You already know how frustrated I am about how poorly our leaders are addressing the challenges we all face as a society. I am not the only one, of course. But we each must focus more on what we can do, rather than only shaking our fists at what we can’t do.

In that spirit, I continue to gather the emerging research of what actually drives individual happiness, and promote personal change to achieve it. So that’s what I want to encourage you to do…pursue your happiness—with verve, gusto, and commitment. Right now…in your present circumstances.

Lately, I have been teaching a class of adults at UC San Diego how to take charge of their career to create both more financial security and meaningful work. This is vital because Gallup’s global research confirms that “work well-being” is the second biggest driver of happiness (after relationship/family well-being).

These days, work well-being is difficult to stumble into. The U.S. Department of Labor reports that most jobs being created today are characterized by

1. high demands,
2. low pay,
3. low power, and
4. low security.

Occupational health research describes these four characteristics as a toxic combination causing relentless stress. But if this kind of job sounds familiar, let me assure you that you don’t have to settle for a stress-filled, unrewarding job or career.

There are many, many forces you can proactively take control of, and the first is to get a deep understanding of how you create value for others. This is the source of our own economic well-being. People who become extraordinary at creating value for others make far bigger impacts than typical workers. In fact, a 10-year research project I am directly involved with reveals that consistently extraordinary performance has both tangible (money) and intangible (inner satisfaction) impact. Extraordinary performance is defined by customers, employers, colleagues, and supervisors who rate individuals across 40 factors related to work performance. It turns out the people in the top 10 percent of these ratings create 2 to 5 times the economic value and are 4 times more engaged than good performers.

So, what has that got to do with pursuing happiness?

Plenty, it turns out.

People who excel in their work life by using their talents to create meaningful value are happier and healthier than people who just earn paychecks. People who simply view work as an economic necessity are generally less fulfilled than people who see that their work makes a difference to people.

That’s the key. Recent Harvard University research found that people in all kinds of jobs found their work engaging and meaningful if they knew it was valued by other human beings. People in all kinds of jobs found their work meaningful. The secret is being consciously aware of the difference you are making, and learning to personalize your work so that it reflects your unique style, values, or flair.

What the researchers discovered is that there are happy toll-takers, maids, and brain surgeons, and that there are unhappy toll takers, maids, and brain surgeons. Of course, some work is more intrinsically enriching than other work. But for the most part, happiness, satisfaction, and fulfillment come from our desire to make our difference, rather than the nature of the work itself. With this surprising finding, the researchers set out to find out what happy workers have most in common.

Perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that what they have in common is these three traits:

1. Gratitude, not just for their job, but as an orientation of life. Gratitude helps them notice all the good things they enjoy, instead of the things they lack.
2. Appreciation of others’ efforts, and an embrace of teamwork. Socially connecting with teammates is a big satisfier.
3. Empathy for the people they serve. The more “real,” flesh-and-blood human beings depend on us as colleagues and customers, the more motivating it is to do a personalized job for them.

The research concluded that even in companies with toxic cultures, nearly 10 percent of employees found their work engaging and meaningful. In great companies, that number is over 80 percent.

The lessons for me are simple. If I am serious about my happiness, I need to be serious about doing meaningful work. Of course, meaningful work can include being a stay-at-home parent, or even a volunteer. Whatever my work, if I approach it with gratitude for opportunities I have, an appreciation for my coworkers’ efforts, and empathy for my customers, I will both enrich others and myself.

This is important. If you are unhappy with your work or your employer, seek first to change yourself, because you can make things better for your inner work life right now.

Now, if you are working for a negative, exploitative employer, always be on the search for an upgrade. Our work is too important to waste it working for Neanderthals.

We swim in a media soup of politics. It is stressful. It hammers with an incessant thud of foreboding. Like most, my life has had deep downs and some inspiring ups, but right now I find it hard to stay focused on everything I should be personally grateful for, when the noise of our culture is so disturbing. Honestly, I have been trying to tune out the politics of self-destruction that has poisoned the minds of so many. It is harder still to listen to the weak, worn-out responses of civic leaders to those hell-bent on turning our society into a survival-of-the-fittest, “Hunger Games” nightmare.

What we need is some smart innovation about how best to create a 21^st-century society where everyone has a genuine chance for a decent life. Who could oppose such a goal? Strangely, it seems many do. Yet this is exactly the goal of our founders. It is the foundation of what we call the Enlightenment, which was an explosion of new thinking about the purpose of society

Before the Enlightenment, there was only savagery. For thousands of years it took the form of tribalism, where the strongest tribes killed, enslaved, and raped weaker ones. During these dreadful millennia, everyone had to carry weapons to defend themselves from everyone else.

