1. Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy

As founder of Aravind Eye Hospital, Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy (“Dr. V”) gave sight and hearing back to millions of people who would otherwise be blind and deaf.

Dr. V. came to the conclusion as a young man that “intelligence and capability are not enough. There must be the joy of doing something beautiful.” So, instead of retiring at the age of 65, Dr. V. mortgaged his home and opened a hospital to perform free or low-cost cataract surgery – if untreated cataracts can lead to blindness – on poor Indians. In his first year, Dr. V. performed over 5000 surgeries.

• See an article on “Dr. V” in Fast Company:
  http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/43/drv.html

• Aravind Eye Hospital Founder Profile:
  http://www.aravind.org/aboutus/founder.asp

• See his video “Infinite Vision”:
  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-430943131005128104

• See his profile on Wikipedia:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Govindappa_Venkataswamy

2. Marian Wright Edelman

Edelman is the author and editor of a number of books on social justice, including Social Injustice and Public Health (2005), which expounds her belief that “a primary goal of public health is to address the root causes of social injustice: widening gaps between rich and poor, the unequal distribution of resources within our society, discrimination, and the disenfranchisement of individuals and groups from the political process.” Edelmen is the founder of Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) an initiative that encourages preventive investment before children get sick or into trouble, drop out of school, or suffer family breakdown.

• See the profile of the founder of Children’s Defense:
  http://www.childrensdefense.org/site/PageNavigator/People_MWE
• See her profile on Wikipedia:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Wright_Edelman
• See her videos on You Tube:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWf-OpQvpKo

3. Byron Katie

Times magazine described Byron Katie as ‘A visionary for the new millenium’. Byron applies the Gandhian concept of “Be the change you want to see in the world” to one’s thoughts, with a deceptively simple technique and stunning clarity. She offers a constant ‘invitation’ to go inside oneself and to take responsibility for any situation by questioning one’s thinking.

Byron Katie’s method is called The Work, and is effective in bringing joy, happines, inner peace and an end to confusion. It has been described as a kind of Socratic Dialogue. “Believing our untrue thoughts is a sure way to scare ourselves to death” Byron Katie. ‘The Work’ has changed the lives of thousands of people.

• See and hear it here:
  Short Video and Audio Clips demonstrating Byron Katie at work
• See the official website for The Work: www.thework.com

4. Muhammad Yunus

Nobel Peace winner in 2006, Professor Muhammad Yunus has transformed Bangladesh and founded a bank that has loaned billions of dollars to millions of poor families, all without any collateral.. This country is the only one in the world which is on course to reach the millennium development goals of reducing poverty by one half by 2015. That is a statistic not to be missed!

His new book “Creating a world without poverty” outlines his vision for the eradication of poverty.

• See his official website:
  http://www.muhammadyunus.org/

• See his profile on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Yunus

5. Mario Capecchi

He lived as a feral child after the Nazis sent his mother to a death camp. His ‘unworthy’ ideas were rejected by the scientific establishment. Last year, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for a medical revolution. He made his dreams a reality and never quit. He is truly exceptional!

• See his profile on Wikipedia:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Capecchi
• His Utah Lab Profile:
  http://capecchi.genetics.utah.edu/capecchi.html
• See his article in Time: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1670524,00.html

6. Mimi Silbert

In 1971 Mimi Silbert founded Delancey Street with four residents, a thousand dollar loan and a dream. She envisioned a place where substance abusers, former felons and others who had hit bottom would, through their own efforts, be able to turn their lives around.

Silbert has since built an empire grossing 20 million dollars a year with locations in New York, New Mexico, North Carolina and Los Angeles. She has never accepted a single penny of government funds.

• See Mimi’s interview with PBS:
  http://www.pbs.org/opb/thenewheroes/meet/silbert.html

• See Mimi’s foundation:
  http://www.delanceystreetfoundation.org/president.php

• See Mimi’s article “the most successful rehabilitation programme in the world” on BBC:
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6245531.stm

7. Kailash Satyarthi

Kailash Satyarthi has been instrumental in freeing thousands of child slaves from numerous industries. He has evolved various strategies and methods to secure freedom for the slave children. These include direct action, secret raids, judicial interventions, parental motivation, community mobilization, persuading and pressurizing employers, etc. Hundreds of real life stories of his liberation operations have motivated countless people to join the fight against child labor.

