A man in Gandhi’s entourage was forever complaining about this, that, and the other. Finally, Gandhi said to him,
‘If it is a peaceful and calm life you are seeking, I think it will be easier if you change yourself rather than seeking to change others.
Which will you find easier; to protect your feet with slippers, or to carpet the whole earth?’
Last week I went to a hand car wash that had recently opened nearby. My car was pounced on by seven people and literally within minutes it emerged clean and sparkling. I was impressed.
The team boss was watching, and he gestured to one of the men to re-polish the back bumper. I could not see a mark on it, but he wanted it redone. Now I was VERY impressed!
People look for two main things with respect to being satisfied in their job.
One - do they feel connected to the vision and to others who will help make it a reality?
And two - do they feel that their management values their contribution?
Many of the ideas of management grew out of the latter stages of the industrial revolution where there was careful measurement and specification of results. Tasks were standardised and managers saw their job as correcting people who didn’t follow the rules and procedures.
We love to give advice.
It makes us feel good. The passing of knowledge and experience to others in our ‘tribe’ to help them survive is built into us by natural selection.
The danger comes when we advise others to act as we want them to act for our own reasons, and not theirs.
Look around you at some of the amazing things people have done. Every one of them started with an idea, a thought.
So if you want to achieve anything, you need that thought first. Your chain of thoughts will evolve, but it must start somewhere, no matter how small. I am sure the founders of Facebook, when it started, didn’t imagine it as it is today.
Strictly speaking, stress is self inflicted.
You might not want to hear that, particularly if you feel stressed right now, but think about it for a moment.
Something happens ‘out there’, and then we react ‘inside’. The way we react determines if we feel stress or not.