One of the things I looked forward to most about my stay at Rancho La Puerta in Tecate, Mexico was an opportunity to have lunch with Deborah Szekely. Deborah and her husband, Edmond, founded Rancho La Puerta in 1940 as a health camp when she was just 17 years old. The goal was to combine the hiking spas in Germany and Scandanavia of the times and the old European spas. Primarily, it was a place to practice and teach the Essene Way of Biogenic Living and make healthy people healthier. Exercise and healthy, organic foods were the foundation of Rancho La Puerta then and still are 66+ years later. The importance of these things in our lives has only been broadly publicized and embraced in the last decade or two. Deborah established Golden Door in Escondido, California in 1958. She has helped thousands benefit from their experiences at these destination spas. Deborah has done much more. She has devoted her life to public service. She is the founder of the New Americans Immigration Museum and Learning Center. She founded Eureka Communities, a national leadership training program for CEOs of nonprofit organizations. She was president of the Inter-American Foundation, an independent agency of the United States government created by Congress to support self-help efforts of the poor throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. The list goes on...

In my short time with Deborah, I wanted her to share her secret to finding the mental and physical resources to create such a life of extra-ordinary philanthropy. When I asked Deborah what it takes to live a life of doing good works - more than the little things we can do every day - a step change, she replied, "It's a group effort. It's always more than one person. It starts with one's parents. My parents were very conscious of the needs of others. It becomes part of one's life... Where one can help people, one should. I've been very lucky in being able to see a vacuum and fill it and get other people to join with me. That's leadership, and leadership requires setting an example." We went on to discuss a variety of topics - the gardens at Rancho La Puerta, the new cooking school, the environment, processed foods, psychological calories, life priorities and more.

Later that evening, Deborah gave a lecture to the group. She held up clipping after clipping of articles from the past week written on topics that troubled her. I guess that's one way she finds vacuums that need to be filled. She talked about some of the same things we had discussed at lunch. She also provided a great time management tool. Like many of us, Deborah keeps a calendar of her appointments and activities. Once a week, she takes an hour or two to examine how she has used her time in the previous week. She marks each item on the calendar in one of five colors: