doing well by doing good: value added

You’ve worked hard. You’ve attained a level of career success that transcends the vagaries of the economy. You deeply value your significant other and nurture your children or other family members. There is no better time to become a mentor, to volunteer your time, to become a board member or to

donate to a nonprofit organization for which you feel closely connected. Here’s how one couple has found much satisfaction giving back by working on community service projects.

The resulting fulfillment—quiet and personal—goes a long way toward mitigating the inevitable stresses of responsibility and accountability, those entrenched and ultimately positive aspects of our culture. Beyond these significant benefits, the giving of time and/or money can readily expand your sphere of contacts and influence. The resulting genuine goodwill opens doors, creates opportunities, and allows for an extra level of direct involvement with both organizations and individuals.

On the home front, the security of stable and loving relationships, in whatever form they may assume—friends, spouses, children, parents—can provide the kind of backdrop that often enables great career and financial success. ‘The harder you work, the luckier you become’ is an aphorism that can easily be applied to all aspects of life. Looking outward and shifting the focus from ourselves to those around us—becoming emotionally and tangibly generous—provide meaningful social and networking opportunities. Implementing this framework of core values and beliefs may well deliver a higher level of career attainment and satisfying personal relationships than otherwise possible.

In these myriad ways, doing well is often a natural outcome of doing good: fulfillment in fantastic forms.

the result of inaction: heavy brainfall

The consequences of a lack of exercise are swift and severe, especially as the calendar continues its relentless passage. With an abundance of physical activity, though, the benefits are equally extreme and measurable. Low cholesterol. Strong heart. Vibrant bones and muscles. Little excess body fat. Increased creativity and stamina.

But society works against all that in the name of “ease of use.” The country as a whole no longer directly reaps the fields or catches animals and fish, instead sitting in offices day in and day out and ordering in. While passing through any thoroughfare in any town in any county in any state, one need not even get out of the car to load up on carbs and saturated fat, a circumstance ushered in by the glorious drive-thru window.

Yet often lost in all the press and proselytizing about exercise is that the brain needs at least as much of a workout each day, each week. People often fall into a comfort zone in daily life that approaches that cursed word, routine. No matter how challenging a particular job may be, by repeating the same mental tasks for weeks, months, years at a time, the brain is fed a steady diet of stagnant protein that does little to create new stimulation, new passageways, new energy.

Pursue new projects at work. Learn a new language. Study a musical instrument. Become familiar with an entirely new subject area. Read different kinds of books. Take trips with friends and family members to different places and foreign countries. Actress Kristin Chenoweth, for one, describes the high learning curve when she first came to New York from Broken Arrow, OK, over 20 years ago.

Curiosity is to the brain as adrenalin is to the body. Both create needs that sustain. All things being equal, why are some older people full of life, and for others, an exhausting day is when their favorite television character has a tough day at the office?

That which cannot be controlled has been exhaustively written about and fretted over. Enough already. Sure, it’s initially harder to choose cottage cheese over cheesecake, veggie burgers over hamburgers, sushi over salami. But the body adjusts. As does the brain. Feed the former a low-fat diet, and feed the latter rich servings three times a day; watch how they begin to crave that which is healthy, sustaining and vital. Reverse the process and experience just how familiar a hospital bed can become.

The pleasures of passive activity are as fleeting as they are deceptive, while living well requires discipline and hard work. “Ease of use” works well for cars and vacuum cleaners. Not so for mental exercise. Effort and reward go hand in hand. So do inactivity and ill health.

The forecast is largely up to us.

the easy way out: artificial sweetener

The human drive to become physically sated expresses itself in many ways. In the realm of food, to take just one of a hundred examples, the richer the better. Yet is all that saturated fat in beef, chicken and fish preparations really necessary? What purpose does our society’s overwhelming tendency toward sugar serve? Balance the passing moments of pleasure against diabetes, weight gain, inflammation, high cholesterol and blood pressure, and a whole host of etceteras. Yet these preparations overwhelmingly dominate the diets of those within the developed world (burger chains don’t sell billions in Bangladesh).

Would that those tendencies could be translated to become mentally sated! Such desires are nowhere near as pervasive within our culture, within our homes. The physical body has practical limits; it’s difficult to survive when toting 350 or 400 pounds. But can the brain ever get enough? Feed it every day. Push and stretch till it hurts. Work hard to become sated in this way and experience first-hand just how difficult it is to actually reach that point. When was the last time you pushed away from your desk, muttering, “I couldn’t learn another thing”?

Go into any supermarket and look at row upon row of sodas, frozen foods, canned goods et al. All literally stuffed with sugar, crammed with carbs, filled with fat. Go for that matter into any bookstore; witness the popularity of condensed editions and audiobooks. Why do people so hesitate to take their mental coffee straight up? Why are we constantly plied such soft-tissue cream and sugar?

Why else? Because they sell. Our free society gives us fresh steaks at one in the morning, and super-premium ice cream at every 24-hour convenience store at every intersection in every town. That same free society also provides the Internet and the widest range of educational options in history. Worldwide employers, such as Starbucks and McDonald’s, have also begun to buy into the clear benefits of having an educated workforce.

Gorge on every bit of it. Become mentally fat. By extension, your rich inner life will never want for calories.