Trust – or the lack of it – is at the root of success or failure in relationships and in the bottom-line results of business, industry, education, and government.
I can’t go to my company’s annual convention vs. I choose not to go to convention. People just don’t want to hear what I have to say vs. I will create an effective presentation that people will want to hear. I can’t think of anyone to talk to vs. I choose to find 10 new people to talk to about my business. If only I had more time to prospect vs. I will make more time for prospecting. I have to go to work vs. I choose to work. A.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. ARISTOTLE Our character, basically, is a composite of our habits. “Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny,” the maxim goes.
So often the problem is in the system, not in the people. If you put good people in bad systems, you get bad results. You have to water the flowers you want to grow.
Your planning tool should be your servant, never your master.
Unless you’re influenced by my uniqueness, I’m not going to be influenced by your advice. So if you want to be really effective in the habit of interpersonal communication, you cannot do it with technique alone. You have to build the skills of empathic listening on a base of character that inspires openness and trust. And you have to build the Emotional Bank Accounts that create a commerce between hearts.
Be Proactive. People are responsible for their own choices and have the freedom to choose based on principles and values rather than.
Stand apart from your dreams. Look at them. Wrestle with them until you’re convinced they’re based on principles that will bring results. Then use your creative imagination to explore new applications, new ways of doing things that have the principle-based power to translate dreaming into doing.
Religious leader David O. McKay taught, “The greatest battles of life are fought out daily in the silent chambers of the soul.” If you win the battles there, if you settle the issues that inwardly conflict, you feel a sense of peace, a sense of knowing what you’re about. And you’ll find that the public victories – where you tend to think cooperatively, to promote the welfare and good of other people, and to be genuinely happy for other people’s successes – will follow naturally.
A thousand-mile journey begins with the first step” and can only be taken one step at a time.
The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to reply.
Proactive people aren’t pushy. They’re smart, they’re value driven, they read reality, and they know what’s needed. Look at Gandhi.
The more people are into quick fixes and focus on the acute problems and pain, the more that very approach contributes to the underlying chronic condition. The way we see the problem is the problem.
The clock represents our commitments, appointments, schedules, goals, activities – what we do with, and how we manage our time.
It’s not enough to say your family is important. If “family” is really going to be top priority, you have to “hunker down, suck it up, and make it happen!
When you pick up one end of the stick, you pick up the other. Therefore, if you decide to take responsibility for your circumstances, you automatically tap into the power to change.
For our purposes, a simple way to understand paradigms is to see them as maps. We all know that “the map is not the territory.” A map is simply an explanation of certain aspects of the territory. That’s exactly what a paradigm is. It is a theory, an explanation, or model of something else.
The contrasting principle of growth and hope throughout history is the discovery that “I am the creative force of my life.
If you don’t let a teacher know at what level you are – by asking a question, or revealing your ignorance – you will not learn or grow. You cannot pretend for long, for you will eventually be found out. Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education. Thoreau taught, “How can we remember our ignorance, which our growth requires, when we are using our knowledge all the time?
Rebellion is a knot of the heart, not of the mind.