Is It Better to Walk or Run?

Walking and running are the most popular physical activities for American adults. But whether one is preferable to the other in terms of improving health has long been debated. Now a variety of new studies that pitted running directly against walking are providing some answers. Their conclusion? It depends almost completely on what you are hoping to accomplish.

If, for instance, you are looking to control your weight — and shallowly or not, I am — running wins, going away. In a study published last month in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, and unambiguously titled “Greater Weight Loss From Running than Walking,” researchers combed survey data from 15,237 walkers and 32,215 runners enrolled in the National Runners and Walkers Health Study — a large survey being conducted at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.

Participants were asked about their weight, waist circumference, diets and typical weekly walking or running mileage both when they joined the study, and then again up to six years later.

The runners almost uniformly were thinner than the walkers when each joined the study. And they stayed that way throughout. Over the years, the runners maintained their body mass and waistlines far better than the walkers.

The difference was particularly notable among participants over 55. Runners in this age group were not running a lot and generally were barely expending more calories per week during exercise than older walkers. But their body mass indexes and waist circumferences remained significantly lower than those of age-matched walkers.

Why running should better aid weight management than walking is not altogether clear. It might seem obvious that running, being more strenuous than walking, burns more calories per hour. And that’s true. But in the Berkeley study and others, when energy expenditure was approximately matched — when walkers head out for hours of rambling and burn the same number of calories over the course of a week as runners — the runners seem able to control their weight better over the long term.

One reason may be running’s effect on appetite, as another intriguing, if small, study suggests. In the study, published last year in The Journal of Obesity, nine experienced female runners and 10 committed female walkers reported to the exercise physiology lab at the University of Wyoming on two separate occasions. On one day, the groups ran or walked on a treadmill for an hour. On the second day, they all rested for an hour. Throughout each session, researchers monitored their total energy expenditure. They also drew blood from their volunteers to check for levels of certain hormones related to appetite.

After both sessions, the volunteers were set free in a room with a laden buffet and told to eat at will.

The walkers turned out to be hungry, consuming about 50 calories more than they had burned during their hourlong treadmill stroll.

The runners, on the other hand, picked at their food, taking in almost 200 fewer calories than they had burned while running.

The runners also proved after exercise to have significantly higher blood levels of a hormone called peptide YY, which has been shown to suppress appetite. The walkers did not have increased peptide YY levels; their appetites remained hearty.

So to eat less, run first.

But on other measures of health, new science shows that walking can be at least as valuable as running — and in some instances, more so. A study published this month that again plumbed data from the Runners and Walkers Health Study found that runners and walkers had equally diminished risks of developing age-related cataracts compared with sedentary people, an unexpected but excellent benefit of exercise.

And in perhaps the most comforting of the new studies, published last month in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology and again using numbers from the versatile Runners and Walkers Health Study, runners had far less risk of high blood pressure, unhealthy cholesterol profiles, diabetes and heart disease than their sedentary peers. But the walkers were doing even better. Runners, for instance, reduced their risk of heart disease by about 4.5 percent if they ran an hour a day. Walkers who expended the same amount of energy per day reduced their risk of heart disease by more than 9 percent.

Of course, few walkers match the energy expenditure of runners. “It’s fair to say that, if you plan to expend the same energy walking as running, you have to walk about one and a half times as far and that it takes about twice as long,” said Paul T. Williams, a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the lead author of all of the studies involving the surveys of runners and walkers.

On the other hand, people who begin walking are often more unhealthy than those who start running, and so their health benefits from the exercise can be commensurately greater.

“It bears repeating that either walking or running is healthier than not doing either,” Dr. Williams said, whatever your health goals.

For confirmation, consider one additional aspect of the appetite study. The volunteers in that experiment had sat quietly for an hour during one session, not exercising in any fashion. And afterward they were famished, consuming about 300 calories more than the meager few they had just burned.

well.blogs.nytimes.com

Making the Case for Eating Fruit

Experts agree that we are eating too much sugar, which is contributing to obesity and other health problems. But in the rush to avoid sugar, many low-carb dieters and others are avoiding fruits. But fresh fruit should not become a casualty in the sugar wars, many nutrition experts say.

Dr. David Ludwig, the director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Boston Children’s Hospital, said that sugar consumed in fruit is not linked to any adverse health effects, no matter how much you eat. In a recent perspective piece in The Journal of the American Medical Association, he cited observational studies that showed that increased fruit consumption is tied to lower body weight and a lower risk of obesity-associated diseases.

