My focus is naturally geared towards the big changes I can make – the multitudes of people I can impact. I’m not the type of guy that gets choked up about making a difference in the life of one person – until it happens.

If you’ve been following my life in the blog, you know that I have organized a vacation camp for kids and am teaching a leadership course for adults. Some of the kids who participated in the vacation camp had parents who are in the leadership course. In the vacation camp for kids, we talked about a lot of basic, but very important topics for anyone who is growing up. Several of them included saying no to alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes, washing your hands, making smart decisions, not polluting the environment, and respecting your parents. Surprisingly, most of the kids immediately applied what they learned in their lives at home.

One of my community members that is in my leadership class is named Alberto. He is a leader in the community and the president of one of the organizations. One day after the vacation camp, one of his sons who participated in the camp went home and said, “Dad, today, we learned the negative effects of alcohol and I don’t think you should drink anymore. Our teacher told us that alcohol is something that alters our mind and makes us lose control. You drink almost everyday and get drunk like the teacher says you shouldn’t, plus your liver is dying. Will you stop drinking?”

This obviously struck a cord with Alberto as the next day, he entered my class. That day, we talked about developing a plan to improve our own lives and forming an accountability within the class as peer counselors or cheerleaders depending on the situation. He said that he was devoted to stop drinking. He knew it would be hard because he knew he was an alcoholic, but never was really confronted about it because it is so normal. When I spoke about the example we set for our kids and the spouse we are to our spouse as the primary task of a leader. I told them that there was no leadership outside of the family that is as meaningful and as fundamental in anyone’s lives and that integrity begins in the home. Then I asked the class what sort of legacy they were creating for their children – empowering or debilitating?

Alberto decided it was time to change and consider his own kids first. He committed to quitting drinking and he did. He came a week sober to yesterday’s class and told me that his kids were happier around him and expressed it verbally to him. I could see there was a bit of nervousness in him as he shared because of the high standards I set for my class participants. I looked at him, my eyes welled up, I took a deep breath, and gave him a big hug. He breathed to let go of all his stress and said, “My goal is to do the same this week and every week to follow. Alcohol doesn’t control me and I can choose to create my own culture of responsibility. I learned that ‘deliberate practice’ and discipline to be responsible and live a life of integrity was the source to becoming a credible leader from you and I want to be that leader that people can trust. Thank you, Ray.”

This is why I joined the Peace Corps.

One life, making it count.

It must be a shift in the perspective of the soul.

A professor of mine from college (Dr. Kent Seibert) once told me that reflection is absolutely necessary to increase your performance and results as a leader. I read his research on both the psychological benefits and the increased probability of success people experience when they do reflect, so daily, I spend between 30 minutes and 3 hours asking myself a question, doing research when materials are available, and discovering new ways of thinking and new things to do. He has found that there are essentially two types of reflection, online and offline. Online reflection is reflection while you are in the midst of the experience (almost like while you are browsing online). Offline is when you are outside of the experience (like when you are about to sign on to figure out what you need to browse and after when you have gathered the information what you will do with it).

On another note, in recent conversations with Jim Kouzes (best selling author of “The Leadership Challege,” “Credibility,” “Encourage the Heart”, and “A Leader’s Legacy”) he explained to me the imperative nature of ‘deliberate practice’ in leadership excellence. In a nutshell, he spoke about how people in general, in order to be great at anything, need to devote 3 hours to deliberately improve their abilities in the area they want to improve. It’s not intended to be enjoyable, but it is intended to make you better. He cited a pianist named Lang Lang, who devoted 8 hours a day from the age of 2 1/2 to 3 hours a day from the age of 15 to practicing the piano. Now, he is considered the best in the world. Best selling author of “The Tipping Point” and “Blink” came out with a new book called “Outliers” where he explored what made one thing great or terrible on either end of the spectrum. He noted that to be the best in the world at something, you need to devote at least 10,000 hours in your life to it. What a paradigm shifter!

So, in light of their suggestions, I am continuing on with full force and absolute fierocity my quest to help myself and others how to live a life that’s worth living.

How do we determine what we want our lives to look like towards the end of our lives?

I was recently browsing through an interesting initiative called TED. It’s a website that features world class speakers like Bill Clinton, Malcolm Gladwell, Daniel Goleman, Rick Warren, Al Gore, Seth Godin, and Bono on topics that matter like education, science, biology, globalization, global warming, religion, philosophy, social justice, and technology. On the site, after listening to one speaker and following a suggested link to another, I finally landed on Billy Graham. I was shocked to find Billy Graham speaking in this sort of event. He talked about Technology, Faith, and Human Shortcomings and what I found extremely insightful was his depth and brevity of understanding. At a conference where most people consider themselves liberal and scientific to the point of denouncing religion, he was received by a standing ovation, captured by a respectful crowd, and sent off with hugs and another standing ovation. What a testament to life when people who disagree with your fundamental values still respect the life you lived and continue to do so. Which brings me to my thesis.

Our lives are worth living when we live a life that is consistent in virtues and determined to find truth while doing good.

Almost every preacher I have ever heard has talked about death. Even Billy Graham in his address to TED spoke of his own experiences with thousands of people lying in their death bed, famous or obsolete to the public, either afraid, regretful, or ready.

He spoke about those who were uncertain about what happened after life who were in absolute fear wishing that they had spent more time thinking about what might happen when they died instead of being preoccupied with fame, fortune, or even extending their health. He spoke about those who were regretful, fully knowing that they could’ve lived a more proactive life, but chose a life of less meaning and more materialism, determining their value through their valuables. And then he spoke briefly about those who were ready, people that lived truly meaningful or significant lives, regardless of whether they were known for it or not, whether they were young or old on their death bed. It reminded me of a funeral I went to.

I had a 20 year old kid who worked for me when I was also 20. He always used to call me chief and was born and raised in the middle of Compton. He wasn’t the best employee, but surprisingly, with an opportunity that no one else would give him, he made better money than he ever made in his entire life. After his second month working for me, a kid brother of his in his gang – sort of like a little brother in a fraternity was shot and killed. I had only known him for a couple of months and I was surprised that he asked me to come to his funeral. I got dressed up and headed to the funeral.
I remember being scared as I pulled up o the funeral home. Kids dressed in colors looked at me like I didn’t belong as I pulled up and were even more surprised to find that I was going to the same funeral as they were. As I walked in, I paid my respects and for a few seconds, stared at the lifeless body that the people in the mortuary tried to paint with make up in order to look as though he was still alive. As I stood there thinking about what happened, how it happened, and what the family was going through, I realized that I had never been to a funeral with an open casket. The experience changed me and it was probably then that I subconsciously turn on a unstoppable fervor to live life and make it count. Up to then, that statement was in black and white, seeing a kid at the age of 14 dead because of gang conflicts reframed what I thought of a life with purpose.
I remember Cameron coming up behind me and putting his hand on my shoulder as I was staring at the body and a crowd of eyes just staring at our interaction. He pulled me in for a hug, introduced me to the families, and asked me if I would take a walk with him. Eyes around the room looked puzzled as I walked out the funeral home with Cameron. The group of kids who stared me down when I was pulling up were just as surprised to see me walk away with Cameron as well. We took a right and walked on a broken cement sidewalk for about 2 blocks and talked. I extended my condolences and Cameron’s eyes began to tear up again. You could tell he has been crying for a while, but doing so in private trying to maintain a sense of cool to show the younger guys that they need to focus on being strong instead of feeling.
I asked him what was next, and he said simply said, “retribution.” I didn’t think I could convince him otherwise, but I decided to ask him questions that might lead him away from making a decision that would truly compromise his freedom. After a series of questions, he just kept telling me, “don’t worry. I’m not going to do anything stupid. I know what I’m doing. Just living the life of the hood.” He wasn’t going to tell me because he either didn’t want to be an accomplice to anything or he respected me enough not to bring me in. Either way, I didn’t enjoy it. After trying a hundred different ways from asking how I could help to offering him money to asking him to stay with me, he simply said, “Thanks, I appreciate your intentions, but I just gotta do what I gotta do. This doesn’t involve you. Thanks for coming.” And he escorted me back to my car. I never heard from him again.

I don’t exactly know how to interpret the whole experience, but I can’t stop wondering if I could’ve done something more to make sure that he didn’t waste his life. For a kid less than 25 to miss out on so much when he was obviously intelligent enough to motivate a group, think through a strategy for vengeance, and persuade me to leave tactfully, I couldn’t believe what he was inferring he was about to do. The kid that died was only 14 years old. Between Junior High and High School, he barely started his life. Yet, in order to survive, he had to find a way to get protected, and that’s exactly what he did. And as for reflection, based on that experience, I think I found a heart for people who have a hard time succeeding in the outside world, so they create a world from within.

So why did I write this story?

