There is an abundance of beauty and good in the world, but it still has plenty of problems.

The world could be made better. Many of us would like to help build a better world, but taking on the whole world as a project can certainly seem overwhelming. Where does one even begin? And what can one person with simple resources actually do? Well, good news! There really is an easy answer! Listed below are five things that anyone can do to help build a better world. Now, the actual work may not be easy...but it will be challenging and rewarding. And it will also likely be a lot of fun. So let's get started. If you want to build a better world: OWN YOURSELF. Recognize that you are a sovereign and unique Individual and make the decision to own yourself in spirit, mind and body. Become the owner of your life and destiny and take personal responsibility for them. This essential decision will guide your other decisions in life, re-orienting and re-creating your existence around the principle of personal sovereignty. Recognizing the sovereignty of other Individuals provides the foundation for ethical social interactions. Owning yourself and recognizing the sovereignty of others are both ongoing processes. BECOME POWERFUL. Creating a better world requires the efforts of powerful Individuals. You can contribute to the new population of powerful Individuals by starting with yourself. Empower yourself physically by getting optimum nutrition and exercising for strength, flexibility and endurance. Empower yourself mentally by learning critical and creative thinking skills. Learn how to learn and seek more knowledge. Empower yourself emotionally by learning to appreciate and increase your Emotional Intelligence and by adopting an attitude of practical optimism in which you hope for the best in situations because you are actively seeking and creating the best. Empower yourself financially by learning money skills and how you can create and manage multiple streams of income. Learn to make the most of what you have. Use your skills and resources to seek, obtain and create new skills and resources. Cultivate beneficial personal and professional relationships. As you become powerful, you will have more opportunities to make a better world and greater capability to effectively act on those opportunities. CREATE VALUE. You can immediately begin to improve those parts of the world that you have immediate influence over. Organize, decorate and improve your own home and office or work space to be aesthetically pleasing and stimulating to you. You can also raise the environmental tone in these spaces by improving your own attitudes and interactions with others. Look for ways to create new value in your personal and work relationships. As a practical optimist, look for the good in each situation and expand it or look for the good that you can put into the situation. In your work, invent something new in your field, add some new innovation to the mix, find standards that you can raise or create a new field altogether. BE A MENTOR. Consider what you have achieved by owning yourself, becoming powerful and creating value and how you can help that process to replicate itself in the lives of others by acting as a mentor. A mentor is formally defined as someone who acts as a trusted counselor or teacher. Informally, a mentor is someone who draws out the potential in others and helps them to develop it. Formal opportunities for mentoring exist through mentoring organizations and career mentoring in the business world. Be a Big Brother or Big Sister or work with some other organization for youth mentorship. Contribute to organizations like Children First America or the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship or other organizations that help children and young adults become empowered and sovereign. Be an informal mentor to the Individuals in your life, especially the young. Give key books as gifts or donate them to libraries. Be a mentor in your workplace. In general, always be on the lookout for opportunities to share what you know about Self-ownership, becoming powerful and creating value. The Individuals that you mentor will often teach you new things about these processes through their questions and new insights. PROMOTE SPONTANEOUS ORDER. Spontaneous Order is the order that emerges spontaneously from the free interaction of elements within a system. Examples of Spontaneous Order include ecosystems, free economic markets and neural networks. Spontaneous Order allows for evolution through variation, feedback and adaptation. It is dynamic and tends toward abundance as many new and unexpected innovations and values emerge from its rich complexity. Within society, Spontaneous Order is promoted by supporting decentralized and voluntaristic social processes and by fostering Self-ownership, Individual liberty and diversity. Do some research on Spontaneous Order and learn more about it. Join the International Society for Individual Liberty, the Extropy Institute or other more personally resonant groups that promote Spontaneous Order. Perhaps you will become motivated to initiate your own project for promoting Spontaneous Order in a specific niche that is not already being given attention. Do create your own local group (formal or informal) for meeting face-to-face on a regular basis to share information, ideas and moral support on the topics of Self-ownership, becoming powerful, creating value, mentoring and promoting Spontaneous Order. Keep your eyes open for good "recruits" for this group as you do your mentoring. Do something in one of these areas at least once a day. Do something in each of these areas at least once a week. Be aware of the connections between the five areas and learn to maximize those connections in your actions. By doing all of this, you will

greatly improve your own life as well as making significant contributions to a better world on your own scale and from your own unique position. Be a "Johnny Appleseed" and spread this essay around to see faster results. Good luck and have fun!