Beyond Core Values to Working Credos

Core Values are awesome. They have enabled many companies to achieve tremendous things. But I think having a solid credo is also essential. When we started the Better Life Company, we developed both Core Values and a Company Credo. Here they are:

Our core values come from the word PERFECT and are:

People: We value the dreams, hopes and ambitions of people. We will do our best to cultivate greatness in every single person we come into contact with.

Empowerment: We value the success of the individual. We will do our best to ensure that personal potential is multiplied.

Responsibility: We value our obligation to live up to our vision and mission. We will do our best to constantly and consistently pursue our goals.

Fun: We value happiness in life and at work. We will create ways and systems that ensure we are having fun in everything we do.

Excellence: We recognize our role as leaders in society. We will demonstrate a high degree of excellence in everything that we do.

Commitment: We value the trust of our consumers. We will do our very best to ensure that we not only meet but also exceed expectations.

Teamwork: We value the need to work to be interdependent. We will work together as a team across, functions, departments, businesses and cultures.

The Better Life Company Credo simply states:

At the Better Life Company we believe that the day will come when people will be judged not by their physical strength nor the size of their bank accounts, but by the quality of their lives; by their response to opportunities to live a better life; by their ability to use their physical, mental and spiritual resources to make a better world; by their concern for the disadvantaged and the disempowered and by their utilization of their gifts, talents and resources in a prudent manner so as to live productively and meet the needs of other people. Better Life Company is a contribution towards that day. 

Drafted into the Flow of an Epic Life

In the recent few weeks there has been a lot of drafting going on for the presidential race. There’s even been talk of a former actor being drafted into the race. While everyone else is focusing on these drafts, I want to ask, how about Draft YOU!! I want you to consider drafting yourself into the greatest race of all time – the race to fulfill your potential and live your very best life!  You can live an epic life. Get into the flow by drafting yourself into the greatest race of all time!

Serendipity and Synchronicity in an Epic Life

Dr. Mark J. Chironna has a little booklet titled, Tripping Over Your Treasures, that I have been reading today. He starts off by explaining the meaning of the word serendipity, saying that dreams are arrived at quite accidentally yet when one is being intentional. It may seem like a contradiction but I find this to be extremely true. When I was planning on my coming to the United States in 2001, I was very intentional about the whole process but my actual leaving of Kenya came accidentally!

I have also found that there is one more thing that contributes to the realization of dreams: synchronicity. Synchronicity is the coincidence of events that seem to be meaningfully related. I met my wife because of synchronicity. We had both signed up for the same elective course in college. Who would have thought that an elective course in school would bring two people together! 

The word serendipity was created by Sir Horace Walpole in 1754 after having read a Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip. In this tale, three sons of a King were always on their way somewhere only to bump into things accidentally on purpose that helped them along the way to their next stop. Over and over again, they kept on bumping into things that would aid their journey onward. 

As I was thinking about this, I started seeing that in my own life I have ‘bumped’ into people and things who helped me along the way. I would never have learnt about the Honor Academy in Texas had I not volunteered to go with some American missionaries to a remote village in Northern Kenya. In Texas, I met a friend who introduced me to the family that helped me move to Colorado. While in Colorado and later in Massachussets I pursued a great friendship with a stunner at Regent University. This led to our marriage in 2004. While watching an NBC Today show, we learnt about Boystown and decided to move to Nebraska. After working in Nebraska for a while I decided to pursue the dream of establishing an organization that I have carried with me for a couple of years. That’s a lot of serendipity! My moving to Cincinnati to start the organization is the piece of teh puzzle that I’m yet to find. 

The American College Dictionary defines serendipity as the faculty of making desirable but unsought-for discoveries by accident. Synchronicity on the other hand is meaningful coincidences that cannot be explained by cause and effect. Both of these words invite us to experiencing deeper lives full of meaning and richness – epic lives.