Jay shri krishna
LKrishna THINKING
“We cannot hold a torch to light another’s path without brightening our own.”
So far in this book, we’ve discussed many kinds of thinking that can help you to achieve more. Each of them has the potential to make you more successful. Now I want to acquaint you with a kind of thinking with the potential to change your
life in another way. It might even redefine how you view success.
Unselfish thinking can often deliver a return greater than any other kind of thinking. Take a look at some of its benefits:
Unselfish Thinking Brings Personal Fulfillment
Few things in life bring greater personal rewards than helping others. Burr believed, “Getters generally don’t get happiness; givers get it.” Helping people brings great satisfaction. When you spend your day unselfishly serving
others, at night you can lay down your head with no regrets and sleep soundly. In Bringing Out the Best in People, Alan Loy McGinnis remarked, “There is no more noble occupation in the world than to assist another human being—to help
someone succeed.”
Even if you have spent much of your life pursuing selfish gain, it’s never too late to have a change of heart.
Dickens’s Scrooge, can turn his life around and make a difference for others.
That’s what Alfred Nobel did. When he saw his own obituary in the newspaper (his brother had died and the editor had written about the wrong Nobel, saying that the explosives his company produced had killed many people), Nobel vowed to promote peace and acknowledge contributions to humanity. That is how the Nobel Prizes came into being.
Unselfish Thinking Adds Value to Others In 1904, Bessie Anderson Stanley wrote the following definition of success in Brown Book magazine:
He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children, who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of earth’s beauty or failed to express it, who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had, whose life was an inspiration,
whose memory a benediction. When you get outside of yourself and make a contribution to others, you really begin to live.
Unselfish Thinking Encourages Other Virtues
When you see a four-year-old, you expect to observe selfishness. But when you see it in a forty-year-old, it’s not very attractive, is it? Of all the qualities a person can pursue, unselfish thinking seems to make the biggest difference toward cultivating other virtues. I think that’s because the ability to give unselfishly is so difficult. It goes against the grain of human nature. But if you can learn to think unselfishly and become a giver, then it becomes easier to develop many other virtues: gratitude, love, respect, patience, discipline, etc.
Unselfish Thinking Increases Quality of Life
The spirit of generosity created by unselfish thinking gives people an appreciation for life and an understanding of its higher values. Seeing those in need and giving to meet that need puts a lot of things into perspective. It increases the quality of life of the giver and the receiver. That’s why I believe that
There is no life as empty as the self-centered life.
There is no life as centered as the self-empty life.
If you want to improve your world, then focus your attention on helping others.
Unselfish Thinking Makes You Part of Something Greater than Yourself Merck and Company, the global pharmaceutical corporation, has always seen itself as doing more than just producing products and making a profit. It desires to serve humanity. In the mid-1980s, the company developed a drug to cure river
blindness, a disease that infects and causes blindness in millions of people,
particularly in developing countries. While it was a good product, potential customers couldn’t afford to buy it. So what did Merck do? It developed the drug anyway, and in 1987 announced that it would give the medicine free to anyone who needed it. As of 1998, the company had given more than 250 million tablets away.
George W. Merck says, “We try never to forget that medicine is for the people.
It is not for the profits. The profits follow, and if we have remembered that, they have never failed to appear.” The lesson to be learned? Simple. Instead of trying to be great, be part of something greater than yourself.
Unselfish Thinking Creates a Legacy Jack Balousek, president and chief operating officer of True North
Communications, says, “Learn, earn, return—these are the three phases of life. The first third should be devoted to education, the second third to building a career and making a living, and the last third to giving back to others—returning something in gratitude. Each state seems to be a preparation for the next one.”
If you are successful, it becomes possible for you to leave an inheritance for others. But if you desire to do more, to create a legacy, then you need to leave that in others. When you think unselfishly and invest in others, you gain the
opportunity to create a legacy that will outlive you
WHY YOU SHOULD ENJOY THE RETURN OF BOTTOM-LINE
THINKING
If you’re accustomed to thinking of the bottom line only as it relates to financial matters, then you may be missing some things crucial to you and your organization. Instead, think of the bottom line as the end, the takeaway, the desired result. Every activity has its own unique bottom line. If you have a job, your work has a bottom line. If you serve in your church, your activity has a bottom line. So does your effort as a parent, or spouse, if you are one.
As you explore the concept of bottom-line thinking, recognize that it can help you in many ways:
Bottom-Line Thinking Provides Great Clarity
What’s the difference between bowling and work? When bowling, it takes only three seconds to know how you’ve done! That’s one reason people love sports so much. There’s no waiting and no guessing about the outcome. Bottom-line thinking makes it possible for you to measure outcomes more quickly and easily. It gives you a benchmark by which to measure activity. It can
be used as a focused way of ensuring that all your little activities are purposeful and line up to achieve a larger goal.
