and live in exile where he could never question anything or influence anything or create wisdom again, or he could choose to die. And that's when he said if I can't gain wisdom by examining my life it's not worth living. So he chose death.

There's another saying from a philosopher more ancient than Socrates. David says, "teach us to number our days aright, so we can gain a heart of wisdom." He is saying, examine life based on the brief number of days we have and in that examination of each day, we will gain a heart of wisdom. That's what makes a life worth living.

Tools to Examining Your Life

So the question I want to ask you how can you number your days intentionally, what tools help you live each day to the fullest? Are there regular activities and personal disciplines that you can engage in daily to help you examine your life?

Here are several tools that have been shared:

• Daily Journaling: Find a process that works for you. Asking yourself questions like what you want to accomplish today, what will make today great, including your daily affirmation or mantra, and a reflection on what made today great or what could have made today better.
• Mentorship: Having the opportunity to gain information from mentors who are willing to speak into your life can be a huge eye-opener rather than when you are the sole examiner of your life. Mentors can point out specific things that you may have failed to examine yourself.
• Evaluate Your Day/Week/Month/Year According to Your Written Values: Formulate a question in line with your values like, "How did today matter in light of my values? How did today's actions matter in terms of living the life I want to live? Did I create value in the world that God wants me to create?"
• Having a group of people, friends or family, that you can come together with and reflect on your personal compass, values, and goals. Celebrate how far you have come and how much more you get to grow. Create an activity that allows you to examine yourself: "If each person around the circle it only had 30 days longer to live what would you do differently? What would you want to say to each person or to this group of people? What would you want to do together? How would you spend the next few days? What would you want them to know?"

Sometimes you may think back over my task list for the day and wonder if it was all worth it. What were all those emails about? But when you ask yourself the question, did today really matter in light of my values and goals, chances are you'll know the answer.Did today matter? If so, great. Do more things like it tomorrow. If you don't remember anything that made a difference? Do something different tomorrow. Before you start every day, take a few moments in meditation to connect with God (or your spiritual self), focus on what's really important in life and decide what you'd like to see happen by the end of the day. After doing this, take some time to prioritize your calendar and tasks for the day. What's most important? What is realistic to achieve?When you take just a little time and intention to examine your life, you'll know where you are in relation to where you want to be and you'll have a much better chance at making progress. Ask the Question Steve Jobs Asked Himself Each MorningSteve Jobs, the man who started Apple and brought it to become the first trillion dollar company in the world, was a master of living and working purposefully. Each morning, when Jobs woke up, he asked himself this one question:"'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' If the Answer is 'no' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something."You may think that it is a bit morbid to think about your mortality at the start of the day, but in reality, this is actually very motivating and filled with optimistic to do better in life, every single day. It helps us "number our days" so we can gain a heart of wisdom, live life to the fullest and create the legacy we'd like to leave in this world.

THANK YOU!

Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. We'd also really appreciate any feedback or questions that might guide what we talk about in future episodes.

Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and we read each and every one of them.

JOIN THE SYSTEMS FOR SUCCESS COMMUNITY!

• Subscribe to the Systems for Success Podcast on IOS or Apple Itunes.
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I'm going to do a little rant today on a subject that impacts every single one of you every single day.

The success of individuals, families, companies, and nations rises and falls on this subject. This subject is often not talked about much in the home…sometimes as hush hush or as embarrassingly glossed over in homes and schools as the birds and the bees. Yet our understanding of this subject has a significant influence on the height of our happiness, the breadth of our impact on the world and the depth of our bank account.

Wanna know what the subject is? Okay, I'll tell you. It's a one-word answer. Money.

Okay, when I say that word, "Money" what thoughts come to your mind? What emotions fill your heart?

I was raised in a religious environment where the prevailing notion about money was that it was somehow evil or at least that it caused a lot of bad things. I actually had a mindset that was a bit afraid of it or at least afraid of having too much of it and I didn't even know how to define what too much was.

But more and more these days, I'm getting these crazy good opportunities to hang around people who have a very different view of money. Shelley, Chellan and I got to spend a couple of days last week at the Prestel and Partner Family Office Forum in San Francisco. It was hosted on this amazing 100ft yacht in the SF Bay. According to their website, the average Net Worth of the families and individuals at this event was $500M. I have no idea how they know that they sure didn't ask my Net worth at the door, and it's probably a good thing as they might not have let me on the ship cause my Networth would have lowered the average too much.

