Culture Shift

According to the preamble of the United States Declaration of Independence:

"...that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Yet, instead of pursuing happiness, we all seem to be trying to get ahead, do better than our parents, keep up with (or surpass) the Jones, and make a $million before age 30. Somehow we have equated the pursuit of Happiness with material gain. Supposedly, the more toys you have, the happier you are.

What if, instead of trying to insure that our children were better off then we are, we try to insure that our kids our happy? What if, instead of trying to accumulate material wealth, we try to just be happy? Imagine the changes this would bring to the world:

The implications of this simple change in thinking are frightening. Think about all the things you do during the day that are done just to allow you to get ahead. How drastically would they change if you emphasis became being happy?

I truly believe that US Society, and for that matter virtually all societies on this planet, would find this simple change to be impossible. The goal of accumulating personal and family wealth is just too ingrained in our psyche to allow for any change.

It is sad to think that so simple a change is so impossible to implement. Just imagine the possibilities if we could pull it off, though. 

del.icio.us tags: happiness, wealth, material gain, getting ahead

Creativity

 

 I look back at my own educational experience and I have to agree with Sir Robinson's position that our educational system has gone down the wrong track and that mix of subjects being taught will not service our kids in these quickly changing times. The big question, now, is how do we fix the system?

Let me put this another way: think of a child as being the basic ingredients for a cake. Sculptors say that the sculpture already exists in the stone and all they are doing is freeing it from the formless block. Similarly, children have the potential of being anything they want to be as long as we--parents, family, and teachers--perform our roles to the best of our abilities. Today, parents have the role of baby sitters who are training the children to pass tests; parents spend more time at work then with the kids in the hope of keeping food on the table and a roof overhead; and family falls by the wayside as lives become more and more complex.

Somehow, we need to come up with a new paradigm where allowing kids to fulfill their potential while facilitating their learning the basic skills of life is of paramount importance. Teachers, parents and families have to become a unified resource from which our children can experience the wonderful richness of life and pass their experiences on to their children for many generations to come.

del.icio.us tags: TED, education, creativity, Sir Ken Robinson, learning, children, teaching, facilitating

Goal Setting

Somewhere we have lost the ability to properly set goals. Yes, one can say "I want to get rich," but you need more. You need to set out a plan that has both a starting point and an ending point. You need to define rich so that you know when you have reached your goal.

Another example would be the formation of a team. A team needs to know where it is at the start--funds, personnel, facilities, resources--and it needs to know what defines the finish line (the goal.) Too many teams are formed who start working before they know what defines the finish line.

Don't get me wrong, goals can shift and morph as a project progresses. But there has to be a starting goal, so to speak; a spot on the project map that the team must first aim at to get the project rolling.

Every project must have a start and an end. Once these two items are defined, you can then figure out the middle.

del.icio.us tags: project, end points, goals, definition, planning