The decision to grow is a decision to take charge of your own future, but, as you can see from the stories we’ve shared, it always ends up having an impact that goes far beyond just you. When you choose to grow by acting in alignment with the ten laws, opportunity naturally comes to you, ideas and resources flow to you, and people with the right skills, passions, visions, and connections tend to show up to help you. You naturally become more connected with the world as it responds in these ways to support your growth.
Because of this connection, growth always has a ripple effect. It creates inspiration and learning opportunities for others, as in the case of Catherine’s mother, Hilda, and of Tommy Sherwood’s encounter with Rebecca Singer. It gives birth to new entities that help others, like Mary Anne Ehlert’s Process for Protected Tomorrows and Jonathan Smith’s fund-raising Web sites. And it creates new capabilities and visions of what’s possible, like Matthew Passmore’s Park(ing) Day changing the way cities look at public space and Clifford Shearing’s insights about power that led to more cooperative approaches to security and policing. Much of the value created by our growth comes in the form of positive impacts on others that we may not even be aware of. In fact, there may be countless people affected by our growth in ways we may only come to know about by chance, if at all. For instance:
Clifford had an opportunity to return to the farm in South Africa a couple of years after being fired, when the farmer was away in town. As he walked over the hills, he began to hear the words “inyoni ende” echoing around him. Meaning “tall bird” in Zulu, this is what the other workers had nicknamed him when he worked there. As word spread of his return, “inyoni ende” was being chanted all over the farm. People came from all over and greeted him warmly. He was overwhelmed.
He knew that leaving had had a profound impact on his own life, but it wasn’t until that chance return that he realized his unusual act of standing up to the farmer’s authority had left a mark on the memories of all those present. In that moment, people who felt powerless under apartheid had briefly seen power shifted in their favor. He had only been trying to teach the farmer a lesson for his own reasons. The bigger impact in terms of the hope or possibility or whatever else each of those people had taken away from the experience was much greater than he had ever imagined—and, he admits, he’ll never know what the spin-off effects may have been in their lives.
So one of the great benefits of living in alignment with the laws is that, as we grow in order to make our own lives richer and more meaningful, we also make a significant positive impact on the world. This contribution brings us rewards—encouragement, resources, and opportunities—that in turn help us continue to pursue more growth. Because of this, the more you grow, the easier and more enjoyable it becomes to keep growing. As the growth mindset becomes habitual, the laws become part of your innate wisdom. You can deepen your understanding of them and explore them in new ways as you see that more is possible. These explorations will continue to return greater rewards and opportunities that open up pathways in life you could never have even envisioned without having gone through the growth that brought you there.
Now we’ll ask you to take a leap of imagination to a much bigger future: Imagine a world where all people and organizations habitually operate according to the laws of lifetime growth. People and organizations in this world are focused on using their rewards to make ever-greater contributions. They build systems and structures that favor cooperation over status, use money to achieve goals aligned with their bigger values, and focus on increasing performance, enjoying applause as a by-product. They are more confident about their capacity to create their own futures based on a sense of purpose, genuine curiosity, gratitude for the many blessings and opportunities that surround them, and a desire to keep on learning, growing, contributing, and enjoying themselves.
In this world there is no sense of entitlement to handouts, but there are many gifts given to people who graciously receive them and use them to grow for their own benefit and the benefit of those around them. Solutions to social problems come from cooperation and combined ingenuity—from the contributions of those who have the needed pieces, pulled together by those whose natural inclination is to ask the right questions to find out what really needs to be done. Individuals feel responsible for their own quality of life and are equipped with the mental tools and habits to turn their visions into reality. They know that their own growth is intimately linked to their ability to continually create value for others.
You might think, so much has to change before this can be true, and you are right. But you can see the glimmer of the possibility of this world in the stories in this book, and in countless other stories that are happening around you as people everywhere, knowingly or unknowingly, act in accordance with the laws of lifetime growth and cultivate a growth mindset. You’ve seen how each of these people impacts many others, often helping them in turn to grow. You’ve seen how new solutions have been created, how people have been inspired and motivated to act differently, and how people have found energy and courage they didn’t know they had.
A world like this is created when more and more individuals like you make the decision to adopt a growth mindset and grow on purpose: taking the laws to heart, deciding to live this way for their own reasons, making their own unique contributions, and providing positive examples for others along the way. You don’t need to know about the laws to do this; you only need to act in the ways they suggest. However, it helps to have the laws as a road map because, just as you may be able to get to your destination by the back roads, it’s always great to know where the freeway is. There are resources on the following pages to help. You have the book in your hands. The choice is yours. The future is your property.