Anyway, from how I used to think, you'd think that this would have been some uppity up event with people who were selfishly absorbed in making more money and having cooler stuff. But it was absolutely the opposite. There were a bunch of normal but ambitious business people but people with a driving passion to make the world a better place through what they do in business and through the money business creates. Honestly, the majority of the presentations and roundtable discussions were all about how to make a bigger positive impact for good on this world. And this wasn't just for some feel-good stuff. Like we invest to make money but want to have it look like we are doing some good for the world in the process. No, these people are serious about real impact to the point of having very specific ways to measure and report on the impact for good.

Impact investments are investments made into companies, organizations, and funds with the intention to generate social and environmental impact alongside a financial return. The focus is on providing or creating the money needed to address the world's most pressing challenges. There were presentations and roundtable discussions about how to do this in sectors such as sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, conservation, microfinance, and affordable and accessible basic services including housing, healthcare, and education.

Loved hearing one dad talk about how they play this game with their teenage kids where they pick one major problem in society and have a time limit for coming up with out of the box business ideas and plans that could address that challenge in society. From illiteracy to homelessness, to aids to racial injustice, etc. It was so refreshing and energizing to be around business leaders and families who truly view money as a tool to make society better. So different from the prevailing paradigm I used to have. This made me really wonder, why is it that money seems to get such a bad rap, especially from many well-meaning religious folks? Some people think that the Bible says that money is the root of all evil. In reality, it says: "The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil."[i] If when you think about the money you have thoughts of evil or fear it will lead to one path that will miss the power I believe it was intended to do for Good on this earth.

Far from being evil, money is meant to be the result of loving people well. It is only when we love money more than we love people that it causes all kinds of problems. Whenever my company begins loving the money more than we love the process of serving our customers and our team, we ultimately end up with all kinds of challenges. That's why a couple of the core values in every business I've led for the last twenty-five years have been to always act in the best interest of our customers, and to always do the right thing regardless of the personal or corporate cost. These are non-negotiable guiding principles that keep money in proper perspective as the measure of how well we are serving people. Sustainable success and positive influence come from putting the needs of other people first.

Not every company or business leader thinks that way. Because some people love money more than they love people, the wealth that commerce can create has sometimes been seen as something that is bad. But there is a long tradition of cultures that see business success as the epitome of service to society.

Have had the opportunity to get to know several wealthy Jewish families at some of these events. Interesting to learn more about how the Jewish tradition has no problem with wealth because it is seen as resulting from and producing a great benefit to the community. Rabbi Daniel Lapin wrote a great book I've read a couple times now. Highly recommend it. Thou Shalt Prosper, recounts how money and wealth were viewed throughout the history of the Jews. It's insightful to understand how historic Jewish people understood money and wealth.

Money as a Medal

Jewish people believed that the wealthiest person in the community was the greatest servant in the community. Wealth was simply a measure of how well and how much you served humanity. Every dollar bill represented a certificate, or medal, proving that you had served someone, just like a military medal received for service to your country. Money was viewed as a medal for giving your life in service to humanity. Thus, in the traditional Jewish paradigm, if you had no money, you were not serving society. In historic Jewish communities, they gave the best seat in the house, the best seat in the synagogue to the wealthiest man. This was not because they were trying to suck up to him. No! It was because they truly saw the wealthiest person as the greatest servant of society, deserving the best seat.

Today people often view making a lot of money as a sign of greed and spending money as a curse to avoid. We view spending as a curse because we feel we lose something by doing so, or we feel an aversion to materialism. Yet in the Jewish mindset, spending is a blessing to the world because we are paying for a product or service that adds value in some way to the world.

The Tale of Two Tactics for Influence

Let's go back in history to some time in the Middle Ages to a little Jewish community somewhere in Europe. Let's make it a village in Germany, where my grandparents were born. In that little community, they would take their Jewish boys and find the most aggressive, self-motivated young boys and send them to school for a rabbinical education. Then they would bring these boys back to their community. They were now highly educated, self-motivated young boys. As the boys came of marriageable age, the community would arrange a marriage, possibly to the daughter of the wealthiest man in the community.

