Merry Christmas!

Just a week ago, we passed the Winter Solstice. Darkness dominates our days and sometimes our moods.

Just days after the light begins its return, we celebrate Christmas—the birth of Jesus, Divine Love, into our world.

Our Divided Nation

Light and Love could not come at a better time. Despite all our technology, wealth, knowledge and progress, we are in a bitter time. Our nation is deeply divided economically, socially and politically.

We are spending enormous amounts of time, energy and emotion yelling at each other and demonizing each other. We’ve lost the ability to have a calm, rational discussion about things.

We aren’t listening to each other in good faith, trying to understand what others truly mean. Instead, we interpret what the Others say in the most negative way we can. Then we attack them based not on what they meant, but on our negative interpretation.

It is a setup. The purpose is not to get to the Truth. The purpose is to create an image of others that we can attack. To scorch them. To destroy them, if we can.

It can feel so good to be self-righteous, and to demonize and attack others.

This demonization and division going on in our nation is very dangerous, however. It puts our national security at risk, damages our ability to achieve success, and makes each of us mean-spirited, awful people.

This behavior weakens our nation socially, politically, psychologically and spiritually. Worst of all, our nastiness threatens our own national security. This brutal infighting sends a message to our international foes that we are divided and weak.

Danger to Our National Security

We have lived comfortably in a Pax Americana since World War II. We have little understanding of the real horrors of war. Our battles have been fought on other continents. The vast majority of us have never really sacrificed for our national security.

But we face some rising foes who want to destroy our nation and they are developing the capability to do it. If these interpret our division as weakness, it can embolden them to attack us.

Overstated? Not at all. There are plenty of examples of American intentions being misinterpreted with nasty, unintended results.

North Korea attacked South Korea in 1950 because they misinterpreted American statements at the time as indicating that the US wouldn’t defend South Korea.

In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait because Saddam Hussein misinterpreted American statements as indicating that the US wouldn’t defend Kuwait.

Russia invaded Crimea 2014 and Georgia in 2008 because Russian leadership figured the US and NATO wouldn’t oppose those invasions.

We’re currently head-to-head with Russia in Europe, China in the South China Sea and Iran in the Persian Gulf. Our internal social and political division sends them the dangerous message that we are weak. It can be tempting to take advantage of an opponent while they are weak.

We need get our act together for our own national security.

Danger to Our American Understanding of Life

One of the greatest things about America is that, from the beginning, we have been a nation united not by ethnicity, but by a shared understanding of life, freedom and happiness. We thrive when we embrace that shared understanding of life, making good-faith compromises with each other to move forward as a team.

Right now, TEAM USA is a mess.

As I discuss in my book, On Leadership: What’s Broken in Our Society and How We Fix It, that fundamental American understanding of life is under...

It is so easy to get caught up in the busy-ness of life and find the weeks, months and even years flying buy.

We are chasing so many immediate things in life—getting the best job, getting our kids into the right schools and on the right sports teams, living in the right neighborhoods and driving the right cars—that it is easy to lose sight of what life is about.

And that’s dangerous. There are two things in life that are certain: death and taxes.

If you don’t pay attention to your taxes, the IRS will actively seek you out. The IRS will make you pay attention.

Life, on the other hand, will simply keep going on whether you are paying attention or not. A lot of people simply go through life, never really conscious of their own life, never living with intention or purpose. They get old or die and wonder where it all went. I can’t imagine a bigger regret than going through life unconscious, simply letting life happen to you.

That gets us to a very important question: Why? Why do you do what you do? What is your life leading to? What is your life destination?

Knowing the Why will make you more successful in all aspects of your life—at work, at home with your family, and in your own Happiness.

"Why" and Success in Your Life

So why do you do what you do? Where is your life going?

The answer to that should be Happiness. Fulfillment.

As I discussed in an earlier blog/podcast, The Meaning of Life: Happiness, history, tradition and, most of all, research tell us pretty clearly what makes us happy and fulfilled in life: high-quality relationships with others.