• See his official website:
  http://www.kailashsatyarthi.net/

• See his profile on Wikipedia:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kailash_Satyarthi

As you know, this list is by no means complete, there are several truly exceptional people that should be included on this list – so, if you have a blog take some time and write about them also. Let’s give credit where credit is due.

“Don’t confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.” – Erma Bombeck

I view myself as “naive optimist” because generally I am a happy person. I just am.  I have a hard time understanding why people that are not in dire straits can be unhappy.  So, I put some thought into why someone’s level of happiness may be greater or less based on similar lifestyles and circumstances.  Although, there is no surefire “How to Be Happy” formula, here are a few things that have helped me put my level of happiness into perspective:

1. Happiness doesn’t, come from “making it.”

What do you long for? Fame? Fortune? Unlimited travel experience?  Retirement? Imagine that I could snap my fingers and give it to you. Would you now be happy? Indeed, you’d be euphoric, in the short run. But gradually you would adapt to your new circumstance and life would return to its normal mix of emotions. To recover the joy, you would now need an even higher high.

As an example – at one extreme, people with disabilities-even those paralyzed after car accidents-typically recover normal levels of day-to-day happiness. At the other extreme, people who’ve won a state lottery also settle back to their characteristic level of happiness. Happiness is less a matter of getting what we want than wanting what we have.

2. Savor the moment.

Happiness, said Benjamin Franklin, “is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by the little advantages that occur every day.”

As a future-oriented person, I periodically remind myself of Pascal’s remark that we too often live as if the present were merely our means to the future. “So we never live, but we hope to live-and as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so.”

To live in the present means, for me, taking delight in the day’s simple cherished moments. Happiness isn’t somewhere off in the future, but in the pleasures of my morning coffee, listening to Sirius satellite during my commute, or even the day’s last moments, sitting on the couch, watching a movie with my special someone.

3. Take control of your time.

There is, nevertheless, a place for setting goals and managing time. Compared to those who’ve learned a sense of helplessness, those with an “internal focus of control” do better in school, cope better with stress, and live with greater well-being.

One way to feel more empowered is to master our use of time. For happy people, time is “filled and planned,” says Oxford University psychologist Michael Argyle. “For unhappy people time is unfilled, open and uncommitted; they postpone things and are inefficient.”

To manage time effectively, set big goals, then break them down into daily aims. Writing a book is, for me, too formidable and remote a goal. But writing four pages a week is easy enough. If I repeat this process 52 times over and, presto – my book is done! Although we often overestimate how much we will accomplish in any given week (leaving us frustrated), we generally underestimate how much we can accomplish in a year, given just a little progress every week.

4. Act happy.

This is the most important trait of living happy. I am a positive thinker, so it is fitting that I concede to the power of hope-filled optimism. We are as likely to act ourselves into a way of thinking as to think ourselves into action. In experiments, people who pretend to have high self-esteem begin feeling better about themselves. Even when manipulated into a smiling expression, people feel better; when they scowl, the whole world seems to scowl back. So put on a happy face. Pretend optimism. Simulate outgoingness. Going through the motions can trigger the emotions.

5. Seek work and leisure that engage your skills.

Sometimes the challenges of work or home are too great, and we feel stressed. At other times, we’re underchallenged and bored. In between these two states is a zone where we feel challenged, but not overmatched. We get absorbed. We lose consciousness of time. We are in a state that Russian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow.”

In his studies of writers, dancers, surgeons, chess players, mountain climbers, and the like, Csikszentmihalyi discovered that people find the flow experience satisfying. Even if we make a lower but livable wage, it pays to seek work that we find interesting and challenging.

So pick up your camera. Tune that instrument. Sharpen those woodworking tools. Get out those ballet  slippers. Inflate the basketball. Pull down a stimulating book. Oil the fishing reel. It’s time to head out or  invite friends over for drinks. To pull down the Scrabble game. To go for a drive. Rather than vegetating in self-focused idleness, lose yourself in the flow of active work and play. “In every part and corner of our life, to lose oneself is to be a gainer,” noted Robert Louis Stevenson. “To forget oneself is to be happy.”

6. Get rest.

Happy people live active, vigorous lives, yet they reserve time for renewing sleep and solitude. Today, however, many people suffer from shortened sleep, leaving them groggy and unable to get into flow.

I HATE arguments – I really do.  To me, most arguments are ultimately pointless, meaningless, and conducted over small matters that have little to no real meaning in life. By choosing to argue, rather than choosing to be happy, you are setting your own course. The two are mutually exclusive; I’ve never met two people who were truly happy when arguing.  Choose happiness over being right!