Then this highly educated young man would say to his young growing family, "Kids, let me tell you, the money that you're going to end up inheriting from your grandfather isn't yours and it isn't mine. Let me tell you a story. If it weren't for Mordecai, Esther, Daniel, Shadrach, and Joseph, most administrations in every city our people have lived in would have killed us. We exist today because of the platform that previous generations have built for us. This wealth that we have is for us to manage and protect because it is designed to give us the ability to add value in and therefore influence every one of the cities and cultures where our people live. This is so our lineage can survive and thrive in future generations. So I want you to know, grandkids, you are not to spend this inheritance, wasting it on yourselves. Use it to build a business that builds a platform to add value to society. Your ancestor Mordecai, who saved our people from certain death, wasn't working a job somewhere in a field. He was a leader with influence where he could hear about the plot of King Artaxerxes to kill our entire people. Thus he was able to save his life and save Esther and thus keep our people from being killed. So we've got to continue stewarding our wealth by using it as a platform to create value and build influence in society. This wealth that we have and the wealth that we can create is designed to give us influence in every city. It isn't yours to be wasted on yourself."

With this ethic, the Jewish people became influential in many of the countries and cities where they lived. In Germany, for example, by 1923, 150 of the 161 privately-owned banks in Berlin were Jewish. About 75% of the attorneys, and nearly as many doctors were Jewish. Although only 1% of the German population, representing a negligible electoral power, by the early twentieth century the Jews' economic, social, and political impact was considerable. By the 1930s, who in Germany owned and controlled most of the companies and industries? Who controlled the steel industry, the fur trade, the newspaper industry, etc.? It was the Jews.

Now, in a normal society, this would simply be an example of how business and the wealth it generates can allow a minority population to exert significant influence on society. Unfortunately, as we all know, the Germany of the 1930s was taken down an abnormal path by an evil madman named Hitler. The evil forces of this world wanted to exterminate this group of people who were leading influencers in building a better world through doing commerce well. Hitler absurdly made the Jews' influence in society into a scapegoat for society's ills instead of honoring them for serving society and we all know the atrocities that followed. However, this story and the Jew's resurgence of influence illustrates how much impact a healthy view of the value of wealth generated by a business can have on a society, even when exercised by a small and even unpopular part of the population.

For contrast, let's go back to that same place in Germany, only let's go to a Catholic community instead of a Jewish one. Now the Catholic community takes their aggressive and self-motivated young boys and sends them off to the Jesuits and they come back as highly educated, self-motivated and aggressive young boys, many of whom become priests. These educated young boys begin influencing all of Central and South America and parts of the United States for Catholicism. These young priests are like pioneers. They gain vast amounts of wealth for the church and influence society quite a bit. Fifty-four cities in the United States are named after Catholic saints (Santa Fe, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, and Los Angeles are just a few of the more famous examples). Yet because these celibate priests didn't have families, the wealth they collected over their lifetimes was passed on to institutions.

Institutions are not wealth creators. Individuals and families doing business are wealth creators. Wealth was never designed to be managed, protected, and built upon inside of an institution. Attempts to build wealth within an institution inevitably cause the influence of the institution to be viewed as paramount over the influence created by serving people well.

I have come to believe wealth was designed to be managed and built upon inside the family and used as a platform for people to serve society in increasingly effective ways across the generations. This is a new paradigm in recent years for me. It has caused me to cast a new vision for my family and even revise my estate and trust structures to accommodate this new paradigm, where the wealth I create in this generation is passed on to the next generation, not for them to spend on themselves, but as a platform in trust for them to use as a basis for adding more value to society and rebuilding the world. This is, in many ways, the Jewish model throughout the centuries. Although there have certainly been abuses and mistakes made in this model, it has resulted in an inordinate influence on societies.

Today, the Jewish people are relatively few in number (there are less than 15 million Jews in the world). Yet in relation to their numbers, they have a huge business and financial influence. Though more persecuted than almost any group in the world, Jews control more wealth per person than any other group. Arguably, they have more influence per person on society than any other group in the world. There are undoubtedly multiple causes for this inordinate influence. However, one significant cause is clearly their deeply embedded belief that money is a medal of honor for doing business that blesses society.

Today, the Catholics are huge in number with more than 1.2 billion in the world. There are many highly successful and influential Catholic leaders around the globe. Some are my dearest and most respected friends. Yet in relation to their numbers overall, this people group doesn't have nearly the economic strength or influence the Jewish people group has on society. In fact, many of the poorest countries in the world are primarily dominated by the Catholic Church. There are undoubtedly multiple causes for this. However, one significant cause is the historic religious belief that money and materialism are evil and that commerce is a necessary evil to make a living and create donations to the church.

