Right Strategies – ElPropósito2 min de lectura

Three key questions

In my post on doing the right thing, I wrote about how a person or a team can tell whether they are making sound decisions, the kind that lead to the right results. Living by values and following principles that produce the right results, and ideally the best ones, is hard. I am coming back to the subject because it feels like we live in a time when doing good has become a trend, and doing our best has turned into something complicated, where "we can’t do it alone." By alone I mean our inner self. And what lives there? Our morals, our ethics and, above all, our reason.

I have often written about two principles my dear and admired professor Ramírez once taught me. Good decisions rest on two principles: reality and consistency. The principle of reality says we can know the truth of things; our reasoning can show us when we are wrong. The principle of consistency explains why anything that clashes with what we "believe" feels dissonant; in plain terms, we don’t like it. Broadly, these two principles explain how we make sound decisions, and that is what fascinates me most about them. They also explain how we manage to make the wrong ones.

What do we believe? Our belief system holds empowering beliefs and limiting ones. For me, an empowering belief is my faith and my fear of God, along with my devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Limiting beliefs feed themselves the same way empowering ones do, only in the opposite direction: "I’ve never been able to, so I never will." Every limiting belief is a negative strategy that produces the wrong results. So what produces the best ones? Doing the right thing.

What does it take to do the right thing? A first question to ask when making a decision: does this line up with my life purpose? A second: will this hurt someone, or will it help them? And a third: will it benefit many more people? Three questions that end up working as strategies for success, three instruments for navigating a moment and a world where doing the right thing has become either a rarity or a trend.

Warm regards and all the best,

Rodrigo Baccaro

Author: Rodrigo Baccaro

Linkedin