I have been having a hard time living in the present and now that something has clicked in my soul, I am enjoying the present more than anything else. But in light of fully being present, I constantly look far far ahead to the future to find the answer to whether my life will be lived in a way that is worth remembering or not. Some lives are lived as an example of what not to do and others as examples of what could be done. No one wants to be a warning label. This life doesn’t just include those we know and those we see, it includes the hundreds of names and faces that we can’t see or know because of our own blindness. In order to live a life worth living, here a set of things that I feel like we all need to do:

1. Evaluate your values to determine if they help you or hurt you.
Values determine decisions. If we don’t have the right values, we can end up living a life that gratifies our self and ourselves only. It’s a dangerous place to be if all you look out for are yourself and your immediate dependents. Our world needs to include the world that don’t directly impact us, but the world that we can impact. Do you value personal net worth or goodwill among mankind? Do you value hoarding or helping? Do you value comfort or change? These among many others will determine what you do with your life.

2. Figure out if your worldview is big enough to change the world.
I was recently listening to Rick Warren and he kept on talking about worldview. In a nutshell, he said that worldview is determined by faith – we can either have faith that life has a purpose or it doesn’t and it will determine our world view. Some people’s worldview only include their route to and from work everyday, while others include the marginalized, helpless, and hopeless. What’s your worldview contain? And is it big enough to make a difference?

3. Educate your self and other around you.
I can’t tell you how many experts out there say that education is the key. I once spoke to a prominent business man who told me that exposure is the key to opening your mind and becoming a world player. I never forgot the example he used about steak because of how much I love it. Some people in the world will never know what a great Morton’s or Ruth’s Chris or Maestro’s steak tastes like simply because they will never be exposed to it. However, if they are exposed to it, they can work towards the realization of the first bite.
Al Gore is a passionate person. He spends most of his time trying to educate people on the importance of protecting the earth and preventing global warming, so what does he do? He found a way to get educated and now he spends most of his time running and organization or personally educating people himself about the realities of it.
Life is the same way. Once we see the needs of the world through self and other education, we can begin to work towards changing the world. How are you educating yourself?

4. Plan, try, fail, plan, and try again.
It took Thomas Edison over 10,000 attempts to invent the light bulb and every time he took on a new approach, how many times do you try to accomplish something before you give up?

5. Build a legacy
Legacies are what lasts after you. Thomas Friedman laid out a good notion for us to consider. The industrial age left a legacy of the national railroad, the internet boom left us a legacy of cheap connectivity all around the world, now, through his new book, “Hot, Flat, and Crowded,” he is calling for action to create a green era for solar energy to become developed. I don’t know if the railroad will ever become obsolete, but after almost a hundred years of use, it’s been quite beneficial for the rest of us as will the internet.
When you think of Mother Theresa, MLK Jr., JFK, and others, you can’t help but think of a world without them. They are premier examples of legacy.

6. Remember to include those that aren’t easy to see.
I listened to a talk from Daniel Goleman (the author of Emotional Intelligence). One day in the 80’s while he was working for the NY Times, he did research and wrote an article about the homeless people in NYC. While he was conducting his research, he noticed that by talking with people who were working directly with and who were homeless, something in his mind shifted. He realized that when he would pass by a homeless person, they would remain in his peripherals in both his sight and his mind. However, after doing research, he realized that all of them were psychiatric patients that had no where else to go. This allowed him to snap out of an urban trance. A day shortly after, he was walking in the subway and he noticed a shirtless, slumped over and homeless guy being stepped over by hundreds of people. Until Goleman stopped and asked him how he was, no one would take notice of this guy who was obviously suffering. As soon as Goleman stopped, at least a half a dozen people followed suit and as they asked him questions, they realized that he had passed out from hunger, didn’t speak any English, and had been wandering around New York for several days lost and without food. When they heard this, people immediately went out and got him some food, orange juice, and some clothes and the homeless man was back on his feet. All it took was for someone to take notice. Who are you failing to see?

7. Begin with your family first.
Does this really need explanation. We need to be responsible within our homes to do well outside of our homes. What good is it if we are helping our world and ignoring our wives, husbands, and kids?

I saw a picture of newly elected President Barack Obama signing his first presidential proclamation. Grabbing the pen with his left hand, he quipped, “I’m a lefty. Get used to it. I was told not to swipe the pen.” And signed the document with Vice President Joe Biden standing at his right. As I looked at the picture, I wondered what it felt like to sit in the same room that so many past influencers of history have sat in to lead the mighty United States of America as it’s Chief Executive Officer, Commander in Chief, or the Big Cheese. The sense of accomplishment must’ve been overwhelming and the pride that comes with that almost tearful. In a sense, this picture signified the next four to eight years of his life as he would be leading over 300,000,000 people into an uncertain future.

I tried to put my shoes and thought of a time when I was just overwhelmed with the place I was at. I tried to think of something that, when sitting in a room in solitude, standing in front of a crowd, or walking around in new territory, that would equal the incredible sense of joy, responsibility, pride, accomplishment, and relief that President Obama was feeling at the time. The closest I got to that feeling was when thinking about the type of son I had become or the kind of brother I am to my sister. Then I thought of what I was doing now, here in the Peace Corps, and although it will be meaningless to most people all around the world, I know that the effort I put in today will affect the lives of at least 1000 people living in the margins of economic, political, and academic life in the future.

While I studied the picture I thought through what it took for Obama to be able to have such a photo taken of him. The blood, sweat, and tears that none of us have seen. The intense sacrifices he made on his body and on his mental sanity. The ups and downs of the emotional roller coaster. The sacrifice his family made during his campaign. It takes someone very ambitions and undeniably focused to win a campaign, but it also takes someone who is believable and has a vision greater than him/herself to keep people putting fuel to the fire.

I think I heard that Obama had over a million volunteers fueling his campaign engine and I wonder how that happened. Were they behind his rhetoric, his sense of calm, his vision for change, his ethnic background, or all of it? I will never really know, and whether you voted for him or not, a volunteer army of 1,000,000 is incredible, and something must’ve driven it to such great heights.

Whatever caused his success, one thing that is certain is that we cannot overlook any piece on the road to success. For him to be sitting there, pen in (left) hand, and an impressive running mate as his Vice President, was a symbol of his incredible focus, his ability to inspire millions, organize with precision, stay steady under undeniable pressures, establish a trust bond with those who are working under his leadership, establish that same trust with those who voted for him, and keep himself moving forward.

I think about leadership in the context of Obama’s campaign and I can’t help, but think of the energy that must’ve gone into it and how well he focused the energy. I remember hearing from good friend of mine, Ben, who I met randomly at 21 Choices waiting in line in Pasadena, that he learned from his professor at Darden Business School in Virginia that Leadership is the management of energy – both your own and those who follow. In campaign leadership, I can’t help but come to the conclusion that Leadership is indeed the management of our energy and the focus of our discipline to use our energy in all the right places. Yesterday, I wrote a piece about “Teaching those you Lead,” and I find that many of those principles and practices apply to running a campaign, collecting volunteers, keeping volunteers inspired, and directing the collective energy where it needs to be used.

A lot of leadership must focused on strategy and execution. Strategy is simply planning, preparing for the unknown, finding ways to beat the competition, and establishing short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals. Execution is the disciplined practice of all that you have strategically planne.

As much as I have lost faith in politics, I have to say that I have jumped on the bandwagon of hope and change, and my prayer is that as Obama impoves our nation’s reputation with the world, brings jobs to the working public, creates tangible change, and continues to promote capitalism, that he will also restore a morality to the country, right our wrongs, and help people gather around a new vision of world citizenship and civility. The world needs change, but we need a change in the right direction.

I hope that Obama will be the catalyst for it.

Mr. Obama, today is your first day as president. Please, give us a reason to be proud in our politics.

The vacation camp that I have been planning is finally in motion. With topics that are meant to create civil citizens, develop leaders in the community, and $10,000 worth of educational materials that Junior Achievement sent us for free, we are on track to changing the community. We have a total of 17 volunteers, 205 kids, and 5 hours of fun a day for 6 days, and we are making waves here! Although a month ago, we started with 30 volunteers (13 of which have dropped off the face of this earth), 300 kids (a guesstimate), and 8 hours of activities a day (9:00a-5:00p), we assessed what the community is accustomed to, it was pretty evident that certain things must change. So we changed a few details and are currently on the road to creating civil servants that are community minded.

The days look like this –

7:00a-8:00a : Dinamicas (a quasi way of saying Ice Breakers)
8:00a-10:00a: Junior Achievement – education materials from Argentina that we got for free
10:00a-10:15a : Recess
10:15a-11:00a: Lecture based on a theme (Personal Hygiene, Sexuality and Appropriateness, Keeping the community clean [not littering, not burning plastic, etc], respecting your neighbor, saying no to drugs and alcohol, and the importance of education)
11:00a-12:00p: Community service activity
12:00p-1:00p: Games

Running the show this time has allowed a lot of gears to click for me. I am finding myself growing with a humility that I never had before in an area of my life that I was stubborn to accept that I needed to be humble. My pride has blinded me in very important ways. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in the past, which I constantly think of to learn from my shortcomings of the experiences and I realized that in order to be a true leader, there has to be a mental click that goes beyond just simple knowledge and even the intention to do. I used to believe that if you force yourself to do something enough times, you’ll understand why you do it and be sold on it, but it’s not always the case. Sometimes, it just has to click before it becomes something significant in your life. Now, I am learning (or really learning) how to serve from the bottom up and not just the top down. It’s been a lesson long-awaited, but I’m finally coming to grips with the reality that what I “knew” takes on a whole new meaning when it truly becomes a way of life and becomes a part of who I “am.”

