Up from Nothing

Book excerpt: American opportunity is not dead. Bestselling author and entrepreneur John Hope Bryant outlines the mindset and practices that will allow us to achieve the American Dream, no matter what our current circumstances are. Americans have lost faith in their country. With job security disappearing and fewer glimpses of a better future, it can feel like we are barely surviving, much less thriving, in today's problematic economy. Americans want the "old" America back-- the America where opportunity comes knocking at the front door. But the real problem, John Hope Bryant says, is that we're forgetting that this is still the Land of Opportunity--a site of upward mobility, a place teeming with different ways to create and grow wealth. The opportunities of today are not only greater than the obstacles, but they are greater than they have ever been. What we need, he says, is a mindset shift--a way of recalibrating to recognize that there is still a bounty of resources for establishing entrepreneurship and success in this country. The first step for us, for America, is to remember our storyline--how, coming up from nothing, we established and harnessed the invincible American Dream.