When we look at successful adults, we often see a consistent set of character traits that were ingrained when they were children. For example:
What is the first thing you remember learning? It’s hard to say, right?
That’s because from the moment we’re born, our education begins. It’s hard to pinpoint what and when we learn because in our early years it is non-stop.
Children arrive on their first day of school with varying degrees of readiness. Thirty million degrees of variation to be exact. By some studies, children born into low-income families have heard roughly 30 million fewer words than their more affluent peers when they enter school.…
What would you say is more important for your success? Your health or your education? We asked Americans which five-year-old is more likely to be successful — one with access to a good education but no health care, or one who has access to a great doctor but poor schools?
People overwhelmingly chose education by a margin of four to one. But consider this:
The factors that contribute to our success work in concert, not isolation.
Our health impacts our ability to learn. Our ability to learn impacts our health. A single traumatic event from our childhood can have lifelong consequences.
When we don’t connect the dots, we draw incomplete pictures that make little sense. This fosters multiple bureaucratic systems working in silos and frustrating systems that add to core problems instead of solving them.…
Consider this quote by Bill Moyer:
“I was one of the poorest white kids in town, but in many respects I was the equal of my friend who was the daughter of the richest man in town. I went to good public schools, had the use of a good public library, played sandlot baseball in a good public park and traveled far on good public roads with good public facilities to a good public university.…
Have you ever accidentally missed a credit card payment or a bill? Had a medical scare or even found yourself in legal trouble? Even been laid off or had a child care situation that turned your schedule upside down?
Kirsten Lodal, founder of the non-profit organization LIFT Communities, calls these “shaky ground” moments.
Some people seem to live perpetually on shaky ground. Jobs that have unpredictable hours.…
When we think about the economy, we tend to talk in the macro sense using terms like GDP. But economics is a very personal matter. Each of us has our own personal economic landscape that plays a significant role in how well we do in life.
When you enter the job market, the industries that rise and fall during your prime earning years, shifts in your local economy, the changes in tax policy, industry regulation — all of these factors impact your own personal economic story.…
When asked in a national survey, Americans will tell you that the role of government is pretty far down the list of what is necessary to achieve the American Dream. Yet education, which is third on the list (behind hard work and a strong family) is largely financed and run by local, state and federal government.
During the recent debate over health care, many Americans expressed concern that the new Affordable Care Act would result in government-run health care.…
A nice house with a white picket fence has long been the embodiment of the American Dream. With home ownership comes pride and stability. A place to call home, raise a family, build a life.
In Washington, D.C. today, there is a 40-year wait for affordable housing. That’s not a typo. Forty years. It doesn’t take much to turn a rented apartment, trailer, or a house into a home.…
While we may feel like we are “masters of our own universe,” most of us have a galaxy of friends and connections that impact our lives in a variety of ways. We call them our social networks.
There is the obvious way. We reach out to those we know for help. We have a legal question, so we ask a friend who is a lawyer. Our car has an issue, so we reach out to someone with mechanical experience.…
This is a terrific question raised in a TED Talk by columnist David Brooks. Are more of your actions something to talk about on your resume or for others to talk about at your eulogy?
In Linda Ellis’ poem, The Dash, she asks readers to reflect on that “dash” on your tombstone; your life’s actions between birth and death.
So, when your eulogy is being read,
with your life’s actions to rehash…
would you be proud of the things they say
about how you spent YOUR dash?…
How has the idea of hard work become so prevalent that we have developed blinders to so many factors that affect our station in life?
Some may suggest it’s a cultural thing. After all, it is relatively unique to Americans. We are the land of self-reliance and pulling ourselves from our bootstraps.
Sociologically, researchers like Paul Piff will point to this as a sign of Fundamental Attribution Error, which is our natural tendency to overestimate the role of the individual versus the situation.…
Isabel Sawhill from the Brookings Institution, one of the country’s leading thinkers on social mobility, recently said, “We do need a more nuanced conversation, and we need to get away from this sense that is being created in the political world right now that it’s either all about being a Horatio Alger or it’s all about government support to help you. It’s not either/or, it’s both.”…
When I was six, my mother called me “Little Professor” even though she had never met anyone who went to college, yet alone taught at one. She called me this simply because I wore glasses and liked to read.
At LIFT Communities, people who come looking for assistance are called “members” as a sign of being equal to everyone who works there.
And at the public charter school, KIPP NYC, incoming students are called by the year of their expected graduation…from college!…
Researchers project that 50% of the world’s population will be short-sighted by the end of 2050. The result of spending so much time focused on little screens in our hands and on our laps, and not enough time outside. As disturbing as that may sound, it is just the latest example of our growing short-sightedness.
Increasingly, we seem to focus most of our energy thinking about how our actions will affect us in the short term versus how they may affect others over the long haul.…
As a father of three little girls, I see them making stuff every day. On our cluttered counter are: a beautiful castle, a makeshift paper house, a Lego swimming pool, and an overflowing pile of drawings and paintings. Beyond these physical works, they walk around the house singing made-up songs, dancing to newly made dance moves.
Just two days ago they were making believe that they were all going on a work trip to China so they could save endangered pandas.…
Wherever you are on the ladder in life, it’s natural to compare your lot to those on the rungs above and below you. But as the comic-philosopher Louis C.K. pointed out to his daughter in an episode of his show, this almost always ends badly.
He pointedly tells her, “The only time you look in your neighbor’s bowl is to make sure that they have enough.…
“Who is your everyone? Chess masters scarcely surround themselves with motocross racers. Do you want aborigines at your birthday party? Or is that yak butter tea you are serving…. Each people know only its own squares in the weave, its wars and instruments and arts, and also perhaps the starry sky.”
In her essay, “This is the Life,” Annie Dillard eloquently writes about our limited worldviews.…
In America, freedom is our most revered value. We are free to live, love, and pursue our dreams. Depending upon your beliefs, these freedoms have been bestowed upon us by our creator and/or protected by our Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and other laws.
Yet how free do you really feel?
Much like the Liberty Bell, our most sacred symbol of freedom, our personal freedom in life often has a few cracks.…
A little harsh, I’d say, but there is a point to be made about the unintended consequences that well-meaning ideas and words can have on our success.
Consider these three examples:
I recently listened to an episode of This American Life called “Invisible Made Visible.“
The opening interview was with Ryan Knighton who is blind. He described an evening where he absolutely could not find the telephone in his hotel room. As much as he used various self-described techniques, such as “groping the coffee table” or “Marcel Marceau-ing the walls,” he could not locate the phone.…
That was the term used to describe Commissioner Scott Semple of the Connecticut Department of Corrections as he was introduced to a gathering at the Vera Institute of Justice.
In discussing his work to create a healthier and more humane corrections system, Mr. Semple lamented that people who work in corrections seldom get to see the success of their work.
After all, success is when someone doesn’t come back to prison — and goes on to live a happy life as a productive member of the community.…
He was, at different points in his life, a journalist, a school teacher, a nurse and a government worker. If these were his only contributions in life, his human impact would have still been immeasurable. After all, he tended to Civil War soldiers in their greatest hour of need and educated children at a time when most received little.
But what Walt Whitman is most known for is a short collection of poetry, Leaves of Grass, that he self published in 1855 and continued to revise throughout his life.…
In New York and other cities, we have become conditioned to largely ignore homeless people. Sometimes, not even acknowledging their requests. Exceptions are made. For example, when someone performs a song or a dance we may reward their obvious talent with a dollar or two, perhaps rationalizing this as a fair exchange.
Recently, I’ve seen several instances where a homeless person asked for either food or money so they could buy food.…
There is a spate of new books coming out that examine different aspects of what it takes to get ahead. One getting a lot of attention is from Angela Duckworth called Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Another is Success and Luck by Robert H. Frank. And yet another covers the role of government by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson called American Amnesia.…