Bottom-Line Thinking Helps You Assess Every
Situation When you know your bottom line, it becomes much easier to know how
you’re doing in any given area. When Frances Hesselbein began running the Girl Scouts, for example, she measured everything against the organization’s goal of helping a girl reach her highest potential—from the organization’s management structure (which she changed from a hierarchy to a hub) down to what badges the girls could earn. There’s no better measurement tool than the bottom line.
Bottom-Line Thinking Helps You Make the Best Decisions Decisions become much easier when you know your bottom line. When the Girl Scouts were struggling in the 1970s, outside organizations tried to convince its members to become women’s rights activists or door-to-door canvassers. But under Hesselbein, it became easy for the Girl Scouts to say no. It knew its bottom line, and it wanted to pursue its goals with focus and fervency.
Bottom-Line Thinking Generates High Morale
When you know the bottom line and you go after it, you greatly increase your odds of winning. And nothing generates high morale like winning. How do you describe sports teams that win the championship, or company divisions that achieve their goals, or volunteers who achieve their mission? They’re excited. Hitting the target feels exhilarating. And you can hit it only if you know what it is.
Bottom-Line Thinking Ensures Your Future If you want to be successful tomorrow, you need to think bottom line today.
That’s what Frances Hesselbein did, and she turned the Girl Scouts around. Look at any successful, lasting company, and you’ll find leaders who know their bottom line. They make their decisions, allocate their resources, hire their
people, and structure their organization to
achieve that bottom line.
HOW TO ENJOY THE RETURN OF BOTTOM-LINE THINKING
It isn’t hard to see the value of the bottom line. Most people would agree that bottom-line thinking has a high return. But learning how to be a bottom-line thinker can be challenging.
Identify the Real Bottom Line The process of bottom-line thinking begins with knowing what you’re really going after. It can be as lofty as the big-picture vision, mission, or purpose of an
organizaion. Or it can be as focused as what you want to accomplish on a particular project. What’s important is that you be as specific as possible. If your goal is for something as vague as “success,” you will have a painfully difficult
time trying to harness bottom-line thinking to achieve it. The first step is to set aside your “wants.” Get to the results you’re really looking for, the true essence of the goal. Set aside any emotions that may cloud your judgment and remove any politics that may influence your perception.
What are you really trying to achieve? When you strip away all the things that don’t really matter, what are you compelled to achieve? What must occur? What is acceptable? That is the real bottom line.
Make the Bottom Line the Point Have you ever been in a conversation with someone whose intentions seem other than stated? Sometimes the situation reflects intentional deception. But it
can also occur when the person doesn’t know his own bottom line.
The same thing happens in companies. Sometimes, for example, an idealistically stated mission and the real bottom line don’t jibe. Purpose and profits compete. Earlier, I stated, “We try never to forget that medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits. The profits follow, and if we have remembered that, they have never failed to appear.” He probably made that statement to remind those in his organization that profits serve purpose—they don’t compete with it.
If making a profit were the real bottom line, and helping people merely provided the means for achieving it, then the company would suffer. Its attention would be divided, and it would neither help people as well as it could nor make as much profit as it desired.
Create a Strategic Plan to Achieve the Bottom Line
Bottom-line thinking achieves results. Therefore, it naturally follows that any plans that flow out of such thinking must tie directly to the bottom line—and there can be only one, not two or three. Once the bottom line has been determined, a strategy must be created to achieve it. In organizations, that often means identifying the core elements or functions that must operate properly to achieve the bottom line. This is the leader’s responsibility.
The important thing is that when the bottom line of each activity is achieved, then THE bottom line is achieved. If the sum of the smaller goals doesn’t add up to the real bottom line, then either your strategy is flawed or you’ve not identified your real bottom line.
Align Team Members with the Bottom Line
Once you have your strategy in place, make sure your people line up with your strategy. Ideally, all team members should know the big goal, as well as their individual role in achieving it. They need to know their personal bottom line and how that works to achieve the organization’s bottom line.
Stick with One System and Monitor Results Continually Dave Sutherland, a friend and former president of one of my companies, believes that some organizations get into trouble by trying to mix systems. He maintains that many kinds of systems can be successful, but mixing different
systems or continually changing from one to another leads to failure. Dave says: Bottom-line thinking cannot be a one-time thing. It has to be built into the system of working and relating and achieving. You can’t just tune into the desired result every now and then. Achieving with bottom-line thinking must be a way of life, or it will send conflicting messages. I am a bottom- line thinker. It is a part of my “system” for achievement. I practice it every
day. No other measurements—no wasted efforts.
Dave used to call members of his field team every night to ask the bottom-line question they expect to hear. He continually kept his eye on the company’s bottom line by monitoring it for every core area.
When it comes right down to it, regardless of your bottom line, you can improve it with good thinking. And bottom-line thinking has a great return because it helps to turn your ideas into results. Like no other kind of mental processing, it can help you to reap the full potential of your thinking and achieve whatever you desire.
Thinking Question
Am I staying focused on the bottom line so that I can gain the maximum return and reap the full potential of my thinking?
Jay shri krishna
LKrishna THINKING
Contact MAIL. lkrishna.htat@gmail.com
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