Whole fruits, he explained, contain a bounty of antioxidants and healthful nutrients, and their cellular scaffolding, made of fiber, makes us feel full and provides other metabolic benefits. When you bite into an apple, for example, the fruit’s fiber helps slow your absorption of fructose, the main sugar in most fruits. But fiber is not the full story.

“You can’t just take an 8-ounce glass of cola and add a serving of Metamucil and create a health food,” Dr. Ludwig said. “Even though the fructose-to-fiber ratio might be the same as an apple, the biological effects would be much different.”

Fiber provides “its greatest benefit when the cell walls that contain it remain intact,” he said. Sugars are effectively sequestered in the fruit’s cells, he explained, and it takes time for the digestive tract to break down those cells. The sugars therefore enter the bloodstream slowly, giving the liver more time to metabolize them. Four apples may contain the same amount of sugar as 24 ounces of soda, but the slow rate of absorption minimizes any surge in blood sugar, which makes the pancreas work harder and can contribute to insulin resistance; both increase the risk for Type 2 diabetes.

“If we take a nutrient-centric approach, just looking at sugar grams on the label, none of this is evident,” Dr. Ludwig said. “So it really requires a whole foods view.”

Fruit can also help keep us from overeating, Dr. Ludwig said, by making us feel fuller. Unlike processed foods, which are usually digested in the first few feet of our intestines, fiber-rich fruit breaks down more slowly so it travels far longer through the digestive tract, triggering the satiety hormones that tend to cluster further down the small intestines.

Another nutrition expert, Dr. Robert Lustig, a professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, who has called sugar “toxic” at high doses and fructose the most “actionable” problem in our diet, is still a fan of fruit. “As far as I’m concerned, fiber is the reason to eat fruit,” since it promotes satiety and the slow release of sugar. He adds a third benefit from fiber: it changes our “intestinal flora,” or microbiome, by helping different species of healthy bacteria thrive.

Neither doctor favors certain fruits over others. But Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center, said that “to maximize the benefit, you actually want a variety” of fruits. He advises “eating the rainbow,” since different colors signal different types of antioxidants and nutrients.

All three experts caution against choosing juice over whole fruit. While the best juice has nothing added, nothing subtracted, some important changes take place when you turn fruit into liquid. Chewing the whole fruit slows down consumption, Dr. Katz said, compared to when you “take an 8-ounce juice and just pour it down the hatch,” which not only makes it easier to ingest more calories, but releases fructose faster into the bloodstream.

Plus, he said, with juicing, “you reduce some of the metabolic benefit of the fiber by pulverizing it so fine; it changes the physical structure.” Commercially produced juices are particularly concerning since they are often filtered, removing fiber altogether. If you opt for juice, tossing whole fruit in a blender rather than squeezing it offers the best chance of retaining most of the fiber, vitamins and minerals.

Dried fruits also hold one of the main disadvantages of juices: volume. Dried fruit essentially concentrates the calories and sugar into smaller packets, making it easier to consume excess calories. But dried fruit is better than juice, Dr. Katz said, because it preserves the fruit’s cellular structure, along with the health assets that provides. And since dried fruit travels easily and does not rot, it can make the difference in eating any fruit at all.

Dr. Katz’s hierarchy? Fresh fruit, followed closely by dried fruit, with sweetened dried fruit a distant third, and juice in fourth place.

He said we should remember “a law we all learned from Aesop” and judge fructose “by the company it keeps,” fiber and all.

well.blogs.nytimes.com

The Unglamorous Truth About Ending Poverty: A Response to Peter Buffett

Dear Peter Buffett,

My heart started pounding four sentences into your Saturday New York Times op-ed piece. You condemned "Philanthropic Colonialism," and told us about donor meetings where the people pledging crumbs to fight poverty are often the same people creating it. I used to go to meetings like those, though a few levels down the food chain. I had to stop because they just made me too angry.

You said what many other donors and recipients see but are afraid to admit: the anti-poverty philanthropy boom is not reducing poverty, and might actually be perpetuating it. I couldn't wait to finish the article, and shared it with everyone I could, because I was just so happy that someone in your position was saying these things.

Then I read the rest. You said, "My wife and I know we don't have the answers, but we do know how to listen. As we learn, we will continue to support conditions for systemic change. It's time for a new operating system. Not a 2.0 or a 3.0, but something built from the ground up. New code. What we have is a crisis of imagination."

