Find Your Purpose, Find Your Courage

The other day, Helen and I met with a business coach. We discussed some concepts and got to know each other better. As we talked I gained great insight into my life, and learned a great deal that will certainly be a catalyst for maximizing my results the rest of this year and next. I know they can be of use to you too:

1. Your personality is who you are when you are afraid
2. Expectations, that aren't communicated, always cause disappointment
3. Operate from a platform of solid mutual agreements
4. Get rid of flimsy agreements in your life
5. What is your purpose?
6. Why aren't you living it?
7. If you are married, what do you and your spouse's purposes' have in common?

The Hedgehog Concept:

Greatness comes about by a series of good decisions consistent with a simple, coherent concept— a “Hedgehog Concept.” The Hedgehog Concept is an operating model that reflects understanding of three intersecting circles: what you can be the best in the world at, what you are deeply passionate about, and what best drives your economic or resource engine.

The Stockdale Paradox:

Retain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND AT THE SAME TIME have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

Confronting The Brutal Reality

1. External Realities
-ECONOMICAL
A. Business
B. Environment
C. Market
D. Competition

-SOCIETAL
A. Government Involvement
B. Educational Focus
C. Trends
D. Media

2. Goals
-MIND
A. Education

-BODY
A. Finance
B. Fitness

-SOUL
A. Faith
B. Family

3. Internal Realities
-LEVEL OF INFLUENCE
A. Learner
B. Performer
C. Leader
D. Leader Developing Leaders
E. A Leader of Developers of Leaders

-PHYSICAL
A. Strength
B. Cardio
C. Body Fat
D. Energy

-MENTAL
A. Mental Sharpness
B. Capabilities
C. Strategy
D. Assets

-EMOTIONAL
A. Strength of Character
B. Attitude
C. Confidence
D. Passions

4. Rigorous Exploration & Clarification of The Above
A. Become a True Seeker - "If it ain't broke...brake it!"
B. The Feedback Loop - Plan, Do, Check, Adjust

What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?:

A. Would you define your hedgehog concept?...How
B. Would you confront the brutal reality?...How
C. Would you live more courageously?...How

Keep Moving Forward.

Rusty Robson

The American Crisis, Part 3

The Cultural Battle: "A World Without Heroes"

"...Education seeks truth; anti-heroism denies its existence. Education seeks meaning in human life, justice in human affairs, dignity in human aspirations. Anti-heroes deny human purpose save evolutionary survival." George Roche

"We ourselves do not wish to predict the future but to change it. For this we must understand the present by identifying its dominant ideas and the salesmen and preachers of those ideas." George Roche

As discussed in The American Crisis, Part 1, there are 2 battles being waged in our world today, the personal battle, and the cultural battle. The main strife within each of these two battles is caused by a difference in the way we see things, or our world view:

1.God Created Man
-or-
2. Man Created God

We've already discussed the personal battle we are facing as we are being programmed in such a way that we begin to limit ourselves because of the faulty programming we've received. These become our limiting beliefs and are all but invisible to one who has no other information source to compare them to. But as I discussed in part 1, we can begin to root these out by listening to, and recording our self-talk. Only then can we begin to think about what we're really thinking about. But we still need a correct source by which we may measure those faulty beliefs against new ones, or vice versa. Will that source be God, or man?

The Judeo-Christian world view says that God created man; we are, each one of us made in the image of a loving Heavenly Father and we are accountable to Him as our creator.

The anti-heroic world view says that man created the idea of a god and therefore we are accountable to no one for anything we think, say, or do. As George Roche describes in his book, A World Without Heroes, the anti-heroic cause has snowballed to a point of creating a "complete - and completely false - conception of life and reality. This 'new' view, inverting moral law and values, appears in its fullness not a product of thought but of pride and lust or darker urges. It is an evil impulse, destroying knowledge, making the fine arts ugly, turning language into babble, educating our children for the anthill, and unleashing our meanest and most bestial cravings. It wars on the best in us and empties life of transcendent meaning."

From a practical standpoint, disregarding your religious or spiritual beliefs, who would you rather have as a neighbor to you and your family... someone who lives, and holds himself accountable to the 10 commandments, ie. "thou shalt not lie, kill, or steal," or someone who is accountable to no one but their own carnal desires.

You might have them both over for dinner, but only one would you allow grandma's fine china to be left unattended.

