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Chapter
Six - Part 2
What To Do
Next
Usually decisions
can only be proven by their results long after the fact. What
do you do until such time? You can wait, hoping that events will
stand still and allow you the luxury of doing nothing. Or, you
can plunge ahead knowing that real choices must be imperfect
approximations.
In the flawed world
of daily life, we must act as quickly as situations allow. Waiting
longer, while seemingly prudent, can sometimes be disastrous.
Be courageous. The willingness to risk a lifetime's reputation
on a single decision (which may be wrong) takes guts.
Can you face such
a prospect? Do you have the nerve to make choices which may influence
the lives around you, even if you do not have every bit of information
available? If so, you have the makings of a true leader. If you
don't, you are probably kidding yourself and would be better
off drifting back and staying in the ranks. If you do not have
a brave spirit, that is the best you can hope for. It is the
best you deserve.
But what if you do
not want to be a leader? Does this mean there is no way for you
to encounter and experience success? Not necessarily. Success
takes many forms. Some require leadership, but there are others
which do not.
Some people are compulsively driven to be a leader in every situation.
These people are not necessarily leaders. They could have psychological
problems that require sustained therapy. A better model is the
willingness to be a leader in some settings and to relinquish
it in others.
For example, an individual
might be very happy being a leader at work and enjoy turning
over the decision to another when they get home. This is a balanced
view of leadership and could certainly help create a happy and
flexible marital and family situation. Sharing leadership roles
is also another option. Here, the leader sometimes takes control
and at other times allows someone else to take the lead. The
responsibility is shared with others who step in when appropriate
and assist in making basic decisions, implementing policies and
generally making sure that original goals of the company, marriage,
or family are carried out. Each has a designated area of responsibility
and has the task of being certain that decisions within it are
made, carried through and then monitored. We would not want to
say that an individual willing to share the task of leadership
is thereby cut off from success, would we? Of course not. There
is a kind of success to be experienced only by those willing
to share in everything, including corporate-style decisions.
A special kind of pleasure comes from working with a functional
and efficient team. It does not end here.
There are many people
who simply do not savor the idea of leadership. While they enjoy
sharing responsibilities, perhaps, they are much more comfortable
carrying out the ideas of others. With them it is not just a
lack of nerve, they just do not like standing in the limelight.
This alone does not mean they cannot experience success, though
it does require redefining the term a bit. For these individuals,
success had more to do with ratification in the task than in
a need to define the task. They take full blame for failure and
most of the praise for a happy outcome, once the results are
in. Is there a special kind of success reserved for those with
qualities strong enough to be true leaders? Probably. But this
does not mean that others cannot experience their own kind of
success. There are plenty of kinds to go around.
It is only important
to find your kind of success and then direct your life in such
a way that you achieve it. Part of this requires you to get to
know yourself in terms of your basic motives, goals and ideas.
Are you meant to be a team player? Are you a loner, with or without
the strength to be a real leader? Do you need public recognition
to consider yourself a success? Is success more a matter of how
you look in the eyes of others (an adoring public) or how you
look in your own eyes? Or can't you separate one from the other?
These are things you
must ask yourself. No matter how hard they may turn out to be,
without clarification in very specific terms, your chance for
success hinges on them. If they require some real soul-searching
this is simply the price you pay for success.
Success is not automatic,
even if you have been able to face all of the questions here
and come up with all the answers. But if you have not done this,
you have no choice. That is why "clarification" is
one of the first demands of any successful individual. Get clear
what you want, what price you are ready to pay, and where you
draw the line in terms of what is not acceptable. Determine as
well as you can what kind of leader you will make. Or for that
matter, see if you even have the desire to be a leader in the
first place. Do you have to call the shots in order to feel happy
and fulfilled? Is the idea of allowing somebody else to guide
you toward success a contradiction for you? If so, this will
make quite a difference in the kinds of business, professional
and personal ventures in which you should be involved.
On all sides, there
are questions, doubts and uncertainties. There are areas which
need definition, clarification and hard thinking. There are issues
that cannot be answered by anyone but you. That is, unless you
are ready to skip the whole thing. And many people are willing
to do just that. They sidestep any chance to determine the course
of their lives. They borrow others' solutions, accepting hand-me-down
solutions in all areas of their lives, including religion. They
wonder why their lives lack zest, fulfillment and purpose.
By now this should
be getting clearer to you. The need for clarity itself should
be crystal clear by this point in your deliberations. But keep
a cardinal rule in mind: clarity is not just a matter of logic
and disciplined thought, although they are certainly involved.
It also must involve action. There is a special kind of clarity
that only comes by acting on your conclusions. All the meditation
in the world carries you only so far and no farther. You must
then act on the basis of all thought, or it becomes paralyzed,
... "paled over by the sickly caste of thought," as
Shakespeare put it. The Bard knew what he was talking about.
