"Six Simple Success Strategies"
“The “Six Strategies” are a concise formula (a computer program to clean up your mental clutter) I cooked up for myself which guides me in my decision-making processes, and helps me stick to the commitments I have made to both myself and others. These strategies are designed to inspire increased effectiveness, and to promote intent/action harmony in one’s life. This is definitely what they have done for me. These deceptively simple commands can transform zero sum games into win-win situations, where everybody is benefiting and enjoying themselves. They are based on the testable assumption that our experience of life is what determines how we feel, what we think, what we do, and the kinds of relationships we engage ourselves in. The stratagems are simply suggestions on how you can improve your own experience of life, and the experiences of those people around you. They have helped me untangle mixed up intentions, express myself more clearly, and enjoy the company of others without the hindrance of my own hang-ups and projections. If you experiment with them, and with modifying them to suit your own life, you might very well find the same things occurring! Let’s begin looking at the stratagems themselves in more detail, shall we?(1) Sow Possibilities: Make things happen. That’s the simplest way to explain the first stratagem. Instead of nothing, create something. Instead of sitting back, take action. Instead of saying no, say yes - or at least maybe. Always be opening doors and making connections. Don’t just shut down. Create opportunities for yourself and for other people.
I hear a lot of people talking about manifesting intentions nowadays. I see intentions as potential. Focusing your intentions is like plowing a field. You’re preparing the ground for things to grow. But once you have tilled the earth, you have to take it a step beyond that. You have to take action. You have to plant seeds.
Seeds are possibilities: things that could happen if the proper conditions are maintained for their growth. When a farmer sows seeds, he doesn’t expect that every single seed will grow into a fruit-bearing tree {See the Parable of the Mustard Seed}. But he knows that at least some of these possibility-seeds will grow to fruition. He can’t necessarily predict which ones, but that doesn’t matter. All that matters is that he take steps beyond simply focusing his intention: and that all-important first step is sowing the seeds of possibilities. Put another way, passive potential becomes active possibility through initiating cause-effect chains in the world of action.
(2) Gather Greatness: The first two stratagems go together: if you sow seeds of possibility, you will be able to reap the results later on. Gathering greatness is more than that though: it is creating the right conditions for success. Put yourself into an environment which favors success, and you are more likely to succeed. Surround yourself with strength, is another way to describe the same principle. If you surround yourself with people who are successful, they will naturally inspire you by their example to become successful as well. Their positivity will rub off on you. Environment isn’t everything, but it counts for a whole hell of a lot.
Going back to our seed analogy, you could think of “gather greatness” as simply creating and maintaining the proper conditions for the seeds of possibility you sow to grow and flourish. Remember: different types of plants need different lighting, temperature, water, soil and nourishment conditions. Look at what kind of possibilities you are putting out into the world, and look at the types of environment and conditions which would be most beneficial for them to grow up strong and healthy. Be objective and analytical. Study the situation and make informed decisions. And last but not least: don’t settle for garbage. Shoot for the top and demand the best out of everything you do. Takes a lot of discipline, but the results are worth it!
(3) Enrich Relationships: The first two stratagems are about creating the conditions necessary for success; the next two are about enhancing experience. If you’re having and encouraging positive experiences from start to finish in everything that you do, success becomes an on-going experience instead of a distant goal which can only be attained at the tail end of tiresome toiling.
Seek to perfect every moment. Fertilize. Nourish. Help those around you to accomplish the things they set out to accomplish. Be the strength and the greatness they need to be inspired. Tell them how valuable and important they are to you: be specific and be authentic. Don’t just shower people with meaningless platitudes and don’t try to manipulate people. Simply find and emphasize the positive points in others. Give compliments. Tell people how beautiful and wonderful they are. Tell them you love them. But only if you really do. People can see through lies, and falsehoods only slow you down as they scramble your intentions. You should, though, be able to find good things in everyone around you - even people who annoy you, people you hate. Being moved by beauty and freely expressing it without any expectation of reward or reciprocation is one of the most beautiful and powerful lessons I have learned in my life.
Tip: focusing on other people’s positive points also allows you to uncover and cultivate possibilities you would never see if you were still complaining and being annoyed by everything. (Suffering seems to slow us down and make us operate inefficiently!)
(4) Add Value: Imagine you and your friends are having a potluck dinner. Would you show up without bringing a meal to share with everyone? Of course not, that would defeat the whole point of having a potluck. When everyone brings something to the table, be it food, their skills & talents, money, or some other kind of value, what you’ll find is that abundance abounds. People have more when they come together and pool their resources than when they sit home alone and hoard what little they have.
A potluck is just one example which makes overt the optimal way of living your life: mutually inspired abundance. Everyone adds value. Value is simply something that is important to people. It could take almost any form, as long as its really meaningful to you and to others. People coming together to exchange things of value with one another is the basis of trade, of economics, of society, of human relationships themselves. We can do certain things better with other people than we can do alone. It’s also more fun. And we can always learn from those around us.
