“woolly-headed idealists” in our society are prevented from doing business. In the case of artists, writers or theatre people, commercial success through entertainment, for example, makes them downright questionable. At the same time good artists have always been interested in money. Andy Warhol painted dollar bills and maintained that he had portrayed what he loved the most.
Fortunately today the paradigm is changing: you have to link your ideas to business or you won’t be taken seriously in the market. Your ideas, plans and dreams end up as a “hobby” in your back room, or your relations support you, “the great artist”, so that you can pay at least a part of the rent and the grocery bills? Can that be satisfying? Not just that.
Figure 1: Performance Scale no. 7 – Sage Learning Method ©
The old paradigm follows this very curious idea in our culture that creative people and everyone who follows their dreams and their sense of curiosity should have the grace to starve to appear credible. You can prove that you are not a “woolly-headed idealist” through projects. It would be fatal to let everything be driven in support of your dreams and dedicate yourself exclusively to this ideal. You turn your ideas into projects which will show how much energy is really invested and how many consequences this idea really has. Through projects you come into contact with reality. They are limited by time and yield a concrete result - possibly even real money without substantial investment.
These projects are genuine experiences and give you feedback whether your idea or your business is going in the right direction.
The “performance scale” doesn’t have dark and light sides. Imagine it as a tree. Every plant grows downward as well as upward. The roots which suck up the minerals are just as important as the leaves and branches. From the roots you can see how the tree thrives and prospers on all sides.
It is the same with the performance stages. They are the indicators of growth and health.
The “performance scale” illustrates the paths of individuals, organizations, models and systems along which it sketches the phenomena that have arisen. Before you begin you have to look deep into yourself in order to understand the reasons why you want to take this path.
These reasons are your values. All further stages are affected by them. We will start from the bottom. Every concept can be found in the subheadings to follow. Every chapter is devoted to a special stage. You will recognize yourself in these stages: possibly in the first, but it could be another much further ahead if you have already developed your business idea. Then it is amusing to read what you have already achieved - and stimulating for what lies ahead.
Because this is a book we have to portray the business stages in a straightforward linear manner. This doesn’t correspond to the “truth” of these individual stages – in fact they don’t exist separately but are linked together. All the things that you have “behind you” don’t disappear. Many moments of disappointment will resurface. You often forget why you undertook this long journey in the first place. Moments of surprise, small successes and large obstacles overcome enable you to recognize the goal once more and take you a step further, where you will have to reorganize things completely and change your system.
Imagine the “performance scale” as a hologram within whose deeper dimensions other processes shimmer which are the individual stages above and below.
Values are the basis of clear perceptions and decisions
V
alues indicate the direction of your creative and emotional intelligence. “Know thyself!” is written above the oracle at Delphi. “Be yourself! You are not what you do, think, desire!” is a famous quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche, who offers a helpful yardstick if you want to break free of the fetters of your illusions.
By what yardstick, from which perspective do you act and decide? To know yourself is not so much to know who you are. That is the province of psychoanalysis. To recognize and to know yourself means to know what really matters to you and what you really want to do.
You are exactly to the same degree happy and contented as you are in tune with your values. People who are fulfilled within themselves and live with their values don’t experience disappointments and are the happiest on earth, regardless of how much money they have.
If you can be in perfect harmony with your own inner truth – i.e. do what you are – your mood will become light and joyful. Nietzsche called this state “exhilaration”, which arises not out of pure naivety but out of conquering dogmas and dictates.
To break another taboo: a lot of modern neuro-scientific research has come to the conclusion that most decisions are made on the basis of emotion. Your feelings decide for you.
Then a mental process starts up which looks for logical reasons for your decision. That is the inner dialogue that you conduct with yourself: often you hear an inner voice that approves or disapproves. Plato spoke in this context of thinking, the “silent dialogue of the soul with itself”; Sigmund Freud spoke of the “super-ego”, Adam Smith of the “impartial spectator”. If you are not clear about your values, unforeseen feelings accompany your life.
If you draw up clear, lasting values for yourself you are capable of perceiving and deciding. Your actions are in tune with your being. Success always arises out of the basis of clarity. As long as you have no clear perception of reality, your business will remain stuck in fantasy or pessimism.
But whoever discovers their own true values has already found on the conception side of the performance scale what they find on top of the action side: the motives for going into service for other people and finding complete self-fulfillment. That is why the overlap between total collapse and enlarged self-perception is a terrific experience – and often the beginning of a unique and true life.
How do you find values?
W
e develop tactics with which we deceive ourselves a little to survive everyday life. We find compromises or white lies. We play for time, pretend to be stupid, although we could do better. On holiday, in a lonely cottage, or after a disastrous business experience, there are often moments when it is too late to fool yourself, when you are led or forced into clarity.
The reasons why you do this or that or want to do this or that appear again from behind the grey wallpaper of everyday life. In the morning everything often appears so clear and simple. A few minutes later the motives of your actions are swallowed by the duties of everyday life. You need absolute peace in order to contemplate your values.
What is the most important thing in life? What do you want most? Why do you live and what makes life worth living? What is most desirable? The easiest answers come first: money or love, a fulfilling sex life, fame and honor etc. These are abstract values without content. They have nothing to do with your real life. If you decide on money, you should marry into a rich family or play the lottery. Is that your life? Recognizing your values means to think beyond costs and returns on investments. Many middle class people regard prosperity as a genuine value in their lives, only to discover that it has nothing to do with their own lives once they have earned their money through a huge investment of time and sacrifices. There is little time left to enjoy life. Values are the measure of things that are more important to you than money. Which values are important to you?
How much value do you place on your health? When you are sick you suddenly discover the values on which you depend. Then all the