Later, civilization brought us commerce and the concentration of vast wealth among a self-appointed ruling class, who rigged the legal system and taxed the peasants to ensure their families would always have all the wealth, all the power, and control of the armies and navies. They even invented a religious doctrine called the “Divine Right of Kings,” that claimed that being born into an aristocracy was proof that God had chosen you to rule over everyone else. This was the nature of society until the past 200 years. For most people life was hard, hopeless, and short.

In the 1700s, s a new breed of philosophers promoted the intrinsic dignity of every man. Eventually, this grew to include every human being—every man, every woman, every race. Once people were “enlightened” to believe in universal human dignity, the concept of a free and equal society became the aspiration of all moral people. It is one of the most powerful ideas ever ignited. It defines a core value. A value that changes everything.

The value is simple. Every person has the inherent right to pursue their happiness. It doesn’t mean we can grant happiness, or insure it for everyone. But, together, we can do a lot to give every citizen a genuine chance at self-determination. The principle of this value was expressed by the influential philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who said the best society was the one that creates the most opportunity for happiness for the most people. This idea inspired Thomas Jefferson’s famous declaration that we should be free to pursue happiness.

Awesome, right?

Well, right from the beginning, there was a big divide over what brings happiness. The battle is over a fundamental value. One side says happiness comes from pursuing self-interest. Selfishness with a dash of charity is the fundamental idea. This concept is tied directly to the belief that your level of material wealth determines your level of happiness.

As an idea, the selfish route to happiness has a long history connecting tribal warfare to the aristocracies of Europe, that seemed to show that whoever has the most power, money and security has the most happiness. The thinking goes that since power and wealth are always judged by competitive measures (that is, “What is my power compared to yours?” or “Who has the most money also has the most food, medicine, land, slaves, etc.”), the game of life is simple: just win. This idea that happiness comes from competitively driving your self-interest to dominate always leads to people who gain power to limit the ways others can gain it. It’s like a football team who, once they get ahead, suddenly changes the rules so that the team behind only gets to play four players.

This philosophy, based on material wealth accumulated through self-interested competition, has always had loud, table-pounding political defenders. This group would not ratify our Constitution if it outlawed slavery. This group fought against public canals, public roads, and public schools. This group fought against child labor and minimum wage laws and social security. This group fought against environmental protection, safety regulations, and limiting advertising of cigarettes. This group opposed women and African-Americans getting to vote or own property. They oppose equal pay, maternity leave, and early childhood education. They are very consistent. This group has always used the obvious deception that the non-rich should not want to limit the power of the rich, because someday you could be rich, and you will want all this asymmetrical power we enjoy.

This group is powerful because, to some extent, their philosophy of self does work! It turns out that free market competition does increase ingenuity and innovation, and does improve the material quality of the lives of billions of people. And that’s no small thing. The problem? It doesn’t account for all of the most important values—human value. A free market has no intrinsic morality. A free market rewards cheaters, pollution, poisoners and exploiters, because the short-term gains arising from irresponsible self-interest overpowers “enlightened” self-interest from being moral. A free market operating without common ethical values is bound to increase suffering of the innocent.

The most basic rule of ethics is to not do anything that would cause avoidable suffering of innocent people. Unavoidable suffering is caused by things like hurricanes and disease. Avoidable suffering is caused by selling cigarettes or bogus investments, or pollution, or…a zillion other legal but immoral things. Even laws and regulations have little impact, because the successful violators corrupt politicians, so that laws and regulations are changed to promote and even reward irresponsibility and exploitation.

As it turns out, pursuing happiness through self-interest is stupid. It doesn’t work. Over the past ten years, scientists have accumulated mountains of research confirming that happiness occurs at the intersection of contentment and optimism, and that these higher feelings directly arise from empathy, caring, compassion, and personal growth. It has nothing to do with selfishness.

In fact, after our basic needs are met, happiness has little to do with material things at all. The research is clear that the most chronically unhappy people are those who are the most competitive and materialistic. Research points out that multi-millionaires with materialistic values are less happy than people living in strong family systems, who are only living 20% above the level of daily sustenance. (In India, these people make only $4000 per year!)

I am not pointing this out to say that pursuing money at the cost of love and compassion is a bad idea. Someone far more important than me pointed that out 2,000 years ago. Rather, I am asking “What are we trying to achieve?” What I’m asking is why would any person support leaders who want to recreate America into a ruthlessly materialistic society, one that only rewards financial success and the arbitrary good luck of being born into a loving, stable family? How can so many of us seem to think that a society that is specially engineered to favor the favored, while increasing avoidable suffering to the unfavored, is the very best we can do?

