I’m on the phone with a friend who wants Darla and I to come to an open house for a home his company just built. We plan to do so but I finish our conversation by saying, “We’ll be there unless something dramatic happens.”

I really didn’t need to add those words. I’m the kind of person who shows up when he says he will. If I don’t show up people know something dramatic must have happened: a sick kid, a client crisis, etc.

But it got me to thinking: our lives will end up where they’re headed “unless something dramatic happens.” That is to say, serious change is almost always predicated by something dramatic and usually unforeseen. We end up out of shape and overweight when we eat poorly and don’t exercise…unless we have a heart attack or our doctor warms us of imminent health disaster. We end up taking our loved ones for granted…until someone close to us dies unexpectedly. We end up working part-time well into our retirement years unless…

How much of our lives are spent on autopilot? How often do we think about where we’re headed “unless something dramatic happens”?

Making an important decision can be just the dramatic event you need to change course. Committing to a new course of action needs to be dramatic to get off the undesired course you’re on. Going through the discomfort or pain of changing a negative behavior is dramatic but might just save your life.

Those decisions, commitments and changes are in your control. Don’t wait for the uncontrolled and often tragic dramatic happenings to occur.

Today’s Wall Street Journal has an important editorial piece about John McCain I really encourage you to read for two reasons (click here).

First, there are some powerful stories about McCain’s character that will give you insights into who he is that you probably haven’t and won’t see elsewhere.

Second, there is a lesson to all leaders about the importance of making yourself known to followers, about the need to appropriate disclose who you are, your shaping experiences and values.

My friend Bill is a successful entrepreneur in Southern California. While having lunch recently he commented that whatever happened at the upcoming elections and whoever was elected really didn’t matter to him. He went on to explain that while he was concerned about what was best for our country and that he planned to vote, ultimately no future president had the ability to dramatically affect the quality of his life. Changes in healthcare would not affect his ability to pay for and receive the quality of care he desired. Tax cuts wouldn’t change his financial independence.

Bill is a pragmatist. I thought about what he said. He’s mostly right about no future president really impacting his life. The exception would be a president who somehow plunged the world financial markets into meltdown or instigated a cataclysmic war (but of course elected officials in other countries have the potential to do that; it isn’t unique to the president of the United States). Barring those two situations, based on what I know about Bill, he is correct in his reasoning.

I like and advocate Bill’s philosophy which I call “personal political security.” The goal is simple: do not be beholden to the government to make or undo your success in life. Strive to always have enough in savings to weather storms, opt out of stupid programs and assure long-term financial stability. It is about self-sufficiency honestly achieved.

It doesn’t mean being unconcerned with the course of our nation and the quality of our leadership or disregarding our responsibility to each other and our role as a global citizen. It doesn’t mean being disinterested in the political process or neglecting to vote. It is about being part of the political process without being dependent upon it.

The benefit is not being scared of election outcomes because they portend personal disaster or eliminate your ability to prosper. Government’s role should be to create opportunity for all, not create entitlement for all. And yes–my libertarian friends will disagree–there are those government should help, but there are far fewer that truly need hlep than most candidates would have you believe.

What most don’t understand about tax cuts and the so-called “wealthy” is that smart, successful people will prosper despite tax advantage, not because of it. Government can make it harder for the successful by unfairly burdening them, but short of a repressive regime, government doesn’t control their destiny.

Bill is one of those people. He enjoyed personal political security. And that should be the goal for all of us.

Larry Bossidy’s book Execution was a bestseller. My friend Sam Giest just wrote a book called Execute…or Be Executed. Both books speak to the crucial need for leaders to create results. The road to Hades, as it is often said, is paved with good intentions. The road to success is paved with results.

Nearly fifty years ago Clement Stone and Napolean Hill said, “Too often what we read and profess becomes a part of our libraries and our vocabularies, instead of becoming a part of our lives.” I express it differently: the difference between excellence and mediocrity is the difference between common knowledge and consistent application.

There is a trait I have discussed countless times as I’ve interviewed job candidates, and I call it “drive to completion.” While I value it in an associate, it is absolutely essential for a leader. Is the ability to do whatever it takes to complete a project or task. Don’t tell me you haven’t been able to get the information I requested because someone didn’t return your phone call. Drive to completion means you kept pursuing the needed information by other means.

As leaders we need to continually hone this trait in ourselves and teach it to our team members. Drive to completion is the ratio between what you started and what you finished. It requires persistence and creativity; determination without skill is annoying and ineffective.

