"We jump forward willingly, even when what is required seems difficult physically or mentally or even financially. Such willingness expresses our innately considerate and generous nature. When our hearts are right, the obligation we feel to treat others generously comes to us as an opportunity." (Bonds That Make Us Free)

"We can't make others change - we can only invite them to change." (Anatomy of Peace)

What are you doing to invite others to change?

How would it be different if:
I stopped worrying about things I can't control?
I stopped making negative judgmental assumptions about people?
I walked away from gossip and verbal defamation?
I approached all relationship with honesty?
I stopped blaming and stopped thinking of myself as a victim?
I didn't allow myself to be defined by my past?

Here are my answers - what about you?
Incredibly productive, peaceful and liberating!

"...there are two ways to be hard. I can engage in hard behaviors and be either in the box or out of the box when I do them. The distinction isn't behavior. It's the way I'm being when I am doing whatever I'm doing - be it hard or soft." (Leadership & Self Deception)

Here's a thought from Leadership and Self Deception on what creates long-term success for a company:
"I'm not minimizing the importance of, for example, getting smart and skilled people into the company or working hard or any other number of things that are important to Tweddle's success. But notice - everyone else has duplicated all of that stuff, but they've yet to duplicate our results. And that's because they don't know how much smarter smart people are, how much more skilled skilled people get, and how much harder hardworking people work when they see, and are seen, straightforwardly - as people."

"Anything that makes me feel better or worse than another is darkness ... True happiness is found not in a belief that I am better but in the obliteration of any need to be." (James Ferrell)

A man in his 50's had worked in the same company for 30 years. Passed over for promotion many times, he grew angry. One day the anger turned to rage as a much younger person was promoted over him. A former boss gave the man a copy of Leadership & Self Deception. He had to read it twice before he began to see himself clearly.

He began asking for feedback from his co-workers. He listened without defending himself. He was humble and began to take responsibility for what he previously blamed on others.

A position as a temporary supervisor of a historically low-performing team opened up. He asked for the opportunity to lead that group. His first day on the job, he told the team: "I can promise you one thing. Everyday, I will try my hardest to see and treat you as people. You can count on that. If I don't, you come and let me know so I can change."

The team broke production records the first month!

What happened? It's simple - he began holding himself accountable rather than waiting around for others to hold him accountable.

Well said Anne!

"The world is a looking glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face." (William Makepeace Thackeray)

A paraphrase from Leadership & Self Deception - "A family, a company - both are organizations of people. That's what we know and live by at Tweddle. Just remember, we won't know who we work and live with - whether it be your husband, you son, your new co-worker, the co-worker you've sat next to for 15 years or the boss you can't get along with - until we leave the box and join them."

1. Don't try to be perfect. Do try to be better.
2. Don't use the vocabulary - "the box', and so on - with people who don't already know it. Do use the principles in your own life.
3. Don't look for others boxes. Do look for your own.
4. Don't accuse others of being in the box. Do try to stay out of the box yourself.
5. Don't give up on yourself when you discover you've been in the box. Do keep trying.
6. Don't deny that you've been in the box when you have been. Do apologize; then just keep marching forward, trying to be more helpful to others in the future.
7. don't focus on what others are doing wrong. Do focus on what you can do right to help.
8. Don't worry whether others are helping you. Do worry whether you are helping others.

"I believe that the first test of a great person is humility. I don't mean by humility, doubt of one's own power. But really great people have a curious feeling that the greatness is not of them, but through them. And they see something marvelous in every other person and are endlessly, incredibly merciful." (John Ruskin, adapted)

"You can use this material to blame just as well as you can use anything else. Merely knowing the material doesn't get you out of the box. Living it does. And we're not living it if we're using it to diagnose others. Rather, we're living it when we're using it to learn how we can be more helpful to others..." (Leadership & Self Deception)

"So your success as a leader depends on being free of self-betrayal. Only then do you invite others to be free of self-betrayal. Only then are you creating leaders yourself - coworkers whom people will respond to, trust, and want to work with. You owe it to your people to be out-of-the-box for them. You owe it to Tweddle to be out-of-the-box for them." (Leadership & Self Deception)

"The lesson, then, is that you need to be a different kind of leader. That's your obligation as a leader. When you're In-the-box, people follow you, if at all, only through force or threat of force. But that's not leadership. That's coercion. The leaders that people choose to follow are the leaders who are out of the box. Just look back on your life and you'll see that that's so." (Leadership & Self Deception)

"Being out of the box actually allows a person to be able to assign or assess responsibility with clarity, and the reason for that is because his vision is not clouded by the box." (Leadership & Self Deception)

"To be aware of a single shortcoming within oneself is more useful than to be aware of a thousand in somebody else." (Dalai Lama)

Seeing others as people does not necessarily put a claim on my life that I must do everything I feel I should do for others. As Leadership & Self Deception puts it, "We simply do the best we can under the circumstances. It may not be the ideal, but it will be the best we can do - offered because we want to do it."

"getting out of the box may mean that I relinquish a prejudice that I ahve held toward those not like myself - people of a different race, for example, or faith, or culture. I will be less judgmental when I see them as people than when I saw them as objects. I will treat them with more courtesy and respect. Again, however, do such changes seem burdensome to you.?" (Leadership & Self Deception)

They seem freeing to me. Free to not necessarily do everything I feel would be ideal.

"People are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of them." (Epicetus)

Is seeing others as people and not objects a burden? In others words, are you worried that in order to stay out of the box, you have to do everything that pops into your head to do for others? Does that seem overwhelming?

Let's have a conversation about that.

I like the example they use in Leadership & Self Deception to help us with this issue. They are talking about driving a car and seeing the other drivers as people - does that create an overwhelming burden?
"So, in this case, being out of the box and seeing others as people doesn't mean that I'm suddenly bombarded with burdensome obligations. It simply means that I'm seeing and appreciating others as people while I'm driving, or shopping, or doing whatever it is I'm doing."