So tell me something, do you believe that an act of kindness can impact a person’s life?

Do you believe that multiple acts of (agenda-free) kindness can change a community?

If so, I have a project I am working on,  and I need your help.

Let me start by saying, this isn’t about spending money.  If you have the resources to support causes you believe in financially, by all means, do that.  However, what I am talking about shouldn’t cost you anything but time and maybe a little effort.

Here is the 30 second version of what I want The Kindness Underground to be  about:

I want The Kindness Underground to be a growing community of people who believe that one of the most powerful ways to effect real and lasting positive change in our world is to simply be kind to those around you.

When the opportunity presents itself, do something kind for someone, expecting nothing in return.  If the person happens to ask how they can repay you, ask them to do something kind for someone else when they get a chance.  By doing this, I believe we can spread a “kindness virus” that will grow beyond our imagination.

KindnessUnderground.com will be the hub of this community.  It will be a place for us to share our kindness stories (those where we give and those where we receive),  to inspire each other with ideas for random acts of guerrilla kindness in our world,  and to encourage others to bring the idea to their community.

So, you ask, what do you need help with?  …I am so glad you asked…

I need to know what our site needs to offer to help this idea grow.  What tools, features, etc do we need on the site to empower people to get out there and make an impact in their community?  What are some really cool things you have seen online (or offline for that matter) that you think are a fit here?  Please take some time to think about it, and then leave a comment with your ideas, I want to hear from you.

…and if you would like to be more involved in the creation of this community, drop me an email, you can get my contact information here.

Thanks in advance for your help.

I will be taking a couple of weeks to have gal bladder surgery and a brief respite for recovery – see you in a couple weeks, and thanks for the support

My 5 year old was having a terrible, horrible, yucky day.  Everything was going wrong.  She had broken her favorite crayon.  Her sisters “weren’t playing nice”.  The cat scratched her…it was just awful.  She climbed up onto my lap and started to cry, and in one of those divinely inspired daddy moments, I said something completely unplanned to her.

“Do you know you have super powers?“

I explained to her that, even though she had some frustrating things happen to her, she had the power to decide how the rest of her day was going to go.  She could make a choice to have a crabby day, or she could choose to have a happy day, it was up to her.  She looked up at me and giggled, and said “I have super powers”.  She laughed some more, said it again, and jumped off my lap to go back to playing with her sisters.  I heard her telling them all about it in the next room, and I smiled.  Chalk one up for Daddy.

I have thought back to that moment several times since then, and I began to realize, we all have “super powers”, we just need to decide to use them.  Here is a short list of the super powers that come immediately to mind:

Mind Control: You can make a conscious decision how you react to the things life throws at you on a daily basis.  You can decide to take a positive approach and deal with people and situations in a positive manner.  Or, you can choose to get angry, frustrated, or even vindictive and bitter.  You can not control all the events or people in your life, but you can control your reaction, and how you decide to move forward.

Diffusion: You have the power to dissipate anger and frustration, sadness, or helplessness.  You can do this with a simple kind word.  You can sincerely care about another’s problem or concern.  You can offer a smile, a shoulder, or just a listening ear and diffuse the turmoil they are going through.  Simple kindness and caring can make all the difference when someone is going through a rough time, and you can be the one that provides it.

Magic Powers: You can perform magical acts.  You can make someone smile by sending the a note and telling them a reason they are important to you.  You can bring someone flowers, donuts, coffee, or something else that will brighten their day.  You can call a friend or family member and ask them how they are doing and make the entire conversation about them.  By performing these magical acts, you can change someone’s day for the better.

Time Freeze: You can take a moment in time and preserve it forever.  You can decide to take the significant moments in your life and enjoy them, you can decide to be there.  Not thinking about work, or your to do list, or the laundry, or the thousand other things that steal your focus from the important moments in your life.  Times with family or friends.  Times of relaxation.  Choose to be completely present in the moments that matter, and they will last forever.

Divine Intervention: I don’t know what you may believe, but as a Christian, I believe I have another super power.  I can call down divine intervention in my life and in the lives of others.  Through prayer, I can ask God to help me, and to help others.  I can ask him for any good gift, and He will hear me and act.  The power of prayer is truly a super power.

Those are just a few of the super powers I can think of.  Please feel free to add to the list in the comments, I’d love to hear what you come up with.  If you care to share, tell us a story about how you have used your super powers, or how others have used theirs to help you.  I look forward to hearing from you.

