Values & the
Miraculous Phenomenon
of “Life Response”
by
Another aspect of our mental consciousness that seems to attract positive life response is the implementing of personal values in our lives.
Before we examine such cases we must ask ourselves what a personal value is? Our definition is that a value is a belief, a mission, or a philosophy that is really meaningful to you. Values can range from the commonplace or the commonly-accepted, such as the belief in hard work, self-reliance, and punctuality, to more psychological values, such as concern for others, trust in others, and harmony of purpose, to name a few.
When we examine the lives of famous people, we often learn of the importance of personal values in their lives. On closer examination, we come to see that these values were in fact the single great cause of their success and achievement in life. For example, one famous actor was motivated by his commitment to social justice, which lead to important acting roles related to that value. Another famous business CEO was motivated by the personal value that technology for the average person should be easy to use, which led to wonderful products, enabling his firm to rise the pinnacles of fame and success.
Also, just as individuals subscribe to personal values, so do institutions or other collectives, such as a business or a community believe in a core set of values. For example, if we closely examined the success of most companies, we would find out that one or more business values were the single keys to their booming success. Examples of companies and the values that propelled them to great achievement were --
-- Sears' commitment to its value customer trust (I.e. any product could be returned with a
money back guarantee from rural areas in the 19th
century)
-- Apple Computer's belief in the values of ease of use and service to society (Apple created the Macintosh computer to end people's fear of the computer)
-- Marriott's values of systemization and standardization
(which are organizational values which enabled it to seamlessly duplicate its standard
model hotel hundreds of times across the country)
Values thus are critical to the growth and development of an individual, as well as to any collective, business, community, nation, or otherwise. On the other hand, we must ask if there is any indication that the implementation of values attract sudden abundant positive life responses from life? We think they do. To prove why, consider this incident involving a young Asian woman that came to our attention not too long ago. Once again, we’ll let her narrate the story:
“I was working at the Railway Recruitment Board, and I was in charge of the entire pre-examination work phase of recruiting people. We have an elaborate procedure for conducting these pre-examinations. The procedure includes a number of stages.
A week ago I was discussing with my Chairman the possibility of the candidates for employment giving their examinations electronically, which would also perhaps have the effect of bringing down expenditures. But my Chairman was apprehensive about such an undertaking, and so that discussion ended. Still, I strongly believed within myself that it was possible.
After two/three days the Chairman called me to say that he received an invitation from a foreign based computer firm who were launching their new software product. Since he was preoccupied with other things, my boss proposed my name to represent our organization.
When I attended the gathering, I was surprised to learn that the software was for enabling candidates to take different types of examinations through computers!!
I not only enjoyed the program, and I got the chance to interact with it, so that I could be clear about its various points to see if it would be practically feasible for us.”
If we examine this extraordinary event, we see that she had the aspiration to improve a portion of the recruitment process though computers. This is an example of the value of Progress at work; or perhaps we can call it the value of “Continuous Improvement.” Though the young woman’s initial aspirations were not met by the Chairman, life still responded to her interest of improving the current system, i.e. to her internal value of progress and improvement. Out of this sentiment and value, an invitation miraculously came unsolicited to the Chairman; i.e. it came from seemingly out of nowhere, an indicator of life response in action.
In fact, if we were to examine many of the life response incidents covered so far, we would see that they involved the utilization or implementation of one or more personal or social values. For example, there was the wine seller who implemented the values of Maximum Utilization of Resources when he decided to clean the dead stocks in the basement, which attracted sales of all of these stocks, plus six months more general sales that saved his company. It also reflected the value of giving Attention to things. These are examples of physical values, which also include values such as cleanliness, orderliness, systemization, standardization, punctuality, timeliness, and others.
There
are so many incidents where life
responded to an individual’s values! For example, one individual we know of
noticed that he had a machine that had remained long idle, which also caused it
to be quite run down. So he made the decision to clean it and fix it; i.e. he was in essence
implementing the values of Maximum Utilization, Continuous Improvement, and Attention all wrapped up in one. Needless to say the
machine was suddenly needed for a new project! And this machine became a great
cash cow for the company from that time after!
Progress/Continuous Improvement, Maximum Utilization of
Resources, and Giving Attention to things and objects are all examples of
values that can invoke positive life response. So long as there is the
necessary intensity in the transition of energy in the event, life will respond to the
implementation of personal or social values in life. Bringing a higher personal value to any situation where one has crossed over
this boundary of intensity, i.e. where one has “crossed over the line,” will enable the necessary
shift in equilibrium hat attracts positive, rapid, and abundant response from
life.
Implementation
of any values at this level of intensity can have this effect, including values
of honesty, integrity, commitment to truth, gratitude, concern for others, maximum utilization of resources, continuous improvement, safety,
openness, tolerance, organization, systemization, service to the community, or any of the other 100 or so
values that we have identified over the years.
Applying
values can evoke life response for the