I just don’t get it. I don’t understand how about half of Americans seem to think a survival-of-the-fittest society is the best fruit of political freedom. We are wasting precious time, and poisoning our future. New polls are showing more Americans than at any time in history are considering emigrating to other countries, because there are greater opportunities to pursue true happiness.

Have we lost our ever-loving minds?

The fact is, the best path to our best future has not been presented. While today’s conservatives are insane, the liberal politicians are stuck in a paternalistic merry-go-round—that is, well-meaning but poorly designed solutions. Our government is too often bloated, uninspired, and corrupt. What’s needed is government re-imagined to take advantage of the best of human nature, instead of rewarding the worst of our animal instincts.

In today’s environment, I don’t hold much hope that such innovation will come without much pain. My mission is to help you avoid as much of that pain as possible, by grabbing the steering wheel of your own life.

(I am teaching a career class at UC San Diego helping scores of people discover their unique path to happiness… I will keep you posted.)

What does it take to live a better life? Action! Nothing will change until you do something. Sign up for ThoughtRocket’s daily challenges and see action ignite your life. Scientific research and practical inspiration are fused together in quick, powerful messages sent to your email three times a week. Click here to subscribe, or visit ThoughtRocket.com to learn more.

Science is making us stupid.

Not real science. Fake science has infiltrated our culture and filled our minds with nonsense. Stephen Colbert cornered the phrase “truthiness” to describe assertions based on flimsy evidence posing as truth. If some outrageous claim is confidently repeated over and over, many of us will accept it as truth. Yes, it’s the basis of talk radio and “crazy news” on TV. But it’s worse than that. It’s all over the media in stories reporting on correlation studies performed by two-bit academics posing as scientists. And it makes us stupid.

Here’s the problem. Real science proves a hypothesis by discovering the true cause-and-effect principles of our physical world. Experiments are created that duplicate results over and over again. These results must have no exceptions to be considered scientific fact. This approach works best in hard sciences, like chemistry and physics.

And even that is hard because, as quantum physics demonstrates, the physical world is full of unanticipated and presently unexplainable surprises. A genuine “scientific fact” is 100% true, 100% of the time. Otherwise, it’s just a theory.

Today, theories of all kinds are asserted as facts. But you shouldn’t fall for fake science.

Here’s how falling for fake science makes us stupid.

1. Correlation is not cause. Recently, a study was promoted saying eating red meat or processed meat (like bacon), in any quantity, substantially increases our risk of heart attack. The study compared mortality rates of daily red meat eaters and non-red meat eaters. But it did not factor out other risk factors. So a deeper look showed that the meat eaters in the study also had much higher rates of smoking, fast food intake, and low rates of exercise. So attributing heart disease to red meat alone is misleading to say the least.Want to know something more bizarre? A Stanford study called “A to Z” examined health risks of five popular diets ranging from Atkins to the Zone. The only diet that significantly lowered cardiovascular risk was the high meat-and-bacon Atkins diet. It actually lowered bad cholesterol. I know—you can’t believe it—but look it up for yourself. (See Stanford Diet Study Tips Scale in Favor of Atkins Plan)

2. Predicting human behavior is named “social science.” But it’s not real science. Psychologists claim to predict human behavior by conducting small studies of less than 100 college students. Most of these students are under 25. This means the test subjects’ brains are not fully formed.

   For instance, until age 25 most young men and women seek to increase pleasurable stimulation and excitement for the least effort. You don’t need a PhD to notice that “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll” is a very appealing lifestyle to college students. The last part of the brain to develop is our higher centers of judgment and the exercise of free will. So nearly 90% of studies of human behavior are based on tiny samples of hormone-crazed frat boys and society girls. No, I am not making this up. The fact is that social science is largely based on studying people who act like the cast of American Pie movies.

3. Personal bias runs amok in science. It’s always been a problem because scientists have size XL egos. When you’re smart about things most people don’t know much about, you can get away with promoting whatever your ego wants to prove. For instance, brain scans used by neuroscientists have been frivolously used in hundreds of studies to “prove” all kinds of pet theories. What is never reported are all the exceptions to evidence presented to support the theory.For instance, a merry band of scientists are hell-bent on proving all the higher motives and experiences of human life are nothing more than brain synapses and chemicals. Feelings of love, compassion, and heroic acts of charity are drained of spiritual meaning, and explained as simply the biology of evolution motivating us to act in some ultimately self-serving way. So a soldier’s sacrifice to give up her life to save members of her patrol is not a selfless act of heroism, but only the expression of social biology. Free will is dismissed in favor of us being biological robots programmed by complex evolutionary forces we don’t fully understand, but are sure to “explain” every unexplainable thing we experience.

