BC, will always be insecure, because its source is thought to be “out there.”The degree to which we have not allowed ourselves to experience the reality of our true Self is represented by our resentment toward those who have actually done so. We resent their aliveness in the areas in which we feel disabled. When we come from an energy field below 200 on the Map of Consciousness, we dislike, criticize, and devalue that which calibrates higher. The small self seeks fame and fortune by undermining others.
Here’s a story that demonstrates this negative tendency:
A man walks along the beach and comes upon a fisherman with a pail full of crabs. He says to the fisherman, “You’d better put a cover on that pail or the crabs will get out.”
“Well, no,” said the wise old fisherman. “There is no need for that. You see, as one crab crawls up the side of the pail to get out, the other crabs reach up and grab him and pull him back down. So there’s no need for a cover.”
As we become freer and happier, we will see that the nature of the world is like that pail of crabs, and then we will seek to transcend the negative entrainment by embracing an inner attitude and lifestyle that acknowledges the greatness in ourselves and others. True success does not come by attacking a so-called enemy but by nurturing success in ourselves and everyone around us.
The tragic careers of many individuals of genius after being discovered and celebrated by the public illustrates that there is success, and then there is Success. The former frequently jeopardizes life, while the latter enhances it. True Success enlivens and supports the spirit; it is not about isolated attainments but about being successful as a total person, attaining a successful lifestyle that benefits not only yourself but everyone around you. The small self aligns with weak attractor patterns (that is, crab mentality); the Self is aligned with high-power energy fields (that is, Love).
Instead of envying or hating success, the truly successful imitate it, copy it, identify with it, and develop the patterns. To take responsibility for one’s own actions and their consequences is, in itself, extremely powerful and almost instantly raises one’s calibrated level of consciousness to over 200. An extremely valuable insight learned by all spiritually evolved individuals in the course of their development is seeing their own personal consciousness as the decisive influence that determines all that occurs in their lives.
The truly successful identify with the ABC. They realize that they are a channel acted through to create success in the outer world. Inasmuch as they identify with the actual sources of success and not merely the effects, they have no anxiety about losing it. They can lose their fortune or position and re-create it in no time because it all comes from their ABC, which is their inner power. We say of such people, “Whatever they touch turns to gold.” But other people, who view their success in the realm of the external, ABC, will always be insecure, because its source is thought to be “out there.”
True success comes as the automatic consequence of aligning your life with high-power energy patterns and following certain steps. True success is not just about a job, business enterprise, or money in the bank. It is about who you are as a total person, an energy field that inspires, uplifts, and beautifies, no matter what you are doing. True success stems from being aligned with the energy of life.
Examine your ABC before you do anything at all about the ABC.
Does the original founding principle from which you are operating have universal appeal? Could everyone wholeheartedly subscribe if it were known to them? If not, the success is automatically limited from the start.
We can look at the example on an international level of Nazi Germany, which for a while certainly seemed to have all the earmarks of a winner. It had assembled the most impressive military force ever gathered on the planet. Yet it went down the tubes. What was its rallying cry? Deutschland über Alles. “Germany above All” does not exactly have a universal appeal, does it? It could hardly capture the hearts of Belgians, the French, the English, or anyone else, for that matter. It is a win-lose proposition: we win; they lose!
If the start-off motive is to win a prize, sell more cars than the other auto dealer in town, or get rich and famous, the endeavor will not even get off the starting line to real success. The fact that you should be the best in something or become rich and famous may appeal to you, but is it of interest to other people? No. If you have a service and attitude that helps others achieve their goals, then you have an enterprise with universal appeal.
Ambition alone does not yield success. But if the purpose is to make this a better world to live in for everyone or to increase the safety, joy, and beauty of life, everyone can subscribe to that. Coming from a universal principle is coming from power. Coming from self-interest is coming from force and leads to counterforce.
The Map of Consciousness may be seen, in one aspect, as a scale of ego, with the level of 200 being the fulcrum at which selfishness begins to turn toward selflessness, and the level of 500 being the fulcrum at which selflessness has become one’s inner dedication. A hallmark of true success is a motive (an ABC) that calibrates above 200, and the higher it is, the more powerful it is, due to the wider appeal beyond personal egotism.
