Mental Diet: The 14 Great Habits (10)
THE HABIT OF INVESTING IN PEOPLE
“You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want”
–ZIG ZIGLAR
The word investment readily brings to mind, value or worth. Investing in people connotes creating value for people and adding value in the lives of others. It is empowering people to succeed.
You are never ahead in the game of life unless you reach out and help someone else get ahead. When you help someone secure a win, your own win is secured. You climb the highest by reaching down to help someone come up higher.
You have the widest influence by reaching out to make a difference in the lives of people. People who go the farthest take others along with them. You never really lose when you help others win.
Investing in people entails helping people become all that they can be; seeing the best in others and drawing out the best in others. To invest in people, we must look for the strengths in people and showcase it to them. It’s seeing beyond what the person is, to seeing what the person can be. It’s helping people discover and maximize their potentials.
We can give people an honest compliment; we can give encouragement to people. We can identify the hidden greatness in people. Believing in people even when they do not believe in themselves; is seeing for others what they cannot see in and for themselves.
It is being a bridge in the destinies of others from where they are to where they can be. We need to listen to the dreams of others and help them in whatever way we can to fulfill their dreams.
When we treat people with respect, honor, and dignity, we build up their self-esteem, equipping them with the confidence to forge ahead.
Give people permission to succeed by giving them something to live up to rather than a prediction to fail by giving them something to live down to. Become someone’s fan before the person succeeds.
“You’re never more like God than when you’re helping those who are hurting. One of our assignments in life is to help wipe away the tears”.
–JOEL OSTEEN
THE HABIT OF ON-PURPOSE FEEDING OF THE MIND
“Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways, in which he exists, to make his life full, significant, and interesting.”
-ALDOUS HUXLEY
Imagine that you had a hectic day at the office and you could not go for a lunch break. But now you are driving home, however, you are too sure that there is nothing edible at home because you have been handling an all-important project that consumes most of your time and you must meet the deadline which is within a short space of time, so it becomes needful to stop by a restaurant to fill your empty stomach.
You pull your car in front of a restaurant but, unfortunately, it’s closed. You drive to another one; you also find out that it is closed. Would you think of quitting and going home to sleep without dinner? I don’t think so. Though tired and disappointed, you are determined to get something to eat at whatever cost before retiring home.
It is obvious how important it is to eat when physically hungry. However, it is ridiculous to observe the crowd of people who go through each day, month, and probably year(s) without intentionally feeding their minds, on which the quality of their lives and their value to the world depends.
The greatest bane to reading in our contemporary times is the television and the social media addiction. Aimless entertainment and socializing are also major obstacles to self-education.
As your physical state is determined by your physical fitness, your material state is determined by your mental fitness and your mental fitness is a product of the quality of your “mental diet”.
