There are no shortcuts, if you want to be noticed, respected, recognized and admired in any area, you must emanate the appropriate values and prove them by your deeds.
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Yesterday I was in a disco organized by my employer. I’ve never learned how to dance. The best thing you could say about my dancing is that it is “positively raw” and “enthusiastic.” But I was perfectly capable of estimating the level of proficiency of other dancers. I could easily say who was as “rawly enthusiastic” as I was, and who had some skills apart from enthusiasm.
At lunch, I sat with one guy who did extraordinary well yesterday and remarked how great he moved on the dance floor. He said: “Thanks. I have been practicing dancing for eight years.” “It shows,” I answered.
I made a connection—it always shows, it doesn’t apply only to the dancing skills.
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In a very special way, you know everything about the people around you.
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How come? Our brains are the most powerful computers on this globe. To keep your sanity, your brain filters out a majority of sensual inputs (and you get about 100 million in one second!). Only a tiny portion of data arrives into your conscious mind. But each and every of these impulses is stored in your brain. Your brain “runs a query” against those data every time you put some attention on any subject. You are not aware of it, but most of the enlightenments you get are the results of background analysis performed on these background data. You ‘know’ almost everything about the world you live in. In a very special way, you know everything about the people around you because you pay special attention to them in an order of magnitude bigger than to any other data.
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Anthony Robbins said that it shows when a man is exercising on a regular basis. The posture, the level of energy, and even the mood of such people appears different. It shows, even when their activity is obscured by bad eating habits. During the same get-together, I swam in the lake with one guy. I needed to give him a hand when he climbed a pier. He remarked: “I have no idea how I managed to do that by myself yesterday when I was drunk.”
He was a bit overweight, maybe by 10 pounds that wasn’t much on a 200 lb. guy. But, I noticed his upright postures and energetic moves. He was exercising. His body frame was different from a round couch potato. He was also bulkier than the other category of people who avoid exercises—the ones who eat very little and move even less. It showed.
It’s not restricted only to bodily and tangible areas. I know a gal who comes from a very humble background. She was raised in a small backwater village in a very modest household with several siblings. What’s more, she has an incurable disease and spent quite a part of her childhood in bed. I don’t even know if she finished her high school. I noticed that her vocabulary was very rich. She spoke fluently using the words not many university students commonly use. My brain came up with the right conclusion from a background analysis. When I asked her if she read a lot, she answered in the affirmative.
It shows even more clearly in relationships. All in all, social interaction is something we attach the utmost importance too. Your brain and the brains of people around you are the highly sensitive radars receiving even the most subtle signals. Your neighbors, workmates and especially your family know everything about you. First of all, they know if you care about them. This is their foremost concern when it comes to social interactions; so their brains read every possible sensible input from you. They analyze your countenance, the timbre of your voice, your body posture and zillions of other signals to determine your real intentions.
Even the dumbest man alive has a brain that has a power vastly superior to any existing supercomputer. You can lie and cheat, and you can get away with that once, twice or a dozen times. But you can’t hide your real intentions, feelings and thoughts for an extended period. You can trick their conscious mind, tell the most convincing stories, but their subconscious already knows the truth. It shows.
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Act in accordance with your values and you won’t need to preach about them.
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Thus, your best course of action is to be authentic. People will notice anyway, so there is no reason in trying to hide the real you. If you want to be known for your virtues, you cannot pretend them, you must develop and cultivate them. If you want to be the man perceived as the one who cares about social issues, don’t argue about them; be such a man. As Saint Francis said: “Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.” Ralph Waldo Emmerson said something similar: “Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.” Preach your gospel with your every deed, pay less attention to the words.
Act in accordance with your values and you won’t need to preach about them. They will be transparent and obvious through your actions.
There are no shortcuts, if you want to be noticed, respected, recognized and admired in any area, you must emanate the appropriate values and prove them by your deeds. Your values will show.
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Photo: Flickr/ Charles Roffey
