LIFE LESSONS FROM A MEXICAN-AMERICAN POLITICIAN

This last weekend I was in Mexico City for the National USANA Conference getting trained (along with 10 thousand associates) on online entrepreneurship, new anti-aging technologies in skin care and how to help more people be healthy.

One of the guest speakers was Rosario Marin. I didn’t know who she was before that day and now I can’t wait to learn more about her life and read her book “Leading Between Two Worlds”. Rosario Marin was the 41st treasurer of the United Stated. What’s impressive is that she’s the only foreign-born Treasurer of the United States. She was born in Mexico and came to the U.S. at age 14.

After graduating high school her parents decided that her brother would go to college full-time and work part-time and that she would work full-time and, if she wanted, she could go to college part-time. It took her 8 years to get her bachelors.

After many years, Rosario and her husband had a child that was born with Down syndrome this is when she decided she wanted to fight for better laws for children with disabilities, and got involved in politics. She’s a very inspiring woman and I want to share the 3 things I learned from her. These three things, she says, are what made her a good politician and led her to be the Treasurer of the United States.

Always do the right thing

It’s easy to do the right thing when everyone is watching. If we want to have a fulfilling life, we need to do what’s right when nobody is watching. As Gabriel Garcia Marquez says, “Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life and a secret life” and I think the key to well-being is to make sure we’re the same person in all three of our lives. Not that we have to share our secrets with the world, but we need to make sure that our values are the same publicly and privately.

Give your best

How you do the little things is what defines you. If you do the little things right, you’re creating the habit of doing all things with excellence. Give it your best, no matter how small the task is. We can all have individual life goals, but our collective mission is to leave this world better than how we found it. And you can leave the world better than what you found it in everything you do: when you go to work, when you cook for your family, when you talk to a friend.

The golden rule, but better

The golden rule is: do onto others, as you would have others do onto you. What Rosario proposes is that we do onto others, as we would have others do onto someone we love. Treat others, as you want your mom, brother, daughter to be treated. It’s easy to be kind to your boss, your superior, someone you admire and people in your church. But this golden rule is more inclusive; it makes me think if I’m kind to the homeless man asking for money, to my subordinates, to someone that I see as “inferior in status”. This year, I want to cultivate kindness in my life and this new golden rule is a perfect reminder.

Over to you: tell me which lesson hit home for you and how you want to apply it in your life.