I had a rough time as a kid – not whining about it, just giving some background.  When I would come home from a particularly hard day of being picked on and verbally abused at school, my mother would say (among other heartfelt things) “People only criticize their betters”.

She told me that the people criticizing me were doing so because they knew I was a “better person” in some way.  She intended it to be a comfort, to sooth the sting of the things that were said, and I am grateful for that.  I took it to heart, and it did help somewhat.  When kids said horribly hurtful things to and about me (kids can be very cruel), I could take some solace in the idea that they were in some way envious of me and that was why they lashed out.

I don’t remember the exact moment it happened, but in some period of self analysis I started thinking about that simple, verbal salve my mother had offered me, and I had a moment of revelation.  I realized that if this were true of those that criticized me, I had to admit that it was also true about me.

I found a much deeper meaning in my mother’s simple words than she intended.  I could find something I envied about every single person I ever derided.  Sometimes it was an obvious attribute.  I criticized “jocks” because I lacked their physical skill and strength.  I criticized the “popular kids” because I felt excluded.  Often it was something deeper, and I really had to search for the root of it.  It was enlightening.

So dear reader, I suggest you look at the people you criticize and ask yourself this question:

What is it about this person that I envy, what  is it about me that is causing me to criticize them?

Sometimes you will see it right away, sometimes you will have to dig around for a while and get very honest with yourself.  It isn’t always easy to put your finger on it, but give it time and you will.

Once you figure that out, ask yourself if it is a trait truly worthy of envy.  If it is, do something to move toward the place where you perceive them to be.  If it isn’t, then it may be an area where you need to do some introspection to figure out where the discontentment is coming from.  Either way, you can only benefit from the answer.

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

- Arthur Ashe (via my sister, Andrea)

We all want a better world – it mans different things to each of us, but we all share that goal to some degree or another.

We are bombarded with news about social issues, environmental issues, political issues, pain, suffering, hunger, and a thousand other things.  It can be quite overwhelming, and it is easy to throw up our hand and say there is nothing we can do that will make any real impact in the “grand scheme”.

Start where you are - You may be right, there may not be anything you can do directly about the situation in Kerplakistan but you can do something about issues in your community.  Look around you – I guarantee there is a need you can meet right in front of you, right now.  Are you concerned about hunger?  Find a local food bank you can help.  Are you troubled by at risk youth?  Find a kid to mentor.  Worried about homelessness? I bet Habitat for Humanity has a local chapter.  Look for local avenues to address the global concerns you have - Start where you are.

Use what you have - Not all of us are millionaires, yet.  You may not personally be able to completely fund your favorite charity, or be able to quit your job and go build housing for endangered womp rats full time.  But you can find a way to serve if you truly desire to make a difference.

If you can afford to make donations and fund grants, by all means do so.  But if you are like me, you are focused on trying not to run out of money before you run out of month.  However, you have talents, you have expertise, and you do have some time (As @garyvee says ” Stop watching @*$%ing Lost”).  Use the talents, time,  and (when possible) money you do have at your disposal to make a difference.  No time and no money?  Then do whatever you can to raise awareness of the particular issue you are passionate about.  You can make a difference - Use what you have.

Do what you can – This one will hit the hardest I think, it did for me.  Stop sitting around lamenting the state of the world, get off your butt, and do something.  You can make a difference, however small, no matter what the issue is.  We each have opportunities to make a difference every day, and we need to stop ignoring them, stop procrastinating, and do something today.  You need to be honest with yourself and really figure out what you can do and then simply do it - Do what you can.

Start where you are:

• Look around your immediate community for needs you can help address
• Where you are includes the internet – you can make a global impression from your living room

Use what you have:

• Find a way to apply the talents you have to help where you can
• Make time to make a difference

Do what you can:

• Decide what is within your power to do and do it
• Start today, small action can have great impact

This post is the start of what I hope will be a series where I do some exposition on meaningful quotes that come (or are brought) to my attention.  Please comment and let me know what you think of this post, as well as the concept for the series.

I’m sure you’ve heard the term “crowd sourcing” coined by Jeff Howe in a June 2006 Wired magazine article, as I am sure you are familiar with the concept of “tribes” put forth by Seth Godin.  The question is, if there is a “tribe” or a “crowd” with a passion that matches yours, what are you doing to find them and help them find each other?

