When dad passed away from cancer, I was 35, but my brother-from-another-mother was only 11.
He’s an adult now and recently asked me if I had some life advice.
I wasn’t ready for his request, so didn’t say anything very useful. But then I reflected more on this. What would I say to a brother young enough to be a son? What can I share that may be valuable to others?
I wrote to him and told him I wanted to put the effort into my response that the sincerity of his question deserved and that I would share 7 things that came to mind. I just shared the first one. It’s helped bring us closer across different sides of the world. He also said what I wrote has been helpful and so with his consent I’m sharing it.
1. Selfishness is self defeating.
I’ve always tried to make decisions based on the principal “what’s for the greater good”. I’ve found that this generally ends up being for our greater good too.
The first time this principal was tested was 25 years ago. I was leading a software team. One of the developers wanted to work for the R&D team. This would mean we lost our top developer which would mean the performance of our team would go down. But it was his dream and I could not hold him back. I worked together with him and others in the company to map out a path for him to transition into the R&D team. Far from hurting me, somehow in some way I do not understand still my career only moved ahead. I took another developer into my team that no team wanted and who the company wanted to fire because if an incident when he upset a customer with his direct manner of communication. I sat down with him and was able to work out what the issue was and coach him. Because we discovered the root cause, he went through a complete shift in his mindset and we never had another issue with him on customer sites. 6 months later I was running two software teams.
When we behave selfishly, we act against self because all things are connected. God, life force, energy or consciousness moves through all things. When we act selfishly we are saying “I am not connected to this universal consciousness” in that moment. The seed of this action is disconnection. The seed of the thing becomes the thing. We cannot plant a lemon seed and expect a mango tree. So a disconnected action can only yield more disconnection in our life. The reverse is also true: as we take actions that are generous, we feel more belonging and connection to everyone and everything.
Guidance of “how I should act” comes directly from our understanding of the nature of reality.