But you do have the answers. We all do. A proven solution has already pulled billions out of poverty. For the past few decades it has been staring us impatiently in the face as we somehow look right past it. The problem is that it's plain, simple and nowhere near as glamorous as a whole new operating system for humanity.

You identified Philanthropic Colonialism. I would like to identify another problem: Philanthropic Adventurism. You said, "Is progress really Wi-Fi on every street corner? No. It's when no 13-year-old girl on the planet gets sold for sex." After three years as a non-profit person in Silicon Valley, surrounded by techno-utopianism every day, your words had me thumping my desk saying, "Yes! Yes!"

The answer is not Wi-Fi on every corner. But neither is it "new code" dreamed up by bored venture capitalists -- or by people they pay. Philanthropic Adventurism is replacing sound thinking about poverty with unproven, ineffective -- but really "new" and adventurous -- ideas. These "new" ideas, however, are as old as philanthropy itself -- and bring adventure only to the philanthropists and their staff.

For centuries, all different kinds of people and movements have attempted to solve crises of production and consumption as though they were "crises of imagination" -- sometimes with no effect, but sometimes leaving a trail of destruction. Before taking care of basic industry and infrastructure, communist dictator Mao Zedong urged China to build an entirely new kind of economy from the ground up based on the "spontaneous genius of the people." Talk about a new operating system! Millions died. More recently, Mike Davis, in Planet of Slums, tells of how the global development establishment fell for fashionable anarchist theories of "small" and "decentralized" public housing, unnecessarily leaving hundreds of millions languishing in squalid slums. (Fortunately, most philanthropists kill no one, and at least employ a handful of people!)

So what is this obvious solution to poverty that is staring us in the face?

There are at least a few dozen countries where virtually no citizen has been sold for sex (to stick with your benchmark) for many decades -- or sold for anything else, or gone hungry, without health care, housing or education. Most eliminated poverty in a rapid push lasting sometimes just a single generation. They are countries as diverse as Spain, Germany, Finland, Greece, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. Not long ago -- 150, 100, 50 years -- all of those countries were even poorer than, say, Kenya is today. In the city (if there were cities), people lived in unimaginable slums. In the country, people frequently starved. Most families lost many of their children to illness, most were subject to extreme exploitation and violence from landlords, soldiers, criminals or all three.

How did they pull billions out of poverty so quickly? Unfortunately, the answer is totally unfashionable and will never, ever be discussed at hipster social venture forums. They all had one thing in common: the people in charge -- whether they were social democrats, conservative nationalists, communists or military dictators -- carried out programs of rapid economic development designed to give most people access to means of making a living.

But how did that do that? They built factories, railroads, universities and everything else required to make the things and do the things that go into a decent living (or were valuable enough to trade for them). Communists and dictatorships used various forms of force -- often brutal. Democrats and republicans (small d and small r) used the market and public-private partnerships. By hook or by crook, wherever eliminating poverty was one of the top few national priorities, it was eliminated.

Where backward elites were able to maintain Kleptocracy, those countries languished in extreme poverty and inequality. South Korea and the Philippines are often compared to show this. In 1945 the Philippines had a higher standard of living than Korea. But an old agrarian elite clung to power in the Philippines. In South Korea, on the other hand, the United States post-World War II occupation government carried out a radical land redistribution program that broke the back of the old agrarian landlord class and created a vibrant, broad middle class (the U.S. also tracked down and killed thousands of socialist leaders in a carrot-and-stick campaign to fend off communist revolution, which was all the rage at the time). With the aristocrats out of the way, capitalists, entrepreneurs and newly independent farmers charged ahead within a development plan enforced by a U.S.-installed military dictatorship. Soon, and after a transformation to democracy, South Korea was one of the richest countries in the world.

That story -- of a purely parasitic elite being replaced by one obsessed with national development, resulting in rapid reduction of extreme poverty and inequality -- has reoccurred over and over through democratic elections, democratic revolutions, communist revolutions, military coups and foreign occupations.

I am obviously not endorsing dictatorship by saying that sometimes dictatorships have eliminated poverty. My point is that a new political "operating system" has nothing to do with curing poverty. Poverty has already been eliminated under almost every kind of political system and local culture. It has also persisted, or gotten worse, under the same array of systems and cultures.