Let’s step that up: Happiness is all about having high-quality, high-trust relationships based in love.

Everything you do in life should point you towards Happiness. Anything that isn’t pointing you towards Happiness is quite literally a waste of your time.

Everything you do in life should be building high-quality, high-trust relationships based in love.

So, if you want Happiness and fulfillment in life, you should be constantly asking yourself why you do what you do. And the answer to that why should be that your action helps you build high-quality, high-trust loving relationships in your life.

Why practice being honest, just, wise, loving and courageous? Because when these become habits, when they become part of your character, you become the best person you can be –and that contributes directly to your high-quality, high-trust, loving relationships.

Why practice loving your family? Because it makes you a better person and because it teaches your children how to develop their own high-quality, high-trust, loving relationships. It is the most important thing you can teach them so they can achieve success in life—in their own families, in their work, as leaders in their own communities, and in their own lives.

Why care about the schools your children go to or activities they participate in? Because their experience in school builds knowledge and their team-based activities build character, leadership and teamwork. The knowledge they learn and the character they build develops wisdom. Having wisdom puts them in the best position possible to… Wait for it… Develop the high-quality, high-trust, loving relationships they will need to be successful in life. As leaders in their work, In their families and in their communities.

Why should you be physically, spiritually and psychologically fit? Because it puts you in the highest-quality, loving relationship with yourself. That, in turns, puts you in the best position to have great relationships with others.

Each week, we should review our activities—past and future—and ask why we are doing them...

Over the last week, our nation has taken time to honor the life of George H.W. Bush, our 41st president. Thousands viewed him in the Capitol in Washington DC and in Houston. We televised two of this three funeral services. Thousands more stood along the tracks while his presidential train took him to his final resting place in College Station, Texas.

Honor is the respect we owe someone because of the kind of person he or she is. For the character that they demonstrate. We have spent the last week honoring President Bush because, no matter where we stand politically, we respect the man he was, what he did with his life and the example he set. All for us.

If we’re smart, we will take powerful lessons from his life to make our own individual lives and our nation better. It is the best way to become good people ourselves and to honor a man who gave so much to all of us.

The life of President George H. W. Bush has many lessons for us, big and small, personal and national. Let’s talk about four of them:

* Strength and Resiliency

* America

* Unity

* Love and Fruitfulness

STRENGTH AND RESILIENCY

In our world today, some young people seem to have the idea that they are entitled to a good life, relatively free from pain, in which the world revolves around them.

to be taught to see themselves as victims of one kind or another. Then they are taught that they can use that victim-hood as leverage to demand something they are told they are entitled to.

Being a victim is seen as a way that young people can empower themselves. To be fair, I am not blaming the young people who have this attitude for having it. It is what they have been taught.

Today’s “snowplow parents” clear all obstacles out of the way to protect their children from anxiety. Parents complete their kids’ college applications. They show up at their kids’ work to talk to the boss. Many parents do everything they can to cover for their child’s failures.

I don’t think this approach is a formula for success in life. Even though our society has more money, education and technology than any time in history, our young people are more anxious and depressed than ever. Many young people seem hopeless and adrift. They don’t seem resilient. Suicide has become the second leading cause of death for them.

Let’s contrast that with the life of George H.W. Bush.

George Bush was part of the Greatest Generation—that group of people who grew up in America during the Depression and led us through World War II and the Cold War. The Greatest Generation had a character and toughness formed from the hunger and poverty of the Dust Bowl and Depression. A strength that we seem to lack today.

George Bush was undoubtedly blessed to be born into a family with money. His father was an investment banker who later became a US senator. He went to one of the best prep schools in the nation and, after World War II, graduated Yale.

On the other hand, Bush faced tragedy and hardship in his life.

