Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality by Henry Cloud

Author:Henry Cloud
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Non-Fiction, Self Help, Psychology, Business
ISBN: 9780060849696
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2006-02-06T22:00:00+00:00

I was looking forward to the meeting with the big guns of the public company. I was then in the psychiatric-hospital business, and we were about to do our first deal with an entity that large. Up until that point, I had only dealt with small companies, or single hospitals. I remember that as I walked into their headquarters, I was wondering what all goes into making something that big. I just could not imagine how that kind of growth occurred. Surely they started somewhere, I thought, but how they got from there to here was a little incomprehensible. Maybe it was because I was in that mind-set that the experience stuck with me so vividly

I went in, met the team, and the VP of marketing said, “OK, let’s go to the war room and get this done.” I did not even know what a “war room” was, but it was the inner sanctum where they did their planning. I did not know exactly what to expect, either, but I was new at this and pretty young, so I was eager to see what a war room was.

I do not to this day have any recollection what that room looked like—how it was designed, decorated, apportioned, or anything about it. All I can remember is that on the far wall was a huge sign that read:

No problems, no profit.

I just stood there for a moment and stared at it, and now, eighteen years later, I still stare at it frequently. It is forever etched in my mind. That’s because it answered the question that I walked in with and has been one of the answers to explain the growth and success of so many people I have seen since then. The ones who succeed in life are the ones who realize that life is largely about solving problems. The ones who can get with that find much success, and the ones who can’t, don’t.

Scott Peck, in The Road Less Traveled (Touchstone, 1978), began by saying, “Life is difficult.” And then he said, “Once we truly know that life is difficult—once we truly understand and accept it—then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.” It was a psychiatrist’s way of saying the same thing that the leadership of that company was saying to its employees who entered that war room: if you orient yourself to the reality that nothing good is going to happen if you can’t deal with the bad things that are going to happen, then you are ready to have something good happen. If you can get with that idea, then you are in the program.

But, if you can’t orient yourself to that reality, nothing good is going to happen, because that reality will not go away. It is still the nature of the universe. It will be true that in your business life, personal goals, and relationships, you will encounter problems. Period. If you are

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.