英文阅读：发现你的成功之道
By William S. Cottringer, Ph.D.“成功”是个迷人的字眼，它代表了一个人想获得的一切。人人都在急急忙忙地向成功狂奔，在路上奋力挣扎。可是成功不是那么容易得来的。
“Slow down you’re doing fine. You can’t be everything you want to be before
your time.” ~Billy Joel.
There is too much hype about thriving to success and way too many hits
about that “race” on the I-net (only 360 million!). Even the most simple,
profound and usable advice on how to win the success race is getting caught up
in the chase to unload the overload. Chaos is mounting by the nanosecond and we
are all running out of time, just trying to survive and getting more frustrated
in the process.
Maybe it is time to pause and think about how we can walk our way to
success and still have enough breath left over to enjoy a little bit of it? I
like the saying, “death is nature’s way of telling us to slow down.” It
certainly makes its point.
If the self-help/self-growth industry concentrates on slowing down to see
how we can teach ourselves and others how to walk to success, we will be taking
this success thing to a whole new level. And this effort is always a matter of
good timing. All zestfully successful thrivers have to accept the dilemma they
are part of.
First, the more knowledge and wisdom you have, the more you identify with
it to the point of staking your whole worth and selfhood on this valuable
knowledge. You are more right and others are less right. But that builds a
prideful ego so full of itself that no one is remotely interested in the most
sensible of solutions. The barrel of good apples stinks.
Secondly, having all this knowledge and wisdom and wanting to apply it
liberally and freely to the masses is like being a driver of a car who is forced
to stay patient idling the engine when all he or she really wants to do is rev
it up, screech tires and lay rubber on the speedway. Of course the impatience
shows big-time and over-flavors the enemy pride and ego even further. And less
running success is the obvious result, making the impatience worsen in a vicious
circle.
How do you walk to success in the self-growth and self-improvement
business? Here are some walking lessons learned the hard way.
1. You have to carefully listen to and understand other people’s problems
before you know what the common ground is between you, where you can offer the
most important part of your solutions to build upon what they are doing right,
when the right time arises.
Sometimes when you are running, this is too much of a blur. And much of the
time people really don’t want or even need your “cure.” They just want to be
heard and understood. This is no longer common with just unhappily married
female spouses with non-listening husbands.
2. You can know mountains of good stuff but it is only a valuable mountain
to you. With others it may be more of an obstacle to getting to trust you enough
to share vulnerabilities and secrets and ask questions. It is trite but true:
People don’t care what you know until they know you care. And expressing genuine
care doesn’t happen overnight or by instant fiat.
3. Successful walking requires using supportive communication, whereas
unsuccessful running relies on defensive communication. Walking to success
involves being positive, polite, spontaneous, honest, empathetic, accepting,
equal and tentative, while avoiding negativity, rudeness, manipulating
dishonesty, insensitivity, judgment, superiority and over-certainty.
4. When you are 3/4ths the way to your own success, that is usually the
time when you want to offer advice to everyone else. But guess what? That is
probably when you need to apply your own best advice to yourself to finish the
job you started. And when you do that you won’t be talking as much as
showing.
5. There is only one way to deal with the impatience that interferes with
walking to success. That is to ask others on the same journey, but maybe
somewhat ahead up the road, how they deal with it. They’ll tell you. It’s all
about delaying your immediate need gratification with legitimate intermediate
substitutes.
页:
[1]