 

At just 20 years old, President Bush was a Navy pilot in World War II who was shot down on a mission over some tiny islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Bush’s two crewmen on that mission died. Nine men from other aircraft escaped their planes. Bush was the only one rescued by Americans. The other eight were captured by the Japanese, tortured and executed.

Put yourself or a 20-year-old you know in an airplane in the middle of the Pacific… getting shot down… then losing your own crew-mates and more than 10 others on your team.

That wasn’t the only hardship Bush faced. He married Barbara while in the Navy and they had six children. Barbara and George were only 28-29 years old when they lost thei...

It’s time again for Thanksgiving!

A History of Giving Thanks

For most of our history, Americans have generally thought that life was hard deal. Life was tough. Difficult. Not supposed to be fair. If you worked hard and had some good luck, you might scratch out a decent life for yourself and your family. Maybe even a life a little better than your parents had.

Hard work and suffering developed toughness, resilience, character and leadership.

So, when something good happened—perhaps a good harvest in the fall or the peace after the horrors of the Civil War—Americans took the time to celebrate that goodness and give thanks for what they had. Safety from harm. Good fortune. The end of difficult times. The freedom to establish a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

In the midst of their hardships in life, Americans took time to give thanks to each other and the Creator for whatever blessings they had received.

Today, Thanksgiving is time to celebrate with family. Time to relax and prepare for the upcoming holidays. Time to get together and tell stories. Maybe even some time to get a nap in before standing in the long Black Friday lines.

Many of us, around the Thanksgiving dinner table, will stop and take some time to share what we are thankful for.

Like America, Thanksgiving stretches across boundaries, generations and ethnicities. One of my daughters’ co-workers, an immigrant from Afghanistan, told my daughter a story about how her children, at Thanksgiving, “hyper-demand” turkey and mashed potatoes. It’s a powerful way they, as Americans, share a common tradition with all other Americans.

All these are good things.

Life is Hard

That said, in today’s world giving thanks can seem counter cultural. How can we give thanks when we’re all battling challenges of one kind or another? Family problems. Problems at work. Financial problems.

The pressure can seem tremendous. Most families in America feel the financial pressure of trying to live paycheck to paycheck. They feel the social pressure of having to live in the right house in the right neighborhood while driving the right car. Our kids must be star athletes and go to the best colleges, or the family prestige is threatened.

With email and texting, we can never fully escape the pressures of work.

24/7 news cycles bombard us with continuous bad news about the nasty, never-ending and all-consuming political fights in Washington DC.

Social media connects us so well that we are no longer developing the tight, personal relationships that used to allow us to share our burdens with others. When we need support from others the most, we seem to have it the least. We have never been so well-connected and simultaneously so alone.

It’s no surprise that we’re more and more anxious and depressed as our own lives never match the perfection others project on Facebook or Instagram.

Un-Thanksgiving: Victims and Entitlements

That’s the backdrop to some growing and dangerous trends in our culture. Some un-Thanksgiving trends. Thanks for blessings are replaced with demands for entitlements.

The un-Thanksgiving trends push the idea that you don’t earn a good life, but that you’re entitled to a good life. That any pain and suffering in life aren’t opportunities for growth, but an unfair betrayal of that entitlement.

These postmodern trends push us to see ourselves as the victims of others who owe us something.

I am entitled to what I want in life and you owe it to me. And if I don’t get what I want from you, I am entitled to demonize you and bully you and be a jerk to you.

These are un-Thanksgiving trends. When you don’t get what you want you are supposed to be angry.

The Marine Corps Birthday

Last night, I took a friend of mine, Tony, out for an important evening. He’s 96 years old, a retired school superintendent, teacher and deacon. I think he is the father of seven. We went to an event that had about 200 people of all ethnic groups, ages 20 to 96. It included a billionaire, federal judges, musicians, attorneys, business people, and moms and dads. Blue collar and white collar. A diverse group bound by one thing: the birthday we share as US Marines.

It’s a thing. Every November 10th, Marines all around the world celebrate the birthday of their Corps.