Those who think too little are fools, gullible enough to be led
like sheep to the slaughter. On the other hand, there are those
who try to substitute thought for the real world of action. Either
extreme is to be avoided.
What is really needed
here is disciplined thought. Thinking, which is logical, when
logic is appropriate, and thinking that is more intuitive when
it isn't. Then the willingness to act on the basis of what thought
has revealed. Analysis, which goes nowhere, is impotent, without
the power to shape real decisions, genuine outcomes and life-directions
in the world of everyday experience. Acting is "not"
at war with thinking! One desperately needs the other, in fact.
All successful people know this even if they have not taken the
time to articulate it to themselves in quite these words. They
realize the need for clarity, but they also know that clarity
without action is impossible. The mind by itself can carry you
just so far. It must then be carried the rest of the distance
by the body-in-action. Ideas must be tested to be proven true
or false. All of the analysis and logic chopping in the world
will not show whether your marvelous ideas have any real clout
in the rough and tumble arena of daily life.
The successful person
knows this on some level. Often without ever having put it this
way, they know. You have an advantage over them already. You
have the luxury of thinking about all of this. You know how to
analyze each aspect in turn, using your history as material.
You can now begin to account for your successes and failures.
Be systematic about it. Let your minds and hearts guide you to
customize your lifestyle and outlook.
What these other people
discovered is now available to you, right now. The kind of knowledge
you are going to possess is really powerful, too. It will have
undergone the truest test of all, the test of your daily experience.
We can all believe
what we have witnessed. By following these suggestions, you will
be able to widen the range of your imagination, broaden your
analytical skills, and determine a way of verifying your ideas.
These are the real stepping-stones to success. You do as much
or as little of this as you choose. If you are careful and determined
enough and willing enough to do really demanding spade work,
you can place your feet on the road to success as never before.
Dig into areas of your mind and soul that may never have seen
the light of the day before. If you are less energetic, you can
increase your chances less dramatically.
You may ignore any
of these ideas. But what you cannot help doing is influencing
directly the course of your success or non-success. You can pretend
innocence and play the role of the ignorant and unreflective
bumpkin. You can refuse to look in the right places, but no matter
which you choose, you will pay the price. Trying to ignore the
whole thing will not work either. Keeping this in mind, you might
as well dig in and decide what you are prepared to do about the
rest of your life. No one else can do it for you. Hopefully,
you care enough about your success and happiness to carry through
on these suggestions and act decisively on these guidelines.
You will never have a better chance to change some of those bad
habits than now. And you will never have a better motive for
doing so.
Just as bad habits
have prevented you from achieving genuine success, good habits
can reverse this negative direction. In either case, you are
what you do and think, and you are defining yourself no matter
what course you take. Timid and cowardly people try to hide from
this sobering fact. They may even turn down their awareness so
that it is only a tiny candle flame, thereby hoping to evade
the truth. But this does not work. They must define themselves
as cowardly. They get the chance to see what a life lived this
way feels like. It is not a happy picture, no matter how common
it may be in today's world.
These thoughts are
meant to be sobering. If they fail to disturb you more that just
a little, you are not grasping what is being said. But they should
not depress you or lead you to believe your life is hopeless.
Quite the contrary. What has been done can be undone, with rare
exceptions. Bad habits can be turned inside out until they become
good ones. Even cowardice and timidity can be transformed in
gradual steps into their opposites. This will take time. But
your life was going to take time and effort anyway, wasn't it?
You might as well benefit from this inevitable fact. By embracing
this truth of being what you do and think, you can gain control
over your life.
You may not want or
need to be a leader to feel happy and successful. But you must
at least be the leader of a one-person army. You must be in control
of your decisions and be in touch with your basic motives. You
must have a say in determining the direction of your life. Without
this power and self-knowledge, success is impossible, no matter
how you define it.
By not being appropriately
assertive and aware of your life decisions you become a passive
stooge for others. You should see yourself like those who manipulate
you. Are you assertive enough to choose your habits? Are you
decisive enough to develop your directions and test your values?
Obviously, there is a price to be paid for being assertive and
decisive. But just as clearly, there is a higher cost in avoiding
them. Since you cannot avoid paying no matter what you do, you
should take your fate into your own hands. Gather the courage
to accept responsibility and take the leap of faith. What does
this mean in concrete terms?
It means, among other
things, that you must act without knowing the outcome of your
actions. It also means you can only avoid responsibility at the
cost of evading your freedom and personal power. If you look
at the lives of people who do just this, what do you see? They
lead lives of quiet desperation.
These are people who
cannot experience success because they are drifting like leaves
in the wind. Externals of all sorts toss them around. They seldom
enjoy the trip because it is not the kind of journey they would
have chosen for themselves.
That is just the problem.