So here are a few “obvious,” but not so easy things to consider and do when you are teaching the people you lead, whether its your children, friends, family, students, or organization.

1. Know your audience
A big problem comes when you cannot contextualize the principles you are asking your audience, whether it be your children or your executive team, to practice. To truly know your audience is to be able to craft a message that they can understand and are captivated by.

If we don’t speak in a language they don’t understand, we are going to be left talking to ourselves. The kids and the culture here is different and different assumptions take precedence when determining what works and what doesn’t. The group of volunteers went from house to house to inform everyone about the upcoming summer camp two weeks ago. We had them sign their kids up, got each of the kids’ names and ages, and told them when their classes would start. Two weeks later on day one, less than half the kids showed up. It ended up that we had to walk from house to house all over again in order to inform the parents once again.

The thing is, when you look at it, this is what they are accustomed to. With a low value in education, it’s almost like pulling teeth to get parents to send their kids to school. For most parents, school is a fairly new concept as they were raised to learn the land, not things like science, math, and social studies. Therefore, in order to ‘lead’ them to send their kids, we had to make sure we knew how to get their kids in the classrooms first and foremost. It’s easy to assume that they are ignorant or even unintelligent without considering their past and what they are accustomed to. If you know who your audience is, you make sure that you communicate to them in a way that they understand.

I used to be a youth pastor for a group of wonderful kids who I knew in some ways, but totally missed the boat in a collective sense. I would prepare these sermons that I would’ve given to adults because I truly believed that the content of the message must not lose any of it’s efficacy; however, I was quick to forget that I was speaking to a group of junior high and high schoolers that although they were very mature for their age, were still in junior high/high school. So I made sure it wouldn’t happen again.

The reality is, that you can keep the same principles, but word them in a more memorable manner and use examples, stories, and anecdotes that are leaps and bounds more applicable to your audience – as long as you know them. I could tell kids that “God is the most valuable being in the universe,” but there is no way they would understand unless if I gave life to the words and explored with them (not talk at them) about the merits of the statement. In other words, the delivery is just as important as the content.

To make sure that I didn’t make the same blunder with this group, I made sure I understood the target demographic. The rest of the points are geared towards how we can effectively lead through teaching.

Knowing your audience is simply another way of saying, care for your audience, because as Michael Hyde writes in his book, “The Life Giving Gift of Acknowledgement,” that acknowledgement can truly change a person’s life from feeling obscure to feeling significant. But it cannot stop there. To acknowledge is simply the first step to knowing your audience and those you lead.

Below is a basic flow chart that I have put together.
Acknowledge Question/Listen Consider/Develop Know Lead

Acknowledge: To acknowledge someone means to take the time to stop what you are doing and shed all attention fully upon them (whether it be for a few seconds or a few hours). It varies from coming home after a long day at work, exhausted, and being fully present to ask your kids what they did or to take some time to listen to what’s on your wife’s house. I wasn’t perfect at it, but I think I was good practicing this step (as well as the others) with my sister Amy.

A rough past had haunted the ties between my sister and me, as I loved to bother her without knowing that I was doing so. It caused a rift between us as she justifiably became bitter and shut me out of the most important personal aspects of her life. One of my on-going faults was to ignore her when I was occupied – I shut out the world when I’m focused. Therefore, in order to be a good brother, my first act towards knowing her, was acknowledging her through stopping what I was doing, making eye contact with her, or even going to where she was at to pay full attention to what she had to say. It wasn’t always easy, but looking at it from present day, it was more than worth it.

There are studies that show that acknowledgement by a boss really connects people to their job and gives them a sense that they matter in the organization. Whether it’s a phone call to tell them how good their work has been, an e-mail showing that they are an important part to the whole, or remembering their name and patting their shoulder as you walk by them, people like to work for people who they feel like actually knows them.

Question/Listen: Questions are the road to truly understanding someone. There are two sorts of questions that we ask in relationships: Internal and External.

The internal questions are the questions we ask in order to find definitions of the people. These questions are like coloring a picture of a flower to imitate the essence of the flower. We can either color the flower in an Andy Warhol fashion, or color things according to how they really are, but depending on the questions we ask, we will get closer or further from the real thing. In order to find out anything, when we observe, we automatically generate questions such as, is this normal behavior from them, I wonder how they got this way, or is this a person I can trust? Without being conscious of our actions, we judge and critique people and sometimes, are left making assumptions about people that aren’t true because the questions we asked about them led us to a false belief. For example, one question is why is this person so unreliable? When we ask this sort of question, we begin to see that they are unreliable the more we see them because we have asked such a one sided question, which will lead us to inevitably find a one sided answer and discover them to be exactly what we hypothesized, regardless of their proof against it. These internal questions need to be questions that allow us to ask external questions because internal questions determine external questions.

External questions are the manifestations of the internal questions we ask. They are based on behaviors, assumptions, and points of curiosity about the words, actions, or lifestyle choices of the people they are in a relationship with. Although it may sometimes be difficult or uncomfortable to ask certain questions, they must be asked. External questions give others the chance to either justify or give reason for what they do or think if they are in conflict with what we have come to think or have assumed. It allows us to truly understand a person beyond what we see externally and work towards a genuine knowledge of them.

You’ll notice that questions and listening are tied together. I’ve been in conversations where the other person, or even myself, has asked a question to me and forgotten my answer a few minutes later. Filler questions (questions you ask to pass the time, but don’t really care about, are absolutely worthless and destroy your credibility with your audience and those you lead. No one likes to be asked the same question five times in five different occasions. The key is to listen as you ask great, thoughtful questions.

Consider/Develop: There is a famous quote in the Bible written by the Apostle Paul to the Philippian church that goes, “Consider others better than yourself.” Pretty shattering as it goes on to compare our own consideration of another person with the consideration that Jesus Christ displayed for people in His own life. To consider someone is to keep them in mind, and to have a humility towards them that would allow you to serve them. To consider them better than yourself is to care about them just as much as, or more than you care about yourself. Sounds like a difficult feat, but think of the people you feel most safe with and trust the most, it’s probably your parents (assuming that you didn’t have a terrible childhood) because you know that they sacrificed for you and did everything to raise you for your own benefit.

When it comes to an audience and leading, the only way to really teach others is through displaying to them that you care more about them then they do (about the right things), and that you are willing to put yourself aside, think of where they are at, and work around their current state in life. A lot of people, like myself, have learned the habit of saying, “If you aren’t as good as I am or know what I am saying, you don’t deserve to hear what I have to say and learn from me in my presence.” How arrogant! It requires a lot of humility to lead and the test to truly know if you are considering others is to see if you are willing to serve them in a way they would deem worthy.
Tied with consideration is the mindset to develop them. If consideration really means that you care about them more than they do about themselves (regarding the right things) then development means that you act on that consideration. Development requires a patience that comes with a proactive effort to truly help people become better people – it’s the combination of humility showing and truth telling. In other words, to develop people, you need to season your words with love, be willing to walk with them by laying out the tracks and helping them take each step, and at times, letting them fall, only for you to be there to patch them up, experience the pain with them, and encourage them to get up and walk again. Development is truly a process where you have to learn how to acknowledge, question, and listen before and during the process. If you really care about someone, then you won’t let them remain stagnant and will do everything in your power to encourage them to become the best they can be. There is no love that tells you to stay the same and never grow.

Know: Someone once said that the greatest feeling to feel like you are really known by someone else. A knowledge of someone is hard to come by and depending on how deep you want to go, it can sometimes be tedious, even through the fulfillment that comes when you are changing lives. It takes a lot of time to cultivate with a lot of acknowledgement to help them see that you are sincere in your leadership, questions/listening to develop the relationship, consideration to develop yourself and to establish influential credibility, and a development mindset to show that your credibility is in tact. To know someone is one of the greatest honors that one can allow as they are letting you into the inner chambers of their hopes and fears, the past, present, and future, and their greatest pains.

To know someone is to know if they are in pain, to be able to communicate with them in that pain, and to find ways to bring them to joy. To know someone is to be able to speak into their lives about anything and have them be receptive to it. To know someone is to know their greatest flaws and with love, still accept them while not accepting that it’s the best they will ever be. To know someone, is to love someone, because of all the patience, humility, thought, effort, and sacrifice it requires. To know someone is to suffer for them.