   A closer look at the materialists who attempt to use brain science and evolutionary biology to explain the mysteries of consciousness, spiritual experiences, and free will make great logical leaps to connect their insistent assertions based on scientifically untestable claims. These are people who claim it’s impossible for humans to retain conscious awareness if we are brain-dead. Yet there are a growing number of cases documented by medical doctors of patients being fully aware and completely alert even when their brains and bodies are clinically dead for extended periods of time. But scientists still claim this can’t be true, no matter what contrary evidence is presented.

What’s the point? It’s that a closed mind is a dangerous weapon in the hands of arrogant and influential people. When you hear someone make the case for their convictions as something absolutely true in all cases, be cautious.

The happiest, least fearful of us are curious. We are happy to live with mystery. We don’t need certainty to have contentment. One of the greatest joys of living is retaining our ability to change our minds.

What does it take to live a better life? Action! Nothing will change until you do something. Sign up for ThoughtRocket’s daily challenges and see action ignite your life. Scientific research and practical inspiration are fused together in quick, powerful messages sent to your email three times a week. Click here to subscribe, or visit ThoughtRocket.com to learn more.

I just got back from national conference of Gap store managers. I love the people who manage Gap stores. They are so full of positive energy. It’s amazing to me how much meaning they pack into their jobs. Yes, many of them like fashion and popular culture, but the deeper reason most are so committed to a hard job with long hours is that they love to develop the people who staff their stores. That’s right—in retail the turnover is quite high. But for these Gap managers, all that means is a bigger opportunity to positively impact more people. I find this to be a very inspiring way to look at one’s work.

I gave a presentation to this group of managers about nine months ago. This time, one of them recognized me, and she stopped me in the hall. She said that something she learned had really made her much more happy and productive, and she wanted to thank me. It was the power of being present. She related to me that since I last saw her, she given birth to a new baby, and was feeling overwhelmed with the demands of work, home and husband. But as she reflected on the power that comes from being fully present, she decided to try it out .

She told me that when she was home, she was completely home. She amplified her loving feelings for both her baby and her husband, and disciplined herself to simply not think about work. That’s the great thing about our brains. We actually can decide what to think about, if we apply a little disciplined attention.

She also told me that at work, she was fully present with her work team. It turned out that it was especially important to her staff members to recognize more vividly how each of them have different needs and motivations; different skills and commitments. She told me that her awareness of these differences made her a much better manager, and make the staff much happier and motivated. Because she was able to deploy her team more in ways more aligned with their strengths and interests, she quickly produced better results. In fact, she concluded, “I’ve got the best review from my boss I’ve ever got. It’s amazing—you really can do more with less.”

I would put it this way. We can do a lot more with less distractions and more focused attention. A recent study concluded that our smart phones and social networks are making it easier to stay superficially connected to more people than ever. Yet there is increasing evidence that our truly intimate connections are fewer. Brain scientists are already mapping biological changes in our highly trainable brains that make focused concentration more difficult. This is, of course, the essence of being fully present. Hmmm…

So let’s look at this as a new opportunity. Let me suggest we all try this experiment over the next 24 hours. The next time you find yourself with a loved one, try to drop your agenda, become an intentional positive advocate, put away your cell phones, and intensely put all your focus on the other. Do this for 3 to 5 minutes with 100% singular positive focus. As you get into the conversation, say silently in your mind “I love you.” Say this silently three times during the conversation. Now, don’t expect some miracle love rainbow to suddenly appear in the room. I just want you to experiment with trying the power of presence even for one day with someone you really care about, and see if you don’t accomplish much more with less effort. More connection…more feeling…more intimacy. Imagine how you might feel after a month of doing this. And don’t concern yourself with how the other will feel. That is out of your control. Just focus on how you are transformed. Please check back in and let us know what is happening.

Our team continues to work feverishly on getting prepared for the launch of Thought Rocket. I can’t believe how much time and effort it is taking, but we are trying to do something really extraordinary. In fact, as soon as I quit typing this, I have to go over the presentation of a new, simple tip that is designed to help people discover whether the Boss you may be working for is worth your effort…or if you need to find a new boss or new job to reclaim your best potential. Ironically, it’s hard to make things quick, simple and easy.

What does it take to live a better life? Action! Nothing will change until you do something. Sign up for ThoughtRocket’s daily challenges and see action ignite your life. Scientific research and practical inspiration are fused together in quick, powerful messages sent to your email three times a week. Click here to subscribe, or visit ThoughtRocket.com to learn more.