We see the difference between these levels on the rarefied plane of Olympic competition. The disastrous consequences, in both private and public life, of motivations emanating from levels below 200 are all too clearly illustrated by the scandals. Excessive zeal to capture an Olympic medal and defeat one’s opponent by any means available has led to the abandonment of the power of ethical principle and a descent to the grossest level of force.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with some manifestations of pride. We all may well be proud when our Olympians win medals, but that is a different kind of pride than egotism; it comes from the heart. It is an honoring of human achievement that transcends personal pride. The Olympics, one of the greatest dramas of human striving, inspires the competitor to move from personal pride to an esteem that is an expression of unconditional love and that honors one’s opponents, as well, for their dedication to the same lofty principles.
True success, as in true athletic power, is characterized by grace, sensitivity, inner quiet, and paradoxically, gentleness in the noncompetitive lives of even fierce competitors. The ABC that brings about fulfillment is the dedication to something higher than oneself (that is, teammates, God, country, and so forth), which is an energy of self-transcendence that calibrates high on the Map of Consciousness. We celebrate such champions because we recognize that they have overcome personal ambition through sacrifice and dedication to a higher principle. The great become legendary when they teach by example. It is not what they have nor what they do but what they have become that inspires all of us. Their ABC has universal appeal, for it evokes reverence for the selfless dedication inside us all.
Reflect: Is it something you enjoy doing?
Once you are sure your intention has universal appeal, ask yourself whether the endeavor is something you enjoy doing. We watch people force themselves to go to work each morning because they have convinced themselves they must do a certain job, but their heart is not in it. The way to be a success is to do what you like to do, to enjoy what you do, and thereby naturally do it to the best of your ability and experience the joy that comes from giving your best. Here is an example from one patient who came to the clinic because he had everything in life but was miserable.
The patient complained, “I’ve lost interest in my life. I hate going to work in the morning. I have everything I could ever want—Cadillacs, fancy houses, impressive titles, millions of dollars, great family—but I’m depressed. I don’t see the point of it all. I don’t get any sympathy from my friends. They all envy me.”
“What do you like to do? Do you have a hobby you enjoy?”
He said, “Doc, this will sound crazy to you, but I love to make dollhouses. I have a workshop at the house and love making dollhouses for my children, nieces, and nephews.”
“Do you ever sell any of the dollhouses?”
He replied, “Oh, I never thought of that. I put so much time and effort in them that I could never make money selling them.”
I made a simple suggestion: “Well, for fun, why don’t you take the one you’re working on now, figure out a price that would be profitable, put a price tag on it, and put it on consignment in any store that will allow it—but not in a toy store, where it will get lost and not seen among the overwhelm of the other merchandise.”
And that is what he did. Surprisingly, he knew someone in the hardware business who was happy to put a dollhouse in his store window, and in fact used it to sell stair treads (there was a little staircase in the dollhouse). The dollhouse sold in short order. The next dollhouse was put in as “display only,” and orders were taken. Soon enough, the patient who had been miserable was happily in the dollhouse business, selling them as fast as he could make them, and hiring out some of the work.
They were absolutely adorable, handcrafted dollhouses and brought joy to the hearts of children. That was the ABC he was coming from when he said, “I want to bring joy to the hearts of children.” That is a universal principle that hardly anybody can argue with. One of the tests of the universal principle is whether it appeals to the heart. If your product or service appeals only to the head, it will have a limited success. It may be quite profitable, but the great successes in the world are those things that you yourself love doing and believe in, and which change people’s lives.
Consider: Is what you want to do actually needed by anyone? Is it truly a service to the world?
You want to make sure that what you are going to throw yourself into is not just a pet project or personal preference. Raspberry vinaigrette salad dressing may be some chef’s idea of haute cuisine, but that personal taste is not necessarily going to be shared by many in the populace, who may come into a restaurant once or twice out of curiosity then never return, because they just really wanted regular ranch dressing and it was not even an option. We will notice that such a business, as a consequence, may become primarily for tourists and not appeal to locals, because the demand is limited. It does not serve any real need, other than just the idea of being cutesy, unique, or different. We can apply this step to any arena of life by asking ourselves, Am I imposing my own pet preference, or is it something that actually meets the needs of the people I am relating to?
Check out all the sensory modes, and cover the ones foreign to your own personality by consulting with people who are experts in that area.
