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Authenticity
The first step to becoming authentic is to be brave. It is not until we acquire courage that we can become real and being real is not about hiding our truth, or our emotions and vulnerabilities. On the contrary it is about revealing them--being authentic.
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Beauty
If we fail to see the beauty in each other, we fail to honor each other, and where there is no honor, there can be no inspiration.
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Bliss
We are on this planet for a short time--this gift is in itself an inspiration. We are here to realize our bliss: to live out our dreams, to serve, to savor the possibilities of our full potential.
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Calling
A calling moves us from our dreams to actions. Our calling is the work we love; the activities that we undertake that make our hearts soar and provide deep and lasting moments of bliss.
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Cause
The greatest leaders in history all saw a beacon beckoning to them from the future--a cause. They had a clear vision of the world they sought to create, and a burning passion to bring that world into existence. What is your cause?
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Chemistry
The most successful teams and communities are collections of successful friends. It is not enough just to respect other team members, because functional respect is based only on the personality. Deep friendship, on the other hand, is a human connection between souls--Chemistry.
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Communication
Those who inspire communicate with each other authentically, truthfully, and deeply, and in a way that serves a higher purpose because if we limit our dialogue to the secular and the material, our relationships will be brittle and barren.
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Community
Only when we view our organizations for what they are--communities of relationships--can we create reality, offering people at work a deeper experience for the soul.
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Congruence
Inspiring leaders love others so genuinely that they cannot resist serving them--and their followers are at once inspired by this congruence.
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Consciousness
As we engage with others, we want to know, "Is this a conscious leader?" Is this a leader who is awake? Is this a conscious leader who honors all of life? Organizations led by such leaders are crucibles of energy that ignite the passions of everyone within.
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Contribution
The pursuit of mastery in the service of humanity is one of the greatest contributions we can make to our world and to other souls on this planet. In this way, our work can become our joy, because it is joyful for others.
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Courage
When we listen to our soul instead of our ego, courage will emerge and give us the one thing that we lack--will. It is the will to make a change that starts the process; it is the will that invests fire into our passion, impelling us to become the instruments of change.
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Creativity
More than anything, creativity depends on love. Creativity flourishes in a loving environment because love enables the ego to renounce autonomy and, therefore, to inspire the soul.
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Delivery
Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve." Delivery is service.
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Destiny
Why are you here? What is your purpose on this earthly journey? What is the uniqueness within you that calls to be lived? This is the important starting point for us all because the deep knowing of our Destiny is the crucible from which is generated our capacity to inspire others and ourselves.
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Detachment
Conscious leaders detach themselves from judgments, personal "right and wrong" lists and, instead, marvel at the beauty of people and life. In other words, they are mystics, and their mystical worldview inspires.
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Effectiveness
Our role as leaders is to treat each other as sacred, to inspire and be effective at the same time. These are not mutually exclusive ideas. Indeed, the reason why conscious leaders are effective is because they treat others as sacred and because they inspire all the time.
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Empathy
To be a friend, we must walk in the moccasins of others, because when we relate well with them, we understand them.
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Encouragement
We are all yearning for more love in our lives--not more fear. It is the deepest yearning in our hearts. If we replace negative ways with encouragement, compassion, trust, patience, empathy, and love, we will inspire others and thus release their untapped potential.
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Equality
Our attitude is the most important determinant of success--whatever that may mean for each of us. We each have the power to manifest whatever we wish for in life. And that makes us all equal.
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Faith
Faith is the capacity to achieve and enjoy a sense of inner peace based on a connection with the divine that transcends the universe. Faith is one way to reconnect business with the soul because it helps us to become more conscious, to become one with the universe.
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Flow
Flow is a state of consciousness--a state of concentration so focused that it amounts to absolute absorption in activity. When we are in flow, we feel strong, alert, in effortless control, unselfconscious, and at the peak of our abilities.
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Forgiveness
The ego has a perpetual need to be right, but the soul is more interested in achieving wholeness. Needing to be right gets in the way of forgiveness.
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Freedom
The soul is a perennial questioner, but even if the quest for information is successful, the soul will not cease questioning and searching until it achieves another imperative: freedom.
