Date: 12/2/2016

Title: LEADING AND LEARNING – Part 3

By Jennifer Erickson

That’s quite a pedigree! Add to that, the man has also won awards for his writing, was a U.S. Cultural Ambassador, and is a highly in-demand speaker. This book laments how fractured our society has become. Its plea is to search for equality….in every aspect of our world. He links our success (or failure) regarding this to (hold your breath)…..history.

He extols the virtue of learning from our history. Notice that word…. “learning”. In his book he states, “history illuminates the safest path in front of us by revealing the pitfalls of the past.” (page 2). The book is filled with examples of our doing exactly the opposite of learning and the problems created by our shortcuts and lack of hindsight. Why do we do such silly things? Why do we repeat the very behaviors that got us into trouble 50 years ago, or 35, or 15, or 5? Abdul-Jabbar posits that we would rather ignore our past mistakes than learn from them.

So, let’s go back to our understanding of paradigms. If we are in the fear paradigm, we can’t admit we’ve made a mistake. We already think we are worthless. And, we certainly don’t want anyone to find that out. So, there is no way we are going to admit we made a mistake. We will continue doing the same behavior, because to change means there is something wrong with the way we were doing it before.

To learn more about how to practice this understanding, contact Results Group, LLC at www.ResultsGroupLLC.com or 515-330-2866.