The best way to deal with jerks is not to be one.

Gratefulness is a path through trials and disappointments.

Mastery creates confidence.

We make our decisions then our decisions make us.

C.S. Lewis said the most important question isn’t “What do you think of God?” The most important question is “What does God think of you?”

We hear much about our next president providing America hope…but what kind of hope.

Lloyd Ogilvie said, “What we hope for determines the vitality of our lives. But the question is: When we have arrived at where we are going, where will we be; when we get what we want, what will we have; when we achieve our goals, what will we have accomplished?”

Those are critical questions. I think much of our malaise has been created by hoping for the wrong things in the past. Everyone wants their lives to be better, but that is almost always defined by how much they earn and not what they contribute; by what they get rather than what they are enable to give; and what they own instead of what they become.

Money and things have an important role in our lives, but ultimately they are means to an end. It seems most of the political discussions of the day focus on income and means as the actual end.

Our hope for better, it seems, is a cheap hope based more on what benefits we can attain without investing much if anything to obtain them. That kind of hope is entitlement hope, not the enlightened hope Ogilvie was describing.

Dan Sullivan, in his book The Great Crossover, suggests four things to teach kids to create an entrepreneurial attitude:

1. Self-learning: how to acquire new knowledge and skills without a teacher.

2. Self-motivation: setting and achieving goals in a systematic manner.

3. Self-management: the effective organization of time and money.

4. Self-promotion: the ability to present oneself to others in a way that creates new opportunities.

This is sage advice you and I can use to teach our kids to be entrepreneurs.

Frances Hesselbein is one of my favorite leadership thinkers. She helped reinvent The Girl Scouts of America and it thrived under her leadership. Of late she is involved with the Peter Drucker Foundation and writes and speaks on leadership issues. She is a livewire and a delightful person. Here are some of her ideas I’ve found insightful:

Leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do it.

When the great Duke Ellington wanted to describe a remarkable artist or an extraordinary work, he would say, “Beyond category.”

Perhaps the biggest question in today’s world is, “How do we help people deal with their deepest differences?”

It is the leader’s job to identify the critical issues in which his or her organization can make a difference, then build effective partnership based on mission, innovation, and diversity to address those issues.

Peter Drucker reminds us that organizations exist to make peoples’ strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.

Today part of every leader’s job, whether in business, government, or social sector, is to help people see the full value of what they contribute.

Frances Hesselbein is one of my favorite leadership thinkers. She helped reinvent The Girl Scouts of America and it thrived under her leadership. Of late she is involved with the Peter Drucker Foundation and writes and speaks on leadership issues. She is a livewire and a delightful person. Here are some of her ideas I’ve found insightful:

Leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do it

When the great Duke Ellington wanted to describe a remarkable artist or an extraordinary work, he would say, “Beyond category.”

Perhaps the biggest question in today’s world is, “How do we help people deal with their deepest differences?”

It is the leader’s job to identify the critical issues in which his or her organization can make a difference, then build effective partnership based on mission, innovation, and diversity to address those issues.

Peter Drucker reminds us that organizations exist to make peoples’ strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.

Today part of every leader’s job, whether in business, government, or social sector, is to help people see the full value of what they contribute.

Nostalgia is a powerful force. Research shows that we are all capable of creating an idealized memory out of a less-than-ideal past. There are psychological benefits to that, but not when you’re trying to lead people into the future.

Obama has, somewhat surprisingly, positioned himself as an old-school Democrat with a bad case of nostalgia. In his reconstructed view, jobs were lost and bad things happened not because the world changed, but because politicians didn’t adequately take care of us. (And despite the shortcoming of Washington–that much I agree with–the world is a much different place than Obama seems to recognize.) He wants to be our benefactor and caregiver and the changes he most wants to create are a return to idealized time in a world that no longer exists and perhaps never did.

I don’t want that kind of leadership from any politician or political party. An individual in denial is sad but a nation in denial is tragic. Instead, I hope voters want someone who tells us the truth unvarnished by spin and nostalgia. And I hope we elect a leader who deals with new realities, not old imaginings. We need a leader who can lead the right change going forward, not retreating into the past.

I had hoped for more from Obama. Despite the promise he holds, he has in my opinion proven what his opponents have said all along: he lacks experience. That has become obvious in both his analysis of the current situation and his proposed solutions. He appeals most to members of the Nostalgic Party.