What is meant by that? The research of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) has demonstrated that people process their experiences of life primarily through one sensory mode or another. Some people are primarily auditory. Some are visual. Some are feeling people. Of course, smell and tactile senses are also important.
Let’s consider a restaurant that is very attractive. The woman who runs it is obviously a visual person. When people look at the restaurant, they see that the decor is beautiful. She also does a great job on the food and the price. But the acoustics are abominable. People can hardly hear themselves think, let alone have a conversation. The music is too loud, inappropriate in style, and plays nonstop without a single break. Evidently, it is what she likes; however, it turns everyone else off from the place.
If you are the opposite, if you do not care so much about how the thing looks as long as it feels right, then you would do well to call in some people in your life who are primarily visual and ask them how it looks to them. We can tell how people process information by their language. People who say, “I see what that means. How does this look to you?” are probably visual processors. People who say, “That doesn’t feel good to me. That doesn’t feel right,” are obviously feeling people. Auditory people will say, “That doesn’t sound right to me.” Just being aware of these cues will make the modes apparent to us.
You want to make sure you cover the sensory modes that are not your forte. It does not take long, only an hour at most, with an expert in the field to convey the idea. One restaurant grew from failure to success primarily by changing the music in the background from loud, funky Western to soft baroque, which brought in high-paying and loyal customers.
People want to relax for dinner. They want to have tablecloths, cloth napkins, appropriate music, and the right lights. Bright fluorescent lights and primary colors may be great for a breakfast diner, but they will kill dinner business. Although the fast-food chains would seem to belie this obvious fact, people actually want dignity in their lives. They will reward you and appreciate you for supplying it or providing the means of achieving that state. Whatever you present, make sure it is featured in the best possible style, with regard for all the sensory modalities, and that it pleases as many of them as possible. It is well worth the extra trouble.
Aside from the aforementioned sensory modalities, a high percentage of the populace rank comfort very high on their list. Potential customers walk out of stores for the simple fact that they could not find a chair to sit on. Many people think things over, and make up their minds about a purchase, only when they are sitting down. Customers appreciate this kind of caringness.
Rely on attraction rather than promotion.
Keep in mind that promotion with aggressive, forceful marketing, advertising, and sales pitches is very outer-directed and takes time, money, and energy. Attraction, on the other hand, takes no time, energy, effort, or money.
Promotion comes from force. The rule of the universe is that force meets with counterforce. Persuasion meets with sales resistance. The more money you spend on promotion, the higher you are going to have to raise your market price. Hence, you will eventually create a price-resistance ceiling and narrow the gap between your product and that of your competitor.
What attracts and builds your success without any time, energy, or effort? Your reputation does that. Your reputation is not a fake image that you hire some marketing corporation to fabricate but rather the real genuineness of your endeavor, which shines forth and is evident to everyone in everything that you do. Some companies’ very names or labels evoke a warm feeling in us because they have proved themselves over time to provide a product or service that is well crafted, trustworthy, and unique, with reliable and responsive customer service. Their reputation is the effect of a positive-energy ABC. Whereas most corporations calibrate around 200 (the same as government bureaucracy), these companies calibrate in the 300s, indicating their resonance with human emotion (rather than mere functionality).
The ABC that we hold in mind is the magnet that has the pulling power, and it costs nothing. If you are doing a good job, people will search you out. That does not mean you should not let them know that you are there and what services you have available, what your specials are this week, and what your hours are. It is an old axiom in business that a satisfied customer is the best advertisement. Everyone nods and says, “Oh yes, I know that,” and then they proceed to ignore it.
A good rule of thumb to go by is to ask yourself whether the temptation to take a certain shortcut is worth the risk of ruining your business. Consider the seemingly unimportant “cutting corners” example of “yesterday’s doughnuts.” At the close of the day you still have a dozen doughnuts left. The next day you put them in the glass case along with today’s doughnuts. If instead you had said YESTERDAY’S DOUGHNUTS with a little sign that shows the discount price, you would sell them all and not take any risk to your business if the doughnuts were not completely up to snuff. The customer would not have any complaint because they were plainly marked “yesterday’s doughnuts.” If you put them in the showcase, however, and sell them as today’s doughnuts, you may make an extra dollar. But when the customer complains to the family—“I don’t know; there’s just something about these doughnuts. They’re a disappointment; they’re not the same as usual”—you will have ruined your reputation with one whole family. That family has friends and other relatives.
