What makes a person successful? Or perhaps better, how can one fully unlock their human potential? This is a question that of course concerns each and every human being alive. We all want to make something of our lives. What precisely this may mean differs from person to person and from society to society but whatever the context each human being seeks to attain self-realization.
There are probably thousands of self-help books and courses available to help people attain this self-realization. There is of course the question of whether these resources are of any help. Offering insights that apply to all people is of course really difficult. This is because people have diverse talents and interests so there probably isn’t one comprehensive and context specific formula for success for everybody.
What can be done is to offer general advice as to how one is meant to pursue one’s talents. Any self-help course that is worth its fee must recognize one fundamental fact about human motivation. The fact is this: any person can only be inspired to fully achieve the excellence proper to their talents if they are primarily motivated by an agenda which is greater than their own self-interest. As Rob Opie reminds us, Churchill once said “we make a living from what we get, but we make a life from what we give.” It is contribution that we are remembered for and our excellence is achieved by be motivated to make a contribution to something greater than ourselves. This is true for every-one, from an individual sportsman, to the leader of a nation, to one employed in a large multi-national corporation.
At Schuitema Associates we maintain that organisations can only hope to unlock the excellence in their employees if they unlock the employees intent to contribute. What is meant by this is that organisations enable excellence in their employees when the organisation provides the employees with a “benevolent intent”. When the organisation is fundamentally aimed at making a greater contribution to society and brings the employees on board the organisation has done the service of enabling the employee to be motivated by an agenda greater than their own self-interest. They have given the employee the only motivation that can inspire the employee to achieve excellence.
Their are count-less examples of this principle at work. Rob Opie highlights the excellence that AB de Villiers has achieved. AB de Villiers is clearly an example of a person who has manage to realize his talents to the highest degree and attain a level of excellence in his profession that should inspire us all. We see in Ab de Villiers a commitment to something greater than his own name. There is the commitment to his team mates, Brand South Africa and the Sport of cricket.
AB de Villiers is not alone. The Greek football team is another example of a team driven to success on the basis of a desire to contribute to something greater than their own self-interest. Among leaders we can list the names of Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and many more besides. We see this even among the great scientists, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Isaac Newton, Galileo (who was willing to die for his insights) and others.
A self-help program is only ever of any use to anyone insofar as it is able to engage a persons higher motive. A person driven by a noble agenda will shoot upwards towards excellence and will make a contribution to the world.