PRINCIPLES FOR PERSONAL GROWTH, CHANGE, AND TRUE
SUCCESS IN OUR LIFE AND SERVICE TO
OTHERS
How
to become all we can be and live at peace in our
world.
Principle 1 - All lasting change comes from deep personal
change.
Much of what we call change
today is merely the passing of time and the changing of
circumstance. But there are changes that we can
create and are responsible for. However, most of
the changes that we create are usually superficial and
shortsighted. A favorite, familiar, and tragic
metaphor is “that we are merely re-arranging the deck
chairs on the Titanic.” This statement describes
many of the so-called change programs that are a part of
most human development and effectiveness programs.
We seek to change style without a change of substance,
leadership strategies without a change of heart, and
priorities without a change of purpose. All of
these, often well intentioned programs, achieve little of
value, significantly deplete our resources, and
eventually sap our energy and spirit. There is a
reason for this dilemma and for the despair that
follows.
We
believe that all lasting and true change comes from deep
personal and profound change. We must not just clean
up our act, we must significantly change our way of
viewing the world, seeing others, and expressing our
persona and following through with our performance.
One of the founders of the quality movement, W. Edwards
Deming, was very dismissive of most of the so-called
“quality movement” and key quality movement ideas that
supposedly came from his ideas. Deming was adamant
that there could not be real quality without deep
personal change in the life, attitudes, and behaviors of
those involved in the change efforts. He chided
those who thought that through programs of quality
control, statistical processing, and by improving
manufacturing standards and performance requirements that
quality could be achieved. True quality and
profound change was not that simple and could not work
that way. There are other related
ideas.
In many religious traditions, there is an experience of
what can only be called “the awakening.” The
awakening is where we discover who we are, where we are
going, and what it will lead to. A number of years
ago, Steven Covey, in his best seller
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective
People,
popularized the term “paradigm shift.”
Unfortunately, the term has become overused, and we lose
the power of the reality described. To shift our
paradigm is to profoundly see the pattern of our lives
and the pattern of our world very differently. It
is not just to see it from a different point of
view. It is to see things different, not in degree,
but different in kind. There is nothing new in this
way of thinking. The word “metanoia,” is an old
Greek word. Metanoia means to renew or to get a new
mind. The term has been adopted into western
religious thinking where it is oftentimes translated “to
repent.” The meaning is deeper than that usually
given by those in religious conversations. Repent
does not mean to simply feel bad or feel sorry about the
situation or circumstances we are in and to which we may
have been a party. It means to have an entire new and
deeper way of looking at the world and of getting,
indeed, a new mind and world
view.
Most of us are not willing to go down that road. It
is, in the words of Scott Peck,
a road less traveled; and for most of us it is a
road that we will never go down. Unless there is
some huge wake up call or significant emotional crisis in
our lives, we continue to do things pretty much as we
have done them before. Unfortunately, one of the
drawbacks of a booming economy is that we often have less
of a crisis that might lead us to significantly look at
our world, our lives, and how we should
change.
All of our landscaped changes and changes of scenery, and
changes of setting, and changes of style will never
do. The principle is true, deep, perplexing and
profound. If we are truly to enjoy the benefits of
lasting change, that change must be deep, personal, and
profound.
All lasting change comes from deep personal
change. What does that mean to you as
you look forward to the 21st century?
Stan
Hustad
PTM Group