In 1775, 243 years ago, the Marine Corps was born in a tavern in Philadelphia. Today, Marines will celebrate their birthday in formal balls, by sharing a birthday meal in a trench in Afghanistan, or even just by saying “Happy Birthday, Marine” to each other.

So, what can a fighting organization founded almost 250 years ago in a bar teach us about life today? A lot, I think. Let’s talk about three life lessons—story, diversity and relationships.

Story

The Marine Corps spent much of its history as a military afterthought. It's obvious that every nation needs an army to defend its land and a navy to defend its seas. But do we need a Marine Corps?

Marines started as soldiers at sea who guarded the captain from potentially mutinous sailors and boarded enemy ships in combat. But mutiny hasn’t been a serious issue for almost 200 years and no one today is firing muskets at an enemy crew.

Sure enough, our Marine Corps has been threatened with extinction several times in American history. Even after the Marine Corps performed spectacularly in World War II, many in government (and the Army) tried to abolish the Marine Corps. Your Marine Corps.

If you talk to the Army or Air Force, the Marine Corps survives because the Corps has great public relations. But that misses a deeper lesson. The Marine Corps survives—even thrives—because the Marine Corps understands the importance of telling a compelling story.

All the military services have honor and courage and commitment. But the Marine Corps brings those virtues alive in a super-powerful way by transforming them from theoretical ideas into real-world stories.

In 1847, during the Mexican-American War, the Marines played a role in the capture of Chapultepec Castle on the approaches to Mexico City. The Marines quickly published the story of their role in the battle as an example of Marine heroism. From the Halls of Montezuma….

In 1805, during the war against the Barbary states, seven Marines led several hundred mercenaries across the Libyan desert to fight the Battle of Derna. The battle itself didn’t mean much. It was fought after the Barbary war had ended. But the Marines turned this relatively inconsequential battle into an epic story. To the Shores of Tripoli….

The Marines turned their role in these relatively minor battles into their Story. They told that Story in song:

From the Halls of Montezuma,

To the Shores of Tripoli...

The first two lines of the Marine Corps Hymn, a song that a surprising number of Americans know.

The Marines didn’t just turn these battles into epic stories and song, they made them concrete in their uniforms and tradition. The red stripe on the legs of the Marine Dress Blue uniform remembers the Battle of Chapultepec. All Marine officers have a Mameluke sword, given to the Corps in remembrance of the Battle of Derna.

Going into the Spanish-American War, there was a move to abolish the Corps. The Marines happened to be the first forces to land in Cuba and won a relatively small, but tough battle at Cuzco Wells. The American newspapers—desperate for news about the war—made the Marines heroes.

In World War I,

Love and Happiness

Today, we’re going to begin an ongoing conversation about the importance and power of love.

Love is obviously a subject very present in our lives. When we are in love we’re happy. When we’re out of love we’re heartbroken and unhappy. We love our parents and our kids. Love is the subject of more than half the hit songs on the radio.

As present as love is in our lives, I don’t think we have a good understanding of love. Maybe we’re too familiar with it. Maybe we take it for granted.

All too often we think of love as little more than falling in romantic love with someone. No doubt, romantic love—eros—is awesome. It feels great. It’s exciting. Maybe even intoxicating.

But love is much bigger than that. It includes love for your parents and your children. Love for your friends. The self-giving love that leads some people to sacrifice their lives for others.

Love isn’t just something we feel. Love is also action.

In my blog, The Meaning of Life: Happiness, we talk about the importance of relationship for Happiness in life. A study that Harvard has been doing for more than 70 years shows that the most important thing for happiness in life is having high-quality relationships.

Happiness does not come from money. Or fame. Or social status.

Happiness is deeply tied to having great relationships. And the best relationships are love-based relationships. Loving relationships with your friends. With your spouse. With your children. With your co-workers.

Being loved by others changes us. When we practice loving others, it changes us too.

