GETTING TO YES!

A book entitled, Getting to Yes, appeared several years ago. It focused on the art and science of negotiation, and how to make beneficial compromises as we each pursue our peculiar aims. As used in this article, however, getting to yes implies mastering the steps needed to experience the greatness deeded in your soul. Once you do this, you experience the bliss of an unmuffled yes! As simple as it sounds, to get to yes you must first say YES to yourself and your dreams.

So many people are wedged between no and maybe instead. They lack the certainty that characterizes destiny. Destiny is the belief that your yes is your right to succeed and not just a wish to do so. If, however, you haven’t said yes to yourself and your dreams, uncertainty will stifle and you will stumble in getting started and in staying committed till the end. The way you get to yes is to not second-guess yourself or your right to success. This is much different from second-guessing your methods, your means and your maneuvers.

Unless you are omniscient you must change these routinely, sometimes remarkably, for various reasons. Second-guessing as it relates to tactics and strategy are part of the anatomy of greatness. It becomes detrimental, however, when you second-guess yourself. Hence the need to examine your assessments and assumptions, making sure you get to yes and stay there as it relates to your belief in your right to success and greatness. The key is in being decisive and convinced without bowing to contingents.

Things will happen, plans will fail and people will change their minds about you. You, however, shouldn’t change your mind about yourself. Once you get to yes by agreeing with yourself, stay there! Whenever you find yourself feeling anxious and uncertain, don’t let these feelings push you into no and maybe regarding your dreams. Second-guess your tactics and strategy when necessary but not your right to and belief in your ability to achieve your dreams. In doing so, you make better and more beneficial compromises with other and yourself.

 

DISCOVER IT!

 

 

 

It's hard to lift the burden when you're it.

     Making a difference begins with discovering our destiny. Until then we make a mess trying to make amends, collecting enemies and disgusting friends.

CULTIVATING GREATNESS

 

 

When companies close our eyes are opened to understand that our destiny is our responsibility.

     People get fired but problems don't get fixed. The problem isn't with the people but with a culture that is corrupt and corrosive. In this culture average consumes. People do their jobs but not their best. After awhile, crises reveals weakness. People are then layed off or fired in an effort to counter. Companies pursue this course daily, as if dismissing people will help them to recover. It's foolish, however, for them to indulge average over time and then demand greatness over-night.

     People seldom change that fast. Even if they did space must be allotted to defray the effects of average. The market must also have time to adjust. Meanwhile employees will suffer because management didn't demand excellence from the outset. Such is the cycle in the contemporary world of work. If workers don't demand greatness of themselves, managment will. By then, however, money is tight and crises imminent. Then firings are proposed and lay-offs are certain. Unfortunately, this is the only way some companies know how to manage average. Doing so doesn't fix the problem but it does reveal the plight facing today's workforce.

ENGAGING GREATNESS

 

If greatness is so engaging why are so many people faking pursuit?

 

          If you aren't willing to go it alone it's best to go on away from greatness toward what is the basis of convention. Consider, however, before you do what compromising will do to you. If after this you can reject the risk of greatness then you make compromise the basis of your life. Nothing is inherently wrong with compromise. After all somewhere daily a dreamer dies to her dream and the thing she once deeply desired. Yet so many people today seem to be faking, acting as if they are taking steps toward greatness. Even so, I understand because its demand often overwhelms. But those who are committed refuse to compromise still.

If we don't fulfill our promise we owe others an apology.

        If we thought the impossible were so, life would cease. Yet none of us believes in the impossible.  We acknowledge it but we don’t believe in it. To believe in the impossible is to reject our passion. Yet our passion stirs us nightly and sustains us daily. The moment we believe in the impossible life passes. Only by rejecting its myth do we master.

DENSITY AND DESTINY

You must be porous to hear the chorus that calls some to greatness. Those who can't ignore its chant, being deaf to music.

         

          You have to be dense to do what makes no sense, especially when you do it at your own expense because inwardly you are convinced that you are being spent in Destiny’s service. Thus nights find you working and days find you nervous because your only resource is a fund of courage that renews itself without your help (or permission), compelling you thus to pursue the vision. Meanwhile others behave as if you don’t exist. Those that are aware often stare stymied because you keep aligning yourself with the unseen with no guarantee that you will succeed.

          In your defense you erect a fence between their doubts and your own even as you are driven to labor to manifest a greatness that only you believe in enough to invest despite the stress and ridicule. The only consolation is that you have now become indifferent when, in referring to you, others whisper, “fool.” Instead you flash a half-smile because you too have turned this stile in an effort to turn away from what consumes your days and command your nights. Not even God is the consolation that religion excites. Yet HHe is the Source of Destiny’s summons.

