The Right Stuff

Sunday, 29th August 2010

I was at dinner last night with my parents and Mum posed me an interesting question. As Buddhists we believe strongly in karma - what goes around comes around and as a result we try to live our lives doing as much good as we can. So Mum posed the question: “In the grand scheme of things, who decides what is right and what is wrong and how do they reward us accordingly?”
This question is usually very easily answered by those of us who are religious and common answers include God, Allah, Jesus in essence a “higher power”. But then we start to get into the depths of the subject. Let’s take a look at the following scenarios:

A man walks into a shopping mall with a gun and begins killing innocent people. Is he doing any good? Most of you would argue no. This is a bad deed that needs to be punished.

What if that same man starts killing people and is shot dead by police? Did the police do a good thing by killing him? Most would say “yes” they did a good thing but what about the man’s family? They would say the police did a bad thing as they could have taken him peacefully and now because of the incident they’ve lost a husband,a father and family member.

What about cases where children are removed from their parents because a 3rd party believes their lives are at risk if they stayed with the parents? This was a very real problem over here in Australia with the “Stole Generation” where the people involved honestly believed they were doing the right thing based on what was told to them at the time.

This whole idea of others knowing better than ourselves bothers me greatly based on my own experiences. I even put together an entire presentation on this topic called “Opening Doors” where I share my stories about not being academically gifted and having a lot of doors close earlier on in life for me because I didn’t get perfect grades.

How frustrating is it when you have a burning desire to do something and someone comes along and says “no you can’t!”. It seriously frustrates the hell out of me and it is another reason why I started Dream,Build,Inspire,Lead! so that cool young people wouldn’t just accept the status quo, they’d go out there and make things happened for themselves and change the world. Imagine if we were all encouraged and supported to do whatever we want in life? What a different world it would be.

The Challenge

So this week I want you to think about the decisions you make at work, how do they effect those around you? Are you closing any doors for anyone or are you opening doors to create opportunities? For those of you who are in managerial positions, are you creating opportunities for those junior members of your team to shine?

Remember the doors that opened up for you in your life either by someone else opening them for you, or by you taking control and opening them for you. Focus on creating opportunities for others so that they feel as though they’ve got the right stuff.

Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead!

AJ~

p.s. Dream,Build,Inspire,Lead! ‘s 3rd birthday is coming up and I still have no idea how to celebrate it. What do you think I should do to celebrate it?

Author: AJ Kulatunga

Category:

Inspire, story, options, status quo, the right stuff, philosophy