Not just changed emotionally, but physically changed. We’re biologically wired for love. It’s embedded deeply in our DNA.

That Harvard study didn’t just show that high-quality relationships make you happier in life. People with good relationships are healthier and actually live longer. Let’s flip it the other way. Loneliness, the lack of love, is as deadly as smoking or alcoholism.

There’s more. Babies. It turns out that if you give infants all the food and water they need—if you give them all the nutrition they need—but you don’t give them love and physical affection, almost 40% of them will die. A 40% death rate for babies who don’t receive love. More than half of the infant survivors will have significant psychological challenges.

The simple and yet profound answer for the meaning of life--for Happiness--is having good, loving relationships.

Love is the foundation for a healthy and happy life.

When you understand and practice love, you'll receive enormous benefits in life.

You’ll have better relationships with your spouse and children and family.

You’ll be a much more successful leader at work.

You’ll have the best chance for fulfillment and happiness in your own life.

Love is at the very core of life. The more you understand love, the better you’ll be at every aspect of your life.

One experience taught me a very important lesson about love and life. It’s make-or-break.

What you believe about love--what you know about love--dramatically impacts your understanding of life.

A Story About Death and Love

True story. I had a friend at the gym who was an accomplished doctor with an Ivy League education. Very smart. Very intellectual.

He claimed to be an atheist,

In this blog, we’ll talk about the Meaning of Life, Happiness, what that means and what you can start doing right now to achieve it.

You can find a podcast version of this blog article on our website or iTunes.

If you want to dive in to the issue of leadership, you can get my book, “On Leadership, What’s Broken in Our Society and How We Fix It” on Amazon.com.

What is Happiness?

If you ask people what they want in life, they’ll almost always tell you that they want Happiness. Isn’t that what we all want? Isn’t the meaning of life Happiness? But that always gives rise to the next questions: What is happiness and how do we get it?

And that’s usually as far as we go in the discussion. Talking about what Happiness is and how we might achieve it gets too complicated too quickly. Is it about having money? How much money? Being healthy? Living a long time? Being with the person you love? Owning a Ferrari? The Dodgers finally winning a World Series? Are those the things that Happiness is about?

If you’ve had a few philosophy classes, the question of Happiness can get buried in all sorts of technical distinctions between happiness and joy and thriving and flourishing and whatever. A great topic for a few beers at the pub or a late-night dorm discussion gets quickly lost in philosophical technicalities.

Besides, who has time to think about happiness when we are struggling to make it to our next pay check, get the mortgage paid and get the kids from school to their sports practices. Most of us are too worried about keeping our jobs and getting our kids into college. Who has time to think about Happiness in life when we’re just trying to survive in life?

Life is complicated and high-speed and overwhelming. But we can fix that. What if we had a simple way of understanding the meaning of life—Happiness—and some straightforward strategies to get there? What if we could do things today that helped us be happy through the rest of our lives?

Let me tell you the story of a guy who grew up in southern California. A few people had put together a concept to make and sell high-quality baseball cards, but they needed some help. So, one of them brought in his high school buddy, Richard, as an investor and accountant.

Over the next 10 years, Richard built the company into a giant. He became a billionaire who also owned a charter jet company. Richard was a guy who had it all: business success. Fame. Boatloads of money. Airplanes and billionaire status.

But he died at the age of 59. Alcohol poisoning. He was suffering from addiction and alcohol dementia. In his climb to becoming a billionaire he had cheated partners and lost many of his old and close friends. He had destroyed most of the important relationships in his life. His billionaire status and business success did not prevent him from drinking himself to death, apparently deeply unhappy.

Let’s contrast that with the story of a woman from a small town in Alabama. She grew up in a simple house with perhaps three rooms. She left home at the age of 18 the day after her high school graduation. She moved to the state capital and found a job. Eventually she met the man who became her husband. He was moving from job to job, not making much money. They got married and he became a union tradesman Between the two of them, they made a modest living.

