Month: May 2021

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Have you ever had a dream come true?

Maybe it was a desire to marry or have children; maybe it was to launch a successful business. Maybe your dream was to write a book or take a trip to a distant country. Maybe your dream was big, maybe it was small, but regardless, you had a dream—and you got to see it come true.

How would you describe that feeling? How would you explain it to someone else who perhaps hadn’t experienced that same blessing?

I ask, because today, one of my biggest dreams comes true. Today we launch a movement that will impact countless lives the world over and change the futures of generations to come. Today we unveil a website that invites you to be part of something bigger than yourself. I’ve been talking about it for weeks now, but today is the day that everything changes.

Today, my new book, Change Your World: How Anyone, Anywhere Can Make a Difference, launches to the world. It’s available online AND in stores, and it is a guidebook to creating lasting positive change in our world.

I’ve been working on this book for years. Every time I sat down to write it, I’d make a little progress and then get stuck. I’d come back to it later, make a little progress, and get stuck again. Month after month I labored on this book, thinking through the Transformational Values, thinking through how Transformation Tables are the engine for genuine change.

But I couldn’t get it written.

And then my very good friend Rob Hoskins contacted me. He’d completed a significant study of transformational movements across history, and he wanted to share his research with me on the chance that it might help me with the book. I had him send his dissertation over, and it was incredible: brilliantly researched, exceptionally well written, but it had one small problem.

No one was ever going to read it.

I don’t say that to be mean; Rob is an incredible communicator, and the work he’d done was nothing short of exceptional. But it was written for academics, and academic works like Rob’s typically don’t sell very well, especially in an age when people are used to consuming content in 200 characters or less. So Rob had finished a book few people would ever read and I was struggling to write a book I was sure the world was hungry for.

It seemed like we were stuck. But that’s not the way Rob or I think.

It didn’t take long for us to decide to combine forces. Rob would provide research and stories for the book and I would provide principles and practices. Between the two of us, we felt certain we could create a handbook for transformation unlike anything the world had ever seen. We sat down with our writing teams and…

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Photo by Caterina Berger on Unsplash

This Saturday, I will turn 74 years old.

Like most birthdays when you get older, I’ll celebrate in some way with my family and friends, but for the most part I’ll treat it like most other days: focused on the mission of transformation. But that doesn’t mean I won’t reflect on my life and what I’ve been blessed to accomplish over its course. I’ll spend a lot of time thinking about the lessons I’ve learned in seven decades.

Of course, I’ve been doing that for a while now.

Seventy years is a long time—and that means there are plenty of lessons to learn, from both the good and the bad. I try to pass along lessons as soon as I learn them; it helps me not only pass the lesson along but cement it in my mind and heart. One of the biggest benefits of teaching others is the ability to really discover where your convictions lay.

You’ve probably heard me say that as I get older, I’m certain about fewer things—but the things of which I am certain, I’m more certain of than I’ve ever been in my life. My convictions about the things I deeply, truly believe have only gotten stronger. I’ve reached the age where I’m not bothered if someone disagrees with me or my convictions; I’m confident of what I believe, in part because I regularly test and review it!

For example, I am certain that Transformation is not only with our grasp, but also a goal I’ll see achieved in my lifetime. For years, my sense of Transformation’s importance has increased; what began as a vague notion has become a refined, thorough, and tested process for seeing real lives and communities changed through learning and living out good values.

I can go back to my book, Intentional Living, and see how the message of Transformation was in its early stages. I can trace how my thinking and understanding of the message of Transformation began there, with the emphasis on being intentional with your life and choosing to make a difference. That message has solidified over the years and now serves as a foundation of the process Rob Hoskins and I describe in Change Your World.

I’m also certain that personal growth is essential for every leader—and really, for every person. Of all the investments I’ve made in my life, none has paid off for me like the personal growth kit I purchased from Curt Kampmeier for $795. It was a significant investment for me and Margaret at the time—essentially one entire month’s salary for me—so it took six months and a lot of sacrifices on Margaret’s part for us to save enough to purchase the kit.

But once we did…it was the unlocking of my most significant discipline as a leader. Daily growth is now more than a habit; it’s the essence of…

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