Lead: We can’t lead those we aren’t willing to get to know and we won’t get to know those we don’t want to lead. It doesn’t matter in what context you think about it, but if you want to teach those you lead, you must know them in order to do so. To truly become a great leader, you must know the people who depend on your leadership.

Leadership is something that requires passion. Without it, you just can’t be a great leader. A lot of people confuse the differences between managers and leaders; all leaders can be managers, but not all managers are leaders. In leadership texts, you consistently find the word passion tied to leadership. The Greek root for passion is suffering, and thus, we find that Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ,” was Christ’s suffering for a cause. Administration can exist without passion, but I would be hard-pressed to admit that leadership can as well.

At the end of every e-mail, Jim Kouzes, co-author of “The Leadership Challenge” signs off his name with “Love ‘em and Lead ‘em.” I took a little time to think about what that meant and after reading all of his books and considering his words, although the statement seems simple, they are very meaningful. To love literally implies sacrifice for the benefit of another. In order to lead, you must love, because leadership requires sacrifice. Maybe “Love ‘em TO lead ‘em” might fit better.

2. Reflect
I don’t know how to emphasize the importance of reflection. In a sense the difference is whether or not you will learn from your experiences or things that you cognitively learn. A professor of mine in college named Kent Seibert said that there are two forms of reflection: online and offline.

Online reflection occurs when you are in the middle of the experience or the talk. It’s asking yourself, what am I doing right/wrong, am I being effective/efficient, am I getting my message across clearly, and how can I improve what I am doing right now? It takes a lot to reflect in the middle of an experience, but I think the numbers were that they were 50% or so more effective, advanced more rapidly, and were viewed as more competent by their constituents.

Offline reflection is written about a lot. Every book that talks about reflection usually refers to offline reflection. It’s the reflection that occurs outside of the experience – usually after. A lot of my reflection is done offline as I consider the effectiveness, efficiency, and the real outcomes of my efforts. I ask a lot of self-directing questions that revolve around: what did I do and how could I have done it better? In regards to an effective message, I generally ask what could I have done that I didn’t do because a lot of new ideas generate as I am in the midst of the experience (through online reflection).

Every minute of my day I practice one form of reflection or another. At the end of each day with the vacation camp, I ask each of the teachers to come to a meeting with something they felt they did great, something they think they could’ve improved, and something they would like my help with. Most of the time, they share two or three stories of things they felt great because we have cultivated a culture of sharing our joys. This allows us to realize what we find pleasure in and helps our team to find ways that we can continue to help them find gratification. The first day, they were hesitant to share an area they felt like they could improve, but after hearing a couple of my examples, they started to open up. Now, they are asking for advice on certain things – something that no one would’ve done just three days ago! But this exercise forces them to think through their day in a deliberate way and the knowledge of their meeting keeps their minds winding as they have been asked to write a sentence about something they did well, could improve, or need help on as the days go on.

3. Plan
Ask yourself, with the effort I am putting into this now, will I regret it in the future and feel like I shortchanged my audience somehow? Planning is offline reflection before the event. There’s a formula that works with almost success oriented experience: Success = PREPARATION (or planning) + opportunity. Anything that we plan for is an opportunity, whether it is written in a work contract or whether it relates to us being parents and having a goal to be a great parent.

I used to plan a lot of my weeks around becoming a great brother to my sister. Every opportunity that I had to spend with her, speak truth and love into her life, and be a better brother than I was in the past was an opportunity I took. I can only be grateful that she allowed me the opportunities to show her that in the past I was indeed a good brother in training and that now, I was ready for the big test. Through planning, which required both mental thought and physical effort (getting materials ready, going out to buy supplies, putting papers together, printing things out, etc), I found that I could find success.

Being here in the Peace Corps has definitely proven that to be correct as the success of any project or class that I give revolves around me going out, walking door to door, signing people up a month in advance, and reminding them again a day in advance, all while preparing for what I would be talking about during the seminar or executing the project.

To plan all the themes, come up with a ‘lesson’ plan, and to find a way to communicate to the volunteer teachers in Spanish took a lot of time, but I knew I had to do it. When we don’t plan, we lose credibility because it looks like we are incompetent at giving directions and setting a vision. As Kouzes and Posner found out, one of the most important criteria for constituents is that they want to know that their leaders are competent. Planning is a way to display that competency.

I found that there is no way around planning and that humility and the willingness to serve those you are leading is completely required for the success of the project. No one goes to war without a gun and without planning, a leader cannot lead. Its just simply impossible to sustain.

4. Keep it fun
Daniel Pink in “A Whole New Mind” wrote that in the conceptual age, Play is required and gives several examples of the cutting edge organizations that include play in their curriculum. I remember watching a special report about a hospital in Indiana that spends a good chunk of their money on prevention education and created an entire division to come up with creative and fun ways to teach kids about hygiene and health, and came up with a wacky bus that had interactive toys, games, and a boisterous crew that could bring out smiles to just about everyone. They noticed a huge decline in certain medical conditions in the towns that they hit, which meant the hospital could spend more time on less preventative patient symptoms and diseases. This proves that we can teach dull things and have them stick as long as we know whom our audience is. But the segment is called, “Keep it fun.”

Every adult is a kid in disguise and loves to have fun. Although I myself have grown to enjoy fine wines and finer food (including vegetables), I never lost my desire to have fun. I noticed that in teaching and leading, there are a few things that a lot of great leaders and teachers do that constantly revolve around staying on point and creating a “sticky” message. I’ve noticed that the messages often times include lots of skits, engaging stories, participative (hands on) activities, and visual aids. People want to be energized by their leaders, not drained. We live (fortunately or not) in a stimulus driven world where boring stuff just doesn’t work to keep us engaged. In order to practice knowing your audience, we need to be able to really develop thoughtful plans and execute in a way that works. That means that we must keep it fun.

In the camp planning sessions, I make sure I make a fool of myself in all the meetings so that they would be willing to do the same. I also participate in the games that they play with their kids in class. Each day, we plan for the next day’s class by presenting a comprehensive outline for each class including activities, skits, games, and key points to go over along with their examples. For the people here who have learned to be serious in public and professional settings, its not easy to get them to open up, but as I stick my tongue out, write my name with my butt, and dance around like a fool, they realize its not that bad and begin to do the same. I will be the first eager participant to volunteer myself to looking dumb and although it gets a little hard with my ego present, I overcome because I know that the kids’ “fun” is at stake.

When I watch the volunteers go to their class the next day, I find distinguished veteran teachers rolling on their ground to illustrate a point about not playing in the sewage, cool kids dancing like no one’s around to teach kids about confidence and being themselves, and strict mothers acting drunk and pretending to throw up to show that cigarettes are bad for the health. It’s amazing to see how far people can go when they feel it is safe to have fun and are challenged to create a fun environment for their constituents.

5. Find a way to enjoy what you are doing
Victor Frankl wrote “Man’s Search for Meaning” and documented his experience in the Nazi concentration camps. As a psychologist, he knew that in order to survive the experience with as much mental sanity, that in the experience, he needed to find meaning. He didn’t per se, enjoy what he was doing, but I think that as long as there is no force that is out to oppress us, we can find enjoyment in what we find meaningful.
Being in the Peace Corps is no easy job, but it’s one that if you have the right perspective and mindset about it, you can love. For that reason, they call it the “toughest job you will ever love.”
I found that I was most miserable when I was thinking about what I left (family, friends, opportunities, etc) and found that as long as I thought about my life back home with a yearning, that I would never really come to learn from my experience in the Peace Corps.

The greener grass syndrome is a scary one because its one that people have come to prescribe to almost every situation and consider normal. To find a way to enjoy what you are doing is to proactively seek out meaning in what you do and find that you are contributing to a great and important cause, whether it be teaching, helping, leading, consulting, training, or organizing a group of people. After all, if life is truly greener on the other side, there is no reason to live on this side. To enjoy this side of the world is to fully be immersed in the present.

My APCD recently visited me and asked me how I was, and then shared with me a story and asked me if I was “fully immersed in the present.” This for me has been the hardest lesson to learn in life. I had never considered any thing, place, group, organization, or institution I have ever been a part of to be “good enough” for my services. In a round-about way, I justified most of my experiences by saying that I knew what they were saying or that they really needed to improve in order to be effective. I was an ego-maniac. Being here, fully immersed in a new world, and fully excluded from my life back home, I have no choice for my own sanity and satisfaction to learn to not only find meanings, but find creative ways to enjoy what I am doing here. It’s a lesson so priceless because it completely changes the quality of life.

6. Don’t be preoccupied, but involved with the details
In order to lead, you have to know where you are going, but because you have to know your audience, you also cannot assume that they are on the same page as you. Leadership requires for us to really understand the capacity of our people and their understanding of the vision. It’s one thing to have and set the vision, it’s another to have them fully integrate the vision into their own life.