There is only one way to get rid of poverty on a large scale -- it's the only way that's ever worked in any country on Earth, at any time in history. It happens when political elites and peoples unite around the goal of economic development -- and manage to build the physical industry and infrastructure that people need to make a living.

You are worried about "more people getting to have more stuff." But there is a tendency for we who have too much to identify "too much" as the problem. How can scarcity of "stuff" be the problem, we ask, when Walmart shelves are bursting with junk everyone can afford and that nobody needs?

"Too much stuff," however, is an optical illusion, experienced only by relatively wealthy people. We are not living in a post-industrial "Internet age." Billions still lack access to the basics: food, housing, medicine and health care. What's true is there is no physical reason for this scarcity. The means of producing all those things could be expanded and spread around the globe easily -- if the people in charge really wanted to do it. That is exactly what happens in national development programs. In development pushes from South Korea to New Zealand to Finland, the consumer economy was aggressively suppressed for a generation or two in favor of building industry and infrastructure so that everyone could have the basics. This was a big part of the United States' own development story, and even one of the reasons we fought both the Revolution and Civil War.

Since most philanthropists, however, are living in their own Internet age (with computers and iPhones produced in sweat shops) they turn their nose up at boring solutions involving antiquated things like factories. "New thinking" is what made many of them rich -- why wouldn't it work for African villages?

Yes, industrialization has terrible side effects that are destroying the planet. Factories and machines that are spewing billions of tonnes of carbon every year must be physically rebuilt and replaced. This just adds one more urgent reason for going back to kind of intentional sweeping economic renewal that has already transformed much of the world.

The problem all this poses for philanthropists is clear: they cannot make sweeping national development happen by writing a check. No clique of billionaires has anywhere near the kind of money to pay for it. A recent proposal by Stanford civil engineers estimated it would cost 100 trillion dollars to completely replace the world's carbon economy. That's unthinkable for mere billionaires. But it's easily within reach by the governments of the world. Recently, for example, the United States alone effortlessly promised up to 15 trillion to bail out a handful of misbehaving banks.

National development plans happen when people take over their governments and demand national development. In America, with millions sliding back into poverty, and the second-worst polluting economy on Earth, we need to renew our economy fundamentally and on a massive scale. We also need to encourage, rather than punish, leaders in poor countries who want to do the same thing, even when that means striking a better deal for themselves (and a slightly more expensive one for us) in the global economy.

People in your position could do so much to make that happen.

Thank you for your courageous straight talk about the state of philanthropy. I hope none of this has sounded like criticism -- it isn't. All I'm saying is that if people like you, and other major philanthropic and business leaders took seriously these unglamorous truths about ending poverty, and spoke out about them, it would create the conditions for not just a new story, but a new political movement that would transform the world.

by Zack Exley

www.huffingtonpost.com

The Charitable-Industrial Complex By PETER BUFFETT

I HAD spent much of my life writing music for commercials, film and television and knew little about the world of philanthropy as practiced by the very wealthy until what I call the big bang happened in 2006. That year, my father, Warren Buffett, made good on his commitment to give nearly all of his accumulated wealth back to society. In addition to making several large donations, he added generously to the three foundations that my parents had created years earlier, one for each of their children to run.

Early on in our philanthropic journey, my wife and I became aware of something I started to call Philanthropic Colonialism. I noticed that a donor had the urge to “save the day” in some fashion. People (including me) who had very little knowledge of a particular place would think that they could solve a local problem. Whether it involved farming methods, education practices, job training or business development, over and over I would hear people discuss transplanting what worked in one setting directly into another with little regard for culture, geography or societal norms.

Often the results of our decisions had unintended consequences; distributing condoms to stop the spread of AIDS in a brothel area ended up creating a higher price for unprotected sex.

But now I think something even more damaging is going on.

Because of who my father is, I’ve been able to occupy some seats I never expected to sit in. Inside any important philanthropy meeting, you witness heads of state meeting with investment managers and corporate leaders. All are searching for answers with their right hand to problems that others in the room have created with their left. There are plenty of statistics that tell us that inequality is continually rising. At the same time, according to the Urban Institute, the nonprofit sector has been steadily growing. Between 2001 and 2011, the number of nonprofits increased 25 percent. Their growth rate now exceeds that of both the business and government sectors. It’s a massive business, with approximately $316 billion given away in 2012 in the United States alone and more than 9.4 million employed.

