Correction Burns

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

Change your direction . . . change your world!

NASA’s “Mission News” reported on February 8, 2011 that its Stardust spacecraft marked its 12th anniversary in space with a rocket burn to further refine its path in space. The half-minute trajectory correction maneuver adjusted the path with a blast that consumed 2.4 ounces of fuel and altered the spacecraft’s speed by 1.3 miles per hour. The spacecraft had already traveled 3.5 billion miles since its launch. That’s just amazing!

Even when they send a rocket to the moon, NASA knows the rocket will eventually get a little off course because of the extenuating space factors. The first set of guidance instructions will need to be enhanced and reaffirmed. Journeys just don’t always go as planned. There will always be need for mid-flight correction burns in order to reach the ultimate destination. The tricky part comes in the recalculating the correction burn from your incorrect position. No one will argue the necessity of getting back on track, but how many ounces of fuel will it take, what new angle will be required, and what new speed will be necessary?

As a cultural economist, I concern myself with the flight path of cultures and civilizations. Guess what! Cultures and civilizations spend a lot of time traveling off course. Likewise, the tricky part comes in recognizing and recalculating the correction burn from the acquired incorrect position. First, there must be the recognition that the flight is off course. Next, there must be the decision to do something about the problem. Then, someone has to make a volitional choice to set a correctional plan into action.

I find it an interesting phenomenon, when dealing with the flight path of cultures and civilizations, that humans have a unique capacity. They can choose to invite and develop excellence of character into their own personal lives. Then, based on that character they can become involved in initiating attitudes and actions of kindness, generosity, fairness, sympathy, personal responsibility, virtue, justice, and wisdom through their conduct. The genuine initiating and promoting of those attitudes and actions is what we call “goodness.”

“Goodness” is the correction mechanism for cultures and civilizations. Goodness is an individual as well as a collective decision. When individuals choose to become involved in “goodness,” they become change agents. Change agents are the human mechanisms assigned to cultures to effectively alter the trajectory path and help maneuver the culture back on course.

I have observed that “goodness” is contagious, and in fact, becomes exponential in growth. Over the past 25 years individuals have been gathering around the humanitarian organization called Project C.U.R.E. There are now about 15,000 volunteers who have discovered the organization as an encouraging avenue for them to express their attitudes and actions of “goodness.” There, they can get involved in delivering help and hope into some 125 needy countries around the world. Their efforts have saved the lives of literally thousands of moms, dads and kids in foreign venues.

Those Project C.U.R.E. volunteers are verifiable “change agents” who are helping to alter the flight path of civility. They recognized that the global flight of culture was off course. Next, they made a monumental decision to do something about the problem. Then, they made a volitional choice to set into action a correctional plan of “goodness.”

Project C.U.R.E. endeavored to figure out how many ounces of fuel it would take, what new angle would be required, and what new speed would be necessary to alter the trajectory by implementing a planned correction burn of “goodness.” And now, along with the small army of dedicated volunteers, Project C.U.R.E. has changed the health care delivery practices of thousands of hospitals in over 100 countries.

Our present world urgently needs a correction burn of goodness right now! We can be a part of an exciting cultural transformation. We can change our direction . . . we can change our world!

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

More Lessons From the Bears

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

Lesson #3: The Chain Saw Rule.

I respectfully stand in awe at the talent of the wood sculptors. They are dealing with quite a different commodity than clay, marble, bronze, or steel. Don Rutledge, the artist we had commissioned to sculpt the 12-foot tall grizzly bear and the 6-foot tall cub, had to be extremely mindful of the temperament of the wood.
 
Since the wood was still “green” and still attached to the 450 year old roots in the ground, he had to continuously spray the sculpture with water so that it did not dry out unevenly and crack in Colorado’s low humidity and high elevation. In fact, each night, Don wrapped the bears in wet packing blankets to keep them evenly moist. I was made mindful of the many times God had wrapped me in his packing blankets of mercy and grace while I was being chopped.

I stand I awe of the talent of the artist, but my amazement is in regard to the chain saw. That’s a mean machine! Don never touched the wood one time with a chisel and hammer. He performed every requirement with the gas powered chain saw, even to the carving of the “fur.”

While I watched the sculpting process I could not help but think of the obvious life lesson involved. “With the roughest of tools can be sculpted a thing of beauty.” I have watched the remarkable talents of those who sculpt marble in Italy, Romania, Africa, and especially in Vietnam. I can sometimes identify myself with the marble as the sculptors of real life have chiseled the rough edges from the slab of my own identity. I have experienced that the process of being shaped and chipped and hammered is not pleasant, at best, but painful and hurtful. But the crude harshness of a chain saw is pretty radical. And yet, I can tell you of times when I could swear that it was definitely a chain saw at work on my attitudes, hopes, and behaviors. It wasn’t a “peck, peck, tap, tap . . . it was varooooom, varoooom!” And the only retort I could come up with was an infantile, “would you at least sharpen the chain?” But even with the roughest of tools can be sculpted a thing of beauty.

I recall from one of my favorite authors, Oswald Chambers, who wrote, “The things we are going through are either making us sweeter, better, nobler men and women, or they are making us more captious and fault finding, more insistent on our own way. The things that happen either make us fiends, or they make us saints; it depends entirely upon the relationship we are in to God.”

LESSON #4: Addition vs. Subtraction.

All the time Don was sculpting the two bears he never went out and brought something back to the creek site to add to the project. He never screwed on something over here or nailed on something over there.