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Gentleness
There is an old Iroquois saying, "The greatest strength is gentleness." It takes a strong person to be gentle. A strong leader is the one with the courage to pause, to reflect, to listen, to love, and to empathize--in other words, to be gentle.
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Grace
Grace is contagious. We love people with grace and are drawn to their company. A little white--haired, elderly lady once approached Mark Twain after an evening lecture to tell him how much she had enjoyed his talk. "I wanted to thank you personally," she explained, "because you said you loved old ladies." Mark Twain smiled at her and then replied, "I do love old ladies and I also like them your age." The grace of Mark Twain endeared him to millions.
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Harmony
Harmony is a "still--point"--that place where we experience peace--internally and with the universe. From this place of strength, we can change the world, because all our energy is available for commitment towards this end. The universe is an exquisite configuration of harmony.
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Honesty
The level of honesty, and therefore of grace, within an organization is set by each of us--not by someone else. The standards for organizations are those practiced by our role models--and if it's going to be, it's up to me. Honesty will not occur unless someone sets a new standard, unless someone raises the bar and models the behavior for others to follow.
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Honor
Our role in life is to honor the sacredness in others--in all of life, including other people and ourselves. When I honor the whole being that you are, complete with your gifts and your flaws, your merits and your blemishes, your dreams and your failures, your hurts and your healings, your beauty and your imperfections, your ego and your soul, then I am honoring you--and therefore myself.
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Hope
We all have two kinds of energy: our light and our shadow. Though the shadow often appears as darkness, it is always within our power to shine the brilliance of our light there. Indeed, we must always do so, because even the deepest darkness will give way to light. By shining our light, we can find our way and thereby inspire others. In this way, we provide hope.
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Humility
Humility is a sense of proportion and reverence for all of life--not just one's own. Humility is an expression of our awareness of others and of our respect and love for them.
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Infusion
Most business organizations and not-for-profit institutions have "programs." But it's not programs we need. We don't have a "sunset appreciation program"--instead, we sit in a sacred place and experience a sunset, and in this way, it infuses us with spirit. Programs intrude. An experience infuses. Followers are yearning for infusion, not intrusion.
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Inspiration
The root of motivation can be found in the personality; the root of inspiration is to be found in the soul. The energy that propels inspiration is love. Motivation is self--focused; inspiration is other--focused. Motivation serves me; inspiration serves you. The difference in organizations is palpable--inspired people arouse the hearts of others, thus creating inspired colleagues, customers, and suppliers--and an inspired world.
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Integration
We hear much about the need to achieve greater balance in our lives. But it isn't balance we need. The very notion of balance infers that there are two solitudes to choose from--work and life. What we are yearning for today is not balance between work and life, but a complete seamlessness of the two--not balance, but integration.
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Integrity
When leaders talk of serving others, their intentions count more than their words; what we do counts more than what we say. Followers are more interested in our integrity than in our speeches about integrity. People yearn for leaders who are prepared to serve them. This is the integrity that followers yearn for--they want to see their leaders place the personal and spiritual well-being of people ahead of the bottom line.
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Intimacy
Organizations are potential meeting places where we can tell our stories, comfort each other in our sorrows, and celebrate each other in our joys. They are organizations of humans who need to laugh, cry--and, yes, hug--together. We are all vulnerable, hungry for love and intimacy, filled with more questions than answers and, therefore, above all, very human. At our core, personality gives way to soul. Intimacy means "into--me--see".
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Intuition
Whereas the personality doesn't take intuition seriously, the soul treats it as the most useful of its senses, the other five playing supporting roles. The soul works primarily on hunches, emotions, premonitions, and funny feelings. Learning to identify our intuitive nature and acquiring the skill and patience to listen attentively, and adding this to more conventional "scientific" modes of gathering data can dramatically increase our effectiveness.
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Joy
If we are sincere in our attempts to inspire the soul as well as the personality, to create blithe spirits, then we must add the dimension of joy. When our work becomes art, we will create grace, experience joy, and invigorate our souls with freedom and fulfillment.
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Justice
The soul yearns for practical conformity to human or divine law. Within our core, there is an innate desire for integrity in our dealings with each other. We hope that others will adhere to a perception of the truth and the reality that we share with them--in expressing their opinions as well as in their conduct. We hope that people will be fair when representing facts or describing merit or demerit. For most of us, justice includes honesty, fidelity, and impartiality. Socrates said, "Nothing is to be preferred before justice."
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Kaizen
Kaizen is a Japanese word, which literally translates into "better way." It is the art of doing the same thing better, rather than doing things differently. Kaizen is the practice of making small improvements in the status quo through continuous, ongoing efforts. It is an intelligent attitude that honors the act of micro-excellence achieved through daily personal mastery and learning. It is a solution-based philosophy, rather than a problem-based philosophy.
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Kindness
The ancient Greeks called it agape; in Sanskrit it is maitri; and metta in Pali. The English term is loving kindness. Serving others and practicing loving kindness may not be the first image that springs to mind when we think about corporate executives or leaders of organizations. But it should be. Let's make it so.
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Leadership
Leadership is not so much about technique and methods as it is about opening the heart. Leadership is about inspiration--of oneself and of others. Great leadership is about human experiences, not about processes. Leadership is not a formula or a program. It is a human activity that comes from the heart and considers the hearts of others. It is an attitude, not a routine.
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Learning
The dictionary defines leading as "showing the way to" and teaching as "showing how to." Therefore, leading is teaching, and teachers show learners how to learn. To acquire greater mastery, this learning must come from masters. Mastery is never perfect, just as there is no perfect knowledge or wisdom. Knowledge and wisdom are always incomplete. Therefore, continuous learning--that is, life--long learning--is essential if continuous mastery is to flourish in all areas of our work and our personal lives.
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Legacy
In the Hopi tradition, no decision is made until its effects on the next seven generations have been considered. In this way, the Hopi people do their best to ensure that their children and grandchildren will inherit a more loving and sustainable planet. As leaders and followers we share an inheritance, which is to serve and inspire each other. In turn, we pass on this inheritance in the form of a legacy.
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Lightness
We all evolve, whether we like it or not. Some of us evolve more and sooner than others, but the choice for each of us is whether we evolve positively or negatively, and whether we direct our evolution or not. We cannot expect the teams we lead in organizations to become anything that we are not first becoming ourselves. Personal evolution precedes corporate evolution. We can make either of two choices--darkness or light, positive or negative.
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Listening
Unconditional and totally attentive listening--sacred listening--is a beautiful gift to the soul of another. Arguments and conflicts begin when people stop listening to each other. Conflicts are resolved when both parties agree to only ask questions, to cease making assertions, and to listen. We cannot meet the needs of others--delivery--if we do not pause to hear what those needs are. We serve best by listening with sacred attentiveness and then acting constructively on what we have heard.
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Love
Nearly all of us yearn for less fear and more love in our lives, and achieving this is simple: we must respect the Law of Karma--what we give is what we get. As Pat Carroll said, "Everybody forgets the basic thing; people are not going to love you unless you love them." Here's the truth: inspiration to greatness comes from love, not from fear, competition or war.
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Mastery
Mastery is undertaking whatever you do to the highest standards of which you are capable. Mastery embodies a commitment to excellence in everything one does. Walt Disney used to tell his colleagues, "Do what you do so well that others will come to see you do it again." Isn't that what we all need to do in every corner of our lives?
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Motivation
The behavior of others is neither a given nor is it separate from our own. We can do more than merely react to the behavior of others: we can dramatically and positively change and influence it. We call this phenomenon motivation.
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Openness
Leaders who are open about information are frequently surprised at the innovative ways in which the information is used and at the dramatic results this can achieve. The potential risks that full disclosure and openness could pose are more than offset by the sense of empowerment experienced by people who feel trusted and are therefore inspired to contribute.
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Partnership
When we sign contracts, or make agreements, we can look at them from two different perspectives: we can make agreements in which we play not to lose, or we can make agreements in which we both play to win. The need of the personality to take has eclipsed the desire of the soul to give. Winning and losing have long been the general pattern of business relationships. However, we need to become ambassadors and emissaries of the New Story Values we stand for by deepening our partnering skills.
