Act As If

I was dismayed to find my (then) four-year-old daughter’s lovely dresses piled in a heap on the floor of her closet.  This was not the result of carelessness but a pointed demonstration of where her priorities lay. Just a few feet above the dresses, she had carefully hung her assortment of swimming suits, evenly spaced to fully occupy the prime real estate of her closet. 

Had she been left to her own resources, I can guess how she would have preferred to spend her Sunday afternoons.  Down came the swimsuits and back went the dresses. Thanks to our family culture of weekly church attendance and the welcoming friends and teachers we meet there, now there’s nowhere else she’d rather be.  My daughter came to love going to church so much that when she happens to feel sick on Saturday nights, she prays hard to feel well enough to go to church the next day.  It seems her prayers are always answered.

Our relationships and environment have a huge influence on how we live our lives.  Our success in reaching our goals has everything to do with how effectively we arrange our environment and recruit people to support us in our efforts.

I am very inspired by a woman I learned about while reading Influencer:  The Power to Change Anything by Kerry Patterson et al.  Her story follows:

Mimi Silbert

(1942 –      )

“My job is to be the chief believer, to believe in them when they don’t believe in themselves,” says Mimi Silbert about the 1,500 ex-convicts who currently reside at one of her Delancey Street communities.  Over the past forty years, she has transformed 18,000 felons into upstanding contributors to society.

There are only two requirements for becoming a resident (slash-employee-in-training) of Mimi’s Delancey Street Foundation: to have hit bottom and to be willing to change. 

Mimi sees the people (commonly labeled as thieves, addicts, even murderers) she brings to her Delancey Street Foundation not as a “menace to society” but people who only need an opportunity to learn how to care about something besides themselves.  She teaches them to care by giving them real responsibilities, not only for themselves but for the success of other people.

Mimi creates a highly structured environment that holds people accountable for their actions.  As soon as her residents learn personal accountability, they are given responsibility to train someone else.  They become “team players” and build something bigger than themselves.

Delancey Street accepts no government funding and seeks no philanthropic aid.  Mimi has no staff other than her residents.   Though almost none of them had previously held a skilled job for longer than three months, they learn to be self-supporting and live off the profits of the businesses operated by the Delancey Street Foundation.

Half the people who dine at the Delancey Street Restaurant don’t realize it is fully staffed by ex-convicts until they read the back of their menu.  By then they’ve been so favorably impressed by the dignified maitre d’ and their gracious waiter, that they are sure their servers are exceptions. 

They aren’t. 

Mimi’s environment and the coaching relationships it fosters create a place where people who have been labeled “human garbage” can find their talents and soul.

We’re lucky in the fact that our people have hit bottom.

We ‘act as if’ we are all the things we want to become.

We ‘act as if’ we’re decent and caring and bright and talented.

And we eventually become those thing.

Mimi Silbert

Her story can influence everyone’s story when we learn to ‘act as if’ and build environments and relationships that help us find the “Gem in the Geode” of our lives.

Sources:

"The Mimi Silbert Story:  Re-cycling ex-cons, addicts and prostitutes,"  by Jerr Boschee & Syl Jones (http://www.socialent.org/pdfs/MimiSilbertStory.pdf)
See also http://www.delanceystreetfoundation.org/president.php to find several more links to televised spotlights and articles about Mimi Silbert.