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THE THREE RESOLUTIONS

~ Your Personal Mission Controller – Self-Leadership That Works

THE THREE RESOLUTIONS

Tag Archives: GOP

Balance, Daniel San, balance. Miyagi was right.

10 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by threeresolutionsguy in Character and Competence

≈ Comments Off on Balance, Daniel San, balance. Miyagi was right.

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Academy Awards, Donald Trump, GOP, Madonna, Oscars, Sherlock Holmes

A coaching process with which I am closely involved includes in its programme the concept of living a balanced life. Stephen Covey aficionados may stop reading here, expecting to read about time management and making sure that all roles get the appropriate attention at the appropriate time, but that is not what I’m going to write about. In this context, balanced living means making sure that your life is not wholly focused in one area or, to be more precise, that your life DOES try to encompass a broader range of ‘stuff’.

Holmes

Last night I was watching the Robert Downey Jr. version of Sherlock Holmes and it occurred that here was an example of someone living just such a balanced life. I watched as Holmes studied bio-mechanics, chemistry, music, psychology, the arts, the martial arts, the culinary arts, and so on. He mastered understanding of the contexts of each, and occasionally the detail. In doing so he underpinned and reinforced his ability to do what he did best, his detecting. His balanced and broad studies supported his ability to carry out his vocation, while not interfering with it.

The Second Resolution, which invited us to focus on character and competence, does not restrict us in terms of that competence; it does not confine us to competence in only one area even if life makes it the most profitable route to professional success. The all-encompassing nature of this Resolution arguably encourages efforts to improve our competence by living a broader experience, reinforcing our character as we do so. By overcoming the Restraining Forces of Pride and Pretension we move past being ‘proud’ of the one thing we do well and seek to take steps* to be modestly content with being able to understand and explain concepts to the degree that we don’t need to pretend we understand things – we actually do understand.

I admit I am guilty of focussing too much in one area – personal development – but that is partly professional imposition and partly a desperate search for something spectacularly new and effective.~

But truly effective, Holmes-like living is better and worth working for. Broader study and experience feeds the ability to express ones-self to a degree that our friends, colleagues and peers understand and accept our ideas far more easily, instead of viewing them with suspicion and doubt.

Balance your competence by widening your understanding of ‘life’ – not just yours, life in general. Read broadly, use what you discover.

That is true balanced living.

*(Oops. Nearly wrote ‘take pride’ there.)

~(When the truth is that adherence to the 7 Habits is all that is needed – the principles serve the detail.)

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Go on. I dare you. At Amazon, now.

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Poor old Donald Trump. Picked on by a lying media……..

13 Sunday Dec 2015

Posted by threeresolutionsguy in Character and Competence

≈ Comments Off on Poor old Donald Trump. Picked on by a lying media……..

Tags

Donald Trump, GOP, media, paradigms, presidential hopeful, republican party, speech

“Make sure your paradigms are true to principles.” Stephen R Covey

A doozy of an example, this week.

Not that long ago, Republican Party Presidential hopeful Donald Trump made a speech. Following that speech the media had a field day, and thousands of people signed a petition to bar him from entering the UK on the basis of what the media had reported. The media had reported that Trump had expressed a desire to ban Muslims from entering America. That was the headline, that was the repeated mantra, that was what most people heard.

But that isn’t what he said. Or, to be more accurate, that is not ALL that he said. The press missed out the bit before that, thus deliberately (I suspect) erasing the context, and then also omitted to mention the next bit, thus deliberately ignoring the qualifier.

What he said was, and I am paraphrasing so you can ignore me if you want, was that there were people out there who hate America (Al Qaeda, ISIL being two pretty confident examples), and  Americans don’t know why that is and need to find out; that SOME people who hate the USA are entering the country with malicious intent (true, or at least reasonably expected); and that the immigration system currently run by the US government was in chaos and was not fit to ensure that those who had malicious intent could be distinguished from genuine refugees/immigrants (up for debate but many commentators agree).

The bit After the reported ‘stop Muslims from entering the country’ comment was ‘until we can sort out the (bit before the comment)’. In other words, he was proposing a bar on Muslims entering the USA until their government had in place a system for better assessing who was coming for what reason – good, or bad.

That’s the press for you – as fair and unbiased as any Liverpool FC fan.

But I can’t help wondering if there’d been as much ire in 1939 when we declared war on Germany, and in 1941 when Japan attacked the USA and the Far East.

There was a quite legitimate feeling that it might be prudent to stop German and Japanese immigration and to further protect the countries by putting their nationals in camps. Now I’m not proposing the latter by any means, but given there is no reasonable certainty that ISIL AREN’T coming in as refugees, or that they are ONLY coming from one country, why not prevent terrorist atrocity by pausing immigration while figuring out how to best prevent that? How you pause it and what you do while paused is then the legitimate follow up question.

Unfortunately, as the new theatre of war is not drawn by national borders but by the abuse of an international religion, nor fought on battlefields between combatants but in the streets and against civilians, the nationality test can’t be used any more. Security can’t just be served by declaring a country ‘persona non grata’.

At least in WWII the enemy wore uniforms, invaded in bulk and (generally!) complied with the Geneva Convention.

(Blue touch paper lit, now stand well back…….)

So why this Covey quote? It suggests that the first thing you ought to do when you see or hear something from a third party is to make sure that what you are seeing/hearing is, in fact, true – completely, not partially – and not a false paradigm, whether or not well meant. To research further until the truth is fully known.

Then, if you still feel Donald is not a good person, at least that feeling is based on a full assessment and not the blind faith that vested interests want you to apply.

That way you won’t be led by the nose by someone whose only interest in you – is your uninformed support in serving their interest.

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