From the book, “212 The Extra Degree”:

"At 211 degrees water is hot.   At 212 degrees it boils and with boiling water comes steam and steam can power a locomotive.   Only one extra degree, but that one degree more makes all the difference.   The one extra degree of effort in business and in life separates the good from the great.”

Excerpts:

212 degree KINDNESS - “One of the most beautiful compensations in life is that we can never help another without helping ourselves.”  (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

212 degree BELIEF - Belief fuels enthusiasm and enthusiasm explodes into passion.

212 degree FOCUS - Having a simple clearly defined goal can capture the imagination and inspire passion.   It can cut through the fog of life like a beacon in the night. 

The movie can be found at http://www.212movie.com

EXCERPTS from Clinton’s speech at TED:

We live in a world that is inter-dependent but insufficient.

• It is profoundly unequal.
• It is unstable because of the threats of war, disease, etc.
• It is unsustainable because of climate change, resource depletion and species destruction.

I hope for integrated communities:

• Broadly shared opportunities
• Shared sense of responsibility
• A sense of belonging

The central psychological plague of this century is that people think they have more differences than in common.

We have to build systems.  In the absence of systems that function, we would not be able to achieve anything.  Think about it.  However many obstacles you have faced, at critical junctures, you always knew there was a predictable connection between the effort you exerted and the result you achieved.  In a world with no systems, in chaos, everything becomes a struggle and this predictability is not there.

Sir Ken Robinson speaks at the TED conference. This is a humorous and provocative talk.  Check it out: Link to Site

Every eduation system has the same hierarchy.  Everywhere, no matter where you go, at the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and at the bottom are the arts.  And within the arts, art and music are normally given the higher status than drama and dance.  No one teaches dance every day to children the way we teach mathematics…  [The way we teach suggests we think] our bodies are only a form of transport for our heads.

All public education systems around the world came into being to meet the needs of industrialization.  So you are steered benignly away as a child from subjects on the grounds you would never get a job doing that…  Now profoundly mistaken…  Many brilliant, creative people think they are not, because the thing they were good at wasn’t valued or was stigmatized.  We can’t go on that way.

Book by Francis Fukuyama | Excerpt:

The satisfaction we derive from being connected to others in the workplace grows out of a fundamental human desire for recognition. As I argued in The End of History and the Last Man, every human being seeks to have his or her dignity recognized (i.e., evaluated at its proper worth) by other human beings. Indeed, this drive is so deep and fundamental that it is one of the chief motors of the entire human historical process. In earlier periods, this desire for recognition played itself out in the military arena as kings and princes fought bloody battles with one another for primacy. In modern times, this struggle for recognition has shifted from the military to the economic realm, where it has the socially beneficial effect of creating rather than destroying wealth. Beyond subsistence levels, economic activity is frequently undertaken for the sake of recognition rather than merely as a means of satisfying natural material needs. The latter are, as Adam Smith pointed out, few in number and relatively easily satisfied. Work and money are much more important as sources of identity, status, and dignity, whether one has created a multinational media empire or been promoted to foreman. This kind of recognition cannot be achieved by individuals; it can come about only in a social context.

See also Fukuyama in the NY Times

On New Year’s Day millions of us are thinking the same things: “Did I take all my vacation last year?…  This year I’m going to finally make that trip to New York.”  We almost always resolve to do something differently (though we might not say it out loud).  Yet, maybe we should all resolve to be a little different, more like someone we know or respect.

A few days ago, I was like a bee in a bookstore, moving from flower to flower, sampling a bit here, then winding a path to the next.  I alighted upon a remarkable book by a remarkable person: Reflections of a Peacemaker by Mattie Stepanek.  I recalled hearing about him on the news when he passed away last year but did not know the details.  You can learn more about Mattie’s story on Oprah Winfrey’s website, on Larry King and in this Washington Post article.  He wants to be remembered as a “Poet, Peacemaker, and Philosopher Who Played".

Mattie’s words are profound for a fifty-year-old, much more for a boy who wrote from ages 3 to 13.  He called our unique message to the world, our “heartsong”:

We each have a song inside our heart
That can make peace in the world,
If we first make peace inside ourselves.

To all of us busy-bodies, he called for stillness and made this wish:

Let us not say
"I am someone
Who will change,
Who can do better,
Who might be gentler."
Rather, let us pray
And let us say,
"I am someone
Who is loving,
Who is peaceful,
Who is thankful for
The fact that I am."