As I’ve put this project together, I’ve realized that most people want to know the “how to’s” that come with any first time effort. As much as we don’t want to, if they aren’t willing to or can’t decide on their own, the when’s, how to’s, what’s, and where’s, we as leaders must give them guidance to give them an outline of what to look for. I developed the outline and asked each group to bring 3 dinamicas, come up with skits for each of the points, review the Junior Achievement material, and prepare a hand’s on community activity, and create games for each day. With that in mind, they developed their teaching plan and came to me before they presented it to the group to ask what I thought and if what they did was what I was looking for. As much as I don’t like the details, I knew I had to be involved.

7. Execute
In a recent phone call with Paul Clayton, the former CEO of Jamba Juice that grew the business from obscurity to the healthy phenomenon it is now, he kept on saying the words strategize and execute over and over again. Strategy is another word for plan, but execute is not what we would normally think. In the examples he gave about his role and actions as a CEO, he kept on emphasizing that he did certain things on a daily basis with a certain level of focus and discipline.

To execute requires focus and discipline. It’s easy to assume that once the vision is set that the constituents all have bought in, but regardless of whether it is true or not, its probably a certainty that they have not thought about it as much as you have as a leader. The hardest thing about running this summer camp everyday is to keep people focused on the task. Daily, I find myself having to remind the teachers that they must educate with love and make them laugh by looking ridiculous. Some of the volunteers (usually the younger ones) have a tendency to yell at the kids when they aren’t paying attention and stay serious. After each day, I ask the kids what they learn from different classes and some tell me everything that we planned, while others tell me that they forgot. The difference was that I failed as a leader to have the volunteers (just one really) understand what their “job description” is. And it shows in the outcomes. The kids whose volunteer teachers did what they were asked to do, had tons of fun doing it. The kids whose volunteer teacher didn’t, were miserable, bored, and didn’t like getting yelled at.

As the leader, it is my duty is make sure that everyone is on the same page and reading at the same (quick and comprehending) pace. To execute not only means to get it done, but to get it done right.

It’s 72 degrees and I am freezing. It’s so cold that my teeth are clacking and my legs are shaking to stay warm. My body must have adjusted to the weather here because 72 degrees in the US used to be perfect underwear weather.

Right now, as I write this, a guy is cutting his lawn with a 3 foot bladed machete. It’s a crazy skill that I don’t want to, but fear will have to learn. The way it happens is that he spends a good amount of time filing the machete before he leans over, bends his knees and starts swiping away at the ground to create a perfectly manicured lawn. It takes a couple of hours to do the whole thing, but I can see why all the guys are muscular and I am… flubby.

Today, an experience has shifted a lot of my thought from what was, to what will be.

I was walking down the road, listening to my iPod while watching the people I have come to know as ‘my people’ and a thought hit me: Wow, I can’t believe I’m in the Peace Corps. It’s really insane to think about what I am doing. I feel like I am a part of an organization that has roots in vision, passion, and humility – to help others by going out of your way, leave your family, and live in their conditions for two years. This is pretty darn cool.

Now, while I am beginning to see my Peace Corps experience as one to be proud of (actually, I’m loving my time here more than I ever thought I would), I am also experiencing things that I probably never thought would happen just by being here thanks to the globalization phenomenon. As you continue to read, first, think of this experience as if it were 15 years ago, then, what this might look like in 15 years. Whoever ignores Thomas Friedman’s notions of global flatteners should try the Peace Corps – or live anywhere you would imagine would be secluded from regular communication.

So, as I am busy here in Panama working to plan a 2 week summer camp for 600 kids, teaching leadership in Spanish two days a week for three hours each day, starting businesses with a group of women on developing world welfare (really poor), working on getting the water source fixed (aqueduct), trying to find 2 community members jobs, mentoring the political representative, and educating people about the importance of education, I am also trying to get the ball rolling on an idea that I wanted to initiate when I get back.

It all sort of started organically. The idea has been blazing in my mind’s eye for almost a year now. The idea generated while sitting in one of my favorite ‘dive’ restaurants in LA and when I returned home to my sister. I asked her about the idea and she raved about how great the idea was. I decided that as long as no one else came along and took my idea, that I would go full force upon my return from the Peace Corps. The idea however, has kept on nudging me with persistence to explore further – so I figured that I would.

Tyler and I chatted and I asked him what he planned on doing after his time with his private equity firm. We tend to talk about the future aspirations we have, but I never seem to get an answer I really like from Tyler. He usually tells me his eyes are always open, scanning the land for exit opportunities. I remember the first couple of times we had this conversation were in Barcelona, Spain in an apartment overlooking the city and in Lagos, Portugal hanging out on the beach. Tyler is one of those guys that is always mellow. He’s polished, well educated, and good at analyzing things with a lightheartedness that makes him easy to love. We share a common interest in fine food, fine wine, and fine women, and I always enjoy his laid back sense of self. We met in Barcelona studying abroad and have kept in touch and become good friends since. We’ve also traveled to France, Portugal, Morocco, and Egypt together with my heck of a friend Spencer and his getting paid to be a Dr. brother Ethan. An obsessed Buffalo, New Yorker, he graduated from Cornell and decided to go into investment banking. I told him he was crazy, but with him making as much in a day as I make in a month, I might be the crazy one (actually, I am glad that I am doing what I am doing).

His answer to my question about his plans after working had always been to go to Harvard Business School – what can I say, the guy is pretty smart and good with people. So this time around, I asked him if he was sure about getting his MBA and he told me that he is always looking for an exit strategy. Here we go again, I thought to myself, but this time, I asked him what he meant by that and he said that he is always looking for opportunities to succeed with. I contemplated on whether or not I should share the idea with him, but the thought of our diverse areas of expertise and the fact that we seem to compliment each other in business knowledge and personality, I told him that what I was about to tell him had to be kept in confidence, he agreed, and I shared with him with my idea. After a few chat lines of G-Mail, he was sold on the idea and we began to think of ways we could make things happen. The idea is just that good. Then, we talked about what was next.

He told me that he had some contact with a consulting company that would connect us with some of the experts in different industries. I got excited about the idea and a couple days later, he sent me profiles of about 15 people of whom we could choose from. I looked through it, gave him my selection and he made the contacts appear and set up the conversations to talk with 5 of the people from a list of about 15. And these people weren’t your everyday Joe Blows. These guys were former CEOs and executives of chains that people knew all throughout the US and the world.

For us to get this to actually work, we had to find a way to do a conference call, schedule the time perfectly, and get things rolling right. We had to make sure that I could find a place to make the call in a location I knew would be available at the time we needed it. So, the only way this could get accomplished was by taking an hour bus to a public pay phone that worked, calling him, have him conference in the expert, and talk for about an hour to an hour and a half with each of them, drilling them with various questions. The conversations mostly were general as we didn’t want to give away too much information and for that our conversations suffered a bit. To keep things general was the hardest part because we wanted context specific advice.

Here’s the crazy thing about the whole thing. We ended up speaking to the former CEO of Ruth’s Chris Steakhouses, the former CEO of Jamba Juice, and a former executive of Burger King. The former CEOs were the guys who made the brand, grew the company to the one you know now, and pretty much built empires from the ground up. If you don’t get the irony, or the plain ridiculousness of this, I’ll draw it in the sand for you.

These guys, who very few people have access to in the world, were looking forward to talking to us. They set apart times in the following few days immediately after we set the appointment. Now, it would make more sense to talk to Tyler because he has a whole company to back him up, but here I am, a Peace Corps volunteer, asking these guys questions and asking them to help me out with a start up idea that doesn’t even have a formal business plan yet. They answered every question I threw at them and while we were talking, trucks were blowing smog into my face, people were kicking dust in my eyes, kids were screaming, roosters crowing, dogs barking, and the constant chatter of voices never ended. I am in a developing nation in the middle of a circus and talking to these guys who sit atop tall buildings waiting for people to come to them dressed in their best Armani suits, $500 Prada shoes, Thomas Pink shirts, and Gucci Belts. These guys are sitting atop tens of millions of dollars and grew companies (and took them public) that I loved to eat at or go to before working out and there were getting drilled by a guy with questions who was making $300 a month in one of the poorest areas of Panama being bitten by bugs that he never thought even existed. And they were the ones looking forward to the call from me and Tyler. Ridiculous no? Imagine if they knew what was really going on?

The thing that Tyler and I found funny was that the questions that we (mostly me) had come up with were pretty dry and confused the experts. One of the days, we had three conversations (an hour each at least) back to back to back. Questions that should’ve flowed off the top of my lips got jumbled as I found myself exhausted from asking them. On top of that, people in Panama LOVE to scream and shout when they walk by someone who is on the phone (or at least it seems that way). Every person that passed by seemed to deliberately look for someone to shout at across the other end of town, over the noise pollution of the cars and trucks, and the sounds of dogs barking and roosters crowing. The final conversation drifted off to a conversation about leadership that really didn’t get us anywhere with the former CEO of Jamba Juice – it was great to talk about leadership, don’t get me wrong, but his insights were very general, with more time, we could’ve delved into deeper topics.

