Speak Your Mind

Malala was born into a Sunni Muslim family in Pakistan's Swat Valley, where she grew up in a house with two younger brothers, her parents, and two pet chickens. Malala and her brothers were educated by their father, a poet and school owner. From a very young age, he saw something special in his daughter, and allowed her to stay up at night to discuss politics after her brothers had gone to bed.

When Malala was just eleven years old, she began speaking locally about education rights. The Taliban, an Islamic fundamentalist political movement, was increasing its military presence in the Swat Valley, and had begun destroying schools for girls in an effort to keep female students from attaining proper education. For Malala, the threat of losing her chance for an education was too serious to accept without standing up for it. So, when her father was approached by the BBC in search of a girl willing to anonymously submit reports about life under Taliban occupation, he suggested his own daughter. Despite the possibility of Taliban reprisals if her identity became known, Malala agreed, and started submitting her handwritten notes to the BBC.

Shortly after Malala's BBC blog began, the schools in the region closed for winter vacation. However, no one was excited, because the Taliban had set forth an edict to ban girls' education completely. This meant that, once they left, the female students had no idea when they could return to school. During the coming weeks, Taliban militants continued blowing up schools to enforce the education ban. And, even after the ban was publicly lifted, many families continued to keep their children (boys and girls alike) home from school. Finally, government forces began clearing the region of Taliban militancy in an effort to avert further violence.

Throughout all of this, Malala's blogs continued, attracting growing interest around the world as she reported openly on what she saw: "It seems that it is only when dozens of schools have been destroyed and hundreds others closed down that the army thinks about protecting them. Had they conducted their operations here properly, this situation would not have arisen." When Malala's identity became known, her profile rose, and she met world leaders, spoke to international news sources, and received numerous international youth peace awards. Unfortunately, this heightened profile also made her a more visible target.

Threats against Malala's life from the Taliban, who claimed to be targeting her for promoting non-religious and westernized education, were published in regional newspapers, through social media, and even slipped under her door. When Malala showed no sign of reining in her vocal activism, members of the organization decided to act. In a secret meeting of the Taliban's leaders, they unanimously agreed to kill her.

On October 9, 2012, a Taliban gunman entered the bus that Malala Yousafzai was riding home after taking exams at school. The masked gunman, after identifying who she was, shot at her, hitting both Malala and two other girls.

Malala was hit with one bullet in her left brow, but instead of penetrating the skull, it was deflected down and lodged in her shoulder. The doctors who treated her stated that the chances of such a wound from a point-blank gunshot not being fatal were astronomical. Equally unlikely was the presence of a team of renowned British medical specialists in Pakistan at the time of the shooting. Brought in to consult on Malala's condition, they were not optimistic due to swelling in her brain, and made the decisive call to move Malala to a facility in Birmingham, England.

Despite all odds, Malala recovered. She underwent physical therapy and a series of surgeries to repair skull and nerve damage, ultimately regaining her speech, movement, and, most critically, coming through the ordeal with no brain damage. Instead of the Taliban turning her into a martyr, they made her a symbol. She was alive and still able to speak, which she continues to do, upholding the rights of young women everywhere to receive proper education. In 2013, at the age of 15, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, the youngest individual ever to receive such an honor. This month, her autobiography, I Am Malala, was published.

Educators teach students all about life, but sometimes it takes a student to teach us what life is all about. Malala does more than speak her mind; she speaks for the rights of women and children. She speaks for the world. Thank you Malala! We are listening.

Until next week...

Live Your Dreams

We Are Connected

I recently returned from a trip to New York City.  My kids were on spring break, so we decided to go on some college tours.  My oldest son, Jaxson, is a junior in high school and it’s time for him to start exploring his higher education options.  We’ve toured four schools so far and his favorite is New York University.  While we were there, I learned the story of one of their former students named Jack.  Although Jack ultimately decided not to finish college, we can still learn from his story…

Jack was something of an unusual kid.  Instead of posters of athletes, bands, or comic book characters, the walls of his room were covered with maps.  He was shy, suffered from a speech impediment, and was not always comfortable interacting in person.  He was also often alone at home.  As a result, he’d learned his way around his first computer by the age of eight, and before he was a teenager had taught himself how to write his own programs.  He was also fascinated by trains, and would spend hours down at the St. Louis train yards watching the flow of trains coming and going.  He was entranced by the way it all seemed to operate as one huge, perfectly functioning system.

Studying trains was the beginning of Jack’s lifelong interest in understanding how things work.  When he was a teenager, he began using a radio that scanned police and emergency frequencies.  Listening to the dispatchers, he became engrossed in their concise language as they constantly transmitted the locations and activities of officers and emergency vehicles.  It also gave him ideas.

