What Matters Most   Mr. Erie Chapman is founding president and chief executive officer of the $150 million Baptist Healing Trust.  The primary focus of Mr. Chapman’s career has been in the leadership of hospitals and healthcare organizations.  Author of the widely-acclaimed book, Radical Loving Care, his goal is to inspire leaders to establish a culture that supports a continuous chain of compassion and quality.

Our conversation with Mr. Chapman began with an explanation of the impetus behind Radical Loving Care.

“I spent seven years as a trial attorney and judge, and then thirty years in healthcare.  Throughout that period I had this nagging feeling, verified by what was before my eyes, that large parts of our society are being mistreated by systems.  They all offer missions that promise loving care, kindness consideration, the best talent, skill and good stewardship of funds.

“My observation is that most systems do not really deliver on that.   There’s what I would call ‘mission fraud’ out there.  You’re promised loving care and what you get is a system that is interested in something other than care and kindness.  So, I’ve worked all my career to try to create cultures that would foster the kind of care that individual’s want to receive and that most systems actually want to give.

“I’ve spoken to admitting clerks in hospitals and other first-line caregivers and charities and police departments.  These are typically very good-hearted and well-intentioned people.  So, I think there’s a misguided sense of efficiency that tends to drive people away from delivering the loving care that we’d all like to have for our mothers and for ourselves and that we’d all like to be giving.

“I put alot of the responsibility for the trouble on leadership.  Leadership does a very poor job, in general, of supporting first-line staff.  We do encounter organizations that do it very, very well.   It’s just unfortunate that they’re the exeptions rather than the rule.”

Erie does not blame this situation on the human condition.  He uses the word “efficiencies” to describe the trouble of providing loving care.  This situation seems to be a result of a technological society rather than a human defect.

Mr. Chapman continues, “Yes, I do think we’re continuing to run the risk in society that, when individuals end up having to depend more and more on technology, it can feel disempowering to the individuals and their skills.”

Erie challenges leaders of these systems to go that extra mile.  “Initially, they will say, ‘Yeah, we do that.  We give loving care.  Yeah, we’re fine.  You know?’  But, if you push them a little bit on that, we find that it’s not really the case.  It’s very discouraging to see that and people will say things like, ‘Well, you really can’t change people!’  Well, that’s not true.

“I’ve been involved in culture change where the organization adapts to this concept and does very well.  A leader can go into a medium or average organization and lift it into a topnotch organization by changing the culture and that happens through everything from hiring and orienting and training to the kind of signals that leaders give when they move through the organization.”

It’s important to put people first.  “What I tell leaders is that they’ve got one job that’s more important than any other thing they do.  The most important thing for a leader to do is take care of the people who take care of people.

“If you set an example by taking good care of the staff, people will say, ‘Gee, people will take advantage of you.’  Well, that has not been my experience.  There’s the rare person that will take advantage of that.  But, a high percentage of people respond to being well-cared for by improving their own caregiving.  That’s exactly what’s needed.”

So, we want our professionals to be well-trained but with heart and compassion.  “In our organizations that we work with, we emphasize hiring people that have what we call a ’servant’s heart.’ 

“Watch for the servant’s heart.”

What Matters Most    Today we consider the psychological impact of the H1N1 Virus, what’s commonly called the “swine flu.”  We all know that this is a new Type A flu that’s a genetic combination of swine, avian and human influenza viruses.  Rather than talk about the epidemilogy of this flu virus, let’s consider our response on a more humanistic level.  What’s our reaction to new information when it seems to threaten us?

Joining us today, by phone, are Tom Skinner, Senior Public Affairs Officer at the Centers for Disease Control, and John Tauer, Professor of Psychology at the University of St. Thomas, and Nancy Childs, Professor of Marketing at St. Joseph’s University.

Starting with Tom Skinner at the CDC, we asked him how all this new information about the H1N1 Virus affect us.  “We certainly don’t want people to be unnecessarily frightened or afraid.  The best antidote for fear is information, and we simply want people to be informed.

“For the most part, people who come down with this novel strain of influenza are going to be just fine.   They may feel miserable for a few days, some may feel like they’ve been hit by a train, but by and large they’re going to be just fine!

“However, there are some individuals who are really at increased risk for the serious complications from influenza, and then unfortunately we see people die from influenza.  So, it’s high risk individuals that we really want to communicate the importance of following the steps to protect themselves and most of all get vaccinated when vaccines become available.”

John Tauer, Professor of Psychology at the University of St. Thomas, offers his opinion about what he considers to be a healthy response to this virus.  “What’s interesting is the ability to discern ‘How much fear should I have right now?  What precautions do I want to take?’  And then, the other part of it, and this gets a little more away from the physiological  into the psychological, ‘How much control (A) do I need to have and want to have; and (B) how much control can I have?’