To figure out how to add value to situations and to other peoples’ experience of life, look at what you value. Look at what you’re good at. Look at what you have a lot of. Look at what you loving doing, and what you enjoy sharing with other people. And then find ways to add that into the mix. You’ll find that you enrich relationships by doing so, that you gather more energy, greate effectiveness and better people around you by freely giving than by holding on tightly. And your gifts and added value will become the seeds of possibility for other people to cultivate and eventually harvest in their own lives.
(5) Always do extra: Many of us are accustomed to doing the bare minimum required for survival. We pay the minimum amount every month on the balance of our credit cards. We’re just nice enough to people (to their face) so that they don’t hate us. When our boss asks us to do a task, we do it in the most basic possible form because we hate our job and can’t stand our boss and we believe we are not being paid enough to put the effort into working any harder. What a stupid way to live life! Maybe that kind of attitude let’s you get by, but that’s it. It won’t ever do more than that and it won’t enable you to expand, grow, change or flourish. Surviving is radically different from living or from living the “good life” which sages and philosophers of old quested after and which you yourself can live today, right here and now if you apply yourself conscientiously.
Doing the “bare minimum” is the best way to make sure that you remain fixed forever in your old patterns and attached to your old habits. You can coast by indefinitely on the bare minimum: as long as things don’t change. But if something unexpected comes up, you suddenly find yourself scrambling to get out of trouble. An attitude of always doing extra is first and foremost a practical matter: it prevents and protects against problems. It’s like an insurance policy, except it is even more effective because it is a method of taking positive conscious action within the world, instead of passively preparing for potential disaster. Always doing extra is important because it enables you to reformulate old habits into powerful new ways of living and acting within the world. If you always do extra, you’re always adding value, enriching relationships, gathering greatness, and sowing possibility. All of the stratagems interlock and overlap. That’s why even if you only master one of the six and apply it to your actions, you’ll be well on your way to an improved experience of life.
(6) Optimize: There are, of course, practical considerations here. In what areas should you apply your extra efforts? That depends, of course, on what your intentions are. If you can be clear with yourself and with others about your intentions, you’ll have something specific to shoot for and you’ll be able to know when you’ve accomplished your goals. If you don’t have a target, you’ll always miss. The fifth stratagem is about using extra effort. The sixth stratagem asks us where it can be applied most effectively. There are better ways to add value and more enjoyable ways to enrich one another’s experience of life. Optimizing simply means observing the effectiveness of your actions, and recalibrating so that they will have greater impact. It is a very analytical process. And you while you may be doing more (”Always do extra”), you will get much more for what you put in, because it will be tightly focused and will make full use of the Law of Cause-Effect, rather than struggling uselessly against it. Optimization is all about finding the best possible.
In another sense, optimization is focusing on the needs of one particular plant which grows from the seeds of possibility you are constantly sowing. It is making sure that each undertaking in itself is successful and complete: seeing things through from start to finish and guiding them organically in the way that is best suited for each thing. Remember, not all the seeds you sow are definitely going to grow. But, through proper care, a few eventually do. And those are the ones that make all the difference. Now get out there and grow!”
I hear a lot of people talking about manifesting intentions nowadays. I see intentions as potential. Focusing your intentions is like plowing a field. You’re preparing the ground for things to grow. But once you have tilled the earth, you have to take it a step beyond that. You have to take action. You have to plant seeds.
Seeds are possibilities: things that could happen if the proper conditions are maintained for their growth. When a farmer sows seeds, he doesn’t expect that every single seed will grow into a fruit-bearing tree {See the Parable of the Mustard Seed}. But he knows that at least some of these possibility-seeds will grow to fruition. He can’t necessarily predict which ones, but that doesn’t matter. All that matters is that he take steps beyond simply focusing his intention: and that all-important first step is sowing the seeds of possibilities. Put another way, passive potential becomes active possibility through initiating cause-effect chains in the world of action.
(2) Gather Greatness: The first two stratagems go together: if you sow seeds of possibility, you will be able to reap the results later on. Gathering greatness is more than that though: it is creating the right conditions for success. Put yourself into an environment which favors success, and you are more likely to succeed. Surround yourself with strength, is another way to describe the same principle. If you surround yourself with people who are successful, they will naturally inspire you by their example to become successful as well. Their positivity will rub off on you. Environment isn’t everything, but it counts for a whole hell of a lot.
Going back to our seed analogy, you could think of “gather greatness” as simply creating and maintaining the proper conditions for the seeds of possibility you sow to grow and flourish. Remember: different types of plants need different lighting, temperature, water, soil and nourishment conditions. Look at what kind of possibilities you are putting out into the world, and look at the types of environment and conditions which would be most beneficial for them to grow up strong and healthy. Be objective and analytical. Study the situation and make informed decisions. And last but not least: don’t settle for garbage. Shoot for the top and demand the best out of everything you do. Takes a lot of discipline, but the results are worth it!