Within this cultural battle, there are four areas that are currently under attack by the anti-hero:

-Education
-Business
-National Beliefs
-Individual Achievement

1. Education
-"The egalitarian's hatred of excellence has metastasized throughout culture. In order to lower everyone down to the lowest common denominator, egalitarianism sacrifices the achiever. No where is this more dramatic and tragic than in education. High schools on both coasts are dispensing with the awards that would honor seniors. They don't select the most likely to succeed, or the most talented. These schools no longer offer class ranking, nor do they select a class valedictorian. In today's age of achievement hatred, it is ok to spend millions on playground psychopaths, but it's considered morally low to honor a bright student. If you've ever wondered, why the number of great artists, intellects, and achievers has dwindled, you should blame egalitarianism." Dr. Gary Hall

-"The schools have been subjected to egalitarian doctrines in pure form. The order of the day is leveling, and in practice that means reducing instruction to the capabilities of the dullest in the class: to the lowest common denominator. The handicaps of the slow are pampered, while the talents of the gifted are distrusted and suppressed. Those frustrated kids with something going for them are bored to tears and often rebel. The dullards plod on through, and in time, and with every inducement government aid can offer, go on to be university graduate students and the new 'intellectuals.'..we mass-produce them nowadays, in absurd numbers, and all weaned on anti-heroic dogmas. The explosive radicalism and anarchism on public campuses in recent decades give all-too-ample evidence that the anti-heroes use public schooling to train their successors. No one need be surprised if these plods home in unerringly on a protected career in public service, often, heaven help us, in teaching. And so the mischief continues." George Roche

2. Business
-"...when men are free politically, there will be inevitably, economic inequalities." Edmund Opitz

-"There will continue to be rich and poor, as there have been in every society since history began, but with this difference: the wealthy will be chosen by the daily balancing of their peers in the market place." Edmund Opitz

-"I think that where the greatest impact on the culture might have been, in other times, the church, education, the family, the greatest impact now is business. Everywhere one looks, it seems to me that short-term thinking in business is the greatest impact on our culture. And that's leadership, because it's certainly educating kids to believe there's nothing between winning and losing...Short-term thinking is the social disease of our time." Norman Lear

3. National Beliefs
-"...Nations are aggregates of individual thinking. National moods and national preoccupations tend to become national experiences and directions." Warren Brooks

A. The American Religion:
-"To unite the American people, the Founders undertook to find those basic beliefs set forth in the Bible on which people of all religious faiths could agree. It turned out that Benjamin Franklin struck the most harmonious chord for everyone in his own personal creed. In a letter to Ezra Stiles, president of Yale University, the 81-year-old Franklin wrote:


'Here is my creed: I believe in one God, the Creator of the universe. That He governs it by his providence. That he ought to be worshiped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is in doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion.'

A careful analysis of Franklin's creed reflects five points of fundamental religious belief which are either expressed or implied and these have been guideposts for Americans for over two centuries. Perhaps these could be summarized as follows:

1. There exists a Creator who made all things, and mankind should recognize and worship him.
2. The Creator has revealed a moral code of behavior for happy living which distinguishes right from wrong.
3. The Creator holds mankind responsible for the way they treat one another.
4. All mankind live beyond this life.
5. In the next life mankind are judged for their conduct in this one.

All five of these tenets are abundantly evident throughout the writings of the Founding Fathers." W. Cleon Skousen, The Majesty of God's Law.

B. Character Based Leadership:
-"Developing character and vision is the way leaders invent themselves." Warren Bennis, On Becoming A Leader.

-"Integrity is the basis of trust, which is not as much an ingredient of leadership as it is a product. It is the one quality that can not be acquired, but must be earned." Warren Bennis

-"Our quality of life depends on the quality of our leaders." Warren Bennis

-"The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression." Ralph Waldo Emerson

-"Leaders have a significant role in creating the state of mind that is the society. They can serve as symbols of the moral unity of the society. They can express the values that hold the society together. Most important, they can conceive and articulate goals that lift people out of their petty preoccupations, carry them above the conflicts that tear a society apart, and unite them in pursuit of objectives worthy of their best efforts." John W. Gardner


-"Honor is such a rarely used word in our times that it seems a little old-fashioned. But living a life of integrity and character is timeless and, for a leader, absolutely necessary. It's about choices, and a person's choices in life follow him to the grave." Chris Brady & Orrin Woodward, Launching a Leadership Revolution.

C. The Sanctity of Life:
-"There is no new morality. Men cannot invent what is right and wrong; that was given to us, and people of all cultures and faiths have cleaved largely to the same concepts throughout all history. Only with the rise of anti-heroism have men dared declare systematically that wrongs are the new rights, that promiscuity is sexual liberation, that dictators can kill dissenters and women their babies if we use the right words and incantations, and so on." George Roche

4. Individual Achievement
-"...All genuine superiority grows from a sense of inferiority. The person who admits his inferiority and then does something about it, develops superiority." Henry Link

-"...People have always learned more from their mistakes than from their success. But when the price of mistakes is eliminated, the result is confusion, and loss of motivation to do better." Dr. Karl Menninger

***As mentioned before, we must have a correct source, against which we may measure those faulty beliefs.***

THE SOURCE:
-"Our past has not been destroyed. Our faith lives. From our roots and living moral teachings we have a framework of truth and knowledge against which the assertions of anti-heroism can be weighed." George Roche

THE SOLUTION:

1. Encourage and edify anyone we see doing heroic work.
2. Find a mentor that challenges you to grow.
3. Start a personal development program.
4. Join a community of like-minded individuals.
5. Learn about free enterprise and start your own business.
6. Learn the foundational Judeo-Christian principles of our nation.
7. Accept responsibility to teach the above to everyone you can.

