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