John Hope Bryant

Bryant Snippets: John Hope Bryant Speaks at the Healthways Well-Being Summit 2013

Watch live streaming video from healthways at livestream.com

 

Huffington Post: Obama Speaks as Father-In-Chief at Morehouse College Commencement

By Ambassador Andrew J. Young, chairman, Andrew J. Young Foundation, and John Hope Bryant, chairman, Operation HOPE

It's hard to evaluate the impact of a commencement speech.

George Marshall (1944) announced the Marshall Plan at Harvard University and changed the world in 20 minutes.

Tom Mboya, as a 29 year-old young African (Kenyan) leader in 1959, at Howard University helped inspire the American sit-ins by his presence alone. Walter Young was in that graduating class from Howard University's dental school.

Jimmy Carter gave the Morehouse commencement as governor of Georgia, and said as he received his honorary degree in 1975, that he expected he would be the first Morehouse man as president (of the United States), but "I promise you I will not be the last."

Obama by his own appearance, as President of the United States, in front of 10,000 graduates, family and alumni on a rainy day in Georgia fulfilled that promise, but may have also inspired a new generation of leaders to return to, and to rebuild their own communities; and their own families too. The president did a good job connecting to this new generation of young people.

In today's complicated political and economic environment, nothing truly significant can happen in just one generation. Obama lit a fire for generations to come.

Read, share and comment on the complete article on the Huffington Post here.

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John Hope Bryant 'Love As Work' Quote of the Day

If I don't like me, I'm not going to like you.
If I don't respect me, It's hard for me to respect you.
If I don't love me, I don't know how to love you.
If I don't have a purpose of my life, I'm going to make your life a living hell.


John Hope Bryant

On Life: Defining Disease

Let me start by saying I am not a medical professional, and on the topic of the medical sciences, I hold zero credentials. I know nothing in the medical sciences which can be relied on.

That said, I believe this -- most disease is not disease at all (in its origins).  It is dis-ease, that turns into disease.

We are all 70% water. That is our makeup, and yet we obsess about the physical body.

We are, to quote author Deepak Chopra, "not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings, having a human experience."

To quote David Brooks in Social Animal, "the human mind can take in 11 million pieces of information at any given moment.  The most generous estimate is that people can be consciously aware of forty of these." Brooks goes on to note that "some researchers have gone so far as to suggest that the unconscious mind does virtually all the work and that conscious will may be an illusion."  He concludes this section by noting "the conscious mind merely confabulates stories that try to make sense of what the unconscious mind is doing of its own accord."

On Life: God Doesn't Kill People. People Do.

Today I was speaking with one of my HOPE Team members, who recounted a story to me of a friend who had passed, and the subsequent conversation with that friend's parents.  The parents, were obviously and understandably in grief over their loss.  The question though, that one of the parents asked the priest, got me thinking about a larger issue.  The parent asked, "if there is a God, why did he take my child?"

It is a good question, but in my view, respectfully the wrong one.  God gave life, breath and discernment to mankind.  God gave this one creation of His -- this one 'animal' in His Kingdom -- the ability to think, reflect, to love, to grow and to evolve in our consciousness.  To the point, I want to say again, God gave us consciousness.  

He put us in charge of His planet, and asked us to do a good job taking care of it.  

He also put us in charge of the other animals, and asked us to be responsible to and for them too.

Importantly, He also asked us to take care of "the least of these God's children."

The short version here, is that God placed his children -- mankind (and of course this is shorthand for mankind and womankind) -- in charge of things.  Most important of all, He gave us free will.

To do as we like.  

To select the red pill, or the blue one.

To go left in life, or to go right.

To do the right thing, or to do something else altogether.

John Hope Bryant 'Love & Spirituality' Quote of the Day

"We die to ourselves, spiritually, emotionally and psychologically -- before we ever die physically. We give up our hope, and then slowly, the energy of our lives oozes away...piece by piece...until anything we recognize of our original selves is gone. Regain your hope, to recapture your life."


