To Be, Or Not To Be?

WHAT if I could change the way people think? What if I could enable the mindset for performance, productivity, creativity, innovation, and excellence?

I’d do this by connecting people to their natural needs, drives and motivations. I would wake them up to their gifts and talents and reconnect them to their essential nature. I’d work on their identity, enhance their self-concept. I’d constantly ensure that they readjust their self-esteem to 100 per cent. I’d remind them of their immense worth and value as human beings, as master creators of the universe.

If I did this, and you all worked with me, what then could this country achieve as an economy, and as a nation? I haven’t even begun talking about the deeper benefits from this — hopefulness, happiness, harmony, purpose and passion.

Monumental task? Completely doable! Human beings are born creative. As we go, we learn how to be who we are. We keep expanding our potential. We keep reinventing ourselves to become the best version of ourselves – according to our perception and our model of good.

Once shown the way, we could take the science of this process down to an art. What could block my vision? Misunderstanding excellence with perfectionism could. Lack of acceptance drives perfectionism. Apply this absoluteness to diversity and we can see how this can hurt growth and development. Acceptance conquers perfectionism and other forms of mental and emotional intolerance.

Another thing standing in the way is the dilemma of leadership vs control. Just like how openness and transparency invites creativity, the need for absolute power – over would obliterate the space we need… to think, to choose, and to respond in order for creativity, productivity, and excellence to arise. Fear of making mistakes, of challenging what is, will certainly kill our spirit. I wonder if it’s true, that our education system stifles us? The urban myth is we have no room to express. The system keeps us at the lowest levels of tolerance – we’re rewarded when we keep our heads down, when we operate “inside the box.”

If creativity is a matter of selection, if it’s about our freedom to choose, to design our lives, and how we want to label things, if everything is decided for us, if our importance and significance is pre-determined, then why bother to unleash potential? Education drives national progress. Think about that. They say a life without hope is worse than death.

Are life, joy and paradise really in our hands? Not in our hands but actually in our mind. Creativity, productivity, excellence happens when we nourish our aspirations, when we encourage and validate people for who they are before what they know or can do. When we plant the fire for learning, the lust for discovering and the habit of questioning, we’re on our way to optimal life, peak performance, personal excellence, self-actualisation, best practices in companies, thriving communities. It happens through self-awareness, self-respect, self-confidence, self-discipline and self-mastery.

“To be or not to be, that is the question” from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I wonder if life might be a campus instead of the Bard’s proverbial expression of a stage? My experience is Malaysians don’t care to learn. Somehow we’re always spouting some kind of excuse. “No money. No time. No use.”

Think of how what you actually lose when you pass up the chance to improve yourself and speak from a platform of certainty rather than guesswork. Truth is only when we respect knowledge can we come to respect ourselves.

The hardest part about learning is that it takes humility to operate from the “know nothing” state. In actualising our potentials we need to melt down our faulty thinking patterns, to release ineffective ways of behaving and mould the mush into new forms. The most awesome change happens when the best resources blend together, when the fires swirl without consuming our zest for life. The most meaningful transformation occurs the moment we’re prepared to recognise the truth of where we’ve been and embrace the courage to take all that and become all we can become.

Age doesn’t bring wisdom. Experience doesn’t guarantee transformation. Unless there’s a change in attitude, unless we’re prepared to take responsibility, unless we accept what we are and take all that to the next level, chances are our out-of-controlness may bring bitterness, not betterment.

People first, performance now, competitive advantage, did we say? Lest it become mockery, best we learn from history, so we will not be doomed to repeat its mistakes.

Boss who’s just too busy to help

Q: I’m a manager who’s been delegated work but when I make appointments to see my boss for approvals, direction and support, he’s always too busy. Meantime I’m wondering what to tell my team. Work stops because I have no authorisation to move at all.

A: Send your boss to me for some self-actualisation coaching! Then he’d know that leadership is not about hoarding power but to use it to enable others at the touch-points of business to make decisions and to take the business forward at a rate and speed no one can ever do on his own.

That said, how well do you know your boss? Use your energy to compose conversations where you both can set up an understanding of how work can proceed when he cannot provide hands-on direction. Propose options, scenarios or solutions wherein your response would be like such and such. So in situations where you need to act, you’d already have pre-approval.

Quit whining. Act on whatever is in your circle of influence. Do what you can with what you have. Take responsibility. Think. If your boss is so tight-fisted with you, could it be something you’re doing/not doing? What can you do differently to inspire a different response?

Fair play for women?

Q: Lower pay for females. Sexual harassment. Emotional blackmail. Incest. Rape. What is the world coming to? When will women be treated fairly? Doesn’t it just boil down to basic human rights?

A: I believe the most certain way to predict the future is to create it for yourself. I believe if you’re looking for a helping hand, the closest ones are found at the end of your own arms. I know this: No one owes me a living. I know if it is to be, it’s up to me.

You want more money? Work for it. Demonstrate how your contribution adds value to your company.

As for male brutality, let’s start by checking ourselves. What’s the level of our self-esteem? If it’s intact, you’ll have had your boundaries in place.

Human rights. How well do you know the law that surrounds what you do at home, at work, in your community? If you operate from the flimsy platform of not knowing, then you’re fair game to anyone who wants to try his luck. I abhor men who disrespect women. I think the punishment for sickness like paedophilia, incest, and rape should be increased.

But women must take responsibility too. First, we must learn to speak up.

We must stop looking away when we see our sisters suffer. What do we often do? We condemn our own gender instead. How sad is that? If you’re complaining, my question to you is, so what are you doing — yes, YOU! — in your little neck of the woods?