Believe there is no such thing as perfection
Believe there is no such thing as perfectionActually this is a self evident truth. There is nothing in the world which is perfect. Those who believe in perfection cause misery for themselves and others. They believe that there is nothing else for them to do because things are perfect already. Alternatively, people who believe in perfection, believe that nothing is good enough and is never ready, because it is not perfect. Effective people know there is always something else which can be done to improve things, and by the same token that they will never actually make something perfect, so the solution is acceptable when it is optimum. There are optimum solutions, not perfect ones.
When we believe in perfection, we tend to use words like 'must' and 'should.' For example, 'People ought to do that.' When we say this, we mean 'People don't do this', and 'I want them to do it', and 'I am not going to do anything to get them to do it, except moan!' In this case, being unrealistic is counter productive.
Believe
the basic intention of life, the universe, people, etc, is relatively goodPeople always believe that they are right and are doing good, from their own perspective. Even the most evil person from our perspective believes he or she is doing right. Otherwise, they wouldn't be doing what they are doing! No one holds a false belief. No one says, 'I believe this', and add, 'but I know it is false.' They always believe they are right. Even a person who says they are evil, believes this is right and good. If we believe that people are evil, we may become frightened of them and react to them unpleasantly, and they in turn will behave worse to us.
When we believe that things are basically good, then we begin to understand them better. If we think someone is evil, we will imagine that we cannot influence them or we will try to influence from our belief-value that they are bad. This will never be effective, because they believe they are good, and doing what is right, so they will never relate to our belief that they are bad. They will simply believe that we are bad! By believing they do, even bad things, from a good intention we can better understand them and begin to influence them, because we take the trouble to understand them and how they think, rather than to fight them head on in terms of the values of good and bad.
Seek
only obtaining a result, a decision, a
change, not to win or lose.We need to clarify the above. It is not only a scientific statement. It is not saying only that when we think there are certain physical-chemical events occurring in the brain at the same time. It is, rather, also a personal development statement. So when we are worried about something, it is not just that we are having certain thoughts, but that we are having certain feelings in the body, which, should we bother to do so, we can experience. For example, if we are concerned about what we should do about something we have certain thoughts which we may or may not be able to articulate, and we have certain feelings in our bodies, which we may or may not be aware of at the time.
Believe there is no failure or success, only feedback,
knowledgeThis belief links to the previous one. The Effective person does not fear failure, because he or she does not believe in failure or success. They obtain feedback. This does not mean that the Effective person doesn't want to succeed. It means that they will succeed because they seek feedback.
View ideas and thoughts from various viewpoints.We all know that we are supposed to view things from the other's point of view as well as our own. But how many of us do it? As children we are limited to our own viewpoint and we cannot see the viewpoints of others. And when we grow up, we often do not realize that we have progressed far enough to think about things from various viewpoints.
If we learn this skill, our ability to influence others and to avoid upsets will have increased manifold.
Have a clear idea of objectivesThe effective person thinks out what he or she wants. They have a clear idea of what they want to achieve. They do not seek to gain what they want in one fell swoop. They know they will get feedback, and they act or not act in order to produce a result. They repeat these actions until they attain their goal or objective.