After writing his own software to track the movements and locations of emergency vehicles, Jack felt he was ready to work in that field.  Still in his teens, he sought out a large dispatch company in New York.  He looked up their website, but it had no contact information.  However, he also found a hole in the site’s security.  Using this as a way in, he was able to contact the company and alert them to the security risk.  He also mentioned that he was a computer programmer who wrote dispatch software.  A week later, they offered him a job.

Jack attended New York University while working as a dispatch programmer.  During his time there, he was part of a brainstorming session about the implications of instant messaging.  Jack made a gutsy decision to leave college and pursue dispatch work in California.  Soon after, he started his own company to dispatch couriers, taxis, and emergency services from the Web.  But it wasn’t long before the dots began to connect.

Thinking back to his youth and remembering how the voices on the police scanner would constantly update their positions from wherever they were, Jack came up with a new idea.  He approached a company who was exploring instant messaging and described a new form of virtual communication that would be as immediate as texting, but among a much larger number of people at once.  The idea was to take the short bursts of communication of the dispatch world and create a web-based network that anyone with a cell phone, wherever they were, could use to send messages.

The story of how Jack found success with his idea is a great example of how things are connected.  And there’s no denying that by following his passions, a young man who was never comfortable in simple, face-to-face conversations was able to create Twitter, one of the largest communication networks the world has ever seen.  By 2012, Twitter had over 500 million registered users, generating over 340 million messages, called "tweets," per day.  Since its launch, Twitter has become one of the ten most visited websites on the Internet, and its founder, Jack Dorsey, was named 2012's Innovator of The Year. 

One reporter recently referred to Jack as an idea man, and I found Jack’s response very interesting:  “Everyone has an idea.  But it’s really about executing the idea and attracting other people to help you work on the idea that really makes the difference.”  The We Are Connected mindset is about seeking out the synergies in all relationships and empowering one another to live your dreams.

I’m about to make it easier for all of us to stay connected.  Now you can join me in the mindset revolution by following my new Twitter, @7Mindsets. You can expect a mindset quote of the day, a link to the weekly story and relevant tweets on how to live to your potential while making a positive impact on the world.

Recipe for Success

Domenica grew up in a house that always smelled like something delicious was cooking.  Her parents loved small-town life, but they wanted their children to know there was a bigger world outside their home.  Every Christmas the family would drive to New York City to see the enormous tree and spend time in the gigantic five-story FAO Schwartz toy store.  Domenica came to believe that when she grew up, she would go to New York City and something magical would happen to her.

When Domenica was thirteen, her parents split up and she moved to upstate New York with her mother and siblings.  Her mom took a job managing eight restaurants, and as soon as she was old enough, Domenica went to work with her.  Her mother found Domenica to be a true asset.  She'd take on unglamorous tasks like setting up buffets and cleaning shrimp, eventually even learning her way around the cook stations, and she tackled them all with enthusiasm and bubbling energy.

After progressing from waitress to manager, at the age of 23, Domenica decided it was time to move to New York City.  She found a job managing a tiny candy counter at Macy's, where her boss gave her a crash-course education in gourmet food, something she knew almost nothing about.  She flourished at Macy's, but two years later, when they offered her a promotion to take charge of another department, she turned it down because she really was only interested in food. 

Domenica always had it in her mind that she wanted to succeed in New York.  However, coming home from work one night, she was confronted by a young mugger in the entryway to her apartment.  Domenica managed to scare him off with pepper spray, but the incident left her shaken.  It also made an impression on her attacker, who sought her out again just weeks later.  The second mugging put Domenica in the hospital, and she decided that she’d had enough of life in the city.  She moved back home and took a job as a waitress.

One year later, Domenica got a job at a specialty food shop.  Not long after, their chef quit, and Domenica’s years spent learning food prep and line cooking for her mother suddenly came into play.  She seized the opportunity to offer cooking classes inside the store to teach people how to prepare delicious meals at home in 30-minutes or less.

The idea blossomed into a weekly three-minute television spot on the local news.  Domenica would go to people’s homes and walk through the preparation of their favorite dishes for the television audience.  The appeal was that she was one of them, just a girl who loved food and wanted to enjoy what she ate rather than a prestigious and unapproachable chef.  She often cut corners by using ingredients you could find in a box, and jokingly said, “I’m not Martha Stewart.  I’m just like you.”

Being on television didn’t mean she was making any money, however, and Domenica was frequently on the verge of not being able to pay her rent.  She was able to arrange a meeting with a publisher to discuss a cookbook, and although the publisher wasn’t initially very interested, Domenica’s determination and energetic charm won her over.