What I believe (inspired by “This I Believe” on NPR)

Know your own stories, nurture networks of relationships, serve a greater cause and work together to creatively solve problems.

Storytelling

Knowing and accepting our self-identity as both shared and unique history

• Steinem: A unique core self is born into every human being -- the result of millennia of environment and heredity combined in an unpredictable way that could never happen before or again.
• Houston man: The Bible and all of our great myths as stories told by others; I looked to my heart to find the right story for me. The more I accepted myself, the more beauty I saw in everyone else.

Relationships

Nurturing relationships with others and with nature

• Gloria Steinem: Faced with some inequality, younger kids say, "It's not fair!" It's as if there were some primordial expectation of empathy and cooperation that helps the species survive.
• Studs Terkel: The individual discovers his strength as an individual because he has, along the way, discovered others share his feelings -- he is not alone, and thus a community is formed.
• Writer Azar Nafisi: It is the urge to know more about ourselves and others that creates empathy. Through imagination and our desire for rapport, we transcend our limitations
• John McCain: To me, that was faith: a faith that unites and never divides, a faith that bridges unbridgeable gaps in humanity.
• Pianist Dave Brubek:  The starting point for peace is for each of us to understand our own religious and cultural traditions, and then open our minds to others, seeking and acknowledging our common roots.

Service

Dedicating ourselves and finding purpose in serving a greater cause

• McCain:  The means to real happiness and the true worth of a person is measured by how faithfully we serve a cause greater than our self-interest.  We celebrate the quiet hero -- the modest person who does his duty without complaint or expectation of praise but for love.

Teamwork

Solving problems together by being collectively creative

• Terkel: It's the community in action that accomplishes more than any individual does, no matter how strong he may be.
• Bill Gates: My own good fortune brings with it a responsibility to give back to the world.  There are lots of ways we can put our creativity and intelligence to work to improve our world.
• Newt Gingrich: The gap between our prosperity and [the problems in other countries] is the quality of our leaders, the courage of our people, the willingness to face facts and work for solutions to energy, the environment, the economy, education and national security.
• Dr. Anthony Fauci: I must continually thirst for knowledge, accept nothing short of excellence and try to help alleviate the suffering of humankind.

If I had my life to live over, I'd try to make more mistakes next time. I would relax, I would limber up, I would be crazier than I've been on this trip. I know very few things I'd take seriously anymore. I'd certainly be less hygenic . . . I would take more chances, I would take more trips, I would scale more mountains, I would swim more rivers, and I would watch more sunsets. I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans. I would have more actual trouble and fewer imaginary ones. Oh, I've had my moments, and if I had to do it all over again, I'd have many more of them, in fact I'd try not to have anything else, just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of my day. If I had it to do all over again, I'd travel lighter, much lighter that I have. I would start barefoot earlier in the spring, and I'd stay that way later in the fall. And I would ride more merry-go-rounds, and catch more gold rings, and greet more people and pick more flowers and dance more often. If I had it to do all over again- but you see, I don't.

-- Jorge Luis Borges (Argentine writer, poet and philosopher)

USNews.com: Your unconscious is making your everyday decisions (2/28/05)

According to cognitive neuroscientists, we are conscious of only about 5 percent of our cognitive activity, so most of our decisions, actions, emotions, and behavior depends on the 95 percent of brain activity that goes beyond our conscious awareness.

U.S. Patent No. 5,436,830, also known as the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique is "a technique for eliciting interconnected constructs that influence thought and behavior." From Hallmark cards to Broadway plays, from Nestle's Crunch bars to the design for the new Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, ZMET has been used to figure out how to craft a message so that consumers will respond with the important 95 percent of their brains that motivates many of their choices. How? Through accessing the deep metaphors that people, even without knowing it, associate with a particular product or feeling or place.

Language is limited, Zaltman says, "and it can't be confused with the thought itself." Images, however, move a bit closer to capturing fragments of the rich and contradictory areas of unconscious feelings. Participants in his studies cut out pictures that represent their thoughts and feelings about a particular subject, even if they can't explain why.

He discovered that when people do this, they often discover "a core, a deep metaphor simultaneously embedded in a unique setting." They are drawn to seasonal or heroic myths, for example, or images like blood and fire and mother. They are also drawn into deep concepts like journey and transformation. His work around the world has convinced him that the menu of these unconscious metaphors is limited and universal, in the manner of human emotions like hope and grief.