Elsewhere

Dear God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

I first remember learning this insightful, elegant prayer at a young age from a wooden inscription hung above the door of a neighbor’s kitchen. It’s been stuck in my head ever since.

Something quite interesting and significant about the second of the prayer’s three parts is the implication that we should change things when we can.

It makes me think of some of my new friends in Austin, including Steve Harper, Asha, and MagnumVox–a self-described “change agent.” That’s a good term. We should all consider whether or not we are acting as change agents, both personally and professionally. (OMG, sorry, but perfect moment to plug Steve’s The Ripple Effect again.)

When I was a boy scout, whenever we’d go camping in the wilderness, our motto was, “Leave it better than you found it.” Pack out any trash you find (even if it’s not your own), don’t trample or otherwise vandalize the area.

Once, in my early teens, someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up. My response was something like, “I hope I never grow up. I hope I never stop growing.”

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Growth and change are an integral part of life. Life is growth. Without growth, and change, we’d still be a bunch of random chemicals floating around on a primordial planet.

Many people make the mistake of thinking that there is some end-state, some point in time at which everything levels off and they can just comfortably cruise through the rest of life.

Any such security is an illusion, and temporary at best. Just ask anybody who’s lived through the uncertainties and surprises of the past century. The only constant is change.

Would you prefer to be reactive or proactive in dealing with the inevitable changes of life? Which one do you think might bring you more success and happiness?

If you choose to be proactive, you are choosing the path of creativity, in which you attempt to anticipate external changes and also create the changes that you want to see. But in order to create, you must have a vision of what you want, and your vision will be informed by your desires, which are dictated by your values.

That’s a long-winded way of saying, if you want to do more than just survive–if you want to prosper–you must first get down to basics and really figure out what you are about.

Without moral traction, you’re just spinning your wheels. The scenery might even change, but when the screen falls away, you’ll realize you never actually moved.

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Humanity is a continuum. We inherited this reality from the generation that came before us, and they from the generation before that. Our children will inherit the sum of what we inherited plus the changes we make to it. To proactively manage that change so we can leave a positive legacy, we should:

1) Accept and engage the reality that we have inherited (serenity)
2) Use our vision and creativity to “leave it better than we found it” (courage)
3) Continually grow and refine our awareness to find the best balance between the two (wisdom)

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As a mental “cheat sheet”, just remember: VISION, ACTION, and FAITH are the fundamental pillars of successfully creative behavior. This is my own personal paradigm which I’ve developed within the last year or so. I’ve been wanting to blog about it for a long time. Consider this a teaser. It might not be tomorrow, it might not be next week, but… sometime soon. I’m a little busy with the ACTION part of it at the moment.