Domenica’s cookbook caught the attention of television personality Al Roker, who watched her local news segments and mentioned her to his booking staff.  Nothing happened immediately, but when a freak blizzard resulted in a last-second cancellation, Domenica was invited with little notice to appear as a Today Show guest.

In a bizarre coincidence, Domenica got a phone call the day after taping her Today Show appearance from the president of the Food Network.  She didn’t understand their interest, given that most of their programming was of high-end food being prepared by established restaurant chefs, but it was her everyday accessibility that they wanted. 

Domenica, better known to the world as Rachael Ray, appealed to home-cooks and food lovers everywhere, and it made her name a household staple.  But it was her tenacity and dedication to what she loved that eventually took her from behind the candy shop counter and made Rachael Ray an internationally-known brand name with over a dozen cookbooks, a lifestyle magazine, numerous cooking programs, and her own network television talk show.

When it comes to your own personal recipe for success, remember how important it is to be true to your passions and stay comfortable being your authentic self.

Until next week...

Live Your Dreams

Stay True to You

I’m in New Orleans this week to deliver a presentation on how a change in mindset can radically improve a person’s happiness and success.  I’ll be sharing the stage with the mayor because we both believe in helping empower people to new heights.  This week’s story is about a young man who was born and raised in New Orleans, and a glimpse into his personal journey.

Emmitt was a middle child with three siblings.  He had a challenging upbringing, due partly to living in poverty, but mainly because of the relentless, abusive anger of his father.  The creative Emmitt learned at a young age to go places in his mind in order to avoid facing the mistreatment and hardships of his young life.

Not long after a particularly troubling incident, Emmitt was watching a talk show on which a speaker discussed how some difficulties in life could be worked through by writing them down.  Supposedly, it was a process that could be helpful and therapeutic, and he decided to try.

Emmitt’s first writing took the form of letters to himself. He found that he not only liked writing, but was good at it.  The letters helped him come to terms with his childhood and find strength in himself and in forgiveness.  He also gained the foundation for a skill that he never knew he had, but which would inspire him to make writing a central part of his life.

Emmitt began working on a play based on his experiences.  In it, he pulled no punches, using fictional names but conveying the hard-hitting truth about what he’d been through.  It was rewarding for him to create, even though the subject matter was far from uplifting, and he was eager to see the play performed.  Having saved up nearly $12,000 working at an entry-level office job and living with his family, he moved to Atlanta with plans to produce the play.

In Atlanta, Emmitt rented a theater to stage his production.  Unfortunately, his name was unknown, so there was no audience for his work.  Only thirty people showed up to see the play, and it lasted just one weekend.  Emmitt lost every cent.

However, he was tenacious, and felt this was what he was supposed to be doing.  He reworked the play while taking a variety of odd jobs that included used car sales and restaurant positions.  Saving up his money, he kept trying to produce the play; each year he would put on another production, and each one failed to bring in an audience.  This went on for six years, with each attempt leaving him broke.  At one point, Emmitt, a grown man of six-foot-five, even lived out of his car, sleeping in his tiny Geo Metro.

His determination was faltering.  His mother told him constantly that it was time to give up and go back to New Orleans where she’d feed him while he looked for a job with benefits.  Nearly ready to quit, he decided to make one last attempt, and booked the show at Atlanta’s House of Blues.  But this time, he went about things differently.  He visited churches all throughout the city and persuaded prominent members of the choirs to take roles in the production.  And for the first time, Emmitt decided to star in his own show. 

On opening night, he was worried.  Once again, he had spent everything he had, and it was the coldest night of the year.  In the dressing room, he was reflecting on whether this would be his last show, when he looked outside into the freezing evening.  There was a line of people around the corner waiting to get in.  It was sold out.

Emmitt finally saw some success with his first show, I Know I’ve Been Changed, which toured throughout the South and up the East Coast.  He wrote, directed and produced a number of subsequent plays about urban life that substantially raised his profile as a creator and voice that resonated with African-American audiences.  Soon, Emmitt set his sights on Hollywood.

One thing he learned through his years in the theater was the power of putting out your own message and staying true to it.  Hollywood tested that belief when one major studio executive told him that African-Americans who go to church don’t go to the movies. Emmitt walked away from that negotiation, and eventually found a deal that required him to put up half the budget, but allowed him complete creative control.  That first movie, Diary of A Mad Black Woman, featured Emmitt “Tyler” Perry in his iconic role as the tough-spirited grandmotherly character Madea, and the film grossed over $50 million. In 2011, Forbes named Tyler Perry the highest paid man in entertainment.

It takes courage and conviction to follow your dreams. Learn to be your authentic self and you’ll never have to act a day in your life.

Until next week...

Live Your Dreams