Philanthropy has become the “it” vehicle to level the playing field and has generated a growing number of gatherings, workshops and affinity groups.

As more lives and communities are destroyed by the system that creates vast amounts of wealth for the few, the more heroic it sounds to “give back.” It’s what I would call “conscience laundering” — feeling better about accumulating more than any one person could possibly need to live on by sprinkling a little around as an act of charity.

But this just keeps the existing structure of inequality in place. The rich sleep better at night, while others get just enough to keep the pot from boiling over. Nearly every time someone feels better by doing good, on the other side of the world (or street), someone else is further locked into a system that will not allow the true flourishing of his or her nature or the opportunity to live a joyful and fulfilled life.

And with more business-minded folks getting into the act, business principles are trumpeted as an important element to add to the philanthropic sector. I now hear people ask, “what’s the R.O.I.?” when it comes to alleviating human suffering, as if return on investment were the only measure of success. Microlending and financial literacy (now I’m going to upset people who are wonderful folks and a few dear friends) — what is this really about? People will certainly learn how to integrate into our system of debt and repayment with interest. People will rise above making $2 a day to enter our world of goods and services so they can buy more. But doesn’t all this just feed the beast?

I’m really not calling for an end to capitalism; I’m calling for humanism.

Often I hear people say, “if only they had what we have” (clean water, access to health products and free markets, better education, safer living conditions). Yes, these are all important. But no “charitable” (I hate that word) intervention can solve any of these issues. It can only kick the can down the road.

My wife and I know we don’t have the answers, but we do know how to listen. As we learn, we will continue to support conditions for systemic change.

It’s time for a new operating system. Not a 2.0 or a 3.0, but something built from the ground up. New code.

What we have is a crisis of imagination. Albert Einstein said that you cannot solve a problem with the same mind-set that created it. Foundation dollars should be the best “risk capital” out there.

There are people working hard at showing examples of other ways to live in a functioning society that truly creates greater prosperity for all (and I don’t mean more people getting to have more stuff).

Money should be spent trying out concepts that shatter current structures and systems that have turned much of the world into one vast market. Is progress really Wi-Fi on every street corner? No. It’s when no 13-year-old girl on the planet gets sold for sex. But as long as most folks are patting themselves on the back for charitable acts, we’ve got a perpetual poverty machine.

It’s an old story; we really need a new one.

www.nytimes.com

Angela Ahrendts Commencement Address Transcript

This is one speech I could not have missed. On 8 May 2010 Angela Ahrendts, Chief Executive Officer of Burberry, returned to her alma mater, Ball State University in Indiana, to give this beautiful commencement address.

Thank you so much for inviting me back to celebrate with you today. Thank you President Gora, Professor Whitaker, who is retiring after 34 years of inspiring students at Ball State. Thank you faculty, staff, students, family and friends, I can honestly say that speaking with you today is one of the greatest honors of my life.

It has been 29 years since I last studied here. Yes, for those of you quickly doing the math, I will celebrate my 50th birthday next month, 50 (or as my teenage son likes to say, a half century). So, thank you also for providing the stimulus to truly stop, reflect, and take account of the great lessons of my blessed life so far. This speech-writing journey is the best 50th birthday present I could be given. Entitled ‘From the Heart’, it’s my gift back to you.

Our Web chat three weeks ago brought back many great memories and one of you reminded me of my college job at the Muncie Mall. One day you are studying and selling albums at Musicland and the next thing you know, 30 years have passed and you receive a beautiful letter from your university President asking you to summarize your life’s journey in three simple thoughts for 14,000 people in 20 minutes! It has been quite a journey, (not just the last three decades), but the last few months since I agreed to speak.

Maybe our lives have been in parallel this final semester. I have been dreaming, thinking, praying, about what I could possibly say that would resonate with you, touch you, and perhaps make a difference in the next three decades of your life. I imagine your last few months have not been dissimilar as you finish exams, term papers, job search, and dream of your future. It’s a bit unsettling. This speech writing process has been somewhat like writing my final term paper, and ironically, I’ve felt like the student and you’re now the grading professor. So, go easy on me, and think of it more like American Idol, and I’ve already won, and am just back to entertain and inspire you today.