“Often times, whether we want control or not, whether our body is panicking or not, often times we just don’t have much control over things outside of us and that’s a hard thing for us to accept especially in a society like ours where we preach individualism to our kids and you can be anything you want. 

“Well, what that tells them in indirect terms is not only can you be anything you want but you can control your destiny.  You alone are in control.  And, that’s really healthy in a lot of achievement domains but when it comes to fear it’s going to lead us to try and grab on to something that we’d like to think we can control and we really can’t.

“There’s a certain amount you can do but there’s also a certain amount you have to live with.  I don’t know that we can really control everything and the best thing people can do is just really be careful, short of locking themselves in the house for the next several months and saying, ‘I’m not going to go anywhere.’  Then we’d be sacrificing months of our lives because we don’t want a week or two of a really lousy illness.

“One of the things that may have helped was the initial buzz about swine flu, that initial scare and some of the cases that started to get publicity last year,  but then it didn’t take off.  It didn’t have that exponential growth.  I think that allowed people to calm down a little bit and look at things rationally but also look at it as, ‘This is really serious, too.’  And, strike that balance between ‘Yeah, let’s have a healthy amount of fear but let’s be practical, too, and see what we can do.’ ”

Nancy Childs at St. Joseph’s University sees folks reacting to this flu virus in a variety of ways.  “People act individually.  You’re going to see people overreact, you’re going to see people underreact.

“You can get a segment of the population that starts crying for sanctions.  If someone is out there ill and not practicing good hygiene, good preventitive health, should they be arrested, should they be penalized?  You’ll have people that react in that way, asking for sanctions, which is not where you want to end up.  You know you don’t want a police state over this.

“The other thing that’s fun is that people always do the thing you don’t expect.  One of the things that came out…people didn’t want to go to restaurants at all because they felt that was too susceptible.  But, you still want to see people, you still want to socialize. 

“People somehow felt comfortable entertaining or socializing outdoors.  Huge bump in barbecue!  This idea that you could have a barbecue, socialize outside, that’s okay.  They can take that risk.  No one saw that coming, stores were not nearly prepared for the kind of purchases that generated.

“People are looking for other ways to substitute for their normal behavior.  Mexico City was literally quarrantined two weeks.  You go a little nutty when you’re confined that long.

“The CDC is putting out notes to schools.  They’re giving them documents that they can utilize and right in them is telling parents to prepare for these lengthy absences and even suggestions about having board games and other activities to keep your child entertained at home.

“I always feel that we get interesting cultural bumps, almost discontinuities, when we have an unusual environment.  And, once it happens, you don’t go back!”

Tom Skinner’s final thoughts for us are, “…we simply want people to get informed on what they can do to protect themselves.  We want them to go about their business, their ordinary lives, but we just want them to take some simple, common sense steps to protect their health.

“And really mainly those are just making sure they don’t go out when they’re sick, they don’t send their kids to school when they’re sick.  Stay home if you’re sick.  Don’t expose yourself to others.  And, wash your hands.  We know that hand hygiene is important.  And also getting vaccinated is the most important when vaccine becomes available.

“So, we have really good, elaborate surveillance systems in place to detect changes in the virus that we’re seeing.  Fortunately, we’re not really seeing any right now and we’ve looked at viruses from all over the world and we haven’t been able to detect any significant changes to the virus that would be of concern to us at this point.

“We’ve got surveillance systems in place that helps us monitor flu activity in the United States.  It also helps us determine if the anti-viral that we’re using to treat flu are effective.  It helps us to detect any significant changes in the virus.  Those systems are all in place and operational.”

 The advice that Tom Skinner, John Tauer and Nancy Childs seems simple enough:  Stay informed and don’t overreact.  Decide what you can control and what you can’t control.  Stay calm.  Barbecue with friends.  Keep the kids at home when they get sick and buy some new board games.

Very simply, it’s still a wonderful life. 

What Matters Most    You might say Sara Snow is a natural.

Her parents, Tim and Pattie Redmond, pioneers in the organic food industry, are the founders of Eden Foods.  Sara grew up in a home focused on conserving natural resources, reducing the impact on the environment and providing the family with the healthiest foods possible.

The Redmond family lived in an idyllic setting in the sticks of northern Michigan where their home was equipped with solar panels and stocked with food harvested from their own garden.

Sara was lucky enough to be raised around a dinner table that hosted guests who would soon become the leaders in the natural and organic food industry.  From her earliest childhood, she’s been inspired by their leadership as well as other like them and in her new book, Fresh Living, she shares her wealth of knowledge with us.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Green Diva: Robyn O’Brien

Sara introduces us to green diva, Robyn O’Brien who is the founder of the Allergy Kids Foundation.  Robyn, a mother of four kids, launched AllergyKids on Mothers Day 2006 after her fourth child was diagnosed with food allergies.  As a result of her daughter’s severe allergic reaction to scrambled eggs, Robyn began reading food labels, discovering the unhealthy truth about our food supply.

