“The hallmark of our age is the tension between aspirations and sluggish institutions.”

That's from John W. Gardner's Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society 1995. It's great--as was he. It's short--as is life. It's simple--as are most things, if we're honest with ourselves....

SELF-DEVELOPMENT. Not just skills, but the whole range of our own potentialities for sensing, wondering, learning, understanding and aspiring. Gardner points out that this does not happen until one gets over the odd notion that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else.

SELF-KNOWLEDGE. By midlife we are accomplished fugitives from ourselves. Our lives are filled with diversions; our heads stuffed with knowledge; we are involved with people. Result: weve never taken time to probe our inner selves. We dont want to know ourselves. We dont want to depend upon ourselves. We cant stand to live with ourselves. A better way is to develop a more comfortable view of who you are. It is the true basis of inner strength.

COURAGE TO FAIL. By the time we reach middle age, we carry in our heads a long list of things well never try again because we tried once and failed. Mature people learn less because they are willing to risk less. Theres no learning without difficulty and fumbling, but if you want to keep on learning, you must keep risking failure.

LOVE. Develop the ability to have mutually fruitful relations with others. Be capable of accepting love and giving it; of depending upon others and of being depended upon. Develop the ability to see life through anothers eyes and reach out to others.

MOTIVATION. A self-renewing person is highly motivated. The author points out that motivation isnt a fuel that gets injected into your system (motivation speakers wont do it); its partly inner energy and partly the result of the social forces in your life. Gardner makes the point that we live in an over-verbalized civilization. Words have become more real than the things they signify and we need to return to the solid earth of direct experience because we are drowning in meaningless word tonnage.

[From a fine Amazon reader review of the book]

To learn more about this incredible individual (founder of Common Cause, Secy. of HUD, War Hero, the list is too long), visit The Gardner Center at Stanford University.