When we got off the phone, Tyler just started laughing. At one point, I asked the former CEO of Jamba why he left, and he said that the company decided to go in a different direction and that he was at home. I said, “you must be comfortably enjoying your life without having to work,” to which he replied, “actually, I’d rather be working, I don’t like doing nothing.” I felt like a sheep. Tyler LOVED that one. Haha.

On top of that, through a social networking site, I contacted a Vice President of one of the largest and most respected energy companies in the world. There had been some problems with one of the indigenous groups here and I thought that based on their values centered leadership, they would want to know. The VP immediately forwarded my e-mail to the country director, plant manager, and the PR director of Latin America and now, this Tuesday, I have a meeting with them. They want to meet with the Peace Corps person who is living day to day with the poor and hungry.. How nuts is that?

We live in a flat world and there is no denying it. Carpe Diem. With the way the world has changed, opportunities await. There is no stopping you. I challenge you.

One life, making it count.

I have a friend who I haven’t talked to in quite a while named Darcy, but I remember she used to always say “My heart hurts.” Right now, my heart hurts.

In a pretty revealing conversation, I am asked by a member of my community, “Why did you join the Peace Corps?”

This is a question I rhetorically ask myself on a daily basis thinking about what I could be doing elsewhere if I wasn’t doing what I was doing here – but to be honest, its a question I ask myself no matter where I am or what I am doing. I’m always about becoming a better me, so wanting to maximize on experiences is something that I do naturally and quickly. I think that’s why I didn’t like the last three years of college, the last few months of DTS (a missions program), and I think that’s why I feel the way I feel about what I am doing here. I might have already gotten everything out of the experience that I can, and the rest is just a continuous reminder. Its hard not to think about what life could or would be like back home elsewhere, but I can’t honestly say that I regret joining the Peace Corps because being here has revealed a lot about a world to me that I never would’ve known about in any other way. But the question bothers me.

I ask her “Why do you ask me this?”

“Because you don’t seem like the other volunteers. A past volunteer whom I know well said that she came because she had nothing else to do with her life at the time and thought that this would help boost her status. I don’t get the feeling that was the same reason you decided to join,” she replies.

With a puzzled look I inquired, “What do you mean?”

Thinking, she suggests, “Well, from your experiences and from what you are teaching us, I feel like you left a lot back home to be here.”

“Yea, I feel that way too,” I respond, “but I joined for other reasons too. To be honest, I think about my comfortable life back home and where I was headed and wondered if I could give up everything to eat, drink, and live with people I have never met and to completely serve them for no financial reward. I have always learned from going to church that service and social justice is important and given the opportunities that I’ve had, I thought a good way to bless others with what I’ve been blessed with would be to share it with other people. But to be honest with you, the hardest thing about being here is being away from my family and friends back home – adjusting to life here isn’t difficult, it’s missing my family that I find hard.”

This is where the conversation gets revealing…

“Yea, you are right. It’s been a hard several years for me when my son moved away to go to school (he is probably one of less than ten people in my town of about 1300 people who have a college education). I missed him a lot. But I knew that it was best for him to go to school for the 4 years even though I couldn’t see him. That was the sacrifice I made recently and I’m sure your mom felt the same way when she saw you off (which she did because she constantly reminds me of how much she misses me, but wants me to finish my service for my own good). I look at you and you’ve lived all over the world, traveled to more places than most people, and although you have a hard time with your language, you seem to fit in culturally as you don’t have problems with our way of life and are willing to do just about everything we are (except eat boiled green bananas). I just didn’t understand why you would join the Peace Corps. I still don’t”

I can’t believe she is saying this. What doesn’t she understand?, I think to myself.

She continues, “If I was you, because you seem to be full of ideas, good with people, smart, and a good administrator (I think she meant leader), I would’ve stayed in the US and made money. For 6 years almost 20 years ago, I moved with my ‘husband’ (not married, but father of all her children) and family to Costa Rica to work. We lived in poverty and spent almost nothing in order to save money. For six years I saved what I earned, but my ‘husband’ spent his money on another woman and started another family. We had a deal that we would save up enough money to buy a plot of land and build a house. Without any contribution from my ‘husband,’ I saved up and bought the plot of land, and little by little, built this house that we are sitting in. It took a while, but I worked and saved, worked and saved. To me, you being here is like me leaving all this to learn about another culture. I just have a hard time imagining it.”

I’m speechless. I ask her to keep talking.

“Well, that’s pretty much it. When I sit in your class, I know that some people aren’t paying attention and some people are, and I think that what you are teaching us is really good. It frustrates me that some people don’t listen.” She gives me a chance to reply.

“Yea, its like that in most places,” I say a little frustrated. “The reality is, the people who need to become leaders are the most ignorant to leadership and are closed off to new ways of becoming better people. The people who are open are usually the ones who move on and leave the others in the dust. I just get annoyed when people who I came to serve don’t take advantage of what I am doing for free when I could be getting paid for it. But its worth it to continue with what I am doing for the others who actually are listening. If you look around when I speak, women pay more attention and take better notes, even though its the men who need to learn most.”

I pause for a moment, then ask, “Is it not hard that your ‘husband’ has another family and is living with them? Is it just normal for you?”

She thinks before she speaks, “Well, for me, its not normal. In fact, it goes against my values. Other people expect me to go find another person to live with and share life with, but that’s just not my style.”

“What do you mean?” I press forward.

She starts up again, “If you look around, people, once their ‘husband’ (or ‘wife’) goes off with someone else, they find someone else to go off with as well. It’s normal to them. I don’t know how they feel because they don’t really share that with me, but as revenge, once a guy leaves for good, the woman will go off and find someone else to be with. That’s why the majority of people have “hijastros” (step children). I’d rather not be in a relationship out of revenge. If I find someone I come to love, then i can see myself settling down, but I am not going to jump into bed with someone just because my ‘husband’ did it to me.”

…

I hear stories like this all the time. They may not be the same play-by-play, but if we look around the world, the value of commitment and the value of marriage is dying rapidly. I find that people who have had bad experiences and have bad sentiments towards relationships due to that are prone to live this sort of life. Their parents were a terrible example or they have gone through a break-up or been cheated on so severely that they never really learn to trust again. To give their heart away and find themselves vulnerable feels like death is approaching and they do everything (from sleeping around and serial dating, justifying their coldness, shoving their emotions into the dark hole of their heart, or stuffing their schedules with so many things to do that they find themselves distracted from what their souls are crying out for). We need to stop this and I have no idea where to begin. If I had it my way, I’d castrate the heart breakers or throw them on an island fly helicopters over it daily with tubs full of urine and ‘pee’ on them, but that’s probably not really practical or possible for that matter.

Listen, as a guy, I am telling us guys that we need to shape up. The way things are and the way things are going doesn’t work. If we can’t really value and treasure who we have, we need reassess how much of a man we really are. Its easy to stick your dick into any hole that’s out there because you are too immature to practice self control and respect other people. Even big dorks can get laid if they really tried. So the fact that we have someone wrapped around our pinky and can still find someone to sleep with without her leaving us cannot be what defines us as men. What defines a man is how much he can love his wife, cherish her, and absolutely be committed to raising his kids to be a better person that he ever was. Anything else is pathetic.

I have been rethinking a lot of the basic assumptions that I have towards leadership these days as I have been working with about 25 people from my community, lecturing for 6 hours a week in Spanish on the topic. Yes, in SPANISH. As I think about the differences between people who just live life to pass the time, and people who live life to lead, I constantly find a common thread that connects leaders and separates them from the rest and I find that it has also become my greatest fear over the years.

I define leadership as the morally developed capacity to ethically motivate people towards a unified vision while simulatenously developing more leaders. Yea, it’s long, but as I explain to anyone who has taken a class with me or talked with me on the subject, the better the definition of leadership, the more clear our vision of it, the better our chances are of becoming a leader as we define it.

My biggest fear in life for the longest time has been this fear that I would look back when I am 70, 80, 90, 120 years old and regret the choices that I made and the way I lived my life. In other words, my greatest fear is that I would have wasted my life. Therefore, I spent several years defining and redefining the values that would not only serve me and my family best, but would also serve the world and most importantly, the glory of God best. In order to do this, at the age of 20, I participated in a 6 month service project that focused a lot on my own preparedness in life before my impact on others (YWAM’s DTS) and choose a college at an institution where academic and intellectual rigor would be required and met with a challenge to put my knowledge to work (Wheaton College, IL). After college, instead of pursuing the corporate world, I returned home to spend time with my sister, Amy, and parents in Los Angeles with the intention of really cultivating a sibling relationship that very few people in the world have. After almost two years, I have decided to join the Peace Corps to continue my pursuit of service and sacrifice for others, and to continue my quest not live a wasted life.