It turns out working for Goldman Sachs requires selling your soul to the devil. At least that’s what was said in a recent resignation letter, published in The New York Times by Goldman Sachs executive Greg Smith. He wrote that the investment bank creates a culture of aggressive exploitation of the clients, where bankers seem to try to make their clients money, but cynically sell them out by misleading them to buy Goldman investments destined to lose value. Of course, they run their clients’ investment portfolios the way Las Vegas rigs their slot machines. You win just enough to dump more money in the slots. But the house always wins by profiting on your losses.

It’s not surprising to me.

I’ve been working with high-level business leaders for three decades. There are two kinds. First, there are narcissistic materialists who are smart, charming, and see themselves as entitled to be rich and successful. They often say they care about their employees and their customers, but they don’t. Not really.

Believe me. These people are not fictional Hollywood creations. They are all too real, and they run both large companies as well as family-owned enterprises. Business itself attracts these personality types because businesses are mostly dictatorships that offer the promise of wealth and privilege.

The other type of leader I’ve had the opportunity to work with is up to something more than just making money. They want to build great enterprises that genuinely contribute to a better future. These people really do exist. Doug Conant, the just-retired CEO of Campbell’s Soup Company, sincerely wanted to nourish his customers and his employees. He successfully revitalized their company’s culture and built a fast-growing new category of healthier soups and foods.

But Doug is an exception. My experience is that most business leaders and owners don’t think much about what they can do to improve their employees’ or customers’ lives. They mostly think about how to make more money, how to amass more power and status, and how to insulate themselves and their families from the uncertainty of the economy and the nasty effects of an amoral business culture. So we have medicine that makes us sick, cigarettes that kill us, fast food that isn’t food, and banks that rob us. This kind of colossal misbehavior is deemed acceptable because the mythical “free market” rewards short-term exploitation with all the goodies of success. And our super-consuming society seems to worship material success above anything else.

The only answer for people like you and me, I’ve observed, is to create our own personal economy. The truth is that we are not dependent on the man, whether the man is your employer, the government, your family, or any other source of economic support.

We are all wired to be self-sufficient if we want to be. Maybe not right this minute, but in two years for sure. That’s what I’ve seen. Everyone can change their life circumstances, get control of their debts, create a healthy stream of income, and live under decent circumstances in 24 months’ time. And we already know what to do. In developing countries where micro-businesses are financed by tiny $200 loans, over 90% of such businesses succeed, with many people doubling their standard of living in two years. Virtually none of these new entrepreneurs have any formal training. It is instinctual to create value, earn a reasonable profit, reinvest in creating more value, and become self-sufficient.

In the US, 7 out of 10 new businesses become self-sustaining. 7 out of 10! So becoming economically self-sustaining is not a mystery.

My point is that many enterprises that want to employ you are designed to make money by asking their employees to play a version of Goldman Sachs. Fool customers and exploit you. And the new age of intelligent robots is just around the corner. In ten years, R2D2-type speaking robots will be working in factories, retail stores, and hospitals. The robots are coming, and coming fast. No, I am not kidding. Read the new book Abundance and you’ll get the picture of the ultimate business use of technology.

The only answer I see is to create your own career, one that is based on your personal wisdom. Wisdom is the intersection of knowledge, judgment, and values. It’s what makes you unique, whether you create your own enterprise, become a consultant or contractor, or search and find an authentically great employer. Your future will depend on you creating unique value with your unique wisdom.

I am doing everything I can to help people develop and harvest their personal wisdom. It’s our best hope.

It’s time to get busy for the new future.

What does it take to live a better life? Action! Nothing will change until you do something. Sign up for ThoughtRocket’s daily challenges and see action ignite your life. Scientific research and practical inspiration are fused together in quick, powerful messages sent to your email three times a week. Click here to subscribe, or visit ThoughtRocket.com to learn more.

Stress—even relentless, frustrating, eye-watering stress—doesn’t have to be destructive to your love life. Recent university research (and none other than e-Harmony) have discovered that life stressors such as job loss, financial pressures, or forced household moving can actually deepen loyalty, amplify appreciation, and increase mutual attraction.

No, not usually. Usually, stress rips couples apart because each person blames the other, either for the problem or for not being nurturing or supportive. It’s true; when our response to stress is to blame or withdraw, we become relationship destroyers.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. As yhis new research discovered, it turns out that in relationships what doesn’t kill you actually makes you stronger together. Here’s what we’ve now confirmed:

1. Social support is a major stress reliever. And the most appreciated ways to offer support are:

• Comforting and encouraging
• Showing interest by listening
• Sincerely expressing confidence that your partner will ultimately triumph
• Expressing a belief that you can both be happy even if ideal circumstances change. (This is the assertion that whether we live in a mansion or a trailer, living together is more important than where we live.)

2. Men and women generally deal with stress differently. Many men want to be listened to if they want to vent, but often don’t want to be advised. Independent problem-solving is a strong style for many males. Many women want to be comforted and jointly work out new strategies to reduce stress. Of course, everyone is different, and there are many exceptions to stereotypical gender behaviors. But being tuned into your partner’s coping style is a key to strengthening stress resilience rather than ending it.

3. Happy marriages and committed relationships “over-focus” on the positive events of life and positive characteristics of the other. This super positive approach to your mutual experience forms a psychological armor against the ravages of stress.

For instance, the happiest, highest-functioning couples create an optimistic bubble around their relationship. They frequently express gratitude for even small positive life events, and affirm the small positive daily actions of each other. They are grateful for a fresh cup of coffee, a kind word, the pleasure of watching a movie together. In short, they consistently look for things they are genuinely grateful for, and openly express their positive feelings. One common mistake they avoid is trying to balance each other’s sunny view of their lives. It seems that often when one partner is expressing optimism, the other expresses caution. This may be done with good intentions to keep things “real”, but it’s a relationship killer.

This doesn’t mean we need to encourage a partner’s reckless risk taking with rah-rah encouragement. Rather, it means pointing out, magnifying and affirming the positive aspects of your loved one and your life together. This makes you more stress resilient and strengthens ties of loyalty and appreciation.

Oh, one last thing the research notes—stress can kill our sex drive. Science suggest we shouldn’t give in to our discouragement. In fact, healthy sexual expression generates bonding brain chemicals, such as oxytocin that make us feel emotionally connected, and dopamine that stimulates both well-being and pleasure. These brain stimulants strengthen our stress resistance and don’t require a prescription!

In facing stress together, keep communicating, amplify the positive, and stay intimately connected. And always remember, life is long and there are many cycles of both stress and joy. It’s all a part of the ride. So keep pedaling.

(We are getting closer and closer to our first full private unveiling of ThoughtRocket 2.0. we have been creating a new learning engine to help you turn research findings like what I just wrote about into permanent human habits. It takes time to create something really new, different and we hope, better. With your continued interest and help we’ll get there. Stay tuned…)

What does it take to live a better life? Action! Nothing will change until you do something. Sign up for ThoughtRocket’s daily challenges and see action ignite your life. Scientific research and practical inspiration are fused together in quick, powerful messages sent to your email three times a week. Click here to subscribe, or visit ThoughtRocket.com to learn more.

There are five common regrets people express before they die. That’s the message of a new book written by a hospice nurse named Bonnie Ware. The first regret is perhaps the most potent.

Regret #1: “I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself and not the life others expected of me.” 

This is not surprising. It is the common advice given by seasoned, older folks to their grandchildren. It’s good for sure.

I’m just not so sure that simply living out loud by “Carpe Diem-ing” your way through life is the answer. Seizing every day can be a fancy excuse for letting go of your impulse controls.

Our American Dream Project research reveals a path to much deeper satisfaction than what you can get by just declaring your current emotion and following your bliss. If we look at people who are deeply satisfied with their lives, we get a much richer picture than just being jolted by the electricity of deathbed regrets.

It seems that deeply satisfied people spend a great deal of time reflecting on what being “true to oneself” really means. They come to a clear understanding of what choices make them feel stronger, happier, and give them a sense of inner dignity and self-respect.

Sometimes those choices require being quiet and patient, while in other circumstances our essential selves ask us to express our convictions, ask for what we want, and be impatient for things to change. Wisdom is the judgment to know when our personal integrity is served though silence and when our courageous voice is required.

Gaining that wisdom takes both self-examination and an openness to feedback. It requires us to reflect on what we do when we get what we deeply desire and what we do when we cause life to explode in our face.

Getting back to Regret #1, if we lived many decades into adulthood without investing our time and effort to gain self-wisdom, it seems to me we might be missing our essential reason for this entire experience we call human life.

These days, I am doing a lot of leadership coaching, as well as career counseling. It is always revealing because so much of our deep dysfunction comes from a lack of soul-awareness. We seem to be very aware of our superficial selves. I call this our “self-concept.”

A concept is an abstract idea. And we all have an idea about who we are and what we want. But research is clear that this self-generated idea of ourselves is seriously distorted. We see ourselves like we see the wavy pattern of a fun house mirror.

On the other hand, soul awareness is clarity about our “essential” selves. This is the you that is revealed when all our illusions of ourselves are shattered. People must often discover their essential selves through intense suffering. Concentration camp survivors are an extreme example. But personal suffering caused by illness, loss of a loved one, and betrayal all provide rich opportunity to see our own core. Most people begin to see themselves more clearly through meditation, reflection, and simply paying close attention to their authentic interests and reactions.

I’ve had a challenging personal journey that has given me ample opportunity to encounter my own inner “me-ness.” I can only report that it was the greatest liberation of my life. What I discovered is that when everything is lost—money, security, status, even love—we have infinite worth. Transcendent worth that is beyond all human expression.

My insight is that the way to be true to ourselves is not so much about quitting a dreary job and moving to Maui. It’s not so much about saying what we think in any emotional moment. It’s not about blowing up relationships that used to excite us but may have lost their zing.

Us being true is much more simple. It comes from knowing we have nothing to prove. There is nothing we can achieve that will validate our importance because our importance is beyond any achievement. There is no pleasure we can experience that will satisfy our longing for wholeness.

Instead, being true requires us to be attentive to the positive difference we can make moment to moment in our unique lives as we are living them. All of us have something unique to bring to the world we inhabit today. We have the capacity to make all work sacred and every human encounter enriching.

What I have learned is that we all have a difference to make right here. Right now. Our calling is to make our difference. As much as we can. As often as we can. When we do, we have no regrets. A friend of mine said our life’s purpose is to continuously discover and contribute our authentic best.

For me, that’s it. And that is very, very big.

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I love the movies. I see one nearly every week. Forty to fifty a year. I most often enjoy the wildly popular and well-advertised movies but also invest a little time searching for the just right independent film. The ones that have something to say worth saying.

I was sitting with Debbie and our youngest son waiting for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close when a preview started playing of a new Robert De Niro film in which he plays something of a homeless poet. I was stunned by the simplicity of a line he delivered to an artsy, confused, younger man. De Niro’s long-distance voice bellowed down a corridor saying “We are here to help each other…that’s the point.”

That was a nugget of pure spiritual protein. It flashed across my mind. There are really only two ways to live life. Help ourselves or help others. We can pretend we don’t have to make such a stark choice. If we choose to make ourselves the focus of our lives, we can appear to be nice, affable, and mesh well into the social machinery of life, but at our core fear is always the driver. When fear is our prime motive there are so many things to be afraid of. Fear of not having enough money, friends, recognition, good health, or happy children. We can be afraid it might rain on the weekend or whether a Republican or Democrat (you choose) might be elected. We live primarily for our own benefit if fear always lurks. Fear drains us. Our capacity for optimism, resilience, learning and loving are all diminished. Our daily opportunity to make our difference is flushed down the drain.

Of course the good news is we are free to choose love instead of fear as a prime motive. We can follow De Niro’s line that “We are here to help each other.” This doesn’t mean that we enable others’ weaknesses or that we become fools for any parasite that demands our help. Rather it’s a calling to create as much value as we can in every moment. The greatest way to create value is to develop our passionate talents, the ones that intrinsically motivate us to improve the quality of the lives of the people who make up the social universe of our lives. It also means that we view our work as a means to express our unique talent to create value for others.

My observation is that every extraordinary person we admire is driven by love rather than fear. It doesn’t mean they don’t have fears. It doesn’t mean they are without flaws. It doesn’t mean that everything they touch is a success. It just means that they generate perpetual passion for everyday life because their love faucet is flowing. The ways that we can help others is as infinite as our individual circumstance. We don’t need to mimic the life of anyone else or copy their calling. Rather it all starts with a conscious decision–am I a faucet? Or a drain?

I’ve been teaching how our prime motive ignites our careers this past week to live audiences. It’s at the core of “Turn Your Superpower into Your Career,” our soon-to-be-released online course. The audience was made of people ages 30-60, and one thing really struck me. Many people over 45 expressed how much they regret working in careers that are sucking all their energy. The message they want to pass along is that if you’re not pursuing your calling, you are being exploited. And that is soul-killing. It’s never too late to turn on your faucet.

If you have a story of following (or not following) your calling, please share it with us.

What does it take to live a better life? Action! Nothing will change until you do something. Sign up for ThoughtRocket’s daily challenges and see action ignite your life. Scientific research and practical inspiration are fused together in quick, powerful messages sent to your email three times a week. Click here to subscribe, or visit ThoughtRocket.com to learn more.

Yesterday I spent the morning with several hundred executives and managers talking about their personal health and happiness. Their interest and attention was intense. In the past ten years, global business has turned into a 24/7/365 war. Competition is ferocious and change roars at us in a never-ending torrent. The price we pay is being always overstimulated, first by external stress and second by internal churning over how to create some genuine harmony between our work, our relationships, and our spirits.

