Happy Birthday to ME!

If you are reading this in print then you are probably reading it on Sunday, maybe with your coffee, as the nation gets ready for its biggest day of football. There will be Super Bowl parties across the nation where friends and family will come together for an exciting day of exciting football, a half-time show from a legendary band, and even the commercials are highly anticipated each year. This year however, has more meaning for me, because Super Bowl Sunday happens to be on my birthday.

This birthday marks my 45th, and the first since the death of my father last September. While other birthdays in recent years have prompted me to be more reflective, this one has caused an internal reevaluation of everything I think, and hold dear. This "spring cleaning" of my motivations, goals, and even my principles and values may be overdue; it has been both deep and taxing.

Either because of advancing age, or perhaps due to my father's passing, I have come to view my mortality in a more immediate and intimate way than ever before. However disconcerting, these changes are part of a natural process for most of us. The question then becomes, "How do we maximize our personal and family growth while minimizing the upheaval and loss of sleep?"

If your sole goal is to avoid the upheaval and get better sleep, you could try avoiding education, introspection and reflection. However, Socrates famously warns us, "The unexamined life isn't worth living." In any event, I have a tough time believing anyone could avoid such thoughts when alone in the dead of night.

So if unavoidable self-reflection involves a furrowed brow and the loss of sleep, how can we at least make our worry profitable? I have found reading philosophical and literary works, both secular and religious, coupled with profitable conversations with the mentors in my life, were a good place to begin. Then spending time alone in thought, asking the truly important questions such as, "What do I want out of life?" or "What do I wish to leave behind?"

Answering Horace Mann's challenge of "be(ing) ashamed to die until you have won some victory for mankind" is another good starting point. However, be warned it is also the entrance to Alice's rabbit hole of self-examination, because one then must ask, "what constitutes a victory for mankind?" Is it merely adding, in the smallest of ways, to the sum total of love and compassion in the world, or is a global paradigm shift required such as the elimination of hunger or political strife?

Last, I wrote down my new goals and reaffirmed some old ones, and fleshed out a plan to get there and sought out mentors to help. I repeat the process as needed.

For me, I find I am valuing love and compassion more each year over power, whether that power is in the form of physical prowess, intellectual acumen or certainly over money. This desire to be compassionate, forgiving and just, has changed everything from my ambitions to my political beliefs. I don't know what kind of success I will see with my new attitude, but William James seems to think I'm on to something, "The greatest discovery in our generation is that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds can change the outer aspects of their lives."

Mark Altman is a speaker and leadership consultant with the Altman Leadership Center. He is an international speaker with two books and a DVD that can be purchased on Amazon.com. He can be reached at mark@leadright.net.