Have you ever had a dream come true?
Maybe it was a desire to marry or have children; maybe it was to launch a successful business. Maybe your dream was to write a book or take a trip to a distant country. Maybe your dream was big, maybe it was small, but regardless, you had a dream—and you got to see it come true.
How would you describe that feeling? How would you explain it to someone else who perhaps hadn’t experienced that same blessing?
I ask, because today, one of my biggest dreams comes true. Today we launch a movement that will impact countless lives the world over and change the futures of generations to come. Today we unveil a website that invites you to be part of something bigger than yourself. I’ve been talking about it for weeks now, but today is the day that everything changes.
Today, my new book, Change Your World: How Anyone, Anywhere Can Make a Difference, launches to the world. It’s available online AND in stores, and it is a guidebook to creating lasting positive change in our world.
I’ve been working on this book for years. Every time I sat down to write it, I’d make a little progress and then get stuck. I’d come back to it later, make a little progress, and get stuck again. Month after month I labored on this book, thinking through the Transformational Values, thinking through how Transformation Tables are the engine for genuine change.
But I couldn’t get it written.
And then my very good friend Rob Hoskins contacted me. He’d completed a significant study of transformational movements across history, and he wanted to share his research with me on the chance that it might help me with the book. I had him send his dissertation over, and it was incredible: brilliantly researched, exceptionally well written, but it had one small problem.
No one was ever going to read it.
I don’t say that to be mean; Rob is an incredible communicator, and the work he’d done was nothing short of exceptional. But it was written for academics, and academic works like Rob’s typically don’t sell very well, especially in an age when people are used to consuming content in 200 characters or less. So Rob had finished a book few people would ever read and I was struggling to write a book I was sure the world was hungry for.
It seemed like we were stuck. But that’s not the way Rob or I think.
It didn’t take long for us to decide to combine forces. Rob would provide research and stories for the book and I would provide principles and practices. Between the two of us, we felt certain we could create a handbook for transformation unlike anything the world had ever seen. We sat down with our writing teams and hammered out the basic outline of the book rather quickly. Suddenly, I was finding myself writing page after page of fresh and exciting material—I was unlocked to write the book I’d been dreaming of.
And today, that book is available for anyone, anywhere, to pick up a copy and start changing their world for the better.
The book, however, is not the point. The book is a tool for people to use as they join the Transformation movement.
Transformation begins when people read the book, learn about the power of good values, and choose to make a difference in their world. The book points them to ChangeYourWorld.com where they can take a free values assessment and learn about hosting a Transformation Table in their community. Once they host a table and share the value of values and teach people about the power of learning and living good values, the movement picks up speed.
We are on a mission to transform the world. I believe it will be possible for me to see an entire nation transformed from the inside out before my time on earth is through. For as much as I have desired to write this book, there’s been a greater desire driving that all along.
My greatest dream was never the book—the book was simply the final piece of the puzzle. My dream for decades was to see a country transformed by the power of values, and I am on the cusp of seeing that dream realized.
Today is an important day for the Transformation movement. We’re no longer taking baby steps; we’re taking strides, and those strides will lead us to see countries and communities transformed sooner rather than later.
You’re invited to join us. Pick up a book, visit the website, and join us in doing something significant for the world.