I don’t think that anyone goes into life thinking that they are going to waste it or live day by day thinking that they are wasting it. I also don’t think that most people want to waste their life. After all, who wants to waste their life intentionally? But I do think that because people don’t define their values in accordance to greater objective values they end up wasting their life by default in pursuit of unsatisfying life goals.

At the beginning of each day, I think about how I can best use my day and at the end of each day, I reflect and come up with better ways that I could’ve lived out the day. And no matter what I’ve done each day, I know I could’ve done better. There is no metric that you can determine whether or not you’ve lived your life to the max, there’s only a process of reflection based on the quality of your values, personal life mission, and the daily discipline you choose to stir it all together and bring it to life. The quality of your values will determine the quality of your life on an objective scale of legacy and humanity, but only you know the consistency you bring to the table each and everyday.

I think of what it means to be a Peace Corps volunteer and I am both encouraged and discouraged. Some volunteers are fantastic and move communities to do things they never thought they could do and try things they never thought they would do. They build legacies, create new opportunities, improve lives, and at the end of the day, watch the people in their community pat themselves on the back and say, “We did good all on our own. We did good.” Then, I look around and notice that some volunteers get sucked into laziness, a lack of creative application, and a self-absorption because of how hard the life is here – and it really is hard. We are dropped into a place where we have limited language skills and no one around us that we can really rely on. The people consider us tourists or outsiders and although we are here to help them improve in sustainable ways, their lack of exposure to the concept puts us in an awkward position when we tell them that we make as much as they do each month and don’t come with truckloads of money to fix all their problems. We have to learn how to gather people to work together, keep them motivated, and help them to do things all on their own – hoping that they will make individual decisions to work collectively together for free to help each other out. I think of how hard it is to get people to do that in the States and all the time, pray that God will make a way through the little amount of work that I can actually do to facilitate it. Being a Peace Corps volunteer is hard, and for everyone who even considers doing it, I give them props. To go through with is, is truly a decision that few people can make. And although I don’t agree with every volunteer’s choice of daily life, I will give them a standing ovation for signing up and going through with this. But I am not writing to give my fellow volunteers props, I have a purpose in writing this blog.

I noticed that on a daily basis, I have an average traffic of about 60-75 people that read my blog. It keeps me motivated to write when I know that I have an audience to talk to and although no one tends to comment, I appreciate the e-mails that come in regarding some of my posts and the encouragements I get through Facebook. As you know, my biggest fear is to not waste my life and in all that I do, to maximize on the moments, experiences, and choices that will bring me towards living a productive life versus wasting my life away. But I wonder if being in the Peace Corps is enough. I mean, what does a wasted life really look like? What does it smell like? Feel like? Sound like? Would we really know if we were living an unwasted life while we were living it, or is it something that it would take us until the end of our lives to be able to determine? I say it’s both.

Today, one of the groups that I got organized (10 people) decided to do a trash pick up. It was beautiful. They woke up at 8:00a (a few thought they were supposed to meet at 7:00a) and for 5 hours, cleaned the streets, raking trash with brooms and rakes, and stuffing them into plastic bags. In total, they collected about 40 bags of trash in my whole community. I walked around with joy, handing out soda and water, as they were doing things to improve the community, even though I heard a few people say, “We’ll clean today, but the streets will be dirty again tomorrow.” It was a beautiful thing. But as great as it was, it just didn’t seem like it was enough. I mean, they cleaned today, but what about tomorrow? What if they are right and no one gets a clue as to why they should keep their village, our village, clean? And there goes my moment of celebration.

I can’t help but wonder if I am wasting my time. If I am doing enough and if the projects I am taking on are big enough. I know that it’s about baby steps for most of them, but I also know that most of the stuff I am walking them through are not at the level I am used to working at. But I can’t be so high and mighty because I was raised with a certain expectation in regards to littering. In fact, my friend Spencer was the one who really solidified the importance of keeping the streets clean to me as I used to be the one to throw stuff out the window as I drove or just toss the trash to the side as we walked around. So I have to ask myself, if the things are basic, then there must be something to make the basics stick. I can’t be frustrated with the size of the project, but the longevity of it’s effects. After all, we are in the business of sustainability.

When I really think about my processes here in the Peace Corps for each project, but I can’t help but feel that something is missing.
1. Think of a project
2. Get people together
3. Plan the project
4. Get all the necessary preparations done
5. Execute, execute, execute.

I could definitely spend a little more time celebrating the small victories, but I know I can’t be satisfied with the accomplishments. I know, that after I leave, the only thing that will be left behind are the habits, beliefs, and capacities that I helped develop. Plus, a small memory of me. That’s why I constantly wonder what a wasted life is. I wonder what it looks like because I realize that its about impact and legacy. In my own life, I know that commitment to developing habits has become fairly easy for me (as I have practiced for several years now), but I am realizing that as leaders, we must learn to commit to help others develop the habits that they should develop and it requires that we apply immense amounts of creativity. In that, I think I might find the answer to the question I am constantly asking myself, “Am I wasting my life?”

I do a lot, I know it too. I looked at this month’s calender, and next, and realized that for the rest of this month and all of next month, I have 8 days where I don’t have meetings, projects, seminars, or camps to prepare for, help lead and facilitate. But I also know that I could be doing more. I could be spending more time getting to know the people I don’t know well. Working with the people that are difficult to work with. Helping out the projects that no one else would want to do, but should probably do. And really sink my teeth into people or projects that will leave me even more tired, more exhausted, and more annoyed at the end of the day. Regardless of what it is, at the end of the day, I am the only one that will know whether or not I wasted my day and whether or not I am wasting my life. And the same applies for our home lives.

I think about all the parents in the world who say they want to be good parents or think they are great parents. Then I look at the quality of the conversations they have with their children, the amount of time they spend listening to their kids, the time they spend helping their kids with both school work and life-work, the examples they choose to set for their children and I find a disconnect between the two. I find that what people think they are doing and what they are actually doing is separated by a big mountain called ignorance.

So am I wasting my life? Yes and no. As long as there is space for me to do more or better – that can be planned or prepared for, then I am wasting portions of my life. The 6th aspect of the process is to commit to cementing the habits in others. I think a great temptation we all face as leaders is to expect people to get it immediately after we show them and walk them through the process once or twice, but if it takes 21 days to develop a habit in ourselves, then we must devote at least 21 efforts to developing the same habits in those who follow.

It’s like a magic trick. See it once and you enjoy it, but don’t learn anything. It feels good for a second, but even if you try to repeat the trick for others, you will utterly fail. If you watch the same magic trick over and over again from different angles, you learn the trick and the secrets of how to do it. You can teach magic through repetition, creativity, and leverage.

I guess the question we all must ask ourselves is, do we have enough integrity to be completely honest with ourselves and to do something about it if we are shortchanging those we serve?

Ok. First of all, I want to give a shout out to Jim Kouzes who has been an awesome mentor of mine throughout the years through his literature, and now, I am finding as an even more inspiring guru of Leadership through e-mail correspondence. You are an ‘excellent’ leader and I appreciate your words and feedback, Jim.

Second of all, I have decided what my New Years resolutions are. I should’ve realized them a while back, but I am just coming to my senses. Here I go, there are two of them:

1. Finish my service with the Peace Corps. When looking at it from a day by day standpoint, this seems like the most impossible thing ever. Honestly, I should be honored that I am serving with such an awesome vision of an organization, but the reality is, for some reason or another, I am just not really enjoying myself like I should. I talk to a lot of people about why they joined the Peace Corps and they give me a variety of reasons, none of which really sound like the one I have. They vary from good resume builder, want to live abroad and experience other cultures, good opportunity, and able to learn Spanish, amongst many other good reasons to join, but their reasons just aren’t the same as mine. Mine was simple for the sake of sacrificing two years of my life for the betterment of others, and to be honest, I quite often find myself miserable for it. What can I say? I miss my cushy life back home where I ate where I wanted to eat, went where I wanted to go, and did what I wanted to do. It was pretty picture perfect. But then again, that was what I discontented in myself as well, the simple fact that I felt narcissistic in living for myself; especially while people around the world weren’t living to the standard that I was. So I joined the Peace Corps feeling all high and mighty, and now I feel low and feeble (well not today, I feel really good today – I’ll tell you why in a moment).

2. My second resolution is to be positive or don’t say a word. I’m really critical and I attribute that to my high level of standards and my even higher aspirations for excellence in everything around me. I am full of little grace, even though so much has been given to me, and I find my attitude eating away at my soul. I taught a leadership class a while back and talked about the importance of a positive attitude, not saying that it would grant me a car if I was just happy and thought about an Aston Martin all day long, but that the attitude in which I live from moment to moment or experience to experience really changes the way I see things. My statement went like this:

focus -> attitude -> perspective -> focus -> perspective -> attitude -> perspective -> focus -> attitude …

Focus determines your attitude which determines your perspective which determines your focus which determines your attitude which determines your perspective…

My sister says that I can be critical, but she wouldn’t call me negative. Instead, she just tells me that I have such high standards that no matter what I do or who I meet in life, I will never be satisfied. The scary thing about that statement is that it has been true all my life (ever since I had a memory). At times I wish that I didn’t really have standards to work towards. I’m like a focused laser and nothing can get in the pathway between me and my mission in life. At the same time, I am glad for that because I see so many people lost, living on a whim without direction, and making choices that they are bound to regret. Ack~ there are two sides the coin that I want and don’t want simultaneously. I believe this is called a dialectical tension.