(3) Enrich Relationships: The first two stratagems are about creating the conditions necessary for success; the next two are about enhancing experience. If you’re having and encouraging positive experiences from start to finish in everything that you do, success becomes an on-going experience instead of a distant goal which can only be attained at the tail end of tiresome toiling.
Seek to perfect every moment. Fertilize. Nourish. Help those around you to accomplish the things they set out to accomplish. Be the strength and the greatness they need to be inspired. Tell them how valuable and important they are to you: be specific and be authentic. Don’t just shower people with meaningless platitudes and don’t try to manipulate people. Simply find and emphasize the positive points in others. Give compliments. Tell people how beautiful and wonderful they are. Tell them you love them. But only if you really do. People can see through lies, and falsehoods only slow you down as they scramble your intentions. You should, though, be able to find good things in everyone around you - even people who annoy you, people you hate. Being moved by beauty and freely expressing it without any expectation of reward or reciprocation is one of the most beautiful and powerful lessons I have learned in my life.
Tip: focusing on other people’s positive points also allows you to uncover and cultivate possibilities you would never see if you were still complaining and being annoyed by everything. (Suffering seems to slow us down and make us operate inefficiently!)
(4) Add Value: Imagine you and your friends are having a potluck dinner. Would you show up without bringing a meal to share with everyone? Of course not, that would defeat the whole point of having a potluck. When everyone brings something to the table, be it food, their skills & talents, money, or some other kind of value, what you’ll find is that abundance abounds. People have more when they come together and pool their resources than when they sit home alone and hoard what little they have.
A potluck is just one example which makes overt the optimal way of living your life: mutually inspired abundance. Everyone adds value. Value is simply something that is important to people. It could take almost any form, as long as its really meaningful to you and to others. People coming together to exchange things of value with one another is the basis of trade, of economics, of society, of human relationships themselves. We can do certain things better with other people than we can do alone. It’s also more fun. And we can always learn from those around us.
To figure out how to add value to situations and to other peoples’ experience of life, look at what you value. Look at what you’re good at. Look at what you have a lot of. Look at what you loving doing, and what you enjoy sharing with other people. And then find ways to add that into the mix. You’ll find that you enrich relationships by doing so, that you gather more energy, greate effectiveness and better people around you by freely giving than by holding on tightly. And your gifts and added value will become the seeds of possibility for other people to cultivate and eventually harvest in their own lives.
(5) Always do extra: Many of us are accustomed to doing the bare minimum required for survival. We pay the minimum amount every month on the balance of our credit cards. We’re just nice enough to people (to their face) so that they don’t hate us. When our boss asks us to do a task, we do it in the most basic possible form because we hate our job and can’t stand our boss and we believe we are not being paid enough to put the effort into working any harder. What a stupid way to live life! Maybe that kind of attitude let’s you get by, but that’s it. It won’t ever do more than that and it won’t enable you to expand, grow, change or flourish. Surviving is radically different from living or from living the “good life” which sages and philosophers of old quested after and which you yourself can live today, right here and now if you apply yourself conscientiously.
Doing the “bare minimum” is the best way to make sure that you remain fixed forever in your old patterns and attached to your old habits. You can coast by indefinitely on the bare minimum: as long as things don’t change. But if something unexpected comes up, you suddenly find yourself scrambling to get out of trouble. An attitude of always doing extra is first and foremost a practical matter: it prevents and protects against problems. It’s like an insurance policy, except it is even more effective because it is a method of taking positive conscious action within the world, instead of passively preparing for potential disaster. Always doing extra is important because it enables you to reformulate old habits into powerful new ways of living and acting within the world. If you always do extra, you’re always adding value, enriching relationships, gathering greatness, and sowing possibility. All of the stratagems interlock and overlap. That’s why even if you only master one of the six and apply it to your actions, you’ll be well on your way to an improved experience of life.
(6) Optimize: There are, of course, practical considerations here. In what areas should you apply your extra efforts? That depends, of course, on what your intentions are. If you can be clear with yourself and with others about your intentions, you’ll have something specific to shoot for and you’ll be able to know when you’ve accomplished your goals. If you don’t have a target, you’ll always miss. The fifth stratagem is about using extra effort. The sixth stratagem asks us where it can be applied most effectively. There are better ways to add value and more enjoyable ways to enrich one another’s experience of life. Optimizing simply means observing the effectiveness of your actions, and recalibrating so that they will have greater impact. It is a very analytical process. And you while you may be doing more (”Always do extra”), you will get much more for what you put in, because it will be tightly focused and will make full use of the Law of Cause-Effect, rather than struggling uselessly against it. Optimization is all about finding the best possible.
In another sense, optimization is focusing on the needs of one particular plant which grows from the seeds of possibility you are constantly sowing. It is making sure that each undertaking in itself is successful and complete: seeing things through from start to finish and guiding them organically in the way that is best suited for each thing. Remember, not all the seeds you sow are definitely going to grow. But, through proper care, a few eventually do. And those are the ones that make all the difference. Now get out there and grow!”
- Tim Boucher, http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2007/09/28/six-stratagems-explained-expanded/
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