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Profit
Profit, like wealth, is a rightful desire of the soul. It can nourish both the personality and the soul. The means--the way we serve--is even more important than the ends. The old-story adage that the ends justify the means is seldom true. No ends are worthwhile if we must pursue shabby means to achieve them. Life is often a better measure than material profit alone.
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Promise Keeping
Almost all disaffections of the soul are the result of disappointments with people and organizations. These disappointments are usually the result of betrayals, which can be traced to broken promises and untruths. When someone lies to us, we are crushed and our souls are saddened. In contrast, a culture of truth-telling and promise-keeping is exhilarating and inspiring--a weight seems to drop from our shoulders; toxicity gives way to healing; joyfulness and trust prevail; and affection for our associates and for our work grows in our hearts. Leaders who inspire the souls of others do not treat promise--keeping or truth--telling lightly.
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Purpose
The purpose of our work is not material but spiritual. We do not go to work solely to manufacture widgets or to produce reports. We go to work because it is part of our life purpose and our cause--to contribute to the healing and recovery of the planet, to create greater wholeness throughout life. Each of us has chosen a different means of working, different skills, different organizations, products, and services, but we can all unite in a shared goal: to celebrate and honor each other and to make our planet more peaceful, beautiful, and loving.
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Questions
There are lots of ready-made answers to all kinds of questions. What we need is not another answer. Instead, we need to ask more questions--especially the right questions. This is our challenge. Although many experts maintain an inventory of answers, there is no ready inventory of questions. Knowing, and remembering, to ask the right questions requires wisdom and judgment. We need to sit with the soul and ask the right questions.
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Respect
Respect is at the center of all civilized behavior--at home or at work. Respect is the act of treating others as sacred. In honoring them, we accord them the respect they deserve. We are all divine, and when we fail to respect each other, we are abusing the divinity that each of us embodies. Respect is the acknowledgement of our oneness with the universe, the understanding that we are all connected and part of one system of life. Therefore, if we disrespect others, we disrespect ourselves.
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Rewards
The opportunity to serve by sharing our gifts is the highest calling in life. When we serve by sharing our gifts, we will be rewarded with the highest gifts in return: our hearts will be infused with moments of pure bliss. This is the bonus for those who practice mastery--they and others will reap handsome rewards, for the law of mastery is: "Mastery never seeks reward; rewards always find mastery." It is a wonderful law of life.
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Sacredness
The purpose of our lives is to see the sacredness in every relationship. Whether it is how we see each other, as spouses or as friends, or even in the relationships we experience as parents and children, teachers and students, customers and suppliers, inmates and guards, followers and leaders, physicians and patients, plaintiffs and defendants--or strangers and neighbors. The need to see the sacredness in our relationships goes further--we need to see our sacred connection with the planet, its flora and fauna, and all of life. The soul pursues values that respect the sacredness of everything.
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Sanctuary
A sanctuary is a holy association, a relationship where we give reverence to all of the people and things within it. It is a place where we practice a sacred code, live in grace, and honor each other. It is not a physical location (which we call a soulspace)--it is a state of mind, or perhaps more accurately, a state of soul. Sanctuaries are formed by groups of like--minded individuals who may not meet, but who create their sacred relationship through shared values, love, trust, and respect for each other. A sanctuary consists of souls who share and enjoy a common, values--centered code.
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Self-esteem
Traditionally, we have attempted to change our personal circumstances by changing our environment--changing what is on the outside, instead of what is within. We attempt to reinforce our self-esteem, which is an inner dimension, by spoiling ourselves with a new suit or a new hairdo, which are external dimensions. In the same way, we hope for a change in our organization through external engagement instead of changing within. Personal evolution must precede corporate evolution. In order to reclaim the higher ground where we can renew our souls, we must first complete our inner work.
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Service
We are exhausted from fear and competition; we are all searching for a new practice of corporate leadership, one in which workplaces are characterized by love and truth, meaning and fulfillment--qualities of the spirit. Servant leadership embodies sharing, cooperation, consideration, and consciousness. The servant leader honors the sacredness in others and in all of life. The servant leader is a loving leader. To the leader who sees their most important responsibility as being of service to others, life is not a continuous improvement project in which we strive endlessly towards greater and greater personal achievements. Instead, servant leaders ask others, "How may I serve you?"