Life is too short to have a chip on your shoulder about anything (unless if it deters you from a greater purpose). I knew this for years and found myself justifying my negative attitude with the fact that I am right, but even if I am right (which I am proud to say that I usually am), my attitude always seems to get in the way of the message. It blocks the reality of what I am trying to accomplish to other people and I find myself feeling a little less chipper than I really could. But here’s an interesting thing: even though I am negative, when I stand in front of a group to talk, I am pretty darn inspiring (or so they tell me). Look, I’m already being more positive.

So there you have it, my two new years resolutions – 1. Finish what I started and 2. Be positive in the process.

Today:
What a day. In a nutshell, my day was 250 screaming kids, with 8 of my students, eating 3 huge pots of rice, destroying 3 piñatas, in 4 hours of activities.

So I started my leadership class which has over 30 students. The class consists of 30 hours of lecture and 20 hours of practicum. I split them up into groups that would have to work together to accomplish a ‘community betterment project.’ Group 1 was the group that worked together today to put together an event for the children on ‘Children’s Day.’

The event started at 1:00p, and the sky was a little hazy to the north, but completely clear to the south. There was a lurking humidity from the rain the night before and I felt gross all day. But we actually got started around 3:00p. I kicked off the ceremonies with a demented version of “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes,” which the kids had a hard time following, and then they commenced with the program. Everyone gave a talk on how to be a better person, better community member, and a better human to the 250 kids in attendance. The only problem was that they served the food at the same time they were talking so the kids probably only heard about 10 words. But it was beautiful how these 8 people who barely knew each other, worked together to prepare for an event that would not only bless the kids, but provide them with a life education.

All of them made my blush as they gave me incredible props when they stood up there and presented themselves. And of course, the representative (a political figure) attended the meeting and gave his few cents.

I felt really proud to see one of my groups taking initiative to organize, plan, prepare, and execute something that they themselves wouldn’t benefit from. What a beautiful day!

I’m pooped, literally.

This week, I went on two hikes through cow poop without knowing that what was being splashed up into my face and soaking my socks was a cow poop and mud concoction. And, as much as I’d like to ignore the bad taste in my mouth and the tainted color of my cheek from the corner of my eye, I can’t. I took a many showers and still yet, I feel dirty. It’s hard to not let your mind wander to imagine the bacteria and cow poop DNA enter through your pores and play around in your system for as long as it wants like it’s McDonald’s Playland. Yuck. I just can’t control my mind. What can I say, mud I don’t mind, but crap is a totally different story.

Anyway, life is a see-saw emotionally. One minute, I am at an 9 (I haven’t felt the 10’s of the Peace Corps, even though I’d consider myself a regular at Club 10 in the States), and the next minute I’m at a 3. Today was a 3 day.

We ended up going about another two hours or so into the interior from my site. It wasn’t the most fun because we ended up taking 3 kids (ages 2,6,8) and a hormonal 16 year old girl that always asks me for a dollar to buy a drink. The kids didn’t get under my skin whatsoever, it was the hormonal girl that made me want to shoot my eyeballs out. The sad part is, she is pregnant and the father is long gone. But I had to ask myself why I was so irritated.

The day started out well. Even though I haven’t been getting much sleep these days (due to the over abundance of work – especially since most of my meetings take place after 7p and I usually end the day after 10p after which I still need to eat dinner), I have been hitting a few high notes in my emotional life. The days are full and generally I am happy in them, and even today, a day that I only had 4 hours of sleep, I woke up with a smile on my face (even though it was probably crooked from my sleepiness).

But we got ready, ate our usual fried bread and fried sausage breakfast and headed out. The drive, although a nuisance and very bumpy, was beautiful. Rolling hills, banana plantations to the left and to the right, the river Sixaola that separates Panama from Costa Rica and a bunch of small streams that we had to cross in our vehicle. After a couple of hours on the road, a slight sickness from the motion of the car, and a pounding headache from the combination of a beating sun and kids screaming about what they want (pretty much everything they see), I was ready to implode (I can’t explode because the Peace Corps wouldn’t maintain the best reputation if I did so), we finally arrived to where we had set the course for. There was one thing about the ride that made it all worth it though; the kid who is 2 still can’t speak yet. His name is Memo, but they call him Chino because he actually looks more Asian than indigenous. Whenever he sees me, he says, “Ley!” and points to me with a big grin on his face. Really priceless. Anyway, as we passed by the cows (probably about 5 times) he would use his tiny little lungs and scream, “MooooooOOOOoooOOoooOooOo!” as if he was a cow. Pretty dang cute.

The place is just like every other place in the Peace Corps Panama: naturally beautiful. Hills, trees, jungle, rock formations, rivers, streams, and wooden houses. We walk up a small hill to the guys house and are greeted by his psychotic dogs. Fortunately, I have balls of steel and protect the kids while the owner shoes them away (and by protect the kids, I really mean, use them as a shield). We cut down a few coconuts and slice them up with a machete and drink. I have 4 myself and they ask me if it doesn’t bother my digestive system. I say no, and guzzle away. I slice the beasts in half and scoop out the meat. We also grab some organic oranges and walk up to Eri’s (the guy we went to visit) finca (field) where he did a sample planting of 1,000 organic pineapples.

We pick a few pineapples, walk to the chicken coup where we see a dead chicken (probably got killed by another one) and a midget chicken. No joke, the chicken was walking around like a duck because it had Osh Kosh B’Gosh sized feet for a Shaq sized body. It was hilarious watching the kids chase it around like they were making fun of the fat kid in preschool. Oh man, pretty mean these kids can be.

We head back and cut the pineapples and I swear, my mouth exploded with happiness. It’s awesome how easy it is to make me happy. A girl that wants to win me over only needs to make my mouth happy to make my heart hers. Maybe that’s why I love my mom so much (she’s a great cook!).

We sat around swatting the stupid bugs from our face and for some reason, they kept on congregating around my eyebrows. Super annoying. I kept hitting myself in the face because the swarms of bugs were just non-stop. Only after 3 hours there did we realize that all we needed to do was walk around to the other side of the house where there were no bugs at all. I guess that nature has it’s patterns in congregation as LA types like to go to the same packed clubs or bars. Well, I now have 7 new bites to look forward to dealing with and scarring.

Anyway, we headed back, and now I’m here. Been out all day, visited our dear friend Alvaro after the crazy 2 hour trek, and now, my body and mind are pooped. I’m still at a three and think I figured out why.

One of the perks about joining the Peace Corps, I thought, was the ability to get closer to God. Of course, I won’t negate the reality that the idea of helping people, serving the poor, and sacrificing for a cause outside of myself sounded noble and very sexy in the grand scheme of things. However, I thought that without many of the distractions, the hustle and bustle, and the ’simple’ life, I would be faced with much free time and even more time alone with the Good King. Before I came here, I imagined myself reading the Bible twice a year and being able to pray while marveling at the scenery. I thought the inevitable loneliness I would face would be a catalyst for turning to God in dependence of satisfaction. But here’s the reality: I pray less than I did back home and opened the Bible 4 times since I’ve been here (usually when I have a “God” conversation with someone back home on the phone). I think of God often, in fact, daily, but find myself stopping at the meta-analysis of what the Christian life should look like instead of directly engaging in an intimate exchange with God. I spend all the time in the world analyzing what a Christian should look like and I find that I can’t get myself to manage the basics of faith in my own life.

A.W. Tozer has a definition of faith that I found captures both a theoretical and reflective essence, which is, faith is simple a dependency on God. I have spent much of my life advocating my own dependency since I heard the definition, but still, I find myself falling severely short. My dependency on God is low and I know it because my prayer life is low. Our dependency on God is exhibited through our prayer life because that is how we communicate that dependency – ask and wait, ask and wait. But here’s what’s interesting; I know that when I do pray, it sustains me beyond a shadow of a doubt that God provides. I find myself comforted, joyful, happy, and full of life after a short time of prayer, yet I don’t persist daily. I just need to flesh it out myself, in my daily life, without just talking about it in the sweeping generalization sense.

The thing is, I know the stuff that every Christian should know, but living it out is a totally different thing. I think I’m a good person in the sense that I am trustworthy, honest, and do my best to live my life with integrity, but I know that being a culturally and ethically “good” person isn’t enough. At times, I find that my being good replaces my need for God and that my identity, dependency, and confidence emerges from my being a good person. It’s a scary thing, but good could possibly be the enemy of God. I need Jesus to do an intervention.

God, fill my cup.