Part of my motivation for doing the best that I can, doing the right things and treating people well is that it is ingrained in me that these are some of the virtues that will contribute significantly to my success in the future. I’m particularly hard on myself that in many cases where I have failed it is because of something I could have done better. I could have studied harder, been better prepared, trained harder or made some other better choice. My outcomes being the result of something I did or didn’t do.
Every self help book or inspirational biography I have read is pitched at helping people become better in some way. Most are pitched in the form of “do these things, behave in this way, think in this kind of way or build these habits and you will be successful”.
There is a lot of content that can help one improve themselves in all aspects of their lives. We are blessed that a lot of this is freely available on the Internet. One can pick just about any topic of interest and find someone who has posted content about it. There is even the poor man’s encyclopedia, Wikipedia, freely available 24 hours per day. So basically, what I am saying is that we have little excuse for not becoming better humans every day.
Now this is where it gets interesting, and I have to challenge what the point of all this self improvement is. If the surest route to success is self improvement why is it that we still get terrible leaders at the top of organisations? Why in many cases is the brown stuff rising to the top and not the cream? Could it simply be that the paradigm we have been raised on about success being as a result of virtue is not always true? Could it be that good things and good fortune can fall onto terrible people too?
Across the world people with terrible values (in my opinion) can become President, CEO, policeman or your boss. Every time you complain about your boss you kinda forget that they are your boss and despite their shortcomings have managed to get elevated in the organisation to a level above yours. Even if you hate them…Mama, the idiot made it! PS/ I have an amazing boss and he deserves all his success.
So just because you care about people, are honest, do the right things and try and display integrity as best as you can, it doesn’t mean that only good fortune is reserved for you. You may do this your whole life and still not achieve half the success as someone with worse values and behaviour. Even if you define success by your own standards, the person you despise the most may get a larger dose of it than you.
Ultimately, there has to be a greater motive for doing what is right that an easy life or career success. You may never get rewarded for it. Unless of course you believe as I do that life on earth is not your ultimate destination. You could do everything right and still have a hard life. The career criminal could live a better life than you. It’s possible.
During the COVID19 curfew period I went for a walk with my family. The kids wanted to know why I was rushing to get home. I explained to them that we needed to be home by 9am as the rules dictated. They asked me if I was afraid we would be arrested. I knew no police van was about to enter into our suburb and there was a very small chance of any consequence for us disobeying the rules. So I explained to the kids that I wanted to be home, not to avoid arrest. But because it was the right thing to do.
Like I tell my kids all the time. We must do what is right because it is the right thing to do. Not because of any benefit we may accrue or because of any fate we wish to escape.
300Paychecks 
Leave a comment