Inevitably there will be times when you have setbacks or things don t go your way. Maybe you didn't get a job you thought you were sure to get. Maybe you lost a job unexpectedly, didn't win a contract, or lost a major client. Your car always seems to break down right after you've had some other unexpected expense. These kinds of situations immediately place us in crisis. They don t feel good, but sometimes they re what we need in order to grow. The beautiful thing about crises is that they force us to take a step back and reevaluate what s going on in our lives and rediscover what we truly want and need. When we get over that initial shock and feeling of disappointment, we might realize that maybe that job wasn't really the best for us anyway. Maybe, just maybe, that wasn't what you really wanted to spend your life doing. Maybe that friend was holding you back instead of pushing you forward. The way I deal with crises of these sorts is simple: If something doesn't go my way professionally, I try to create a situation that would be more rewarding than the situation originally planned. A while ago, I was offered a job that looked very promising. After I accepted the offer, they pushed the start date back three times, later informing me (via e-mail) that they wanted to bring me on in the near future but I should feel free to explore other options. I was extremely disappointed. I felt disrespected and angry, but decided to make the best of the situation and follow my dream of working internationally. I then flew to Santiago, Chile and had great professional and personal experiences I wouldn't have had otherwise. Later, reflecting back on the original opportunity, I realized that working for a company that avoids a start date three times and then can t pick up the phone to explain the situation is probably not where I need to spend my time. Use setbacks as an opportunity to put your goals in order and act on them. In the moment, it s difficult to look at a setback as temporary, but they are. They happen to everybody. It s how you respond to them that will determine how they affect you.
Social entrepreneurship is free enterprise’s answer to social issues and injustices, which, ironically, are largely a result of the failures of that very system. According to economists, a true free enterprise system is the efficient allocation of goods and services from producers to consumers. The problem is that many of these goods and services are allocated very efficiently to only a privileged few, rather than the masses. I’m not pushing a socialist agenda. I’m all for capitalism and free enterprise. I don’t have a problem with one person owning three homes while another owns one. But why should a child have to starve while I’m enjoying steak and shrimp on an expense account 800 miles from home?
Just yesterday a teacher friend of mine told me she saw a young couple across the street pushing two cats in a specially designed cat stroller. What does it mean when our educators are struggling to eat while others can cart around their feline friends in a stroller? Now, I have no problem with how you choose to spend your money, but what does it say about our value system when it’s okay, even expected, to put in sixty hours a week to make enough money only to make it back to work?
Social entrepreneurship brings business intelligence and socially conscious ingenuity together to effectively bring solutions to human and environmental issues that have thus far been largely ignored or have been ineffectively addressed, such as education gaps, health care, poverty, economic disparity, prejudice, and access to clean water and safety.
I love Half Price Books. Every time I walk in there, I walk out with three or four books I’d never heard about prior to entering. I received an email from them with coupons for this week. After making sure it was okay to share, I saved the coupons as a .pdf so you can download them here. Hopefully it works for you.
So I finally read Chew On This, by Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson. This book, although a little wordy, really opened my eyes to many of the things that go on in the fast food industry and how they have greatly affected culture, environment, and society locally and globally. I have become a much more conscious consumer because of the information Schlosser and Wilson provide in these pages. They not only inform us of what goes on behind the scenes at the farms, slaughter houses, and restaurants, but also give examples of companies that have better practices and tell us how we can take steps to change the industry for the better. I definitely recommend this to anyone who eats fast food or wants to learn more about how our food choices are impacting the world.