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Leaders are readers






 

Years ago, one of my teachers, Jim Rohn, taught me that reading something of substance, something of value, something that was nurturing, something that taught you new distinctions every day, was more important than eating. He got me hooked on the idea of reading a minimum of thirty minutes a day. He said, " Miss a meal, but don't miss your reading."

I've found this to be one of the most valuable distinctions in my life. So while you're cleansing your system of the old, you might want to be empowering it by continuing to read the new. And there are plenty of pages of valuable insight and strategy ahead of you that you can be utilizing during these ten days.

If you've learned anything from this book, it's the power of decisions. You're at a critical point in our journey together. You've learned a variety of fundamental strategies and distinctions that can now be used to powerfully and positively shape your life. My question to you right now is: Have you made the decision to use them? Don't you owe it to yourself to make the most out of what this book has to offer you? This is one of the most important ways to follow through. Commit now to do this only as quickly as you're committed to living the quality of life that you once only dreamed of.

So realize that this chapter is my personal challenge to you. It's an opportunity and an invitation to demand more from yourself than other people would ever expect, and to reap the rewards that come from this commitment. It's a time to put in practice what you've learned. But it's also a time to decide whether you're willing to make the commitment to make some simple yet powerful improvements in your life. I know that's what you desire. If you need evidence that you can do it, I sincerely believe this chapter will provide it—if you're willing to go for it full out.

At this point, you're ready to move on to the next section of this book. You've learned the fundamental tools for shaping your life by making decisions. But now let's study the Master System that's controlling every decision you make throughout your life. Understanding the basis of your own personal philosophy is accomplished by...


 

PART 2

TAKING CONTROL

THE MASTER SYSTEM

 

 


 

ULTIMATE INFLUENCE: YOUR MASTER SYSTEM

 

 

" Elementary, my dear Watson..."

WITH APOLOGIES TO SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

 

 

One of the things I love most about what I do is the opportunity to unravel[98] the mystery of human behavior and thereby to offer solutions that truly make a difference in the quality of people's lives. I'm fascinated to probe below the surface to find out the " why" behind a person's behavior, to discover their core beliefs, questions, metaphors, references and values. Because my forte is being able to produce immediate and measurable results, out of necessity I've learned how to quickly locate key leverage points for facilitating change. Every day, I get to live the role of Sherlock Holmes, sleuthing[99] minute details to piece together the jigsaw[100] puzzle of each person's unique experience—I guess you could say that I'm a very private detective! There are telltale clues to human behavior just as blatant as the smoking gun.

Sometimes the clues[101] are a little more subtle, and it takes further investigation to uncover them. However, as diverse as human behavior is, one of the things that has allowed me to do what I do so successfully is that ultimately it all comes down to certain patterns made up of specific key elements. If you and I have a grasp of these organizing principles, then we are empowered not only to influence people for positive change, but also to understand why they do what they do.

Understanding the Master System that directs all human behavior is as much a science as are chemistry and physics, governed by predictable laws and patterns of action and reaction. You can think of your own Master System—the five components that determine how you evaluate everything that happens in your life—as a kind of Periodic Table, de- tailing the elements of human behavior. Just as all physical matter breaks down to the same basic units, so does the process of human behavior to

one who knows what to look for. It's the combination and structure—how we use these elements—that makes each of us unique. Some mixtures are volatile and produce explosive results. Other combinations neutralize, some catalyze, and some paralyze.

Bombarded as we are with the countless things that happen to us every day, most of us don't even realize that we have a personal philosophy, much less the power it has to direct our evaluations of what things mean to us. The second section of this book is dedicated to assisting you

in taking direct control of your Master System of evaluation—the force that controls the way you feel and what you do every moment of your life.

Understanding the Master System of others allows you to immediately get to the essence of a person, whether it's your spouse, your child, your boss or business partner, even the people you meet every day. Wouldn't this be one of the greatest gifts you could ever receive: to be able to know what is driving all the people who are most important to you—including yourself? Wouldn't it be great to get beyond any upsets or challenges with someone and understand why they're behaving this way—and then, without judgment, to be able to immediately reconnect with who they really are?

With children, we usually remember that crankiness indicates a need for a nap, rather than a sour disposition. In a marriage, it's especially important to be able to see through the day-to-day stresses so that you can support each other and nurture the bond that brought you together in the first place. If your spouse is feeling pressure from work, and is venting his or her frustration, it doesn't mean that your marriage is over, but it's a sign to be more attentive and to put your focus on supporting this person you love. After all, you wouldn't judge the stock market based solely on one day when the Dow-Jones Average plunges twenty points. By the same token, you can't judge a person's character by one isolated incident. People are not their behaviors.

The key to understanding people is to understand their Master Systems so you can appreciate their individual, systematic way of reasoning. We all have a system or procedure that we go through in order to determine what things mean to us and what we need to do about them in virtually any situation in life. You and I need to remember that different things are important to different people, and they'll evaluate what's happening differently based upon their perspective and conditioning.

Imagine playing tennis and hitting a poor serve. From your perspective, you blew it. From your opponent's perspective, it was a great shot—for him. From the line judge's perspective, the serve was neither good nor bad; it was simply " in" or " out." What often happens after hitting a poor shot? People start generalizing —and more often than not, in a disempowering way. " What a terrible serve" becomes " I couldn't serve today to save my life." Their next few serves are likely to be equally underwhelming. Then the train of generalization picks up speed, moving from " I couldn't serve today to save my life" to " I never did have that great a serve" to " I'm really not such a hot tennis player" to " I never seem to be able to master anything" to " I'm a horrible person." It looks ludicrous here, spelled out in lurid detail, but isn't this the way it happens in so many areas of our lives? If we fail to take control of our evaluation process, it literally runs wild and sweeps us into the spiraling pattern of

self-recrimination.

 

 


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