So, the next time you’re searching for happiness at your work, your relationship or even at home, just step back for a second and think.  You will soon realize that you need to stop searching – happiness is right next to you.

Here are 12 ways to create and give happiness to others, follow this and soon you will find that you have much more of it.

1.  Live in the Moment.

Don’t think about how great things will be in the future. Don’t dwell on what did or didn’t happen in the past. Learn to be in the here and now, and experience life as it’s happening, and appreciate the world for the beauty that it is, right now. Practice makes perfect with this crucial skill.

2.  Connect with others.

In my experience, very few things can achieve happiness as well as connecting with other human beings, cultivating relationships, bonding with others.

3.  Spend time with those you love.

This might seem almost the same as the item above, and in reality it’s an extension of the same concept, a more specific application. Spending time with the people you love is extremely important to happiness … and yet it’s incredible how often we do just the opposite, and spend time alone, or disconnected from those we love, or spend time with people we don’t much like. Make it a priority to schedule time with the people you love. Make that your most important item of the day.

4.  Do the things you love.

What do you love doing most? Figure out the 4-5 things you love doing most in life, the things that make you happiest, and make those the foundation of your day, every day. Eliminate as much of the rest as possible. Focus on the good things.

5.  Do work you love.

An extension, of course, of doing the things you love, but applied to work. Are you already doing the work you love? Then you’re one of the lucky ones, and you should appreciate how lucky you are. If you aren’t doing the work you love, you should make it a priority to try to find work you’re passionate about, and to steer your career in that direction.

6.  Help others.

Is there any better feeling than helping a fellow human being? There aren’t many. And it’s not too hard

7.  Notice the small things.

Instead of waiting for the big things to happen – marriage, kids, house, nice car, big promotion, winning the lottery – find happiness in the small things that happen every day. Little things like having a quiet cup of coffee in the early morning hours, or the delicious and simple taste of berries, or the pleasure of reading a book with your child or even that surprisingly good cheesecake your partner made.  Noticing these small pleasures, throughout your day, makes a huge difference.

8.  Appreciate.

Learning to be grateful for what’s in our lives, for the people who have enriched our lives, goes a long way toward happiness. It helps us to appreciate what we have and what we have received, and the people who have helped us.

9.  Simplify your life.

This is really about identifying the things you love (see above) and then eliminating everything else as much as possible. By simplifying your life in this way, you create time for your happiness, and you reduce the stress and chaos in your life. In my experience, living a very simple life is also a pleasure in itself.

10.  Learn to accept.

One of the challenges for people like me – people who want to improve themselves and change the world – is learning to accept things as they are. Sometimes it’s better to learn to accept, and to love, the world as it is, and people as they are, rather than to try to make everything and everyone conform to your own ideal. I’m not saying you should accept cruelty and injustice, but learn to love things when they are less than “perfect”.

11.  Bite your tongue.

That means learning to let go of things that you’d otherwise bring up. And it means caring enough about the other person’s happiness (and your own!) to make the effort to try and change. It won’t always be easy, and the first couple of times will be rough. But the more you learn to let the little things in life glide over you, like a gentle breeze blows across a field, the more at peace and happier you will be.

12.  Focus on the good things.

I have been told that sometimes I am overly optimistic and that I never bring up issues because I am always content with the way things are.  Well that’s because I always focus on the good things – in my relationship, at work and in every aspect of my life.  It is who I am — and it really has helped shine a positive light on almost any difficult situation that I have come across.

So, the next time you’re wondering why you’re not happier – take a look at this list and you may find that happiness is already next to you.

Respectfully,
Rob

• Make the world a better place.
• Increase the quality of life.
• Right a terrible wrong.
• Prevent the end of something good.

One of my favorite quotes comes from an unknown source, “the essence of intelligence is skill in extracting meaning from everyday experience.” I have always thought that a successful person is someone who has meaning and purpose, and every day touches someone’s life in a positive way–whether to make them laugh or learn or both at once!

From a business perspective, it is important to reach out and connect with customers and employees in a way that is meaningful… in a way that matters to them… does your business or idea make meaning, but what IS IT that people find meaningful?

Here are a few questions you should ask yourself to determine what is meaningful?

• How does your service or product improve the lives of others?
• How do you give back to your community?
• How have you helped others reach their dreams?
• What can we do as a community to make meaning?
• How have you inspired creative collaboration?