Never take a shortcut that is going to impair your reputation. If you just assume that your customers know what is going on, then you will be right. People in fact do “just know,” even though they cannot say what it is. Rationalizing a departure from quality originates from force in such quotes as “What they don’t know won’t hurt them.” That is true. “What they don’t know won’t hurt them,” but it sure will hurt you! They will not know it consciously; however, they certainly do know it unconsciously. This is true in every area of life.
Offer consistency and reliability.
One of the greatest ingredients of success is people knowing that they can count on you in various ways. A simple thing like changing your hours, such as closing early, can lose all kinds of customers. They value convenience and respect for their time. When you come from a level of integrity on the Map of Consciousness, you are concerned about the happiness of others. At the level of Willingness (cal. 310), for example, your intention is to be reliable and friendly in your service to each customer. You put yourself in their shoes and do all you can to make their experience as wonderful and easy as possible.
It is important to avoid all the little turnoffs—the answering machine that does not work, the impolite employee, the long line with only one checkout cashier, the dirty carpet in the restaurant, or the sign OUT TO LUNCH. Ask yourself, How available is my business to provide what is needed in the world? Many businesses fold because they are open only on weekdays and close at 5 P.M. In counseling young doctors getting established in their practice, I always told them: “Start by charging fees that people can afford, and be available evenings and Saturdays.”
How much is convenience worth to people? The answer is: plenty.
Keep in mind that there is only one customer, and that is human nature itself.
You cannot make a mistake if you keep in mind the basic rule that you only have one customer to serve, one customer to please, and that one customer’s name is human nature. No matter whose skin it may be wearing, it is the same customer inside of everyone. It is easy to understand your customer. Just ask yourself what qualities you look for in a product. Notice that the word is qualities. No price will sell it to us if it does not have the qualities we are looking for in it.
In this area you have to watch the mind’s tendency to pander to the weakness in people’s character. If you cater to negativity, there may be a profit. You may survive quite well; however, you will never be a success. Not colluding with what is sick and perverted is not being a “goody-two-shoes”; it is being realistic. Can you ever fool the universe? No, according to the science of kinesiology. Even if people have no conscious knowledge of the facts, when we test complete strangers with no knowledge at all on the subject, we will find that if they focus on something where integrity is absent, they will go weak.
Everything in the universe is connected with everything else. When we first get that fact, we will be a little paranoid for a while, but it will be a therapeutic paranoia. If someone manufactured a “disembowelment doll,” there would be plenty of strange people out there to buy it, complete with hari-kari knife, lifelike guts, electronic scream, and plastic blood ooze. Someone could also profit from it.
The cost to the panderer of such tastes, however, is enormous. It is invisible to them but quite visible to everyone else. What we have been describing in the last two paragraphs is not human nature but inhuman nature. We kid ourselves if we think we can cater to what is weak without becoming weakened ourselves. It is contaminating.
Those who are violating human decency and seem to be profiting by it may look good for a moment. However, when we study their lives in detail longitudinally, the devastation is staggering to comprehend. Do we conquer a thing by opposing it? No. The way we conquer it is to grow and move away from it. When it becomes clear that something in our lives is antilife, immature, or superficial, this is really disguised vanity. When we discover that there is no love or goodwill in it, should we feel guilty about it, punish ourselves, or become reformers? No. Rather, the resolution is maturity and wisdom. Our consciousness evolves beyond it when we do not give in to it or fight against it. As we become more conscious and aware, killing ducks just does not appeal to us anymore. We switch to skeet. Birds that fly in a V formation and honk are trying to make it south so that they can survive and raise a new flock for next year.
One time, visiting a small town, I said to a local shopkeeper, “Where is everyone?”
“Well,” he said, “squirrel season opens today.” Apparently, all the town’s he-men had run out of wildlife to kill: bears, mountain lions, elk, moose, sheep, deer, javelina, porcupines, beavers, foxes, buffalo, mustangs, swans, ducks, pigeons, doves, and anything else that moved. Now they were down to the squirrels. The sheer grotesqueness of what a high-powered rifle or shotgun could do to an itty-bitty squirrel is incomprehensible. Dove and squirrel hunting calibrates at 65.