As a long-time conservative Republican, Robyn’s experiences in motherhood led her on an unexpected journey into the food industry revealing how the processed food corporations, chemical corporations and the federal government allow toxic proteins and allergens to enter into the American food supply.

O’Brien never considered herself to be an environmentalist or tree-hugger.  She describes herself as a “kid hugger” and it was O’Brien’s love of her children that led to her shocking discoveries.

As explained at her website, “AllergyKids directly impacts the well-being and livelihood of children and their families by creating universal awareness of food allergies, educating the population about the severity of food allergies and the important role that diet can play in healing these children.”

Overwhelmed by the knowledge of the ingredients of what her kids were eating, O’Brien started waging her personal campaign against the conventional wisdom of what we usually considered “good” food and started changing the foods she was feeding her family by providing them with fresh, natural products.  This is why Robyn O’Brien is one of Sara Snow’s Fresh Living heroes.

Heart of the Home: Your Kitchen

Sara Snow explains, “In the kitchen, food is, of course, paramount.  In my opinion, food is one of the first steps, the most important step someone can take when they’re trying to live that healthier life.  It’s such an important part of who we are.

“We make countless food decisions every single day-at least three involving three square meals-and probably twenty different food choices every single day.  It’s a real opportunity to affect your body for the better or sadly for the worse.”

Sara continues, “In the kitchen, there are choices you can make to have a healthier family and a healthier home by infusing more organics into your diet, organically grown foods, not only fruits and vegetables but also things like cereal, milk and cheese.

“[You can] buy more locally grown foods, too.  So, that means shopping at a farmer’s market or belonging to a CSA.  CSA means “Community Supported Agriculture.”  It’s a system by which you actually become a member of a farm.  So, in exchange for a membership fee, you get a weekly share of that farm’s crop.  That’s two good ways to get fresh, local food, which is so important.

“Our foods travel so far in this country.  On the average, they travel about 1,600 miles so when you look down at your plate of chicken, broccoli and potatoes, those foods travel over a thousand miles just to get there.  So, it wastes a lot of freshness but it also wastes a lot of petroleum and other natural resources in the transportation of those foods.  This is why buying local foods is so important.

“It supports your local economy.  It supports your local farmers.  Often times, it’s the small family farms that absolutely need our support and so important to the vibrant nature of our country.  It’s so important that you support them.  And then, you’re getting the freshest food possible so that should also correlate into the healthiest food.”

Fair Trade in Your Kitchen

Another decision we can make when buying products for our kitchen and throughout our home is to be sure imported goods obtain a Fair Trade Certification.  “It means the farmers or the producers of that product were paid a fair wage, that they were given fair working conditions,” Snow elaborates.

“Often what happens is that a community can really be changed as a result of your purchasing those fair trade products because those families are able to purchase better food for their families, afford better health care, invest back into their farms, into their communities and into whatever product they’re producing for you.

“It’s a tremendous way to affect some real change just by choosing those food items or other items around the house that have the fair trade logo on them.  So, in the kitchen you’ll most often see fair trade tea, coffee, chocolate; a lot of time, people see fair trade bananas.  But, it also extends into baskets, blankets and jewelry pieces.”

Fair trade practices add another dimension to what we mean by sustainable.  It means that just not the product is sustainable but also that the community is sustainable.

Sara adds, “It’s not only about sustaining ourselves.  I think that, especially in this country, we focus a lot on how can I be healthier, how can I be wealthier, how can I be more comfortable, how can I be more sustaining.  And, it’s really not just about ourselves.

“We have to step back and look and see we all share this planet, we’re all in this together, and really it’s about how can we sustain not only ourselves but our communities, our state, our country, our world, our planet as a whole.  That also means reaching across and sustaining communities who may be half way across the globe.”

Sara Snow grew up in this life of healthier, greener, fresher living.  She understands that it is a possibility to live this life and embrace these values.  Maybe it requires some sacrifices and it may not be easy but it’s important we make changes today.

As in the case of Robyn O’Brien’s family, Sara knows people suffer health issues.  Sara believes that if we can all decide to make one or two small changes, if we can all group together and take small steps toward healthier, sustainable living, this is how we will collectively affect some big positive changes.

What Matters Most  Life is not always easy, often difficult.  Today, we are facing hard times both as a society and individually.  Often, these moments of catastrophe or trauma seem insurmountable.

 Sarah Susanka believes it doesn’t need to be this way.  

