What can we do to generate inner wealth? As apprentices, we can mention some elements that have helped us a lot:
1. Have the correct paradigm
2. Feeling and knowing yourself loved
3. Commitment to personal vision
4. Have the freedom of service
5. Understand service as an expression of greatness
6. Enjoy what you do
7. Fill loneliness with things that enrich
8. Constantly seek to be a better server
Building and nurturing the right paradigm
One of the dictionary definitions tells us that the paradigm is an "example that serves as the norm." Roberto A. Orr defines it as "a pattern or map for the understanding and explanation of certain aspects of reality"; the same author, quoting JA Barrer, mentions that a paradigm does two things:
Set and define limits
Show how to behave within limits to succeed
There is a lot of literature on the subject of paradigms, mental archetypes, and mental maps. We do not want to delve into it because we run the risk of deviating from the central issue that we want to communicate; However, we want to make clear the importance of this topic for those who are convinced that without internal victories there can be no natural victories without. The paradigm being an inner root, it must be examined by those who wish to work on the causes to see the fruits.
We will begin by repeating what more than one author has already mentioned: we do not see things as they are, but rather as we are. In other words, deep inside us we have mental paradigms, a kind of map that draws reality according to certain parameters, awaken our senses and condition our responses and attitudes.
For example, if a person contacts you by phone and tells you that they live in a large residence with more than 100 rooms, they generally:
Your mind would create the image of a person with many resources, perhaps with a certain education and many relationships.
Your feelings towards this person would be determined by the image that was created in those seconds. Your attitudes in the conversation would be determined by the mental image and the feelings that arise from the already conditioned patterns.
From attitudes to actions there is only one natural step, it is a matter of time that they express themselves verbally or bodily. This is as logical as going up from the first floor is the second.
Let's continue with the previous example. Suddenly someone shows you the photo of the person and you see them dressed as an inmate in a patio and in the background the 100 «rooms». Did your image of the same person change? Did your feelings for her change? Did your attitude change?
Many times we think that it is enough to respond externally appropriately, but without internal changes we will only feed a double personality that sooner or later will charge us for their employment.
In the end, whether we want it or not, we will do what we believe; This is not a suggestion trick, but the natural consequence of what we announce that we would do inside.
It is surprising the number of people who say they believe in something, but with their facts they show that they do not believe in it, and instead of working with what they really believe, that is, their paradigms seek to solve only their actions, which are the consequence of their way of thinking.
The image I generate will influence my feelings, my feelings will influence my attitudes, and my attitudes will show in my actions.
If we have a crowd of people in front of a public building, what does a teacher see, feel and want in front of that group? A politician? A salesman? Did the circumstances change? Did people change?
Now imagine that the teacher, the politician, or the vendor are sad, depressed, or euphoric, what would they see, feel, or desire about the group?
The paradigm affects our perceptions, our emotions and our attitudes.
It is true that we are conditioned by our culture, our past, our immediate needs and even our emotional states. But if you got this far, it is evident that you continue to be interested in serving better instead of being served, you have discovered the importance of taking responsibility for choosing your response in the circumstances and working on what you really believe, you decide how to respond. Paraphrasing Víktor Frankl: "No one can take away our freedom to decide how we are going to respond."
An effective server is tired of blaming his past, his genes, his grandparents, or his mother. He has decided to make a sincere trip to the interior to modify the image he has of himself and of others, so that by changing your way of thinking, you change your way of living.
That is why he takes the initiative and takes the reins of building his future, nobody lives for him, nobody makes him angry, he knows that if he gets angry it is because he decided or allowed it to be.
In this perspective, you must choose to forgive and walk the pilgrimage of inner healing, so as not to replicate generational flaws that are disguised as complaints.
A parenthesis in your reading. If you want to delve into the previous paragraphs or you have never seen life like this before, in the appendix you can find some books that brilliantly expose these truths, texts that motivate people to go from being temperature recorders who only react in the face of circumstances to people who create personal changes first and then their environment. We will briefly refer to this topic when we talk about forgiveness. Flaubert asked himself the rhetorical question: «What prevents us from living in the present? The chains of the past or the torture of the future? ».
Closing the parenthesis, we continue to assume that our readers have taken the path of responsibility for their future and the liberation of their past through forgiveness, and we return to the thread of the book, relapsing into the attitude born of paradigms.