What is the cost to the person who kills life willfully for monetary gain or momentary thrill? What is the cost to the person who caters to the negative in others? In the long-term cases that have been researched, the cost to the person is enormous. Such people have no real personal power or magnetism. They do not have the power to transform the situation just by being who they are.
People who are coming from inner power have the capacity to transform the situation merely by their presence. Their presence alone makes all the difference. When you have owned your inner power, it is not what you have or what you do that counts. It is who you are. It is what you have become. Power is greatness. Greatness is stature. Stature is presence. Presence comes from the ABC that you own within yourself. It cannot be purchased. It cannot even be earned. It is inspirational to others, who come to experience the best in themselves just by virtue of this presence of greatness, which validates their inner nobility and nurtures their hidden potential. The world acknowledges the presence of this inner power just because it “is.”
Nelson Mandela is a great example. Coming from the ABC of caring for all South Africans and not just his own racial group brought forth a unifying spirit strong enough to disassemble, against all odds, a long-standing inhumane apartheid system.
Decide on the quality that you intend to serve in others, and be aware that what you serve in others is exactly what you will bring out in yourself.
You pull to yourself that which you serve. It is impossible to serve two masters. You cannot become strong by catering to human weakness. You become strong by supporting strength. You become dynamic when you support the aliveness of others. You become great when you support the greatness of others. You become beautiful when you support the beauty of life. If you are truly coming from the heart, you do not have to worry about success. The world will love you, be loyal to you, support you, and forgive you all kinds of mistakes.
To demonstrate, we can look at an exemplar of greatness. Mother Teresa (cal. 710) is one of the great success stories of our time. She was a little 90-pound woman who spent no money on advertisement, market strategies, or promotion and had no sales crew, no Madison Avenue image makers, and no speechwriters. Yet all she had to do was wiggle her little finger and she raised multimillions. Throngs followed her. People would travel thousands of miles, stand in the sun and the rain on tired and aching feet for hours, to catch a glimpse of her.
What was her magic? Was it that she was a celebrity? Was it that she was famous? No. That is just the ABC of it all. Rather, people hoped for a glimpse of her, or a few moments in her presence, in order to experience her ABC. What they wanted to experience was her “presence.” No advertising, marketing, image making—yet many books have been written about her. She had a following of fans worldwide. She was a winner of the Nobel Prize and internationally acclaimed as one of the greats of our time.
Mother Teresa’s greatness and power arose because she addressed the most noble qualities within human nature—unconditional love and nonjudgmental compassion. She exhibited the heart of all hearts, even though she was small, wizened, hunched over, and with no money or possessions of her own. There was a long waiting list to join her. As a matter of fact, people had to go through an eight-year period of trial, tests, and hard work in service to see if they even qualified to join her organization.
Obviously, she was on the level of a master. She had outclassed everyone. How did that happen? By charity? A lot of people in the world are charitable. By do-gooderism? No. There are plenty of professional do-gooders. They do not win Nobel Prizes. By her kindness? No. There are many kind people in the world. Why did she stand head and shoulders above them all? It was because her alignment, commitment, dedication, and personal sacrifices reached a level that can only be described as devotion. When someone dedicates their life to carrying out the principle of universal truth, that person becomes magnetic. They develop the power of attraction. What they have and what they do are secondary to what they are. It is that quality, which the world acknowledges and brings them, that we term success.
What was it that Mother Teresa acknowledged in others and, by so doing, magnificently brought forth for all of us to see in her? When she ministered to the poor and the sick and the dying in the streets of Kolkata, was she trying to save them from death? Was she trying to raise funds for the poor? No. What she ministered to and acknowledged was the intrinsic truth of human dignity, worth, value, nobility, lovability, and greatness. Those qualities are intrinsic in every human being no matter how abysmal their external life situation may seem to be.
She owned for them and acknowledged for them that which they had not owned in themselves. Consequently, she acted like a mirror to them. By looking at her, they saw the reflection back of what they had denied—the grandeur of the existence of their own beingness. Even the lowliest of the low deserve the respect of the recognition of the intrinsic dignity of just being a human being. Sharing the human experience is transformative. Having seen this within themselves, having witnessed it, and having known the truth of it by seeing its reflection in her eyes, they died with a smile on their faces in a state of beatitude. That is true power.