This also illustrates that churches existing on donations cannot exercise the same influence that businesses can. The Catholic Church primarily created wealth through donations, not by providing a product or service for a profit. On the other hand, the Jews primarily created wealth by providing a product or service for profit. Thus, their influence is both wide and deep, especially in proportion to their numbers.

A company is in some ways like an extension of the family concept, where people work together to create value that has a positive influence on society. Those companies and families who understand how money and business can redeem culture are world changers and history makers.

An Ancient Teaching on Influence

Jesus was one of those history-making leaders who really got this. A couple thousand years ago when Jesus was teaching how God's ideal society would develop in cities, he told a story that illustrates how business leaders who are able to turn one gold coin into ten gold coins are the ones who would end up having influence over ten cities. Society is built by business leaders who multiply their money and increase their net worth by providing a product or service or creating value so that it multiplies. This is what Jesus taught about how God's ideal society (what he called God's kingdom) is designed to grow. Yet it is interesting that the Catholic Church, which is supposed to be one of the primary vehicles for bringing God's kingdom to earth, ended up following a system that was not at all based on the system Jesus taught was to be used for building God's ideal society on this earth. Instead, the Catholic Church fostered what is, in reality, more like a socialistic system that takes from the producers to give to the non-producers. And for the most part, the institutional church around the world continues to perpetuate this basic paradigm of taking from the producers to give to non-producers more than it perpetuates the paradigm of people producing tangible value to build a better society.

Don't get me wrong. I do believe there is great value in producers giving to help people who can't produce. I do believe there is great value in generously giving to the church or charity you believe can use those resources to do really good and important work that wouldn't otherwise get done in this world. For the last forty some years, my wife and I have regularly donated a pretty good percentage of our income to churches and charities like this. And I think many of our donations do make a positive impact on the world. I am simply making a statement about the systems that I believe will ultimately have the greatest impact on transforming our world. I would put transformational commerce at the top of the list.

God's ideal society is not built best on a paradigm that takes from the one who produces and gives to the one who doesn't. I believe "the church" as Jesus envisioned it, as you will see in subsequent chapters, was actually designed to be people providing value to society through the marketplace.

One Last Lesson on Leadership Influence

This notion first started to dawn on me one day when I was reading the apostle Paul's last speech to the leaders he had been mentoring for years. Paul is known as the leader who did more to build the early church than perhaps any other person after Jesus. He developed leaders (none of whom were paid professional religious leaders) to oversee the church in various cities. He was about to make a long trip to Jerusalem, where he knew he would very likely be killed for going against the religious norms of that time. Just before he left, he gathered these church leaders, what we would call "pastors" today, and gave his farewell speech. With tears, Paul gave these pastors his final leadership advice for building the church.

He didn't tell them to preach better sermons, build better buildings, start more programs to feed the poor or raise more money to fund the ministry. What he said was that he had not coveted silver or gold or clothing.[ii] In fact, he said he had always produced the money for these himself: "You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions."[iii] Paul had worked for his own money, and he had been able to help others with that money too. He suggested that they do the same: "In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'"[iv]

In his last speech to the pastors he is mentoring in the early church, Paul is essentially saying, "I want you to be like me. I want you to produce so much profit from the work you do in business that you have plenty of money to give to those in need."

Now that's a switch. He's not telling pastors that the secret to success is to get their congregations to give more. He was telling pastors to make more so they could give more to their congregations! I want you to make enough money so you can give! Make profit so you can give to those who have a need in your congregation!

I don't know about you, but I have never heard a sermon on how pastors are supposed to do so well in business that they can give to people in the congregation. That, though, is the essence of Paul's last speech. Clearly, Paul did not see money or business as the root of all evil but instead as the basis for blessing society. When this dawned on me, it became clear that business and the church are supposed to have a more significant influence in building a good society than what most of us understand today.

So I'm going to challenge you to really evaluate your underlying subconscious beliefs and paradigms about money. Do you view it as an evil thing or something to avoid being around too much or to avoid having too much because it might somehow tarnish you? Or do you view it as a medal of honor for the value you create for others? Do you view it as a sinful or sinister thing or as a certificate of service that simply lets you know how much good you are doing for others or for this world? Embrace money as a measure of the value you give in serving humanity and humanity will be that much better of because of you.

Much of the potency of business to permeate every aspect of society for good flows from the genius of the free enterprise system in promoting good human relations and creating value in society.

Resources:

• [i] 1 Timothy 6:10
• [ii] Acts 20:33
• [iii] Acts 20:34
• [iv] Acts 20:35