Miscellaneous Essays

When to Use Positive Thinking – and When to Ignore It

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When my sons were growing up, I dreaded meeting with their teachers. I was always a tiny bit afraid that somewhere in the middle of the conversation the teacher would lean forward, grab my ear, and chastise me. This may be an irrational fear, but it is deeply seeded. It was planted many years ago at St. Agnes elementary school, and it was nurtured in middle school and high school by just about every teacher who had the misfortune of having me in his or her class.

Despite my less-than-stellar early education, I went on to graduate college magna cum laude. I earned a master’s degree, and stopped just short of my dissertation for a Ph.D. I’ve written and published more than a dozen books – including three best-sellers – won awards for writing, and have used the skills I learned in school to help build several multimillion-dollar businesses.

All that said, because of my deeply seeded irrational fear, I had a negative idea of what I could accomplish early in my business career.

But that didn’t stop me.

In The Power of Positive Thinking, Norman Vincent Peale says that unless you have a positive attitude about yourself and your abilities, “you cannot be successful or happy.”

I believe he is half right.

 

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Miscellaneous Essays

The Ten Commandments of Charity

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Down the road going north from my vacation home in Nicaragua, you pass two hamlets, both bearing the same name: Limon.

Most of the families that live there have at least one member who works for Rancho Santana, the residential real estate development my partners and I started 13 years ago. Some work as guards, some as groundskeepers. Others work as housekeepers or gardeners. Still others have found employment as bartenders, waitresses, lifeguards, plumbers, carpenters, mechanics, electricians, or laborers.

The homes they live in are two- or three-bedroom wood-framed or clay-block structures. They travel to and from work by bus or bicycle. They get their water from community wells. Their children go to local schools. When they get sick, they get medical treatment at the clinic, which is financially supported by Rancho Santana.

It is a simple life but not without its pleasures. There are baseball games and soccer matches on Saturdays, church-sponsored events on Sundays, and many birthday parties and weddings and baptisms.

And ever since Rancho Santana erected a tower three years ago, everyone has a cell phone.

When I first came to Rancho Santana, these same families were living in abject poverty. Their houses were shacks put up on dirt floors. Their diet was rice and beans. And there was no medical care available less than an hour’s bus ride away.

The reason things are better now has nothing to do with international development agencies, government initiatives, or non-profit organizations.

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