Recognize that the way to be a success is by sharing it with others.
By not sharing your success with others, you deprive them of their motive to support your success. If by acknowledgment you give recognition to the important part others have played in your success, they will all join you in supporting it and in celebrating it. The way to make a lifelong enemy is to have someone contribute to your life and refuse to acknowledge it. So many people do this with their spouses and fail to acknowledge the part their inspiration and efforts played in achieving success.
Many businesses are problematic, because the owners refuse to share their success with the employees, much less with the customers in any way. The employees are on an hourly wage, hired by an impersonal distant corporation. It sure feels like that’s the case when we go there. They couldn’t care less about us. They are going to make the same amount of money whether they knock our socks off or not, and they know it. The motivation has been zeroed out. The basis for human endeavor has been removed. They have been denied dignity and worth as individuals. They are mechanical, joyless, going-through-the-motions employees. There are mechanical foods served by mechanical people in mechanical surroundings in a lackluster manner for a price. Although it is supposedly cheap, it is really very expensive when we compare our dollars with what we get for them. The efficiency experts and computers have really had their day and have successfully dehumanized the whole experience.
By contrast, when I go into a certain local supermarket, I see the same smiling employees, year after year. Customers in line are smiling and laughing with the cashiers. Older customers are sitting in the front of the market at little tables, chatting away, having their afternoon club meeting there, in the company of friends. Up over the manager’s counter is an award plaque. Surprisingly, what does the award plaque say? It is the annual award to the “Friendliness Family.” It is not just recognizing an individual but a family. It acknowledges that there is more than just one person involved in their performance. The award does not go to the employee with the biggest sales but to the friendliest. Isn’t that amazing?
How long does it take to become a success? The answer is: exactly one second. The second you decide to “be” a certain way, you already got it. Success is yours the instant you get that it is not “out there.” It is not what you have. It is not even what you do. Doing only contributes and having only embellishes. It is what you are that creates success. To decide to be a certain way is all that is required. No master’s degree, diplomas, correspondence courses, boring lectures, or workshops are necessary.
Once you decide to be a certain way, you take on a new importance and significance to people. It is not what you do or say that attracts them but your very “presence.” Whether you are in their lives or not makes a difference to them. Whether you are going to be at their parties or not makes a difference to them. People are proud to work for you. They start to act like it is an honor to know you. Positive human qualities are contagious.
What makes for success is that a certain principle is constantly operating for you 24 hours a day, even when you are not consciously expressing it. At that point, you are not aiming toward that higher energy field on the Map of Consciousness; you are living it.
Realize that life is a feedback loop.
Life is your feedback loop. You strengthen within yourself the identical things that you strengthen in others. This clinical fact has enormous implications. The obvious conclusion to be drawn, therefore, is that you will do well to constantly support that which is positive in others.
We say that some people are negative people and other people are positive people as though it were just accidental. It is not accidental at all. It is the easily observable demonstration of the clinical fact just mentioned. If we listen to people’s conversations, we will hear some people engaging in negative gossip, describing all the negative facts they can about other people’s lives or about world events. What they don’t realize is that they are reinforcing these very same things within themselves.
When I was very young, my grandmother, who was described as saintly by everyone around her, used to say, “If you haven’t got something good to say about someone, then don’t say anything at all.” I puzzled over this for many years. It was only after I became clinically experienced as a psychiatrist that I could see the results of these principles in operation and began to understand what she meant.
That is the next principle: support the success of others in every little way you can think to do. This means to also recognize and acknowledge their successes, which tends to reinforce the positive not only within them but also in yourself. It is not about manipulative flattery but rather genuine appreciation for the positive characteristics of everyone you run into, including store clerks, servers, colleagues, family members, friends, guests, casual acquaintances, and people you might encounter only in passing. This is a valuable training that teaches you to look for the positive.
This method moves you to an attitude of “givingness” rather than “gettingness.” Everyone around us unconsciously reacts differently to diverse attitudes. People know on a conscious or unconscious level when someone is out to “get” something from them. They are on guard, wary, and resistive. If even animals can detect this, we can be sure that human beings, who are far more evolved, also detect it.