She had challenges in life. She lost her only son shortly after he was born. She raised her two daughters while her husband was away for long per...

In this blog, we’ll talk about the Meaning of Life, Happiness, what that means and what you can start doing right now to achieve it.

You can find a podcast version of this blog article on our website or iTunes.

If you want to dive in to the issue of leadership, you can get my book, “On Leadership, What’s Broken in Our Society and How We Fix It” on Amazon.com.

What is Happiness?

If you ask people what they want in life, they’ll almost always tell you that they want Happiness. Isn’t that what we all want? Isn’t the meaning of life Happiness? But that always gives rise to the next questions: What is happiness and how do we get it?

And that’s usually as far as we go in the discussion. Talking about what Happiness is and how we might achieve it gets too complicated too quickly. Is it about having money? How much money? Being healthy? Living a long time? Being with the person you love? Owning a Ferrari? The Dodgers finally winning a World Series? Are those the things that Happiness is about?

If you’ve had a few philosophy classes, the question of Happiness can get buried in all sorts of technical distinctions between happiness and joy and thriving and flourishing and whatever. A great topic for a few beers at the pub or a late-night dorm discussion gets quickly lost in philosophical technicalities.

Besides, who has time to think about happiness when we are struggling to make it to our next pay check, get the mortgage paid and get the kids from school to their sports practices. Most of us are too worried about keeping our jobs and getting our kids into college. Who has time to think about Happiness in life when we’re just trying to survive in life?

Life is complicated and high-speed and overwhelming. But we can fix that. What if we had a simple way of understanding the meaning of life—Happiness—and some straightforward strategies to get there? What if we could do things today that helped us be happy through the rest of our lives?

Let me tell you the story of a guy who grew up in southern California. A few people had put together a concept to make and sell high-quality baseball cards, but they needed some help. So, one of them brought in his high school buddy, Richard, as an investor and accountant.

Over the next 10 years, Richard built the company into a giant. He became a billionaire who also owned a charter jet company. Richard was a guy who had it all: business success. Fame. Boatloads of money. Airplanes and billionaire status.

But he died at the age of 59. Alcohol poisoning. He was suffering from addiction and alcohol dementia. In his climb to becoming a billionaire he had cheated partners and lost many of his old and close friends. He had destroyed most of the important relationships in his life. His billionaire status and business success did not prevent him from drinking himself to death, apparently deeply unhappy.

Let’s contrast that with the story of a woman from a small town in Alabama. She grew up in a simple house with perhaps three rooms. She left home at the age of 18 the day after her high school graduation. She moved to the state capital and found a job. Eventually she met the man who became her husband. He was moving from job to job, not making much money. They got married and he became a union tradesman Between the two of them, they made a modest living.

She had challenges in life. She lost her only son shortly after he was born. She raised her two daughters while her husband was away for long periods on construc...

In this blog, we are starting an ongoing discussion about leadership. First, we’ll talk about how fundamental leadership is in our lives. Then we’ll talk about definitions of leadership resulting in what I believe is the best definition of leadership. Finally, I am going to ask you to share your thoughts, experiences and questions about leadership. I want to hear what you think and why. This is a discussion, after all! Real talk about life.

You can find a podcast version of this blog article on our website or iTunes.

If you want to dive in to the issue of leadership, you can get my book, “On Leadership, What’s Broken in Our Society and How We Fix It” on Amazon.com.

Why Leadership is Important: Leadership and Life Are the Same

Leadership is very important for at least three reasons.

First, leadership is personal to all of us. You are a leader at work. You are a leader in your own family. And hopefully, you are leading your own life towards fulfillment and Happiness. If you are going to be successful in life, you must be a good leader in all these areas. Leadership isn’t something that someone else does. Leadership is something you do and experience every day.