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Silence
Silence is the rest between the notes, the place where the infinite resides. Being silent is the only way we can listen to each other. More important, being silent is the only way we can listen to the intelligence of the universe, to the divine. When we talk, we push at the universe. When we are silent, we invite the universe to visit us, and we become open to the great universal energy. Robert Greenleaf posed the question we should all ask ourselves: "In saying what I have in mind, will I really improve on the silence?"
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Soulspace
If you were to seek an environment that would encourage you to produce the most inspired work of your life, where would you go? Would your office or factory spring immediately to mind? Or would you choose a verdant forest, a rocky mountain, or an ocean at sunset? Or perhaps a beautiful temple, an art gallery or museum, a fine hotel, or a concert--or home? It is a tragedy that the contemporary office tower does not enrapture the soul. Yet if we wish to inspire the soul let's create beautiful soulspaces where our spirits can soar.
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Soulwork
Voltaire puzzled about the soul and soulwork, eventually concluding, "Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what the soul is." Yet, we know that all work can be sacred and all work can be soulwork. Short-term thinking is the nemesis of soulful change because it is easy to interrupt the process at any moment and then declare it to be a failure. The soul does not think in terms of a fiscal quarter or a financial year-end. The soul is patient and deliberate. Our work is transformed into soulwork when it is devoted to bringing more love and sacredness to the planet.
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Spontaneity
The spirit yearns for a straightforward life, a life shorn of complexity. Yet our routines become increasingly complex, because we confuse progress with complexity. The most elegant forms in life are simple--sunsets, flowers, a smile, or a hug. These are complex events, but the universe has cleverly concealed their complexity in order to engage the soul. In the Tao Te Ching, Lao--Tzu wrote, "True mastery can be gained by letting things go their own way. It can't be gained by interfering."
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Teamwork
More than anything else, teamwork should be about community, relationships, trust, and love. Ego and the encouragement of individual ambition in search of rewards often impedes group performance. It can be difficult to align ego with the need to foster the networks of community. But teamwork at its very best is a joy to the soul. Teams that are built on win-win relationships flourish as sacred communities. Successful communities do not waste their energies competing either within their communities, with other internal communities, or with external communities. They are dedicated to excellence, to their cause, and to inspiring the soul.
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The Card of Knowing
Perhaps there is no special need in your life right now. Perhaps this card has appeared in order to suggest to you that this is an ideal moment for you to reflect, to contemplate, to meditate, and to give thanks for the blessings in your life. This might be the time for you to find that still-point inside you where the infinite resides. Another possibility is to think of the blank card as a metaphor for your life just now-a clean canvas upon which you can begin the most creative work of your existence-a tabula rasa, a fresh place--an opportunity to begin again. Or perhaps this is just a moment for you to invite your mind to become empty, to meditate, and rest for a few moments, temporarily leaving the business of the world behind. Perhaps it is telling you that you know. The card of knowing may be inviting you to turn inward for the answer to your question--to find that still place in your mind and heart that knows what to do. The knowing is within you.
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Transformation
Organizational transformation can only be achieved one soul at a time, because organizational personal evolution is the path of personal transformation. Transformation is simply the aggregation of personal transformation. If we inspire one person at a time, a group of these people will become a team. If we inspire the team, a group of teams will become a community. If we inspire groups of communities, one at a time, these groups of inspired communities will inspire the world.
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Trust
Promise-keeping is an essential precondition for trust and one of the cornerstones of chemistry. Not until a sustained pattern of promise-keeping has been established can sacred relationships grow. Not only does promise-keeping lead to new standards of decency and civility, but it has another important advantage-it is efficient. When we keep our promises we can eliminate many processes and procedures and controls because we trust each other. What if we could scrap the controls because we knew that we were each utterly reliable when we made commitments and could be counted on to keep the promises we made and to own our mistakes?