Attitude comes from a feeling and it comes from a thought, and all thought comes from how I have been conditioned to think. We all act and feel according to how we have been conditioned to think, and the truth is that if we change our way of thinking, our way of living will change.
The paradigm is a truth internalized deep in our heart and mind, which has to do directly with our way of thinking. And we can write it in the depths of our hearts We want to highlight two implications about what we have just mentioned:
1. We can theorize or, as E. Cole would say, «rationalize our failure«, defend our point of view in a brilliant and logical way, but if we see as evidence only personal failures, no matter how much makeup they are, our wives will leave us, our children will suffer and our self-destructive circles will continue. Of course we will also have lucid answers and explanations, but these do not change the facts.
There is nothing more consistent than a seed.
two. Do you remember any area in your personal life, work or studies where you made a mistake at the beginning, either because of ignorance or because you didn't want to recognize it? Then the error was multiplying in time, until it was not possible to continue hiding it. We could fill hundreds of sheets about similar stories that have this script, we have all accumulated many of them in our lives.
Imagine now how errors would multiply in our lives if the paradigm we live in is the wrong one. It is scary, isn't it? Don't you think it's worth stopping to meditate on this? Neither the rush nor the crowds should prevent you from making a turning point, you run the risk of serving with a motivation that will take you to a breaking point, or worse, to invest your life in a wrong cause.
The correct paradigm?
What is the correct paradigm? We will not play God, but we have useful advice: "look at the fruits." Someone said that since excuses were invented, man is perfect. We delude ourselves with dissertations, lucid explanations or passionate defenses, but it is the fruits seen in a decanted way in the light of time, behind the stage lights and beyond the short-term results, that are going to tell us who we really are. Look at the fruits you have achieved in the people you love.
An honest look saves you from wasting your life, even if it means a continuous effort to be better. It will be an effort that will drive passion for what you can achieve and not blame for what you did not do.
As learners, we share with you the characteristics of a paradigm that particularly satisfies us.
Our bet:
Every server who wants to be effective and influence people must have a transcendent, clear, consistent and principles-based paradigm.
1. Transcendence
Two qualities that are necessary for a paradigm to be transcendent:
Transcendence implies that you should not be self-centered.
To paraphrase Dwight E. Stevenson we will say that: "Christians are not extraordinary people, they are only people who know they are not God." Do you want to multiply your mistakes? Make yourself gods in your image and likeness, put complacency at the center and you will see how selfishness takes you through a spiral of sterility and mental stupidity, where the farthest vision you can have will not go beyond your own navel or will not be farther than you own grave.
When our paradigm is not transcendent and only seeks gratification in the short term, the comforts we get will lead us to mediocrity and sophisticated ways of self-destruction.
There will never be enough contentment, the fear of losing what we have will be another way to be subject to slavery or servitude.
We are aware of it because we have lived it, because more than once we have peered into the abyss. We also know that you know it.
Living for oneself is fine for those who know no other reality than the mirror, but for a server who bets on transcendent causes that is already history, since he knows that life is more than food and the body more than clothing.
Transcendence implies eternity. Man is immortal and cannot aim less, he must respond to the last need of the person, beyond the physical sustenance; the need to belong, or even personal fulfillment, must be something higher than oneself, seen in all its dimensions.
The human being must aspire to transcendence; experience has convinced us that this can meet the above needs.
Effective servants are those who perceive an eternity from which various ideologies emanate, it is not enough to have only one social ideology as the basis of a paradigm, we need one at the height of our eternity.
2. Be Clear
A paradigm must be clear, cloudy images lead us to frustration. Ken Blanchard has a great phrase: " dealing is an effortless way of doing nothing ", and much of our empty effort is due to acting like Quixotes who want to do good but don't know how. A person who loves a truth and is faithful to death, achieves more than those who generate cosmetic changes in their lives, thus leading a fashion.
Defining ourselves as a person is as impossible as wanting to define the God who has not been created by man, these claims are only funny and are a tabletop exercise. But it is very feasible to define our purpose or our meaning, the channel through which we are going to invest what we are and what we have in a pilgrimage of personal fulfillment. That is why the paradigm is important, it is the cornerstone of our mission in life and of our vision of life. We must learn to ask ourselves the right questions.
One way to find clarity is by answering two questions:
What is really important to me? And what would I really like to care about? Later we give practical help to work paradigms.
Other helpful questions: What do you think is valuable to your service? What reason do you think is valid to serve? Can you repeat it during the day? Can you look at your daily life through it?