Many people resist adopting a giving attitude because they have an equation that “to give is to lose.” They do not understand this feedback mechanism; therefore, they do not try long enough to discover that we always get back more than what we give. Success tends to automatically amplify itself. It is like a snowball that gathers momentum and increases in size as it rolls effortlessly downhill. Every time you create a good feeling in others, they feel grateful and develop a positive attitude toward you, which completely changes the nature of your life.
We say that some people seem to lead a charmed life. We forget that this is because they have taken the trouble to be charming to others. This charmingness is an inner attitude. It is not opportunistic, or manipulative, or done for gain. They are not trying to charm us into giving them something. Instead, it is a true reflection of those people’s nature.
To understand this quality, never do others a “favor.” Why is that? Because doing a favor is really a manipulation. It is a bargain in which you expect something in return. If after having done something for someone, you feel they are obligated, then you have missed the whole point altogether. Givingness implies no expectation of return.
This latter statement is of crucial importance. We will easily observe that what most people are really trying to do is purchase approval from others or manipulate them into a debt. “I’ve done this for you; now you’ve got to do that for me.” This manipulative, tradeoff, bargaining position ends up in resentments so that we often hear, “After all I’ve done for him.” Who wants “free” dental work if you know it comes with the expectation that you will take care of the dentist’s dog while he’s on vacation?!
When you really do something for someone else, you do it with no expectation of return in any form, even by acknowledgment or recognition. You do it out of caring for other human beings, because you are contributing to the quality of life itself. This is an inner secret that we arrive at only through a deep inner understanding that when we support life, life supports us in return. Granted, this sounds philosophical, but it is a truism that we will arrive at through inner observation and experience.
The simple practice that leads to this awareness and can be tried by anyone interested in becoming truly successful on a daily basis is this: in traffic, always let others cut in front of you. Does that sound sort of crazy? Within that practice is the hidden, secret power of becoming a successful person. As you practice this technique, you will eventually discover the pleasure of becoming a truly courteous person. What does courteous mean? It means merely to support the life of others and their happiness. You will shift from the short-lived satisfaction of blocking others into the long-term, inner awareness that comes from supporting others.
If you let others into traffic, you experience yourself as magnanimous. You notice that others wave to you in thanks. Your life becomes full of thanks, kindness, gratitude, and win-win outcomes, because those are the principles by which you stand and live.
The next practice is to always be growing something in the office, apartment, home, or garden. This can be tomatoes in the window, or a bonsai plant, or little cacti, or whatever takes people’s fancy. It should be something for which you take personal responsibility, even if it is just watering the geraniums in the window box. It is noteworthy that Nelson Mandela, even while in prison, grew tomatoes in a discarded trashcan and gave the fruits of his labor to the prison guards and their families.
The capacity for success resides with everyone. Any of us can make others feel good about themselves. In so doing we begin to feel good about ourselves. This begins to rub off and points our compass in an increasingly positive direction in which success is merely the automatic by-product of what we ourselves have become.
Advanced research has demonstrated that within all happenings in the universe there is a discernible pattern and organizing principle. In fact, if it were not for the organizing principle, no universe would even be possible. Organizing principles have different levels of power. We now have one of the secrets of the success of powerful people. Their entire lives are automatically and effortlessly organized by the complete and total alignment with and commitment to very high and powerful principles. This is how Mahatma Gandhi defeated the British Empire.
Power comes from aligning with those dominant attractor patterns that support life. We see this orientation in the grace and friendliness of truly successful people. They want to put others at ease, supporting their comfort and well-being. Even their artlessness, naïveté, or clumsiness is done within an overall context of grace. It is almost as though unconsciously they know when it is most graceful to be awkward. That sheer awkwardness is what sets the other people at ease. How often could we think back to a point in our lives when we just suddenly pretended we had forgotten something, or were flustered, and the sole purpose was to put the other person at ease? That was a good space to come from and assures us that our consideration for others brings an automatic grace that fits the needs of the moment.
Success is neither something that we have nor something that we do. It is the automatic consequence of what we are. Our lives and what we accomplish in the world are merely the outcome of what we truly are within ourselves and what we have decided to serve. This truth is what makes our work easy.
In steering the ship, if we change direction only one degree on the compass, after a few days of sailing we will be hundreds and hundreds of miles from where we would have been had we not shifted our course that one little degree; therefore, a slight shift in inner attitude can have an enormous consequence in our lives. Perhaps no one knows this better than the recovering alcoholic or addict.