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Truthfulness
It is unrealistic to expect that we can move from truthlessness to truthfulness in one step. Reversing an embedded pattern of truthlessness is difficult, and it takes courage to go first. The goal is not to change the entire world in one fell swoop, but to create our own sanctuary, in which we can feel safe and grow, knowing that our souls are being nourished and protected. So we must initially create awareness of a better way, and then systematically work through all of the activities where truth-telling is absent and design the alternative approach. Then we must ensure that in every relationship, truth-telling becomes a safe thing to do. The truth puts the soul at ease. Gandhi said, "There is no God higher than truth."
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Values
In Western societies, we are addicted to goals and achievement, often believing that by simply defining a goal, we will make the outcome real. Living a goal-directed life is modern but unnatural. Even though there is no shortage of experts who urge us to plan, no other part of our lives is managed this way. It isn't fun, it is graceless, and it is not fulfilling. Values guide all human interaction--not goals. A life lived within a framework of sound values produces harmony, balance, and serenity for the soul. Paying attention to our values and detaching from outcomes will, paradoxically, lead to a higher order of goals.
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Vision
Great leaders develop a vision so compelling that it becomes a magnet for passion--a Cause. They do not develop cookie-cutter or connect-the-dots approaches to leadership. They combine visceral energy with a clear and focused vision, founded on strong spiritual beliefs and values. This combination radiates a light so bright that followers find it irresistible--it becomes a Cause.
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Wholeness
Competition is contrary to the natural wishes of the soul. The soul seeks to be whole, while competition seeks to divide--between winners and losers. We will be unable to heal the pain afflicting the souls of millions in modern organizations until we embrace wholeness in everything we do. Wholeness embodies grace, and draws us inevitably to cooperation and to love. The soul naturally withdraws from competition, having an innate preference for cooperation. The soul seeks to collaborate, not to compete. The soul is simply a part of a larger universe, and it cannot achieve wholeness until we pursue it at every level.
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Win-Win
We are emerging from one of the most self-absorbed eras in human history. The personality-driven way is dangerously egocentric. A values-centered approach is other-centered and seeks win-win combinations. It assumes that when we help others to win, we all win. It recognizes that a proposition that is good for me but bad for you is, in the end, bad for both of us. A win--win approach does not flow from the ego but comes from the soul, enabling us to make decisions with empathy. The shift from me to YOU assumes that a customer is more than a walking credit card, that an employee is more than a means of production, that a supplier is more than the lowest-cost producer, that a partner is a vital part of our combined potential.
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Wisdom
Wisdom is different from learning: learning is achieved by acquiring information; wisdom is acquired by letting go of previously learned ideas and information. None of us is born, for example, with prejudice towards another--discrimination is a learned behavior. When we become aware, we open the windows of our mind to the fresh outside air of wisdom and refresh and replace the stale air of our fixed opinions. This is a liberating activity. It is through this act of letting go that we acquire wisdom. Wisdom is the graceful practice of challenging our old habits, inviting opposing ideas into the rooms of the mind, and allowing them to enrich our existence. Thus, growth requires both learning and wisdom. Learning without wisdom is like a rose without fragrance.
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Wonder
The cynic cannot imagine an alternative possibility that contradicts his or her current beliefs. Cynics will say that reawakening spirit and values in the workplace is too difficult in modern organizations that are faced with the pressures of contemporary markets. If we continue to use the concepts of the old-story organizations instead of changing the paradigm, the cynics will be right, for cynicism is simply creativity that is repressed. If, on the other hand, we approach all this with a sense of awe and wonder, we will be able to change the paradigm, and therefore the possibilities. None of us knows enough to be cynical.
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Yin-Yang
In the Eastern traditions, there are two forces in the universe: yin, the feminine, passive, cool, negative force; and yang, the masculine, active, hot, positive force. Yin and yang are based on the principle of balance and interdependence, a perfect system being evenly represented by both. They are a unified system, all things having yin as well as yang aspects, and their energy rules everything in the natural world. The overarching principle behind the Laws of Nature is the need to seek a balance-point--for every action, there is a corresponding and an opposing action. Life cannot exist and unfold without this balance. We need both.
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