In many ways, it seems, we have become great at creating a hollow world with a shell of possessions, achievements and debt, and a core of empty anxiety. Strangely, we keep investing ourselves  by adding glitter to the shell, hoping it will compensate for the cold and drafty core. So many of us, it seems, are hypnotized by things that matter less, while the things that matter most are ignored.

I do not blame the victims of this crazy system. I feel nothing but compassion, and I do my best to offer the new tools of brain science, and the insight of the masses from new research on the causes of human happiness, to the thirsty runners daily sprinting in the race of business.

This brings me to yesterday’s insight.

One of the major skills we teach managers and leaders is how to more efficiently achieve tangible goals. Focus and feedback. These are major emphases of everyone’s workday in a high-performing workplace. That’s because getting the right things done is critical. “Mission-critical,” as they say.

But what strikes me is how ill-suited this skill is with our love relationships at home.

The people we love want us to listen and affirm them. They want us to be gentle, patient and encouraging. They want us to accept them for their intrinsic goodness, and constantly overlook their quirks and unpolished bits.

In many ways, the quality of our love rests on our ability to love, encourage, and root for the people we love in spite of their weaknesses. When we deeply love, we see through the stupid stuff to the genuine, tender goodness of our friends, spouses, partners and children.

At work, however, great management is all about feedback, direction, development and giving candid performance reviews. Too often, I see that the skills of hard-driving leaders are misemployed at home, and end up alienating loved ones.

But enriching personal relationships are not about results. They’re about the relationship.

It’s not about extrinsic performance; it’s about intrinsic connection.

When people at home are not doing what we want them to, instead of trying to manage them like an employee, we might consider investing in the quality of the relationship. Doing some very un-business-like things. Like wasting time together, listening without judgment, and genuinely affirming anything and everything you like or admire, down to the tiny personal details you refuse to take for granted.

Real life is not a business. Real life is love. It always has been. And, thankfully, always will be.

What does it take to live a better life? Action! Nothing will change until you do something. Sign up for ThoughtRocket’s daily challenges and see action ignite your life. Scientific research and practical inspiration are fused together in quick, powerful messages sent to your email three times a week. Click here to subscribe, or visit ThoughtRocket.com to learn more.

Smart Trust is a new book just released by two friends of mine, Greg Link and Stephen M.R. Covey. It makes a strong case that people who love one another produce more, enjoy more and love more because they trust each other. The same, they say, is true of business enterprise and governments. It turns out the happiest people live in high trust cultures. The problem of course is that much of the world and many, many people are not trustworthy. Self-interest trumps very, very often when the payoffs of betrayal overwhelm commitment and integrity. That’s why, the authors say, we need to be smart about whom we trust and what we invest our trust in.

I believe my friends’ case for trust. Imagine how great the world would be if we could trust each other. I know, miniature unicorns might also be fascinating pets if they existed. My experience is that real trust is extremely fragile. Even people with long track records of perfect behavior can let us down or even cut our hearts out. Our entire economy is built on financial Darwinism where “buyer beware” is the only sensible course of action. Remember how we all got scolded for buying houses with too-big mortgages because we trusted both the banks and system? And yet when it all blew up we were told we should have read the fine print and only a fool would trust a mortgage broker. Of course I wish we could de-regulate the economy, and when we quit selling things like e. coli-laced meat and tainted medicine, I’ll be the first in line.

But self-interest is a very hard thing to control with either self-control or a very slow and sloppy marketplace. So it turns out life is scary. Both personally and professionally. We get whacked by bad relationships and are often disappointed by  our bosses, co-workers, and all the rest. What are we to do if we can’t trust?

Well, it’s foolish to live in a state of perpetual cynicism. What I have found is that it’s most important to increase your self-trust. Our core beliefs must be that “no matter what happens, I can deal with it.” Life is terminal in the end. We all end up the same way. So in that sense we have nothing to lose by being bold in our thinking. We are wise not to require trust in others to thrive. Even if they don’t keep their commitments, you can be just fine. The quality of your inner life does not depend on others doing what they should. Whatever happens, you can recover, grow, and move on. One of the great purposes of life is learning how strong we can be. It’s true.

After going through a very, very rough period in my life, a friend said to me, “Wow, you have nothing left to fear. Every unthinkable, bad thing you never wanted to happen has happened and you’re still standing. What a gift!” His words struck me. The nature of human resilience is unlimited. Live with optimism. Act with courage. No matter how bad it gets, it can get better again if you get up and keep moving. You do have a unique Superpower that is your way of creating a better future. Trust Yourself.

Through great adversity we are almost ready to launch our “Turn Your Superpower into Your Career” course. This week we are asking 10 to 15 people to beta-test it online. If you want to follow our progress, join us on Facebook. And as always, if you have questions, email me at askwill@thoughtrocket.com