This speech-writing journey forced me to stop and reflect, in a way I haven’t done in years. Was there a professional story I could recall that would broaden your perspective? Was there a compelling strategic secret I could share that might jump-start your path to success? Recognizing some of the pressures you face—the constraints of a soft economy and challenges of the digital revolution—I have not taken this assignment lightly and thinking about this question has required much time

So, I apologize to my husband and kids, as the process took too many preciousweekends away from them, but their sacrifice allowed a great discovery. I realized that the most vital component of my life that has guided every aspect of my professional career is my Character, and its Midwestern “Core Values”.

Do you realize you may already possess the foundation of your success? You might have the answer to the most important test question in life. What if you could answer it now and use it to your advantage versus mid-life? The game changing question is, do you truly know what your Core Purpose in life is, your fundamental reason for existence, and can you clearly articulate your Core Values, your guiding principles? I love the way management guru Jim Collins phrases it for business, he says a “Core Purpose is your reason for being, it captures your soul, with the primary role to guide and inspire. You cannot fulfill a purpose, it is like a guiding star on the horizon—forever pursued, but never reached.” Walt Disney’s Core Purpose is simple: “to make people happy”. Burberry’s is more expansive: to Protect, Explore and Inspire. What is your Core Purpose, your “life book” profile?

Your Core Values are the soul mate of your Core Purpose and are your purest beliefs, your conscience and convictions. They rarely change throughout your life. “We live by what we believe, not by what we see.” Identifying your Core Values early in life will help provide clarity into the type of organization you want to work for, the type of people you want to be with, and the type of leader you aspire to be.

Let’s consider this from a less theoretical perspective. If you think your college years have flown by, just wait until someone is actually paying you to do what you love! I enjoy meeting with students as they have visited over the years in New York, and now London and interviewing recent graduates as they tell me all they have done during their university years, and how hard they have worked. I remind them that they were paying the school to learn and work that hard, and ask them if they will learn and work as hard if our company is paying them? I also remind them that their great education is what got them the interview, but it is who they truly are that will get them the job. Getting to understand a person’s character—sometimes in less than an hour—is a critical part of making sure a candidate is culturally compatible.

When I think of my Core Values, I think of my parents. My father, who in my mind is one of this generation’s greatest philosophers, used to constantly remind me that “you can teach people anything, but you can’t teach them to care.”  Caring or compassion is a Key Value. Growing up I was always told to put myself in the other person’s shoes, to be aware and sensitive of my impact on others.

With Mother’s Day tomorrow, it is only fitting to acknowledge what a powerful force my mother has been. Whenever I would ask her if something were okay, or fine, she would consistently reply, “I didn’t raise you to be fine.” I’m sure Jim Collins was inspired by my mom when, in his book, “Good to Great,” he says, “good is the enemy of great”, and that “few people attain great lives, in large part because it is so easy to settle for a good life”. Being the best I could be was a Core Value she instilled in me from a young age. Along with this, she would constantly remind me that “God helps those who help themselves,” and the importance of faith.

Another Core value is Humility. My dad would always say, “When you look at a photo do you see yourself last?” and then would remind me of a line from Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem “If”. “…or neither walk with Kings— nor lose the common touch…” Funny, I always thought this extreme improbable, but about six months ago I was honored to sit next to Prince Charles, the future king of England, during a formal dinner at Buckingham Palace. After talking with him throughout the evening, and then returning to my daily work routine the following morning, this life lesson became real.

So, with the focus on your left brain, or your education, the last few years, you may not have given much thought to right brain Core Values. But with the world moving and changing so fast, they are your foundation. They offer confidence and peace and their significance and influence should never be compromised in anything anyone sees from you off or on line. The fact that the Core Values which were developed many years prior to actually being on my own at Ball State, are still the guiding force in my life today was an epiphany that only took me 20 years of youth, 30 years of experience, and five months of reflecting to discover for you today. These could be your most important assets, your differentiator in this digital age. If you can clearly articulate the answer to this question early in life, it could be your best shortcut to success.

While Core Values are your foundation there are many other emotional facets such as dreams and passion, fear and insecurity, underpinned by heart and faith that provide additional guidance and inspiration as your career commences.

This speech-writing journey also serves to amplify a few of these emotional drivers. Again, take when I received President Gora’s letter asking me to speak. After recovering from the initial shock—I mean, I’m not David Letterman—I quickly fell into what I call the Dream phase.  Megan, if you are still with me, this section will hopefully answer your web chat question.

