Book Extract: Growing the distance

Growing the distance authored by Jim Clemmer is an excellent book that gives profound advice that helps one understand importance of Growing once personality. This book is organized into 8 chapters with each chapter containing one page sections. Most of the sections contain a practical parable followed by words of wisdom that are action oriented. Each chapter is filled wonderful quotes from various sources. Jim Clemmer manages his own consultancy and his website www.clemmer.net contains very good collection of over 200 articles.

"A true master is not the one with the most students, but one who creates the most Masters. A true leader is not the one with the most followers, but one who creates the most leaders." - Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue.

Extract 1: From Groaning to Growing

In the dismal streets of Pity City, there's an epidemic of the Victimitis Virus

"In the holiness of always being the injured party. The historically oppressed can find not only sanctity but safety in the state of victimization. When access to a better life has been denied often enough, and successfully enough, one can use the rejection as an excuse to cease all efforts." - Maya Angelou, American author, Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry like Christmas.

Blaming others for our difficulties is the easy way out. That's why it's so popular.

A job applicant put this statement on his resume: "The company made me a scapegoat, just like my three previous employers."

In How to Save Your Own Life, author Erica Jong writes: "No one to blame!... That was why most people led lives they hated, with people they hated ... How wonderful to live with one's nemesis! You may be miserable, but you feel forever in the right. You may be fragmented, but you feel absolved of all the blame for it. Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame."

Rolling Stone journalist P.J.O'Rourke adds: "One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it's remarkable how often his pictures turns up on your driver's license."

Turn on any daytime talk show and you'll find enldess examples of people blaming everybody and everything for the way their lives have turned out. A little channel surfing could lead to the conclusion that we're living on the Planet of the Aches.

As long as these sad souls are playing the blame game and embracing their victim role, they are stuck in that rut. It can too easily become a rut that's really a grave with the ends knocked out. Regular viewers of these "misery-series" soon end up feeling as helpless and hopeless as the continual parade of victims.

As key players in the "whine industry" these shows reflect - and help to spread - the deadliest disease in society today: the Victimitis Virus. The virus leads to poor-little-me syndrome, a state of hopelessness and powerlessness to do anything about one's problems. Once infected, sufferers run away from personal responsibilities with excuses like "it's not my job", "I was just following orders", "I am too old to change," or "the dog ate my homework" (also the title of a great book on personal responsibility by Vincent Barry).

The Victimitis Virus is the most contagious and destructive infection ever seen on this earth, and is often diagnosed along with the Pessimism Plague. Both kill, mutilate, and destroy millions of lives every year. They are also the only lethal diseases that can be transmitted without any form of physical contact, most often spreading through one-on-one, group of mass communications.

Symptoms of the Victimitis Virus include bouts of doubt and discouragement diarrhea, constant vomiting of cynicism and snide remarks, pains in the neck (or lower regions) from suspicion and distrust, hoplessness headaches, waves of nausea from pessimism and put-downs, and frequent cramps from it's-beyond-my (or our-) control language.

Such "victim-speak" often includes statements like "he/she makes me so mad I can't control myself," "that's just the way I am," "there's nothing we can do," "they won't allow that," "I have to ....," "I am no good at ....," "the system won't let us," and so on. We can all add to the list from our personal favorites.

It's very easy for entire groups to become infected with the Victimitis Virus and the Pessimism Plague. The result is that many family gatherings or meetings at work turn into "primal scream therapy" or "blame storming" sessions - about a family member's poor behavior, a missed deadlines, or declining sales.

Extract 2: Words Worth

Compelling communication is essential to energizing and mobilizing others.

"The man who can think but does not know how to express what he thinks is at the same level as who cannot think." Pericles, leader of Athens circa 450 B.C.

It was the dead of winter in the middle of a very cold snap. As we approached departure time, judging by all the activity outside the aircraft, we weren't likely to leave on time. In a few minutes the captain announced, "You can see a lot of activity on our left wing. This is a maintenance crew trying to replace a defecting fuel pump. We find it's best to fix a problem like that on the ground before we're in the air. The good news is that there is another fuel pump is available at the airport. The bad news is that it will delay our departure by about 30 minutes.

Within 10 minutes the captain was making another announcement, "Folks, you can see the little truck on the right coming in with our fuel pump. Unfortunately, this is work the work that can only be done with gloves off. Working with jet fuel on your fingers in this freezing weather is extremely difficult and taking longer than expected." We started to feel sorry for those hearty heroes working in such tough conditions to get us underway!

The captain continued to give us updates on the progress every 10 to 15 minutes. When he announced the problem was fixed and we were finally ready to go - some 90 minutes late - a cheer went up from the passengers.

As late as we were, I am sure there wasn't a single complaints among the fellow passengers. That's because the captain treated us like adult customers - not "the cattle in the back" who don't really need to know what's going on.