Do you find opportunities and obstacles to be faithful to this truth?
3. Be consistent
Do you consider one or several important or vital things in your life? If we have assumed various things as important to our lives, they must be consistent and complementary to each other.
We all have paradigms because we have roots from which our ways of thinking, feeling and acting derive; there are no coincidences in our actions.
If we do not take responsibility for creating or recreating our paradigms, we simply act on what others have imposed on us.
As we mentioned, our nature leans towards short-term solutions, those that give us pleasure as soon as possible, that mean the least effort and are self-centered.
Many times we relativize what we do by thinking about the consequences of our actions in the lives of others or we cushion the consequences with promises we make to avoid more serious consequences. We simply make up the fruits of what we sow in order to live with them.
For this reason, it is easy to have self-indulgent paradigms that make us little gods of ourselves (gods of clay, but gods at last). These paradigms are tremendous tyrants, they are never satiated, they always start with "having" and not with "being" and if they start with "being" they always have our egos as their ultimate end.
The enriching paradigms are powerful, eternal and transcendent, but we have to make room for them in our minds and hearts, fall in love with them, be faithful to them and cultivate them every day. We can yell at them without feeling ashamed.
In addition to the tragedy of living only for ourselves, there is another more common tragedy: living with two different paradigms. This means having a broken heart and starting our personal battles dragging the disadvantage of a kind of schizophrenia or double personality; Our inner struggles and enjoyments do not seek to incorporate a paradigm in daily life, but to overcome that sort of double-mindedness. If we don't purify our hearts, we will never get rid of that two-way battle. That is what happens when there is no consistency in our paradigms, when we do not align the short term with the long term, when we do not decide now and we hope or dream results later.
Purity of heart can mean cleansing of life and conscience, but in this case I only mean an enormous stubbornness to fight passionately, to be the same inside and out, to follow an obvious path without two directions.
Also to renounce the concept of balance as the coexistence between good and evil, we must pursue a good even if we accept our contradictions and defeats, but never justify living with evil to "pass the moment". It is not about living with love and hate, it is about recognizing that we must go after love and that hate is not the opposite of love in order to "balance" love, if not, as Elisabeth Lukas would brilliantly say, hate it's failed love.
We can be slaves to an incorrect paradigm or decide to be faithful to an enriching paradigm.
This does not mean that there are no personal struggles at the heart of the servers, of course there are! In a sense we are fighting against the current and following a counterculture, but here we mean that starting this fight with a broken heart is like wanting to love your partner having in your heart the memory of another person, or like wanting to heal others when you have deep wounds that bind you to the past.
I can be a wounded healer who understands the pain of the people I serve and seeks to help heal, but I will never be able to help heal others if I am enraptured by my illness.
4. Based on Principles
When we build a paradigm there is a risk of being carried away by explanations that make the search smoother for us, or that minimize the pain by discovering our wrong paradigms.
There are always fascinating explanations for our mistakes.
If you continue affirming phrases like: "I always look for the good", "I do no harm to anyone", "in my life there is only room for positive thoughts", better not continue reading this book because you will not get more benefit from it than using it to quote it to others.
RW Emerson said, "I hate dating, tell me what you know." This book is not a compilation of phrases to repeat in conversation.
We think of effective servants who are as afraid of complacency as they are of using power to manipulate others.
On principles, A principle is a self-evident truth that is affirmed in the life of people regardless of what we think or think of them.
If you planted cucumbers, regardless of what you think, so you change the color of the fruit with paint, so you think positively about another harvest, so you declare to the four winds that tomatoes are going to come out, you are still going to harvest cucumbers.
What is sown is reaped, that is a principle that speaks of cause and effect. Cecil B. De Mille mentions: «It is impossible for us to break the law. We can only break ourselves by going against the law.
How to choose the principles?
We repeat the opinion that we have raised before: «look at the fruits». After the fireworks or the spectacle that people who only want to justify their actions sell us, look at the fruits in the light of the long term. See the fruits in the people who will be affected by putting this principle into practice. Will it be liberating? What kind of footprints will they leave? CS
Lewis said, "Whoever seeks the truth will find comfort, whoever seeks comfort in the end will find neither comfort nor truth."
This is an excerpt from the book "Serve, the effective way of being a leader", Jose Luis Ochoa Gamboa, you can purchase it in full at this link:
