Involve your whole family and others A good experience shared is a greater one. When united in a good cause, our relationships become richer. Many years ago I managed several programmers developing software to be used by nursing home personnel. They had developed that “ivory tower” attitude that users were idiots, and they were superiors. There was also terrible job dissatisfaction and turnover in department. I had to find a way to help them feel a greater purpose in their labors. I began taking them to some of nursing homes, and had them volunteer. Not once in their visits did they watch their software being used. Instead, they helped with activities, gave manicures, and served food. Almost immediately, tone of department changed. They viewed their work more as a purposeful calling than as a difficult labor. They gained an admiration for workers who used their products. And they began working more as a team. The sense of meaning and unified purpose changed everything.

The same effect can result when we involve our families in serving others.

Who needs your help? Keep your eyes and ears open—opportunities to serve surround us. We just need to become aware. Read your local newspaper and newsletters from your schools. It’s not hard to find people or agencies that need helpers.

Nursing homes always need visitors and volunteers. The elderly who live at home need yard work, snow removal and home repairs. Youth need athletic coaches, scout leaders, and vocational trainers. Health associations need people to help in office, stuff envelopes, and many other tasks.

Check your yellow pages for social agencies and service clubs.

Do something right away. I have heard people say that they will first make their fortune, then perform some grand and exotic service to mankind. But I have found that we can do more good by doing many little things throughout our lives—day after day. Samuel Johnson said, “He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything.”

Find a worthy cause, and thrust your heart into it. Your community will benefit greatly—and so will you.

Contrast that with a young boy building a tree house. He dreams of a place he can go to be alone-a secluded, secret place. He imagines a wonderful “castle in air.” But, rarely do young men plan details of such a structure. He may find a board and nail it up on a limb. Next, he finds some masonite, which he nails next to board. As he finds materials, he adds them to his little structure. Without planning, his castle becomes less than a shack.

We do that with our lives. We take what comes, try to find a way to use it in our lives, and settle for what comes our way. Rather than planning what we will become, we settle for what comes to us.

We may have striven to reach our dreams and through opposition and trial, chose to give up on them.

Road Construction Analogy If you were on your way to work and found barricades indicating that your usual route has been close for construction, what would you do? Give up and go home? Go somewhere else? Of course not, you would find another route to your destination.

We will often find barricades blocking our way toward our dreams. But, too often we give up and find another destination. Rather than changing our dreams, I suggest that we should change our route to our dreams. Find another way to get there. Make a new plan. The blueprints may change, but basis of our dreams need not. We need not settle. We can live our dreams. We need a plan.