PEOPLE CHOOSE WHAT THEY WILL OR WON’T DO
Ultimately, all human behavior comes down to individual choices. When we began this discussion about leadership, we talked about the idea that we are ultimately responsible for everything we do. We can expand that and say that every human is ultimately responsible for every aspect of his life and every action that he takes—a really strong statement that speaks quite robustly to ultimate human power and consciousness. We can extend that to the most basic level and say that we even choose the areas of which we remain unaware.
This frames our position as leaders. People cannot be forced—at least, not for long. We know that we can enslave the body but not the mind. We can use powerful psychological methods of brainwashing to create thought control, but that is only temporary. We can create systems that direct or captivate the attention and influence the thinking of people, but we cannot control the total flow of information or how people interpret it. We just cannot control other people. Besides that, we really don’t want to. While many people in authority positions wish they could mandate or dictate direction and action for large groups of people, it is truly impossible to do with any degree of success. It is also completely undesirable to do so when operating through any degree of human dignity.
Human beings truly choose who they are, how much they will accomplish, and how they will engage the world at every second of every day. That is simply a fact of existence. As leaders, we must recognize this and commit to honoring that fact. Unfortunately, many things in life teach us an ultimate deception about people, and we have many practices that are built from the premise that people can be controlled and their actions mandated. We know, however, that although people ultimately may choose to comply with a direction, the results of that pale in comparison to what happens when they choose to commit to a direction that is based on the passion they feel in their hearts.
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Buse (not verified)
Wed, 03/21/2012 - 01:14
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Hitting is difficult. Even when you uxecete perfectly, you still sometimes don't get the results that, on the outside, indicate success. I played in college with a kid who hit four of the hardest balls I've ever seen in one game. Everyone of them was crushed, but all four were caught for outs. In the scorebook he was 0-4, but he probably never hit the ball in any game in his life. What makes a great at-bat is having enough self-control to work the process of hitting. The most difficult thing to do in hitting is to control your stride and body in the face of real competition. Being able to control yourself on each pitch, to take a controlled stride, to keep your hands back and actually see pitches comfortably is a great at bat, regardless of result.
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