I watched with curiosity. The only function utilized by the artist was to systematically pare away the parts of the tree that were unnecessary. He had told me at the beginning, “I see a bear in that tree and I have to help him come out.” The only pieces of the tree that were cut away were the pieces that were restraining the magnificent bear from coming out.

It is not necessarily what we add, but sometimes what we subtract, that brings about perfection and beauty. For example, we usually think happiness will be achieved by adding something to our lives. We say, “I would be happy if . . . I had a different house . . . a new job that paid more money . . . I could win the lottery . . . had a new husband . . . .” I had a friend that once told me, “I believe that happiness is determined by the things we have successfully learned to live without.”

Perhaps God does not want you to learn something from the situation in which you find yourself today. Just maybe . . . he wants you to unlearn something. Anyone can become complicated, but it takes real wisdom to become simple. “Simple” includes paring away the unnecessary, the distractions, the addictions, and the impediments that would keep us from becoming the resplendent individuals of beauty and usefulness for which we were imagined and designed.

I’m extremely pleased that we had Don Rutledge transform our spruce tree. I’m even more pleased that I was able to be an observer and learn the “Lessons from the Bears.”

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

Another Lesson from the Bears

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

LESSON # 2: Visualize, Maximize . . . Dare to Dream.

Don Rutledge, the man we had hired to sculpt the 12 foot tall grizzly bear and the 6 foot tall cub out of our massive blue spruce tree, was totally enraptured by his project.

I came out of the house one morning to find Don just sitting on top of the picnic table staring at the fifteen foot tall stump. He was smiling, but totally ignoring me. I thought to myself, “If I were going to get started on sculpting a giant bear out of a 450 year old tree, I would be there with a measuring tape, a French curve and a can of spray paint to give me some direction. But, not Don, he just sat there on top of the picnic table, smiling, with his eyes glued to the tree. He finally acknowledged me by saying, “I see a bear in there and I have the chance to help him come out of that tree.” He must have heard my old dad saying what he used to say to me, “No one accomplishes a thing in fact that he or she does not first accomplish in the mind.”

In our home our parents helped us to understand that there were steps to goal setting and achievement. Those steps, they said, were to Fantasize, Crystallize, Visualize, Verbalize, and Materialize. “If you don’t know how to get where you are going, you had better dream a way to get there.” Fantasizing isn’t something weird. We have the freedom to be creative in our imagining, and literally kick the sideboards out of the mental box into which we are sometimes placed by circumstances. Creativity walks through the unlocked door of the dedicated imagination.

Don inherently knew that before he started his assignment a vivid mental image had to be projected on the screen of his mind. He was seeing the bear clearly enough to be able to say to me that he was going to “help the bear get out of that tree.” Likewise, he had to be able to see himself as having already accomplished what he was setting out to do. Now, he was verbalizing it to me.

I can recall in the early days of Project C.U.R.E. I could see in my mind’s eye the loading of medical equipment and medical supplies into ocean-going cargo containers and their arrival in ports I had never seen. I knew before it happened that God would enable us to take help and hope to people we had never met. We dared to dream . . . and then we had the thrill of watching the dream come true.

Don had to live within the limits of the spruce tree stump, but he also recognized that he could push his possibilities to the maximum edge of those limits. It was necessary for Don to Dare to Dream.

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

Lessons from the Bears: Lesson #1

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

LESSON # 1: Take the lemons life has given to you and make some lemonade.

When we purchased our home on Upper Bear Creek Road in Evergreen, Colorado, the real estate agent was careful to point out the magnificent Colorado blue spruce trees along the creek in our front yard. “This tree,” he bragged, “could well be the oldest and tallest tree in the county.” A couple of years later, however, I came home from a trip and looked up to the very tippy top of the tree and noticed that it was turning red. We summoned a tree doctor who gave us the sad news that our glorious tree was dying and there was nothing we could do to save it. 

While growing up I had been trained to “take what you have and make it into what you want . . . if life gives you lemons, make them into lemonade!” Life had just given us the largest dead blue spruce tree in the county. Now, what to do? I called Don Rutledge, the finest chain saw sculptor I knew, and invited him to my house. “Don, I want you to sculpt for me the most resplendent, 12 foot tall grizzly bear you can imagine. Don took it as a challenge and began studying the tree. “We will have to dismantle the tree from the top down because there is no room to fell the monstrous tree.”

“Alright,” I countered, “if you are going to take it down in sections, make the final section you cut just above the big bear, large enough to also sculpt a handsome bear cub.” The deal was made. But the following morning when Don arrived to work he almost reneged on the deal. “Yesterday, I didn’t fully realize just how tall this tree is . . . I have to climb clear to the top and I can hardly even see the top!”

After a couple of scary days the tree was down to workable size. We counted the rings and found that the tree that was going to become our prize bears was well over 450 years old.

 

While I watched Don engineer and manage his piece of art I was impressed with how confident and gentle he remained. He acted as if he loved that tree. He knew that inside that area of the yard he provisionally had everything he would ever need to sculpt the perfect bear. He was satisfied that he could take the “lemons” of a dead tree and fashion an object of beauty.

I knew that I needed to learn that lesson. There had been times in my life that I had been given lemons and I had fretted and thrashed around without the confidence that already I provisionally had everything I would ever need to fulfill God’s plan for my life. But, somewhere along the way I would always be faced with the final determining question, “What’cha gonna do with what’cha got?” What would I do with my sack of lemons? How Don handled his assignment would determine the outcome of the bears. What I determine to do with my “sack of lemons” will always determine the outcome of my life.

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com