A few months ago, I visited my eye doctor. My doc is a wonderful, brilliant lady who I respect and who is also a lot of fun (Dr. Amy Ward, if you are in the Winter Park, FL area and need a great eye doctor). We were having a great conversation about her business, employees, the economy, wealth and success.
As you know, those types of issues are in my area of expertise, a place where I theorize and advise others. While we talked, I was able to share with her a key thought that I have had for the past few years. I first started thinking on this path as we headed into the economic crisis and I heard many talking heads, including some of our leading politicians, sharing their thoughts on the matter.
Again and again, these talking heads have lamented that if people lose their homes, even if the fault was their own, somehow that was the end of the “American Dream.” This understanding of “The American Dream” is misguided; not the idea of owning a home or having wealth, but using that fact to define the “American Dream.” Worse, it is a systematic attempt to redefine what has been a solid guiding principle for us over these previous two centuries.
What is the American Dream?
The real concept of “the American Dream” is a simple one: it is the concept that anyone here living in the USA has the freedom, the liberty, to pursue whatever they want. I wrote about this just last week to my subscribers of my Success Tips Email Program. Here, let me explain this a bit more. The American Dream is simply a fact that I can do something here that cannot easily be done anywhere in the world, still in the 21st century. I can do anything. The philosophy only became tied to land or home ownership due to the reality that in the 1700s and 1800s, in most other places in the world, one could NOT simply own land easily, typically because of the social system inherent in that location. So, here in the USA, people found the freedom, the liberty, to pursue whatever they wanted and that included the opportunity to actually own their own land or house.
In our modern times, by redefining the concept to mean having wealth or merely “home ownership,” we have actually cheapened the concept. In fact, you could argue that we’ve been duped to trade our liberty for home ownership; many would rather have the government control their lives and provide for them (helping them with their mortgages, for instance), which is, in reality, a modern version of the old feudal system that our forefathers FLED. You see that many think this way because of how they will not accept their own choices, will not use discipline to hold down their personal spending, and thus, in many choices of the recent crisis, overspend and find themselves into a mortgage that they simply cannot afford.
Personal Responsibility?
See, with the real definition of the “American Dream,” I remain responsible for my success or failure. If my crops grow, if my business takes off, if my bills are paid, if I have enough food to eat—-all of that is MY RESPONSIBILITY. If I make a poor choice in some arena of my life, no one is supposed to be there to bail me out. Sure, if life gives me a bad blow that is not my fault (i.e., a drought emerges to ruin my crops, a drunk driver hits me putting me on disability for 6 months), then yes, the community rallies around me to help me and my family. But, in the normal of life, if I spend too much money on random things and then claim that I cannot achieve the American Dream because I will lose my house, that is no one’s responsibility but my own.
Dr. Ward, as she heard me, simply remarked that she’d never really thought about that before, but knew instantly it was true, and as being true, certainly made some things she’d been dealing with at work more clear. I am sure it did. If we think success, or the American Dream, is only “me having tons of money,” then I am being set-up in a way that ultimately will leave me, and most people, feeling empty. Why, you ask? Because, the bar is constantly set higher. We think becoming a person with a “six-figure income” makes me well off, but then I see LeBron or Kobe getting millions a year for playing a sport, so then I want to be a millionaire. Later, I see people winning millions on game shows, so then I realize that I can’t really be happy on just a million, but that I must make a million each year. It never ends. I am always unhappy. I always claim that I have not been allowed to achieve the American Dream because I have bought into the lie that the Dream is wealth.
Dr. Ward is very successful because she is brilliant, is a caring eye doctor, and runs a quality, fair organization. Her success has nothing to do with the “bottom line.” She has achieved the American Dream because she is a woman doing what she wishes, using her personal American freedom to pursue her own dream. Money or home ownership has nothing to do with it!
This Fourth of July has come and gone and once again, our Founders have tried to remind us the point of their actions. It was not for wealth; it was for personal control, personal freedom. If we will reclaim the truth that the “American Dream,” real success, is about “me having the freedom to pursue whatever dream/job/life I wish,” then you have the opportunity really find happiness and success.
I have. Dr. Ward has. I hope you will too!