Our current default way of thinking about becoming successful—the competitive king-of-the-hill mentality—reduces both the level and likelihood of success.
When you examine many of the most successful organizations around the world, you find that they capitalize on fostering cooperation, coordination, and collaboration. Businesses built upon an effective culture of compassion were found to have “high levels of productivity resulting from relatively high worker loyalty, low turnover, and hence low recruiting and training costs. It translates into closer relationships between employees and frequent customers, thereby contributing to sales and marketing efficiency.”
Employees who help each other are the engines of successful companies, and the best top executives know it. Understanding what others need or need to avoid and then acting on that understanding is at the heart of what compassion is and what a compassionate achiever does.
Learn more about my new book, The Compassionate Achiever, coming next month.
My New 4-Step Program for Cultivating Compassion
Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet and scholar, said that “There is a place where words are born of silence.” The silence of the Weaving Wise/Whys blog over the last few months I know has been deafening. Thank you for staying with the blog and for your patience though the silence. For out of the silence, my new book (The Compassionate Achiever) was born.
The Compassionate Achiever was also born out of my concern that many people seem to be unaware of or overlook the fact that compassion is an important factor in attaining success. When you ask people to list the qualities of a successful person, they usually mention grit, courage, perseverance, and intelligence but rarely do you hear compassion. One problem with such lists is that they are exclusively self-focused and don’t include any concern about others. Do we really want a world filled with self-absorbed achievers?
When you follow a compassionate path in whatever you may be doing in life, the byproduct is success for you and the people around you. Whether you are trying to get a promotion, reach a financial milestone, complete a degree, or help a child learn to read, compassion helps you to accomplish your goal more efficiently and effectively, and it makes the achievement more enduring, fulfilling, and rewarding. Compassion is win-win. It helps you to be successful, and it helps solve problems and create opportunities for others.
My hope is that The Compassionate Achiever helps to not only spread compassion but also alter the common perception of how to attain success. I’ve heard the adage that “it’s lonely at the top” over and over again throughout life but it’s never lonely at the top if you’re a compassionate achiever.
The Compassionate Achiever: How Helping Others Fuels Your Success is now available for pre-order from the following retailers:
AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE | INDIEBOUND | BOOKSAMILLION | GOOGLE PLAY | iBOOKS
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