I firmly believe that the key to drawing a crowd is to be screamingly unique and completely unafraid to shout about your passion from any and all platforms.  …and if you can’t find a platform, make your own.

The impetus of this post came from a tweet by @lotay (follow this guy if you are on twitter, he is amazing).  He got me thinking about what really draws a crowd.  Take a look at the video @lotay linked to (you might want to bump your volume down a little):

A beautiful, sunny afternoon, some music, and a guy who is not afraid to be in the moment and do what he does with complete abandon.  You can see it happening, can’t you?  Do you feel yourself being drawn in?  Aren’t you in some way wishing you were there?

The person in the video is not a celebrity, and evidently not a professional dancer.  But he does what he does with such passion that it can’t help but draw others in.  Watch how the “tribe” grows, one or two at first, sharing the joy of the moment.  But suddenly it grabs the crowd, and grows exponentially.  That is the power of a passionate performance, and a core group of like minded individuals.  This is a living example of how your passion can become much bigger than just you and take on a life of its own. It happens when you are willing to throw caution aside, stop worrying about what people will think, and just dance.

We live in a time when the individual voice can become a world-wide phenomenon in a matter of hours.  The ease of communicating a message out to a world audience is incredible.  You can speak to the world, right now, and from the comfort of your own home.  If there is something you are passionate about, something you want to share, you have a capability to do so at a level, and with tools that did not exist one or two generations ago.  Imagine if the U.S. civil rights movement of the 60′s had a web presence.

You can blog.  You can tweet.  You can Facebook.  You can do this, and you can do it now.  Your tribe will grow, and as it does, it will drive what you do to keep it growing and enable it to fulfill the passion that drew the tribe together in the first place (we’ll talk about giving your tribe a voice in a future post).

Don’t wait for someone else to do it for you.  Stop looking for a tribe to join, and start looking for a tribe to lead.  Use the tools available to you to tell people about what you believe in and let the dancing begin…

Related Links:

Seth Godin – The Tribes We Lead – on the TED website (this site is a sinkhole of time for me – amazing information)
Jeff Howe – Crowd Sourcing – Jeff talks about the basics of Crowd Sourcing (as it relates to business, but you’ll see the connection)
Mashable.com article – on places to host a (free) blog
Twitter.com – and if you are already on twitter, here’s  my twitter page
FaceBook.com – and you can send me a friend request at my FaceBook page

Do you have a (cost free) place that can help people find and build their tribe? – Post a link in the comments

You're SUPER!

We have all met them – shiny happy people who never have a care in the world, and deem it necessary to spread their “joy” to everyone around them. They stand in front of you with their hair on fire, and are just ecstatic that they don’t ever have to worry about their ears getting cold ever ever again…

That isn’t what I am about.  I am not Mr. Marty HappyPants.  I do not believe that every steaming pile of…pudding…has a hidden treasure in it if “we just look hard enough”.

That being said, I do strongly believe that how you decide to react to things in life and in business will determine how well you weather the challenges that will surely come along.  You will have problems, you will be insulted, hurt, even betrayed.  But you have a choice about how it impacts you and how much of it you carry with you as you move forward.  The heavier the baggage you decide to carry, the more difficult the journey will be.

This may seem a bit simplistic.  You may ask, “what about the person that has experienced <insert horrible life changing event here>?”  To this I say “stop it, this is my blog”.  I’m kidding.

You are correct, some people go through horrible things.  People have been victimized in almost unimaginable ways, by people that I personally believe are truly evil.  But I believe they still have a choice to make.  Understand, I realize their lives will be forever changed by these types of events and my heart aches for them.  No one should ever be victimized, and I don’t have the audacity to say “suck it up and move on”.  However, I will say that they can choose to turn the pain inward and let it eat them alive, or they can chose to turn that pain into passion and use it to make some semblance of good come out of the horror they suffered.  Thankfully, for most of us, we will never know what it is like to live after being hurt like that.

So this blog is about you and I, and how we choose to deal with life and career.  What I hope to show you here, is that we make choices about how we react to the events in our lives, and that it impacts us, our loved ones, and our success on a daily basis. In my ever so humble opinion, there are two basic types of people in the world.  Those that live their lives based on what has happened to them, and those that live their lives in spite of it.

I hope that by talking about these things, we will all leave the table a little better equipped to make positive decisions in our lives.  Please leave your comments or questions.  I would love to hear what you think, and you, dear reader, will help shape this site into what it needs to be.