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March 14 - March 28, 2024
People must first learn the basic competencies of communication. They must be able to read and write; they must be able to understand instructions and convey them intelligibly to others. They must then be taught the special skills pertaining to their roles in the organization. In addition, somewhere along the line they must also have learned and absorbed the moral dimensions of their professions. This means that they must learn to show up at their jobs on time every day regardless of how they feel. They must learn how to accept not only direction but also criticism without responding
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we succeed with money to the extent we encourage the divine or spiritual side of our beings and diminish the damage we do with the animal or material side of our beings.
This essential ability to constantly teach oneself and improve oneself depends entirely on becoming accustomed to seeing oneself as made up of two separate beings: one tugging toward short-term gratification while the other is heard issuing warnings in the background.
Knowing that your heart can tug you in destructive directions is rooted into the Jewish psyche, and you would do well to root it into yours, too.
In the quest for increased income, it is wise to improve one’s tendency to act in accordance with what one’s mind advises rather than to follow one’s emotional tugs and the urgent summons from one’s appetites.
How can you hope to succeed in this quest to make only wise decisions? Treat this quest as a war and, as in all wars, you must know the enemy and its goals. Then not only are you better equipped to defeat the enemy, but you also feel more courageously committed to doing so.
Who is your enemy? Who thwarts your ambitions and obstructs the path to your dreams more than anyone else? That part of you I have been identifying as your negative impulse. Whatever you call it, the important thing is that you come to understand it.
One part of you is encouraging you to act with self restraint and courage. At exactly the same moment, the second part of your makeup is feverishly trying to persuade you to do what you really feel like doing. The only question is, “Who is going to lead?”
Each time you reject the destructive appeal and follow the voice of wisdom, your ability to do so again the next time is enhanced. Your system behaves just like a muscle that responds more effectively after it has been exercised. Conversely, each time you allow yourself to yield to the negative impulse, you subsequently find it harder to make the right decision the next time.
Long before you can hope to lead others, you must acquire the strength to lead yourself. You will be truly amazed at how quickly your associates perceive character strength or its absence. Just think how easily you recognize its presence or absence in others. People are far quicker to forgive your ignorance, particularly if you promptly confess it, than they are to forgive your weakness.
you can earn the respect of those you hope to lead not by knowing everything but by demonstrating easily recognized character strength.
The more common a commodity, the lower the market price. The more rare a commodity, the more valuable it is. Your value in business derives from possessing rare commodities. Strength of character is like gold, and there is nothing stopping you from acquiring it. Real gold often follows.
By understanding your own motivations, you can far more easily determine why you do things and how to change your conduct.
Your employers are interested in how honest and loyal you are; and as an employer yourself, you wish a reliable instrument existed to test the spiritual integrity of potential new hires. Employers and transaction partners are interested in how effectively you communicate and how well you can sell their products or services. They are interested in your integrity and your persistence. They want to know that you won’t give up until the job is done.
you should regulate your reading and your exposure to intellectual stimulation so that you don’t subject yourself to just the mind candy found in popular entertainment. You also need the mind nutrition found in regular solid and substantial material that will provide deep and vital satisfaction.
The basics of life can be reduced to the incredibly demanding task of extracting an adequate living from an often reluctant earth while expending the least amount of energy. Not everybody understands this, and losing sight of this reality can be a real handicap.
By achieving something, you earn the esteem of others and thus gain self respect, too.
you are saved from the long irreversible slide down the slippery slope of self-neglect by your drive to preserve the good impression that your friends, business associates, and relatives have of you. When you lose the desire to retain others’ esteem, you can deteriorate so far that death is brought on prematurely.
26 Ancient Jewish wisdom has always seen this verse to be advising people not to attempt the difficult acquisition of good habits before getting rid of the bad. The recommended sequence is to first stop doing the destructive activity, then embark on making the good and desired activity part of your life. Finally, you can integrate it all into the new and complete you.
You dramatically increase your value to others if you always maintain a calm and pleasant manner.
Stop showing your anger, and you will soon stop feeling it.
One of the perks of maturing is getting to know yourself a little better. One of the marks of sanity is seeing yourself pretty much as others see you. In your quest to increase the amount of money that flows toward you, getting to know yourself is vital. However it comes with some risk. Sometimes you do not much like the person you come to know.
Few people are all evil or all good. Each person is a complex amalgam of emotions, aspirations, and moral coordinates. Sometimes people do wonderfully noble things, and other times they can act in ways that leave them loathing themselves. Far more often though, people’s actions themselves are complex. One reason that universal moral agreement can be so elusive is that most actions are combinations of good and bad.
