Why Getting Head Lice Is the Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me
The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve. - Albert Schweitzer
The Kids Wanted to Make Sure I Didn't Forget Them
Thanks to donations from my readers, seven Guatemalan students will go to high school, three villages have school supplies, one has a new refrigeration system for soy milk, 60 villagers ate meat, and 140 kids got ice cream. I also think I have lice, but I couldn't be happier!
Newly returned from one-week service vacation to the center of Guatemala, I urge you all to give this experience a try. I went through an Austin-based organization called Cultural Embrace, and came back more renewed than I ever would have had I spent a week sitting on a beach or skiing down a mountain.
So many moments playing like a movie in my head now, making me smile – like for example one of my last days, I went to visit the home of a little girl named Wesley because she wanted to show me “her tree.” When we got there, I watched her reach into her pocket and pull out a wad of cheese from the pizza we’d had earlier at the orphanage. She’d saved the best part to give her little brother!
Such generosity among these kids, such joy – and in that, so much hope for the future, despite so many challenges. While I was in El Hato, the village where we donated scholarships, I had an eye-opening moment. Early on in the visit, without even thinking about it – just making the kind of silly conversation adults make with kids – I asked the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” None of the kids really had an answer. It was shyness around this strange American, in part. But it was also because no one had ever really asked them to create a vision for their future.
I was so floored that I actually led the kids through a kind of mini-seminar on the spot – what was essentially an extremely distilled version of some of the work I deliver to global corporations, I kid you not. They happily worked together on goals and ideas for the future in small groups, with an intermission half way through to raid the ice cream truck – actually, a bike with a big ice chest strapped on and a boom box blaring the familiar tinkle of an ice cream truck.
When we came back together, I was amazed at these kids’ new confidence as they spoke to an audience (with foreigners even) about their individual visions. You could sense the support and confidence from the parents that surrounded the children in the room. The experience was a moment of universality – true flow – where I felt my work moving into an entirely new dimension.
This year I plan to try to find a local service project each time I’m on a business trip, especially the international ones, like I did recently in Israel, where I worked with Israeli and Palestinian kids while there for a corporate engagement. I’ll also continue to spend vacation time doing service. Finally, I plan to make service even more core to our team cohesion work, inside FG and in our work with other companies.
I urge everyone to find a way to work service into your professional life – with your team, your clients, and your friends. If you want to improve your relationships, SERVE and serve deeply. Start wherever, but do it. You will learn vulnerability and intimacy, you will learn generosity, and it will drive a level of courage for accountability and candor that will enhance everything you do.
The most profound gift that’s coming back with me from Guatemala (besides the head lice!) is the reminder that serving others creates an accelerated learning path for personal growth. Pity – remote and passive and isolated – resolves to empathy. We learn so quickly that people are more similar than they are different, and that's a lesson to bring home: simple human empathy through service.
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Keith Ferrazzi is an expert on relationship development, a world-renowned speaker and the #1 New York Times Bestselling author of Never Eat Alone and Who's Got Your Back.-
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What a great thought to end the blog... Pity resolves to empathy. As someone who has served in western europe and southwestern Africa in the past, I can attest to that, and even more... after you have empathy, it can be very frustrating to see others have pity (as you put it, "remote and passive and isolated."
Great post, Keith... keep up the good work!
Keith, you have found your calling!
Great post, Keith! Thanks for reminding us that serving people in other countries can be as easy as a vacation. But much more rewarding...and life changing.
It wasn't the chilly Chicago air that gave me goosebumps this morning, it was reading this. What a great experience! Keith, thank you for everything you do, you are truly an inspiration.
Hello!
I stumbled upon your blog while looking for more info about your two books (one's on it's way to my mailbox!). Your posts are insightful, thought-provoking and motivating, which makes me more excited to read your books.
I've been serving pretty much all my life, whether through church, schools, nonprofits and community centers. I wish my friends served more and can see the true importance and benefits of serving, but I never really knew how to push them, without really pushing them. I'll be forwarding your post along to them, b/c you've put into words what I've always wanted to say. Especially this part: "Start wherever, but do it. You will learn vulnerability and intimacy, you will learn generosity, and it will drive a level of courage for accountability and candor that will enhance everything you do."
Thank you!
Keith,
Your title caught my attention and I thought it was going to have something to do with corporate business/motivation.
Sometimes we need to get back to basics and take a look around us to see where we can help others to make this world of ours a better place to live. We take so many things for granted. For instance, when you said you asked the kids what they wanted to do when they grew up and none of them had ever been asked that question before. That amazed me.
I try to live by the phrase "Do unto others as you would have done to you." Help others, treat others with respect, and learn from them.
You have inspired me to do more for my community. Thank you!
Great Read!!! Very inspirational!
I worked on a community dev project in the mountains of Guatemala many years ago and, because of what it did for my personal development, I still advocate to this day that every single American should volunteer in a 3rd world country to gain a better understanding of how the world lives - to walk over that bridge that divides us all - as you say, Keith, 'empathize,' - to make the world a truly better place and refuse to look at the world through politically and culturally tainted binoculars from distant, ignorant, pitying, resentful and elitist shores.
You put it so well, Keith, in terms of what the effects of walking that bridge can do. I used to think that a mandatory, 2 or 3 year military service for EVERY post-high school graduate would go a long way to accomplishing this - overseas service would be required and a Peace Corp type service would be incorporated into this miliary service. But now I also think that perhaps the private sector could accomplish this goal. Best to you, Keith.
Keith, I'm from Guatemala and I thank you for sharing this experience. Guatemala was faced by a dirty long Civil War and many families/kids were left with a lot of suffering. Any help is always greatly appreciated!
We met once in SF during your WGYB Book Tour and you invited me to dinner, thanks again for the experience! Continue doing what you're doing.