Virtues

Few family issues have led me to start thinking about what makes ‘good’ people good and ‘bad’ people bad.

I love the personal development movement and after having read so many books and heard so many audio books, I am convinced there is some truth to it. However, as its past my second anniversary of joining this movement, I also have developed some qualms.

First of all, there are far too many of these self called ‘personal development’ gurus. There is something to be said about the character of ‘Stephen Covey’ and ‘Dale Carnegie’, when you read there stuff, they look like people who follow/followed what they preach, its quite obvious, there are no shortcuts and the road ahead is a bit rough but definitely worth getting on to.

As I've mentioned ‘Jonathan Haidt’ so many times already on this blog, and considering ‘The Happiness Hypothesis’ is the first book I've read from him, I am absolutely bewitched.

Jonathan doesn't exactly join the personality development movement, this book is more a psychological overview than an advice and follow steps’ book and the deep insight is more geared in neutral than following any one course, yet its so wonderfully written and entertaining, I am already looking forward to reading it the second time to understand it better.

Coming back to the topic from the start, I read about Ben Franklin (a man in 1700s who set out to improve himself by focusing on virtues important to him) and have decided to set out my own charter and gauge my performance and improvement over time.

So here is the game, I will choose a number of virtues I think are most important and focus my adherence to them on daily basis, with the hope of sharing my results at the end of the week or mayhaps fortnightly, whichever is more convenient. Anyone wishing to join me is more than welcome. For reference, here are the 24 virtues as identified by Peterson & Seligman.

Wisdom
• Curiosity
• Love of learning
• Judgement
• Ingenuity
• Emotional intelligence
• Perspective


Courage
• Valour
• Perseverance
• Integrity


Humanity
• Kindness
• Loving


Justice
• Citizenship
• Fairness
• Leadership


Temperance
• Self-Control
• Prudence
• Humility


Wisdom
• Appreciation of beauty & excellence
• Gratitude
• Hope
• Spirituality
• Forgiveness
• Humour
• Zest

Success Literature

For a few months now, I have been eagerly sifting through ‘success’ literatures in search of that secret formula that all successful enterprises and more notably successful people use.

  One of the best & most inspiring sources was Stephen Covey’s classic ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People’. The problem I noted to myself about this book back then was that its too open and too deep, meaning to say, its not something that I can read today and hope to enact tomorrow and be on my way to achieving success. ‘7 Habits’ is the kind of book that reminds us about the fundamental principles of life. To establish those principles, one needs a lifetime. And so my search continued…

I turned to Guy Kawasaki's ‘Art of the Start’, which was almost totally devoid of any ‘principles’ and thus soon forgotten. Michael E. Gerber’s ‘Awakening the Entrepreneur Within’ for all its recommendations was founds to be mildly inspiring at times but mostly self-adulation of a non-arguably successful man. Not great or recommendable.

Few more books aside, I stumbled upon Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Outlier’ in a bookshop in Lahore and decided to hear his argument. And wow, what an argument the man presents.

In a nutshell, Malcolm presents that no one in this world makes it alone, success is a cumulative of hard work, opportunity outside on one’s controls and events & circumstances (which are again outside one’s control.

If anything, this book rejuvenated my faith in Allah. There is so much one can do and at the end of the day its Allah who has decided what each of us gets. Hard work will be my way of staking a claim for his mercy.

I really could not be happier with the book. Its a wonderfully written, richly explained and all round a wonderful read. I love this. I intend to re-read this book (along with 7 Habits & Don Tapscott’s absolutely revelatory Wikinomics).