John Hope Bryant

A Mother's Day Tribute, and a Rose, for A Mother-Leader to us All

 

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On April 27th, 2013, the King Center unveiled the Coretta Scott King commemorative rose, and I was honored and pleasantly surprised to return home from one of my many trips to find two of the beautiful roses at my home.

The roses were a gift from my friend and HOPE board member Dr. Bernice A. King, CEO of the King Center (a post once held by her mother), and destined for a special planting location in my private park here in Atlanta, Georgia. But as I reflected on the Coretta Scott King commemorative Rose, I also began to reflect on the woman.  The woman, as leader, mother, wife, keeper of the King legacy flame.  I decided I had to write something in honor of her, on this special day.

Huffington Post ~ On Leadership: Sunburned Black Folks

John Hope Bryant

Bestselling business leadership author and philanthropic entrepreneur

 

This just makes me smile, because it completely neutralizes the backwards theory of and around this crazy thing called race and racism.

While in the Bahamas for an event recently, I noticed that I was actually sunburned. Let me note here, that I am proudly African American. My deepest roots come from mother Africa, so no way I thought, would I ever be sunburned. Black folks are built for the sun. That's true, if I were 100 percent African.

The reality is (thanks to African-Ancestry I know this), just like my friend and mentor Quincy Jones, I am 71 percent Cameroon, but I found that I am also 26 percent European, and the rest is Asian, Indian and 'other.' That means that what I really am, to quote Quincy, is "Global Gumbo." I'm a rich mixture of the broad texture of our world, and in all likelihood, so are you.

Or take our president, the Honorable Barack Obama. In the Black community we refer to him proudly as "Black," when in reality, he is Black African (his father from Kenya), White European (his mother), and was raised in part culturally Hawaiian and Indonesian, and then moved to the South Side of Chicago. So, what and who is President Obama, actually, if not a global reflection of all of us? A man for our times, really. Global Gumbo, thank you Quincy J.

We are all in this together.

Read the complete article on the Huffington Post here.

 

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My Word for 2013

Every year I pick a word, just one, that represents my goal for that year. What everything else for me, is all about. Previous words have included:

....Intentionality in 2011 (thank you Atlanta Mayor Reed. His word, he told me Christmas, 2010, was to be 'intentional,' and I immediately connected with that, but went a step further, with 'intentionality.').

....Balance in 2012

...Authenticity before that, and so on, and so on.

My word for 2013, is Empowered.

Once you have drained the negative energy (and people) out of your life and environment, filled that space with authenticity and goodness, been focused and specific about what you want next, and then made moves to achieve that.

Once you have taken steps to "reset" your life and environment, so that all of the pieces come back into it with a sort of balance --- then it is time to MOVE FORWARD, boldly in the direction of your dreams.

To fulfill the mandate and aspirations of your higher self.
To be a servant, and of service, to both society and your own soul.
To live your truth, with no regrets, and no looking backwards.
To create the life, environment, and to the extent possible, the world -- you want to live in.
The world you want your children to see, to feel, and to be bathed in the backdrop of.

This is the essence of my new commitment. My word for 2013, Empowered.

You will see a lot of it as I move through the balance of my year, integrated into the whole of what I do, what I am about, my life's journey...

What is your word for today, this week, this month, this year? What are you about, beyond paying your bills, going to work, coming home (assuming you are blessed enough to have either or both), and doing the things on your to-do list today?

Answering these questions, for yourself, is the essence of living a fulfilled life.

Okay, let's to......

John Hope Bryant

Rich Food for the Soul ~ Images and Voices of Global Dignity Day, Brazil, 2013

 

Last year I traveled at the invitation of our Global Dignity Brazil Country Chair, Young Global Leader Ms. Christina Lopes, to participate in their Global Dignity Day celebrations in and for Brazil (more than 50 countries participated on October 17th, 2012 around the world).  I had no idea what I was in for, but when you witness the spirit of the energy of these young people, you cannot help but to be moved.  I actually was hesitant to watch this video, because I knew that I would be both sad, and inspired at the same time. I knew I might cry.  All were true, but ultimately, I was left with an immense feeling of hope for them, for Brazil, and for our world.