The Dream phase is that wow moment that lets your imagination see everything so positively. It’s a state of euphoria, cloud nine, the infatuation stage of a new relationship. You know the feeling. This dream state is a little surreal; you are not thinking, or purely feeling, both are fused creating an energy that fuels your imagination. Dreams are your most exciting thoughts, your future life in 3D, and by envisioning in your mind you are creating your life roadmap. “Whatever we focus on, we become”. At Burberry, our catwalk shows are Chief Creative Officer Christopher Bailey’s seasonal dreams. They inspire both art and commerce, and help us see beyond our self-imposed boundaries. These shows also demonstrate for dreams to become reality, they must be backed by passion and persistence, be channeled and largely immune to external opinions and obstacles. As author Napoleon Hill says, “This changed world requires practical dreamers who can and will put their dreams into action.”

The Dream phase can also include the occasional nightmare. That insecure state when some part of your mind conveniently reminds you of everything you don’t know, exposing with brutal clarity the full reality of the situation. Again, take this speech, why did the letter have to say live, to 14,000 people, that it is the University’s greatest tradition, and the most memorable day of your life!

I have learned over the years that just as the dream phase is critical, the intermittent nightmare is perfectly normal. Hill also stated almost 100 years ago “that if you take inventory of mental assets and liabilities you will discover that our greatest weakness is lack of self-confidence,” and ”the subconscious mind will translate into reality a thought driven by fear just as readily as it will translate into reality a thought driven by courage or faith.” It is how well you manage your fear that determines the outcome of your dream.

In this insecure phase I become a curious student again. So what to do with the commencement speech? Of course I turned to Google and spent the next few weeks reading everyone’s from Oprah Winfrey to Steve Jobs, politicians, academics and artists. I also read the experts’ advice: what’s appropriate, what’s not, how to organize, how long, who to thank, and the fact that the majority of you will not remember most of what I’ve said once the graduation song begins. Fear is simply a state of mind that, managed proactively, makes you more aware, and in time much more astute to subtle shifts going on around you. Fear of failure has been a frequent motivator, and helped keep me passionate, objective, and focused on achieving the desired result.

So, having confused yourself with the facts, you passed the nightmare phase. Your mind is sufficiently sharp. Your confidence is back, and you begin to systematically think through the solution. With the rational options in front of me, my mind at peace, I’ve learned at this stage to turn off my head and turn on my heart.

You see, if your dreams are your road map, your heart is your true guide. The intuitive, feeling heart will never mislead you, in work, a relationship, or with family. In this digital age we are seemingly hardwired to over-think our way through life, and, almost instinctively to look outside for heartfelt answers instead of within ourselves. We are bombarded with information 24/7 and spend too much time responding to others rather than listening inward. Technology has given us access to the world and its sea of content, allowing us to never speak to another person if we don’t want to. Computers and smart devices are among the greatest intellectual gifts ever created for man, but if not balanced with human contact, may offer little to develop ones heart. Don’t get me wrong, I am mesmerized by this Digital Tsunami, but Google doesn’t have all the answers and are all those people on Facebook truly your friends? With Twitter and texting you can share sound bites, as I have with many of you the last few weeks, but they offer no substitute for real human interaction. In my many years of travel around this amazing planet, I have found that the heart is the one global language we all instinctively possess allowing us to communicate across genders, generations and cultures – at times only with our eyes, by a simple gesture or touch.

So with the world at your fingertips, have you learned to listen to your heart, your intuition and your instincts? Have you learned to feel what others will feel before you say a word? Do you understand the lasting impact of a smile, or a simple thank you? Do you truly “do unto others as you would have them do unto you?” Your heart is your guiding force, teach yourself to listen to it, nurture it, and let it guide as you start this next exciting chapter of life.

This reflecting has brought back my early chapters vividly. I grew up about an hour from here in the small town of New Palestine, Indiana where I lived vicariously through fashion magazines. My dream at an early age was to be in the fashion industry. I dreamed day and night, night and day, so much so my father would tell me to take off my “rose colored glasses”. I was dreaming, then began praying, and soon began believing I could make it, but how?

My belief was encouraged by small things, coincidences, and signs all around me. The first was in the form of a little book called “As A Man Thinketh,” which fell into my teen lap. To this day I have no idea why I began reading it, but it taught me early on the power of positive thinking, and that the inner thoughts you choose and encourage weave both your inner character and your outer circumstances. Then, larger signs appeared, like the ones I ran into on an early campus visit with my older, smarter sister, who had chosen to attend Ball State. They described upcoming merchandising and marketing program(s). As a student in that program the following year, I don’t believe it was a coincidence that I attended the summer fashion [course] in New York. Where, for the first time, I had a behind-the-scenes view of all the things I’d been dreaming about all those years. With that visit, I fell in love. There was no looking back.