These moments of extreme pain or loss may also be the time when your life shifts in a positive direction.  At first, we identify this negative experience as a bad thing, but it’s possible that out of this experience something wonderful may enter into your life.  This is how change happens.

“Change does not feel good, and feels grossly unfair,” says Susanka, “but the reality is that it’s moving out-of-the-way the stuff we don’t need anymore so we can become something new.”  She adds, “If you look at it without the judgment that this should not be happening, but instead, as new opportunity that’s coming in a guise that you don’t yet recognize, it doesn’t have all the pain attached to it.”

This attitude will allow “positive change to come into your life.”  Life offers surprises, unexpected joys, which can come into your life.  Susanka believes it’s marvelous when you’re not laying over all the frustrations, all the pain, all the ideas about how it’s supposed to be different.  “There’s so much richness to life that we miss because of our ideas about what’s supposed to be happening,” according to Susanka.

In Susanka’s Not So Big Life, she emphasizes that the most important thing to learn is how to be present in the moment.  When you can actually “show up in the moment” with whatever’s happening, then you’re enjoying life more than you could possibly in your normal, everyday way of being in the world.

Susanka points out that sometimes you’ll experience this feeling when someone really close to you dies.  It creates an intense experience of “right now.”  She says you experience everything as though it’s magnified.  Although this experience is attached to something very sad, you often realize that this is a very profound moment.  “The profundity comes from being in the moment.”  You are fully engaged in both love and loss, and you feel more alive than ever before.

Click here to view the embedded video.

 Surviving Cancer

In her personal life, Susanka dealt with breast cancer, and she’s experienced loss and suffering, yet she still considers her adversity to be a “gift.”

In the middle of her illness, she didn’t know what to call it. “One of the things that happens when you go through chemotherapy is that your energy is dramatically depleted.  What I hadn’t known until I hit this moment was that I depended upon my vitality to do whatever I wanted to do.  Without that vitality, I could barely walk to the mailbox to get the mail everyday.  It was an entirely new experience.

“If I was thinking, ‘Why is this happening to me?  This shouldn’t be happening to me!  I’m in pain!  I’ve lost the things that make me…me.’  I could create for myself a very miserable experience.  But, it was because of this experience, I discovered that I could also just be the way I was ‘Right Now’ without all the memories of how I was in the past.”

Susanka learned to experience life from a slowed-down perspective, and she viewed the world differently.  “I got to experience things that I couldn’t experience in any other way.  So, for me, the gift of that moment was to discover how much I had missed by always rushing because the busyness was occluding the reality, the moment.  This is what we all have the opportunity to see right now.”

The Gift of Hard Times

This is the gift of hard times:  the shock of your life changing dramatically forces you to deal with reality in a new way.  It provides you with “the opportunity of really showing up in life.”

Susanka emphasizes, “What happens in these moments is that you become aware of another person’s plight, and we reach out to each other in ways that usually don’t happen when things are hunky-dory.”  Amongst all the pain, we discover our humanity, our ability to care for each other.  Crises bring forward the best in human nature, allowing us to reach out to one another.

During hard times, it doesn’t feel good in the moment, but “if you can look with the eyes of a student, everything can teach you.”  Susanka believes if you look within these very difficult times, to what you can learn from this moment, that you may discover things completely outside of your awareness.  At times like this, people help one another.  We reach out for one another, and we discover that we are always supported when we are open to that support.

Susanka points out, “Trust is an important ingredient.  If we say to ourselves, ‘This will never work.  Or, I can’t do this.  Or, I’m not good enough.  Or, I’m hopeless at this.’  All of this undermines trust in the moment and trust in yourself.”  She continues, “What you need to see is that in each moment of your life, the nutrients for your own spiritual growth, your own maturing, surround you all the time but you usually get in the way of being able to see them.

Susanka suggests that you “get out of the way” and allow the things that come into your life to influence you, then you’ll discover that “you’re perfectly taken care of.”  She continues, “It’s difficult but during hard times, you need to trust that the things around you are there for your own growth.  What matters are the people that you love.  It has nothing to do with things or material possessions.

“That’s such a revelation to us right now because so much of our lives we’ve been oriented toward the accumulation of stuff to prove that we’re getting somewhere or making it “up” some sort of hierarchy whether it’s in the job market or getting a degree or whatever your particular accomplishment or goal.  Even these things are not nearly as critical as literally being with the things in your life that are significant to you.

“They are almost always to do with people and relationships so we can feel our humanity reflected from the other humans that surround us.  I think more than anything else, when we can be with each other more completely…that’s where meaning resides.  When you can have a truly authentic relationship with somebody, there is nothing like it in this world.  That’s the kind of thing that allows us to grow in ways we can’t imagine.”