***The leaders of the future will be those who take the next step - to change the culture. Change must start within you, which is then carried on to others, who carry it to others, so on and so forth.***

THE FUTURE:
-"The future is taking shape now in our own beliefs and in the courage of our leaders. Ideas and leadership - not natural or social 'forces' - are the prime movers in human affairs."

-"In the words, 'Thy will be done,' is our life and our joy and our heroic vision. We have only to accept them to find the serenity we thought lost in a World Without Heroes." George Roche

Keep Moving Forward

Rusty Robson

For source, please see the above referenced books and the audio CD, "Where Have All The Heroes Gone?" by Orrin Woodward, best selling author and chairman of the Team LDSP.

The American Crisis, Part 2

THE PERSONAL BATTLE:

“He knows not how to rule a kingdom, that cannot manage a province; nor can he wield a province, that cannot order a city; nor he order a city, that knows not how to regulate a village; nor he a village, that cannot guide a family; nor can that man govern well a family that knows not how to govern himself; neither can any govern himself unless his reason be lord...” Hugo Grotius (1583-1645)

The first, and the last, battle we will engage in along our leadership journey, is the battle with ourselves. And as Hugo Grotius so eloquently states, "neither can any govern himself unless his reason be lord." In other words, we're gonna need help, and a lot of it. Self-mastery is hard enough, but when you throw in the constant barrage of Anti-Hero egalitarianism, which brings everyone down to the lowest common denominator, you could say we've got a real battle on our hands.


There's better than a 95% chance that 95% of us were raised with faulty programming which has created deeply set, limiting beliefs. These beliefs have tightly fastened the lid on achieving our full potential. Just like when you close the lid tightly on a jar full of fleas, they will only jump and hit their head against the lid for so long until they just stop jumping. Then when the lid is removed, the fleas remain captive because they have been programmed to believe that they can never jump out.

The first big guns we face then, in our battle for self-mastery and excellence, will be our limiting beliefs. One of the reasons these weapons are so dangerous is because most of the time, we don't even know they exist, much less limit us. One day I was prompted to get out a piece of paper and put down all the "you can't do this," or "you're not worthy of that," statements that run through my head, almost on automatic, and I found that as I looked at my limiters on paper, they became exposed as the out right lies that they really were. I learned that day that limiting beliefs can only be exposed through listening to, and taking note of our self-talk. If we don't root these out, they eventually become true, just as a self-fulfilling prophecy. So let's start with some big ones that are very common in our society today:

1. Fate vs. Destiny

-Fate says, "I have no control; why try; just waiting for my ship to come in; it's the luck of the draw; que sera sera, what ever will be will be; I'm a victim."

-Destiny believes, "I've been called by a higher power to do something great. I can tap into His vision, work hard and serve, knowing that I'm responsible to follow Him and He's responsible for the results. Where ever He takes me, I'm O.K. Ultimately, you control your thoughts; your thoughts control your actions; your actions produce your habits; and your habits produce your destiny."

2. Self -or- Service

-Self says, "It's all about me," and "Who cares, as long as it doesn't effect me."

-Service knows that in a true win/win environment, if you serve others, you will naturally be lifted up to victory after victory.

3. Ease -or- Excellence

-Ease clings to, "Success should come easy," or "I'm just going to play it safe."

-Excellence has seen that anything worthwhile takes effort. A good marriage takes work. Leadership takes work. And anything else fulfilling takes courage, discipline, focus and determination. Excellence says, "I'd rather deal with the price of excellence, than the pain of regret."

4. Relativism vs. Absolutes

-Relativism believes in situational ethics. "Maybe being honest all the time is right for you, but it's not for me." "If he feels like stealing once in a while, let him do it." That's a great idea, until it happens to me.

-Absolutes say, know why you believe what you believe. Not sure where to start? Try Exodus 20:2–17 in the Bible for starters and find 10 absolutes for happy living, whether you're Jew or Gentile; Muslim or Hindu. Survey after survey says the #1 thing people want in a leader is...Character.

5. Competition

-If someone else is winning, I must be losing. Criticize and get angry when others are winning. Dog eat dog. Compare my worst to their best.

-The power of the team. Help others win and I will win. Don't worry about the other guy, just do your best, give full effort. If you are prepared, ye shall not fear.



I have come to realize that if I'm not where I'd like to be, I need to start by checking my self-talk. Negative self-talk leads to fear, fear causes in-action, in-action causes lack of experience, lack of experience breeds ignorance, and ignorance perpetuates more fear. Expose your limiting beliefs, confront them, let your reason be Lord, and He will cause the change.

Keep Moving Forward.

Rusty Robson

[See the audio CD, "Four Laps," by Orrin Woodward for reference].