Sense of Purpose
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.
