Naja Faysal | Blog

Have you ever noticed how important is it to have a preference?
Well I did, and I am convinced that you too need to start cherishing, improving or expanding your set of preferences. I am sure you use or hear a lot of phrases like “whatever”, “I don’t know”, “I don’t care”… Let me tell you that you SHOULD care and you SHOULD know…

Jack Canfield talks about preference in his book “the success principles” as an integral part of leaping from where you are to where you want to be. You need to create a very specific and clear goals so your brain can work day and night to achieve it. If your goals are very generic, the brain doesn’t feel the urgency to work hard on, but if they were very specific with full details including your own taste and Preferences, the brain will take this as a command and you will be amazed how soon you will achieve what you have seen and visualized.

For instance, an incident happened yesterday made me realize that preferences are getting ignored and diluted by so many people including myself. We are living in a generic world where everyone is trying to “fit in” or blend within the social norms. For some reason people are adopting the same trends, consuming the same products and thinking & behaving in a very similar way. Yesterday, I realized that I was, as well, trapped by this. I don’t want to get into details of the incident, but I would like to share with you how I felt. I discovered that for so long, I was not listening to myself. I was doing and thinking just to adapt to the situation. Now, as I did finally cherished what I really wanted and took bold action in that sense, I felt a great relief and deep piece of mind, and I encourage you to do the same. If you feel you are not satisfied with your job, leave it now. If you feel that your partner is not the person you dream of, tell her/him so. Get of your butt and take action towards what is really the right thing to do.

You know, life is too short to spend time, efforts and money on something or someone that is not worthy or maybe it is worthy but not exactly where you want to spend your time at, but most of us do things without listening to our preferences – what do I really want? Which of the options fit me best? If I would care, what would be my choice? what is my opinion of this issue or that one? Is my decision affected by the social mirror or it is really what my heart and mind are telling?

The feeling that you feel and the confidence you get when u really listen to what your heart and mind is telling you and act accordingly, gives you the courage to conquer all other challenges with confidence and braveness. It makes trust yourself. You don’t have to start with big things, think of those little things that you have indifference for and try to have an opinion about them – a preference – what would I choose? Having a preference is a skill that needs training and practice, as we mentioned, start with the little things like which color I would choose for the coffee-mug all the way up to who is the person i”d like to marry with. Put unique attributes and criteria that are originally yours. Things that you are deeply convinced can make you happy.

When you have a preference you will be more focused and your objectives seem clear. Remember vague objectives produce vague results, maybe this is just a small change but it is very powerful, it is a paradigm shift, use it and you shall achieve all your dreams.

A trend today is that people and companies are loosing one of the most important values of interpersonal relationships: TRUST. Trust is strongly related to principles and principle-centered individuals, principles are natural laws that passed the test of time. As a result, people lost faith in each other and companies are holding trust from their people replacing it with sophisticated processes and feeding it with internal competition. They think that people have abused their freedom and need to be controlled and managed. They hang on the carrot in front of them to motivate them and the stick from behind them to punish them if they do wrong. However, these are quick fixes and first-layer solutions. What they actually lack is principles. Principles govern personal and interpersonal relationships. Principles have the power to inspire trust, align systems, unify purpose and unleash people’s talents towards achieving the organizations’ highest priorities.

A vital aspect that determines the value of our human race is Education. What I mean by education is not the degree or the certificate hung on the walls. I mean true education. In his book “Principle Centered Leadership”, Stephen Covey gives an example that you can probably succeed an exam using some cheating tricks or by perhaps befriending the teacher, but would you be able to harvest good crops at the farm if you were using tricks and short fixes during the growing seasons? Worthwhile education is also principle-centered; it is guided by the Natural Laws, the laws of the farm. Once education is there, knowledge flourishes. Once knowledge is there, people become more open, more curious, more effective and more peaceful.

Technology on the other hand is a result of education yet today technology cannot be ignored and its role is, more than ever, of high impact on people’s life. Technology made the world goes FLAT as Thomas Freidman described it in his book “The world is flat”. It made business go faster and empowered individuals to compete at the global level. Countries, societies and corporations will not be able to control those empowered people who have the choice whether to volunteer their work or not. Globalization expands the battle field and gave all people the same rights, opportunities and tools to perform their highest potential.

Thus, if education is taken in the manner I described earlier, and if technology is utilized to give equal opportunities for people not in feeding terrorism or developing nuclear weapons, I believe education and technology have the power to dramatically elevate people and societies around the world. And because of this conviction and observation of people’s behavior and the cultural fuel at my circle of influence, I decided to dedicate myself to genuine contribution, whereas my purpose has become to lead change in societies, empower people to liberate themselves and help them realize their highest potentials by means of education and technology.