I am not arguing that companies are in a position to create meaning in people’s lives rather they are in a position to create meaningful experiences.  Meaning is in the eye of the beholder. The more you can create peak experiences – whether it’s coming face-to-face with an appreciative customer or building a sense of deep community amongst your employees – the more likely you will see the meaning in what you and  your company does.  In business, making meaning is to observe, define and describe meaningful customer experiences.

So, why not start by doing something worthwhile, because you want to contribute and make a difference? There really is nothing stopping you from making meaning in your life, your business or your community.

What do you think about this post?
Is this just more gobbledegook or do you agree with me?  If you enjoyed it let me know.  (Thanks to Guy Kawasaki for inspiring this article.)

Respectfully,
Rob

So! This post is purely from a professional perspective and I’m asking all of YOU!! What is your source of inspiration — in your job, your business or your career? What drives you each morning to work harder, to push for success and to ultimately become a winner?

After taking some time to examine what truly motivates me, I have come to realize that we can find inspiration everywhere.  When I turn to my professional associations and their resources, or when I attend educational sessions, I’m inspired.  Everything from my peers and mentors to volunteering and even communicating with thought leaders, their passion is contagious. Just as an example, I thought about my work over this past week and quickly came up with three sources of professional inspiration.

1. Reading.

I find inspiration in everything I read. If I need ideas or don’t feel really imaginative, I look to find people that share similar interests and check out their work, their websites and their blogs. Chances are you’ll find something interesting, and it may trigger your creativity switch. Studying successful people can definitely help on your way to success. By being a lifelong learner – each experience can inspire us to think of better ways to improve ourselves.

2.  Integrity, Professionalism and Leadership.

Practicing integrity, professionalism and leadership in my work is equally inspiring as well. Very often the world is not perfect, being able to be in the position to change things to set things right is certainly a plus to me. I believe in integrity and being professional by working hard. Leading by example – don’t blame others, take responsibility and deliver quality solutions; thus achieving the trust and respect of others.

3. Turning a Crisis into an Opportunity.

Exposure to tough problems stimulates the creative mind and being able to solve those issues by inspiring other team members and helping them recognize their potential and strengths gives me a great boost when they become ready to take on more challenging roles. It is very inspiring for me when my colleagues, co-workers are capable of facing challenges & overcoming them.

Inspiration is everywhere. In the strangest places thoughts about how to improve a process, create a more cohesive team, add a product, entice a member, or create a marketing opportunity may strike. It may happen while attending a non-related industry meeting, reading a newspaper or journal, daydreaming, or talking with colleagues about their practices. Be ready.

And if you DON’T find inspiration in what you do I am curious as to how or why you would continue in that role? I am very interested to hear your answers.

Additional Resources to Find Your Professional Inspiration:

• Sources Of Inspiration From DailyBlogTips – interview with Daniel Scocco
“Keep your radar on through out the day”, carry a notebook everywhere you go, learn how to identify all those sources of inspiration that surround us.

• Inspiration From Your Future Self by Kate Hudson
“I want my future self to look back and smile, knowing it was worth it”. Inspired by exciting lives of older people who traveled the world, took chances and had fun “along their journey”.

• The Roots Of Inspiration by Isabella Mori
Everything is connected and becomes a source of inspiration. It’s all about “being willing to make connections”. Serendipity is a big part of inspiration.

• Inspired By One Minute Miracle by Lewis Bass
Inspired by quick thoughts or quotes, great outdoors, helping other, by feeling the presence of the Creator.

• Inspired By People by Jacob Share
Inspired by five influential bloggers who have insight, attitude, motivational skills, expertise and dedication.

• Finding Inspiration At The Top Of A Ladder by Rory
Allow the mind to “freely to wander”, relax in the bath, until Eureka! hits you, just “don’t forget to take your notebook” everywhere you go.
Thanks for reading.
Respectfully,
Rob

Each day, you can evaluate your behaviors and compare them against the standard that you have set for yourself and/or your company. If you internalize your own credos and believe in these words often enough, with conviction, your behaviour will change subconsciously to reflect this. A change in behavior will eventually lead you to a change in performance. And when you perform at your peak, you succeed. It doesn’t matter where you are in life, or what you do for a living, if you just modify the way you look at things, the way you think about things, you can and will achieve success.

