The Significance Sandbox

I embrace life as an active participant and co-creator of the future. I search for meaning and find meaning in the search. I am a loving partner and soulmate to Barb. Together we challenge one another to personal growth. I help prepare my children to become active participants and co-creators of life in their universe. I encourage them to love, to work, to think and to share. I improve the world by envisioning and working toward a more meaningful society and by supporting causes in line with that vision through my time, talents and treasure. I act as a financial mentor for others through my planning, earning, saving, giving and stewardship. I am at my best when I breathe deeply; eat healthfully; exercise my mind and body regularly; love unabashedly; work diligently; seek and speak honestly; and demonstrate appreciation for “the sacred” in the Divine, in others, and in myself.

I’m having lunch at my favorite Thai restaurant. I really do love it. There are exotic flavors, friendly service and a reasonable price. What more could a guy ask for? Well … how ‘bout “No mushrooms!” That’s what I say. “I’d like the tofu ginger without the mushrooms -- not the black ones or the other ones -- no mushrooms.” Mary, my favorite waitress at my favorite Thai restaurant, writes it down and reads it back to me. She understands. I’m a regular. She barely has to ask me what I want or how I want it since I’m there so often. Yet, I think to myself, “I’m still going to get mushrooms.” It’s amazing how what we say we want isn’t always what we intend . A friend of mine tells me that whether I like it or not, “results always equal intentions.” I resist -- both in my head and to his face. But time after time, he’s right. I hate that! I believe that my wants and dreams and desires and hard work and drive do lead to successful results when those results are positive. When things don’t...

It happened over 60 years ago in the South Pacific during the Second World War. A young ensign was fresh out of Midshipman’s School where he had been studying a specific type of mathematics – Spherical Trigonometry. Naval officers needed to know this type of math so they could figure out their position on the globe before Global Positioning Satellites were invented. So one night while not on duty, the young ensign was practicing his skills from the deck of the ship. He used an instrument called a marine sextant to determine the angle of the stars relative to sea level. The readings were then used to plot the position of the ship. What he found was that his coordinates did not match those that were officially posted. In other words, the ship was off course – significantly. He took this information to the ship’s navigator who responded by explaining that the ensign must be wrong. He did not appreciate being called into question and accused him of insubordination. The ensign accept...

I spend most of my days in conversations with people about things that matter deeply to them. Commonly, we will develop and work from their “balance sheet”. However, most of us initially think only in terms of a financial balance sheet – the one with financial assets on one side and liabilities on the other. It’s an important and helpful tool to be sure. But I work from a different balance sheet – I call it “The Holistic Balance Sheet”. If I asked you to develop your own balance sheet, you’d start by thinking of the things you own. Your home, 401K balance, business interests and automobiles come to mind pretty quickly. You may or may not readily know the value of each of these. But you can fairly easily identify the key items. They are the ones that have the biggest price tags usually – the most valuable assets, right? Or are they? I often ask people – once they’ve racked their brains trying to identify all the assets in their possession – if they’ve truly identified the most important...

It’s got to be one of the simplest and most asked questions of all time. And just about anyone might ask it of you. A parent might ask a child, “Jimmy, what do you want?” as in “milk, food, diaper change.” An exhausted waitress might ask, “Sir, what do you want?” as in “a burger, fries or cup of coffee.” A disrespectful teen might ask “What do you want?” as in “it’s my life and you can’t understand it so I don’t understand why you don’t just leave me alone to make horrible choices with my life.” Each “What do you want?” is really a different question. And, to be sure, there are thousands more ways the question might be asked. And even the above interpretations aren’t so easy to answer depending on who we are developmentally and emotionally at the time. But the question I ask is deeper still. It’s the eternal question. It takes time to ponder. And when you think there’s a simple answer, usually it’s because you haven’t looked deeply enough. “What do you want … from Life?” “How do you wa...

Have you noticed that there never seems to be enough time for everything – especially the really important things? It is tough for many of us to squeeze in 10 minutes to simply breathe with no other purpose or to notice a sunset or to gaze into a child’s eyes without worrying about changing a diaper. We all get a few of these moments, but they have to be squeezed in. Maybe it’s more accurate to say they are “squeezed out” – out to the margins of our lives. Imagine your own life as a typed sheet of paper. How big are the margins on that sheet? 1 ½ inches all the way around? 1 inch? A half inch? Do you find the margins getting smaller? I know that for me it is very easy to continually add things to the page. With a letter or an article, perhaps I have the luxury of going to a second page. Not so with life, though. There are career obligations for many of us. That takes forty hours – or fifty – or more. Plus, there’s the time commuting to work. For some, it means significant air travel. A...