After three and a half fast and fulfilling years, in 1981 I left college for New York City, or, as Alicia Keys so brilliantly sings, “The concrete jungle where dreams are made of”. Classes ended and I flew out the next day, with nothing but my Core Values, dreams, heart and faith— combined with a great education. I was scared, trust me, but knew I was not alone and kept repeating to myself “I will not live my life saying I wish I would have”. At the airport that day, my dad was trying desperately not to cry, and my mom just kept asking when I would be coming home. Finally, as I was boarding the plane, I turned, and blurted out my lifelong dream. I said “After I become the President of Donna Karan, I’ll be home”. So of course as realistic moms do, she prepared for a long absence. About 10 years later, I was sitting in my new office on Seventh Avenue when the phone rang. Who else, but mom? She said, “Congratulations, you are now President of Donna Karan, when are you coming home”?  That’s when I realized dreams have no boundaries if you learn to read the signs of life.

A more recent story begins four years ago when Christopher Bailey, then head designer, and I sat in New York sharing our thoughts of what we would do if I moved to London to be the CEO of Burberry. We talked about creating a great company, the kind of company we both always dreamed of working for, and creating the greatest democratic luxury brand in the world, with the most innovative merchandising and digital marketing strategies. We dreamed of establishing the Burberry Foundation so we could help less fortunate young people realize their creative dreams. [During the conversation, Christopher and I also recognized the similarity of our Core Values.] On our first Christmas card we proudly printed Winston Churchill’s famous quote: “You make a living by what you get, you make a life by what you give”.

Burberry’s annual reports describe the key strategies underlying the company’s strong financial results during the first 2.5 years. But the deeper secret to our early success was that 6,000 associates worldwide were dreaming the same dream. Then again, as life would have it, in 2008 the world was rocked by this extensive economic disruption. This could have deeply shaken the team, our company. But with our core values as the foundation, our dream so clear, our hearts so connected, it is not a coincidence that Burberry recovered quickly, and more united than before the crisis.

I know I have made it sound easy—if you dream it, it will come— but I have learned that there is sunshine and rain (and in London, sleet). Without the dark clouds you don’t truly appreciate the bright day. Every graduating class is confronted with its particular tests. In my case, I left Ball State in 1981 at the start of the worst post-war recession, prior to this one. This was also an era in which women contended for equal status in a male-dominant workplace. You face a difficult economic environment and onset of the digital revolution with all its advantages and challenges. Remember, individual opportunities are always present if you have a dream, truly know yourself and focus on the things you can control. Back to Kipling’s famous poem, “… if you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same”.

In writing this speech, I have looked backward to guide you forward. Today, you have heard a little of my journey, along with the wisdom of poets, philosophers, proselytizers and my parents. Many of them wrote early in the last century (not you, Dad). I find their perspectives insightful and invaluable and often missing from today’s headlines.

As you leave the comforts of campus and enter the real world, learn to share your values, dreams and heart with others. College is an individual endeavor, where the broader world is a team sport. The more honest and open you are about yourself, the faster you will connect and cut through the competitive clutter. School has sharpened your IQ and rewarded you with a degree today; life will require you to master your EQ, which will reward you with success in its many expressions.

Thank you again for the opportunity to speak today. As a commencement speech was never in my wildest dreams, I have been diligently working alongside you this final quarter. Our web chat, your Tweets, the focus on today’s message have helped bring me more in tune. Encouraging you has inspired me at this stage of life’s journey and resulted in the greatest 50th birthday gift I could receive.

Thank you, and in turn, I hope you feel my heart’s gift to celebrate your amazing achievement and that you dream even larger (this is your life’s roadmap), conquer your greatest fears (they are simply a state of mind), and listen with an amplifier to your heart and faith (as these are your greatest guides). And never forget your Core Values. They can be your greatest asset, along with a brilliant Ball State education.

Congratulations graduates. You are now global citizens. So remember, the universal language is not texted, emailed or spoken. It is felt.   Good luck, as you continue life’s amazing adventure and I look so forward to reading your commencement speech someday.

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