Everyone must learn to identify and credit the good components in complex actions and complex people,
although there may appear to be countless ways for a society of people to structure a successful economy, that is not so. Although the old adage claims that there are many ways to skin a cat, a Jewish understanding of how the world really works insists that whether it is business or bridges, there is usually only one effective way that will achieve a goal and many other ways that will fail.
Following the system of Ethical Capitalism provides the rigidly reliable framework within which there is limitless room for individualism, choice, and personality.
Anything residing in your brain becomes part of you and plays a role in the person you become, in the actions you perform, and in the things you say. You can use this fact by deliberately implanting in your mind those ideas and principles that you wish to retain and empower to impact you.
Viewing a movie or a theatrical production is a very powerful way of implanting themes in your mind. Reading something is another way of doing so. However, perhaps the ultimate method is reading something aloud. Somehow, when your ears hear your own mouth say something, you absorb it and believe it.
Jewish tradition taught that equality was neither realistic nor a goal.
Let nobody consider himself to be poor. Forming that opinion of yourself erects an insurmountable obstacle to becoming rich.
there will always be some people with less than you. They must not consider themselves poor, but you are obliged to give something to those with less than you.
Inequality does exist, and it exists in so many different ways that it would be impossible and undesirable to redress it. Inequality is not an indictment of the world; it is testimony to human uniqueness.
A quick glance at reality reveals that business creates wealth, it doesn’t redistribute it. By contrast, governments have no capacity to create wealth, but they can and do redistribute it.
Equal opportunity for all is the promise of any civilized society, but equality of outcome is unachievable and will only be promised to the accompaniment of totalitarian elimination of free choice.
in business, you would greatly benefit from recognizing that in the real world it is only possible to evaluate people’s actions. Their motivations are hidden and often impenetrably complex. Your neighbors or your transaction partners are far more interested in how you treat them than they are in how you intended to treat them or in why you treated them the way you did.
Somehow, people have uncritically bought into the notion that their acts of benevolence are negated if they benefit by those acts as much as, or more than, the beneficiaries do.
One of the gigantic economic advantages that Judaism confers on its devotees is this deep, internalized conviction that making money is largely the consequence of a mutually beneficial interaction with other human beings.
Jewish tradition strongly establishes the principle that each person makes his or her own needs the primary concern, although not the only concern. One could say that Judaism declares it necessary but insufficient to focus on one’s own needs first.
No, business is not akin to theft, and profit is not plunder. I may be trying to sell you a product or my services chiefly in order to survive and thrive, but having the care of myself and of those who depend on me as my paramount concern is right and moral.
It is difficult for a successful businessperson in the U.S. system to remain self centered. It is precisely a preoccupation with the needs of others that characterizes the entrepreneur. Concern for customers is the hallmark of an American business professional.
Rid yourself of all feelings of envy toward those who have much more than you do. Replace envy with feelings of empathy and compassion for those with less. View your own condition as nonstatic.
Focus on the good, the wonderful, and the miraculous. Think of how much you have to be grateful for.
Thinking, acting, and sounding positive, happy, and upbeat make you more pleasant company; and building many new friendships and relationships is crucial to your quest.
the circumstances of wartime raise people to leadership and allow them to exhibit capabilities that were possibly also possessed by other leaders less favored by history.
One key to being a leader is to leap at the opportunity for leadership. But it does not usually transfer from one situation to another.
How do you become a leader? The answer is, “Acquire followers.” How do you acquire followers? First, acquire certain character traits, and then be willing to assume the responsibility of leadership by stepping into the role when circumstances bring that opportunity into your orbit of activities.
no Jew is an independent authority, but is instead bound to the traditions and rules of the past and only through following them acquires the power to rule others.
you must focus on your ultimate goal. You must then break down that goal into intermediate phases, ensuring that each phase links seamlessly with those around it. Then, you need to break down each phase into specific tasks, each of which can be tackled without any distraction from the bigger picture. At regular intervals, you should glance up at the bigger picture to make certain that you are still on course.
Leadership is rare and it requires more than courage alone.
When I use the word faith, I mean the ability to work as comfortably with something yet invisible as if it were already a present reality. Whether you are leading yourself or are already leading others, you are distinguished by something very important. You alone see the desired outcome in front of your very eyes, as plainly as if it were already a reality.