          He’s also the reason your friends start running when they see you coming. It isn’t because you solicit money or anything else. You just sometimes need help believing in yourself. But it seldom happens, so you keep hoping and working that Destiny is certain, and that you aren’t deceived. Yet in reviewing the lives of the great similar parallels you perceive. That’s what makes it hard just to discard the time you’ve invested and to discount the ways you’ve been tested. So, you just vow to die until you are ushered into eternity away from time. At least it can’t be said that you denied your allegiance to the thing that kneaded itself in your soul.

SUNGLASSES

Some people wear shades to shield their eyes. Others model to mask their gloom. Yet eyes are never as tender as gloom pretends. We just aren't used to being perturbed. So, we don the lens to project the lie that all is well.

THE MIDDLE

Things always muddle in the middle. But if you keep walking, enduring the dangers (and daggers), you'll emerge with a swagger self-redeeming. Then others will pay to see your wounds, even those who doubt your win.

THE ROAD

The road we travel often baffles because we chart unwisely and short-sightedly. We do so because we imagine that our directions are synonymous with perfection, at least until we get lost. Then we realize that maps and markers are often harder to read than we imagine. In this regard, the GPS to success often fails to help us in our quest. Thus we must be willing to travel blindly trusting kindly in the goodness of fortune while be willing to hearken to whatever help we can receive in route. Otherwise we will pout and complain at the pain of being detained in our pursuit. If this weren't so, success' road would be empty because each traveler would have fulfilled her destiny. Yet the fact that she hasn't proves that we are given to assuming more than we should about just how good our maps are. If, however, we persist we will arrive eventually.

SO MUCH TO DO

We have so much to do and not enough time. This at least is the loser's whine. But those who truly have something to do refuse to let time rule. Instead they do by minutes what others avoid by intention, because instinctively they lack the ambition success requires and diligence describes. Ask the great about how small were the steps they had to take before they triumphed. In failing this pattern, we make ourselves liars concerning our dreams.

ON BEING PLIABLE

We must be pliable to be liable for success. In being rigid we are apt to stiffen when we should bend instead. Hence, the importance of passion which, rightly managed, enables us to maneuver accordingly without, however, forfeiting our integrity.

ON SEEING

We see more than we admit yet often pursue less than we desire. Some people refrain because the claims of success are too demanding, according to their standards. Others ignore because they aren't sure of themselves. Even so, we still see whether or not we seize accordingly.

TOO MUCH ENERGY

We have too much energy, more in fact than we need. Else we wouldn't desire to do the exceptional deed, by which it would be drained and we would gain a new image of ourselves. Presently, however, our endeavors neither demand greatness nor reveal our uniqueness. We get by instead as if we are bred all the same, with nothing significant to distinguish our frame. http://www.joelbryant1.com/

ON CROWDS

Shallow is the marrow of most bones.

Those who would astound must not be found in the crowd, because most people are so fickle that all they can do is tickle mutual fears. (www.joelbryant1.com

ON TRANSITION

When we get stuck in transition we become transients, wandering the streets and enduring the strokes of those who escaped. (www.joelbryant1.com )

GETTING THROUGH TODAY...

If you can get through today with all of its weight, you can win tomorrow despite the sorrow that threatens or the desires that are waiting to be fulfilled. If you don't, someone else will. It's not that they're better than you. They're just more willing to do what it takes to out-wait the cycles of success, which none can rush.

THE STRONG

The strong survive because they insist on life. They are strong moreover because they discover that the secret is in letting weakness nurture strength, not accuse it. Thus they accept their limits without being inhibited thereby. Instead, they pursue what they desire and endure the ire of circumstances. 'Tis by this that they make their advances.

THE AGE OF ARTHUR

In our will to rule we waste and ruin.

Our age yet awaits its Arthur, a king so keen that he can not only extract Excalibur but also exalt humanity simultaneously. We have sought vainly politically. It has the words but not the will to redeem, especially if redemption benefits universally. It would rather palaver than pull the sword, being bound by allegiances too narrow to hold. Even so, the age awaits Arthur's emergence and groans daily for his appearance. Many contend, and even more pretend because they know instinctively their hypocrisy. Yet the opportunity entices. Afterwards, however, Excalibur remains and they leave with sore hands. Even then, however, the age awaits. It can do no less if it would survive. (http://www.joelbryant1.com/ )

THE PROBLEM

The problem isn't with success but with our willingness to be seduced by easy formulas that promise to produce. Success is possible but it isn't as docile as some people claim. Those who say such only seek to make a name for themselves based on our fears. (www.joelbryant1.com)

ON WRONG AND WORST

A fist-fight is the first fight virtue forsakes, especially when cowardice provokes.

It's better to do the wrong thing than the worst thing, especially if the right thing eludes. Ask any husband who killed his wife because he couldn't leave her. (www.joelbryant1.com)