Second, you are a citizen-leader. As Americans, we all have the responsibility for being leaders of our nation, states and local communities. Our Constitution begins with “We the people of the United States,” and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address noted that we have a “government of the people, by the people and for the people.” You are a citizen-leader with the responsibility to choose the day-to-day leaders in our government. To choose good leaders, you must understand leadership.

Finally, leadership is at the very core of our society. It permeates every aspect of our lives. Every day, depending on the situation, we constantly trust the leadership of others and others trust our leadership.

At work, we trust that senior leaders keep things headed in the right direction while we lead our people and teams in our projects.

In our families, parents lead kids through the first 20 years of their kids’ lives and then the kids often lead their parents through the last 10 years of their parents lives.

Church ministers lead us through spiritual and life challenges.

Doctors, attorneys and bankers lead us through our health, legal and financial issues.

Teachers lead our communities and children in education

General contractors lead us through home renovation

The employees at Trader Joe’s help us find new trending foods and the Geek Squad leads us through the installation of our home theater systems.

Youth athletic coaches lead our kids in the development of teamwork, leadership and character. Or at least we hope they do.

When you think about it, leadership goes on all around us all the time. It is the most basic of human relationships. Leadership has been around since the first time one human guided or taught another.

Leadership is pervasive to our human experience. It permeates every aspect of life. Our personal and professional lives are full of relationships where we trust the leadership of others and they trust our leadership.

Our society depends on billions of these leadership-trust relationships every day. Without them, our society would collapse quickly. Think about some of the areas where we take leadership for granted:

* Law

* Banking and Finance

In this blog, we are starting an ongoing discussion about leadership. First, we’ll talk about how fundamental leadership is in our lives. Then we’ll talk about definitions of leadership resulting in what I believe is the best definition of leadership. Finally, I am going to ask you to share your thoughts, experiences and questions about leadership. I want to hear what you think and why. This is a discussion, after all! Real talk about life.

You can find a podcast version of this blog article on our website or iTunes.

If you want to dive in to the issue of leadership, you can get my book, “On Leadership, What’s Broken in Our Society and How We Fix It” on Amazon.com.

Why Leadership is Important: Leadership and Life Are the Same

Leadership is very important for at least three reasons.

First, leadership is personal to all of us. You are a leader at work. You are a leader in your own family. And hopefully, you are leading your own life towards fulfillment and Happiness. If you are going to be successful in life, you must be a good leader in all these areas. Leadership isn’t something that someone else does. Leadership is something you do and experience every day.

Second, you are a citizen-leader. As Americans, we all have the responsibility for being leaders of our nation, states and local communities. Our Constitution begins with “We the people of the United States,” and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address noted that we have a “government of the people, by the people and for the people.” You are a citizen-leader with the responsibility to choose the day-to-day leaders in our government. To choose good leaders, you must understand leadership.

Finally, leadership is at the very core of our society. It permeates every aspect of our lives. Every day, depending on the situation, we constantly trust the leadership of others and others trust our leadership.

At work, we trust that senior leaders keep things headed in the right direction while we lead our people and teams in our projects.

In our families, parents lead kids through the first 20 years of their kids’ lives and then the kids often lead their parents through the last 10 years of their parents lives.

Church ministers lead us through spiritual and life challenges.

Doctors, attorneys and bankers lead us through our health, legal and financial issues.

Teachers lead our communities and children in education

General contractors lead us through home renovation

The employees at Trader Joe’s help us find new trending foods and the Geek Squad leads us through the installation of our home theater systems.

Youth athletic coaches lead our kids in the development of teamwork, leadership and character. Or at least we hope they do.

When you think about it, leadership goes on all around us all the time. It is the most basic of human relationships. Leadership has been around since the first time one human guided or taught another.

Leadership is pervasive to our human experience. It permeates every aspect of life. Our personal and professional lives are full of relationships where we trust the leadership of others and they trust our leadership.

Our society depends on billions of these leadership-trust relationships every day. Without them, our society would collapse quickly. Think about some of the areas where we take leadership for granted:

* Law

* Banking and Finance