My personal credos are in my wallet and on a fairly large poster I taped directly in front of my desk. Purposely unavoidable but nonetheless, encouraging. They are as follows:

1.  Believe in yourself.

The most important resource you will ever have is you.  You can always accomplish more.

2.  Visualize the “finish line”.

Always focus on the goal and not the road to get there.

3. Worrying is a useless emotion.

Just keep moving forward or fix it.

4. There is never an excuse.

Excuses are the exchange of the poor and money is the exchange of the wealthy. Money can not buy happiness and neither can excuses.

5. Make meaning with everything you do.

Collaborate, inspire and change what is needed to improve a life besides your own.

So now it’s your turn. What’s your credo? (Feel free to post one here, or to put it in your own blog).

A fixture on the same corner for more than two years, Dave Dessler or Crazzy Dave as he prefers to be called, may be homeless, but he isn’t faceless. With his messianic hair and quick, caustic wit, he has been “busking poetry” that tends to focus on what he senses at street level to survive.   He doesn’t wave a hat at strangers and he never asks for money. Instead he spends his days etching rhymes onto stained pieces of cardboard in colorful shades of permanent marker. However, the poet is, in fact, tired of life on the street. “I’m so mentally and emotionally beat to sh–, I don’t know how much longer I can do this.”

Fortunately, with the financial backing of Steve Hambling, the president of a local ice-cream shop, Dessler’s poems have now turned into a book, Mindlessly Adrift: My Ottawa Streets, a co-effort with photographer Jean Boulay.   Dessler, who admits to a “checkered past,” hopes the proceeds from the book will be enough to provide a small nest egg to establish his own housing. From there, he hopes to cobble together enough income — his street poetry, possibly a small home business — to get by on his own.

Dessler is one of well-over 5,000 homeless men and women living in the Ottawa area.  It is extremely unfortunate that the homeless are still in large part society’s “visible” invisibles. There is an old saying, that if a problem is well defined then it is half solved. Part of that problem is awareness and it is also a big part of the solution.  The poetry by Dessler reminds us of the unique individuality and creativity of the forgotten. We must ensure that no matter what problems befall any of us, even during the worst of times be sure to lend a helping hand.  Let’s focus on random acts of kindness and work on promoting the social inclusion of homeless people by ensuring equal access to services so they can become a part in the life of the community.

If anyone is interested in chatting more about this topic feel free to contact me anytime!
Respectfully,
Rob

I, of all people, usually never watch Oprah, but my girlfriend kindly insisted that I watch yesterday’s episode (I think it was a repeat). The topic was about two people that have incurable life threatening illnesses and how they now look at life from a different perspective. These two incredibly inspiring people will never take no for an answer. This article in its profoundest sense is about realizing that life is a terminal condition, we are all going to die eventually — but how many of us are truly going to live?

Randy Pausch – “Dream Big and Go For It!”

How many times while you were growing up did you hear, “follow your dreams”? Yet, very few of us actually did. Randy Pausch believes that we should always be dreaming because anything is possible. “Even if we fail at achieving our goal, we still gain a lot by trying for it.” Randy was diagnosed with an incurable form of Pancreatic cancer but instead of being bitter – cancer has pushed him to live! “I needed to make peace with my disease, even if it didn’t go away” said Randy during his moving final lecture at Carnegie Melon University, “lead your life in the right way because charma will take its course and your dreams will come to you.” Randy’s lecture has become a phenomenon, celebrating the dreams we all strive to make realities.

To watch the full version of Randy’s inspirational lecture please click on the video below.

Kris Carr was diagnosed with rare stage four cancer around her liver and lungs in 2003 at the age of 31. However, Kris isn’t focusing on living with cancer. She’s focusing on living her life to the fullest and not letting something she can’t see ruin the opportunities life offers. “I always wonder why, when we are challenged to survive do we give ourselves permission to truly live”, Kris asks. “We waste so much of our life worrying about the future and we should really be living in the moment.” Kris is a true example of someone who has taken desperation and turned it into her own inspiration. She really does have a truly amazing outlook on life.

“We spend most of our lives trying to live life.
Life changes in a moment.” – Kris Carr

It amazes me every time I see people with such unrelenting personal strength and ambition. These two extraordinary people have enriched many lives and motivated others to achieve their full potential. Their amazing outlook on life should teach us to live life every day to the fullest (and not wait until something tragic befalls us to start learning to live.) I could only hope to one day live my life with the same grace, dignity and joy that both Kris Carr and Randy Pausch seem to exhibit.