Striving for value is one of the most difficult projects to set for yourself. No matter your line of work or interest, value is the basis for achievement and success especially if you define success for yourself, as the Shinsei Method™ strongly advocates. Value is the basis for love, and love–not only romantic love, but love in the most general sense-is the basis for motivation and the desire to make things well. Love, or a variation of it, prompts people to see a neighborhood or community and take steps to ensure that it is safe, clean, and energetic. The reverse is also true. The absence of value prompts individuals to loot, pillage, terrorize, and harm. It is a basic dichotomy that is more pertinent today than ever. Unfortunately, the choice between value and vice, between the long term and the short term, between quality and the low-grade is not generally emphasized in many social situations in the American culture. Many families are dysfunctional, and dysfunctionality is taken as a “normal” standard. When disruption and disarray are considered to be standards, quality or what some call total quality management are not possible. Quality is one of the first causalities of the dismissive mindset. Today dismissiveness is a very common mindset. Its commonality poses the greatest challenge for anyone that still values value, and more constructive standards. The more entrenched the dismissive mentality becomes in business, politics, science, family, and life, the more difficult it becomes for levelheaded individuals to keep their bearings, and to maintain a certain level of belief in themselves and in those values. Other cultures notably Japan have not lost a sense propriety, and the idea of appropriateness is stressed in most social situations in Japan particularly throughout school. This is exemplified in the Japanese approach to punctuality and professional dress particularly for business settings. It is also demonstrated in the low divorce rate and high nuclear family numbers. These sorts of statistics indicate something that can be observed anecdotally: Japanese families, worforces, communities, etc. tend to stay together. Therefore, cohesion forms the fundamental basis for Japanese society, and it shows in the relatively low crime rate there. There is much wisdom in these phenomena. They demonstrate the same thing that nature shows: strength, health, and well-being are based on sound values because sound values lead to a more balanced outlook, and a balanced outlook leads to less overall disruption, chaos, distraction. And, despite the inordinate attention to chaos as a theory, Nature tends toward balance and equilibrium. Chemical reactions are made possible by an imbalance. That is true. However, Nature strives toward a state of equilibrium. Nature’s natural progress toward balance is what drives chemical reactions. In this case there is an endpoint: equilibrium. I often highlight that Nature provides many useful insights for family, business, work, and life. However, it takes a different mindset and a different set of values to benefit from Nature’s insights especially since schools tend to deride the importance of sound values, virtue, character, and family, which are the building blocks of quality in many things.
However, quality and appropriateness are principles that apply to every aspect of business and life. In fact, business and life cannot truly happen without these two important principles. Despite the unpopularity of these principles, nothing can really happen without them. In other words, nothing can really get produced, packaged, practiced, or understood without some kind of standard and some way to measure those standard. Having no standards, which is increasingly common, is to have poor standards by default. No one can avoid standards. Standards are built into the fabric of existence. Logic necessitates standards. Are those standards clear and known, or are they hidden and confused? Schools tend to encourage the latter; but quality requires the former.
Without standards, development is not possible since there would be no practical way to determine differences between one result over another. Business and life cannot be “anything goes,” or “whatever.” These attitudes, however popular they may be and however much social pressure to adopt them there may be, lead to regression not progress. To establish a different course for yourself then becomes one of the biggest challenges of life. Striving for value or at least learning to strive for value becomes central to that life’s mission and that life’s goal. However, the challenge does not end there. The most difficult part of the challenge, the part that is not at all obvious and certainly not taught in most self-development courses or business training seminars, is to maintain that forward looking path no matter the environment. And, sometimes that environment can be utterly contrary to the desire and and task of self-enrichment. In fact, that environment can be so bad that the very idea of pursuing a constructive value could be met with violent reactions. The most recent rioting and looting is just one example of that. And, it is not an extreme example if you happen to live in the neighborhoods where the rioting tends to take place. However, it need not be so extreme. You may find yourself in a family, in a community, in a workplace, in a relationship or friendship where constructive values like building strength from within, or the value of listening, courage, valor, integrity, thriftiness, loyalty, kindness, and other values that tend to build rather than tear down, may not be supported. Unfortunately, that is often the case. No matter how enriching a particular value or principle may be, many people will not support it even if they give lip service to its importance, which is also very common. So, what do you do? How do you maintain a course in your life and in your business that is individually suitable to your values regardless of the support that course of action may receive? This is one of the purposes of the Shinsei Method™ to establish a waypoint, an anchor, a compass, and a reference to build up the values so crucial to true individual success (i.e. the inner sense of acceptance that is so fundamental to a sense of well-being, but that is often neglected in so many circumstances especially now during a time of a global health, economic, and social crisis). There has never been a time when that inner sense of acceptance, that trust in your self that derives from striving for value was needed more than today.