Common Sense Success: The Right Roadmap

COMMON SENSE SUCCESS: THE RIGHT ROADMAP

By

Bill Cottringer

     It is always a good idea to begin by defining your key terms precisely so that things start out with the necessary agreement and understanding. In this spirit, here are definitions of my key terms in this article.

Common Sense Success =  Doing the right thing in the right way for the right reasons and getting the right results.

Common Sense =  The naked truth despite all the "facts" and everything else; the simple knack of seeing something the way it really is.

Success =  What you get from what you do to get it and the quantity and quality of what you get related to how you define success itself.

     The object of this article is to get a better handle on "right" as in the four levels of rightness in the right roadmap. Before I get started though, I have to apologize for one huge assumption that unfortunately is unavoidable. This is the assumption we all make in determining the certainty of something we believe to be true, for sure. The assumption is in the form of a "leap of faith" we make between the actual belief we think to be true in our minds and the certainty we assign to the truth of this belief in our hearts. In other words, you can't really know anything with 100% certainty.

     Let's take the communication process as a good sequence to work through the four levels of rightness. This is because we use communication to deal with everything and so it is very relevant to success.

THE RIGHT THING

     Probably the most difficult thing in life is in knowing what the right thing is and then actually doing it. Sometimes the only way we get to know this is by working our way through many failures in this formula sequence. This is because we must always find our own way, despite the many obvious success clues that are readily available from the wisdom of others traveling the very same journey. At any rate, discovering the right thing is an exhausting mental process which mediates a whole lot of lower level interactions between positive and negative thoughts and feelings. But that is too much of a mess to get into here.

     How can we know what the right thing is in communication? There is one very widely applicable truth we all have the opportunity to try out. This truth is that supportive communication works well to improve communication, whereas defensive communication cuts communication off at the legs. Supportive communication happens when you convey the most important values of equality, tentativeness, freedom, acceptance, honesty, politeness, empathy, spontaneity and good listening. Defensive communication happens when you do the opposite—conveying superiority, certainty, control, judgment, dishonesty, rudeness, insensitivity, manipulating strategy, and poor listening. The right thing then is communicating supportively and avoiding defensive communication. Although this is really a no-brainer, it happens less frequently than it needs to happen.

THE RIGHT WAY

    Here is where communication usually breaks down. In the end it is not intentions that matter but impact. Consequently you can easily erase the good content of what you are saying, by how you say it (defensively). Consequently, it is easy to do the right thing in the wrong way for the right reasons. But the results will always be wrong. Back to our communication example and note that this step is often so unconscious it is overlooked.

     We must be very careful to communicate the right thing—the values of support—in the right manner—by being what we are saying we are. In this case, we want to communicate our likeability by actually being likeable in walking our talk, or by speaking and writing words that convey the things that make us all feel the way we want to feel—to be accepted and respected, not judged or disrespected.

THE RIGHT REASONS

     The right reasons for doing anything are to do the right thing in the right way to make positive progress in improving a situation to get the right results. Notice there is no ulterior motive in this formula. Again, you can easily do the right thing in the right way for the wrong reasons (ulterior motive) and the results may be right or wrong.

     Take motivation for self-improvement as an example. If you try to lose weight by harsh dieting and rigorous exercising to please someone else or to get some other external reward, you may succeed but possibly be disappointed in the eventual outcome. This is probably because your time and effort may not result in what you expect (to please the other person and gaining the satisfaction you expect that to bring).

     Hence the likely need to shift attention from external motivation towards intrinsic motivation—doing something just because it feels right and good to do in and all by itself and for no other reason. Some obvious examples are seeking knowledge, being altruistic, and performing random acts of kindness.  But intrinsic motivation can apply to everything. It seems to be the only right reason for doing anything in this formula or any other success formula.

THE RIGHT RESULTS

     The right results from these other levels of rightness are the actual outcomes you get from what you are doing and how you are doing it. In our communication case, it is good communication that results in progress where all parties are conveying and understanding precisely what is meant, with utmost clarity and positive impact. This good communication in turn helps everyone to move forward in solving problems, resolving conflicts and making progress which benefits everyone.

     The right results shouldn't be the object of this entire process, but rather the product. The key to getting the right results is to focus more on what you can change here and now in doing the right thing in the right way for the right reasons, than focusing on the results themselves. 

     This right roadmap can be applied to any situation. Always try to know what the right thing is to begin with, pay close attention to doing it in the right way, have only intrinsic motivation for doing it, and forget about the results as they will take care of themselves. The successful results are what you get from doing the right thing in the right way for the right reasons.

William Cottringer, Ph.D. is President of Puget Sound Security, Business Success Coach, Sport Psychologist, Writer and Photographer from Issaquah, WA. He is author of Passwords to the Prosperity Zone, Getting More by Doing Less, You Can have Your Cheese & Eat It Too, and The Bow-Wow Secrets: How Dogs Live Simple Lives and People Don't. Bill can be reached for comments or questions at (425) 454-5011 or bcottringer@pssp.net