Terry Newell is currently director of his own firm, Leadership for a Responsible Society. His work focuses on values-based leadership, ethics, and decision making. A former Air Force officer, Terry also previously served as Director of the Horace Mann Learning Center, the training arm of the U.S. Department of Education, and as Dean of Faculty at the Federal Executive Institute. Terry is co-editor and author of The Trusted Leader: Building the Relationships That Make Government Work (CQ Press, 2011). He also wrote Statesmanship, Character and Leadership in America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and To Serve with Honor: Doing the Right Thing in Government (Loftlands Press 2015).
All in Pursuing Happiness
Vacations are not considered the”real world.” But the work of truly living, the responsibility to appreciate life before losing it, both also possible when we leave our daily lives, is the “real world” too.
This is not Lake Wobegon. Not all of our children will be above average (though each can be above average in something). But a society that does not encourage mastery gets mostly average performance. For our children, for ourselves, for our society - we need more.
A balanced life is a mixture of prose and poetry. We all have both in us. We are all writers and poets of life. Some of us - I count myself among them – tend toward the planned life, much as prose is planned. Others live lives that are more poetic.