If you do not bother to choose the direction and thrust of your
life, you can bet that somebody is going to step in and do it
for you. This happens at work or at home, in the voting booth
or on the freeway. These people are not going to have your best
interests at heart. They will have their own agendas, hidden
and otherwise, and you are just there as a tool. You become an
instrument of their push for personal success. You might luck
out and find someone whose choices for your life are almost as
good as those you might have made if you only had some courage.
But that is quite the gamble. The stakes in this are non-renewable
resources. The stuff of your life is at stake. Isn't it interesting
that the same person who is afraid to risk a wrong decision is
still somehow able to accept the decisions of others for their
life? The cautious individual, who only wants to avoid paying
a high price for acting, ends up paying a higher price by not
acting.
What does this add
up to? You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by accepting
personal responsibility for your decisions. If you don't, you
still have to do something out there in the real world, at home
or at work. You can choose for yourself, accepting the burden
of making clear your life-direction. Or, you can follow someone
else's orders.
Define what success
is to you and what it is going to mean in the future. Or, you
can live without it and never truly be happy and successful.
But I assume you want to be successful, that you really are not
prepared to let others make your mind up for you, no matter how
good their intentions seem to be. Okay, where does this leave
you? In need of new and better habits, for starters.
One of the most basic
habits is developing a more positive attitude. This is difficult
for most people. This must be done consciously, reflectively
and regularly.
Repletion is the basis
of all habits. If you are a chain smoker now, your smoking did
not end with that secretive butt behind the barn when you were
thirteen. It began there and was repeated hundreds of times to
create that habit. You have proven strong enough to establish
bad habits. Be equally strong to develop good ones. You can stick
to them, too. Just look at the rut you have been in for years.
Man is the habituated
animal. Let's use this fact to make our lives work for our betterment.
Make an effort to be more optimistic. Try to see a more positive
side to your future and your changes for success and happiness.
We know the power of negative thinking. It demonstrates itself
every minute. It is close to a miracle that any of us ever experience
any happiness or success. But thank God, we do! In spite of the
emotional cloud-cover, which we generate for ourselves, the Sun
of Hope manages to break through now and then. Why not help it
along by looking for the good and praising it? Why not accentuate
the positive in yourself and in others? Do it often because this
is the way you build a good habit.
A positive mental
attitude toward you is the most important habit of all to cultivate.
This does not mean to ignore your failures. Such blindness can
make it impossible to correct the direction of your life. What
you must do is use the appropriate attitude towards the shortcomings
of your past. Don't deny the mistake ever happened, but do not
dwell on it obsessively. Try to see the error for what it was.
Use it as the opportunity for learning what went wrong and why.
Don't just look at it; look through it.
Ask yourself what
made you commit such an error. How could you correct it if the
same opportunity arose again? What have you learned that makes
it unnecessary to keep on repeating this same old screw-up? People
who do not learn by their mistakes keep on repeating them. Rather
than moving beyond these negative aspects, they are damned to
a cycle of painless repetition. But do not stop the examination
there.
Learn to transform
errors into success. How?
See the past mistakes
as your friends. They are valuable footnotes of your life. They
are nagging little reminders that all was not as it should have
been. The world's leading sports heroes, the giants of business,
finance and industry, political strong men, et al, all learned
this secret about their mistakes. Mistakes happen to everyone,
but even the most timid people who learn to profit from them
are light years ahead. Rather than being discouraged by mistakes
you have made, look to them as sources of inspiration in the
present and future.
The fact that you
blotched up that decision yesterday does not mean you have to
foul up now. You will continue on a negative course unless you
stop and take your bearings. Correct your emotional compass and
correct your perspective on things. There is nothing vague about
this. You need to conduct a regular inventory of your most recent
and/or recurrent errors at regular intervals. Did you underbid
that job again? Did you fail to meet your sales quotas? Were
you taken in by the slick talking sales rep that unloaded that
questionable merchandise on you?
If so, what does this
say about you? How can you convert these failures into successes?
There is a way, you know. Nietzsche said that, "What does
not kill you will teach you." He meant we could learn to
move beyond our errors and take them seriously, then put them
back behind us. It may be a humbling experience to admit that
we have gone astray. Yet this knowledge is essential to change
things in our future. In a sense, mistakes are the price we pay
at the Checkout Stand of Life. Since we have already paid the
price, we may as well get the "groceries," that is,
the positive benefits from looking at things in a new way. Unexplained
mistakes quickly move from casual acquaintances to old, thoroughly
unwelcome tenants. They do not go away by themselves. We have
to make them go away. By developing new habits, new ways of thinking,
new ways of perceiving and acting, we can shoo them out of our
lives. If you embrace your mistakes and squeeze the very life
out of them, your life can work in new and wonderful ways. Grab
them and do not let them out of your grip until you have made
those damned mistakes talk! Don't be gentle. If you do not work
them over, they will turn the tables and work you over with more
negative, frustrating and embarrassing moments.
Chapter Six - Part 3
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