Building a Solid Foundation for Your Life

We were discussing on the case of Enron during my strategy class this Tuesday and listening to the reports and interviews has made me realized the one thing that caused Enron to collapse; that is, building the whole organization upon the wrong values.

When an organization is built upon dishonesty, upon greed; it’s really matter of time that the organization will collapse. And the ‘collapsing’ really began when such values were being espoused within the organization.

It’s the same for our lives. The day we think that a lie will get us ahead, anger will get us our way; we take the first step in putting a shaky foundation in our lives; due for collapsing.

Take for example, we lie for our job interview so that we’re able to get a placing in our ideal job. “Sometimes we just have to ‘adjust’ ourselves to suit the job.” We convince ourselves.
Next we realize to cover our tracks, we have to make another 5 stories; and another 100. And so on. In essence, we’re building a tower with a deck of cards; waiting for that one trigger to bring it all down.

It’s the same when we act in anger. e.g maybe we didn’t score too well in our midterm exams; and in our anger, we decide that we’ll forgo everything else to make sure we score As the next time round. We withdraw from our social circles; we give up quality time with friends; we give up our leisure time, all so that we can have that extra time to mug for our quizzes and papers.

When we reinforce that moment of anger by making certain agreements with ourselves, “ If I enjoy my life like everyone else, I can’t get ahead of them.” “If I want to lead a successful life, I have to give up my friends. They are holding me back. They are a bad influence.” “If I am going to be successful, it’s up to me. No one will help me get there.”

These agreements we make with ourselves are dangerous. They are dangerous because firstly, they happen at the subconscious level. We won’t even know we made them. Secondly, its these beliefs that we agree to that form our foundation of our lives.

Then many years later, we wonder why nobody seems to trust us deeply enough; we wonder why the true friends we have around us are few and far between. We wonder why we’re so successful at our jobs and yet our family is falling apart. Little did we know that it was because

So even today, watch out for the things that you subconsciously agree to. It usually happens in moments of anger or hurt.

For me, sometimes upon failure of a certain task, I am really tempted to let all that anger come in and give me the strength to charge harder the next round. But I have to stop it. I hold myself back; and I only allow myself to act in faith, not in fear.

One of my favourite movies (and I think for most guys) is the Star Wars Trilogy. Star Wars illustrates this perfectly. You would remember the scene where Yoda tells the young Anakin, “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” And in the end, Anakin was so consumed by his fear of Padme Amidala dying that he ultimately turns to the Dark Side.

This is a great illustration for our lives too. When we first act in fear, we reinforce a life that brings us closer to the ‘Dark Side’. We’d like to use the strength that is derived from our anger to achieve the things that we so deeply want to.

And so the story ends badly for the young Anakin who was supposed to be the One. And so has many a story ended like that. How about your life? What are you using as a driving force in your life?

Is it faith? Is it hope? Or is it survival? Or is it bitterness? (both which comes from fear)?

Like what Yoda advises; don’t do that. Don’t reinforce the anger in you by using it as a weapon.

Instead, build your life upon the values of truth, courage, love, compassion, kindness, self-control, faith, purity. If we do anything less than that, we’re really just setting our lives up for failure many years down the road.

Enron made it from $10 billion to $65 billion in 4 years with the values of competition, greed, self-preservation, money-mindedness; and guess what, they became bankrupt in 24 days.

And a mere 7 years later, look at history repeat itself again in Wall Street today. =/