Running a Good Business, Book 3: Becoming Values-Focused
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About this ebook
Book 3 in a collection of stand-alone, hands-on guides to managing the ins and outs and ups and downs of starting and growing a small, micro or one-person business driven by personal values and offering the unique lifestyle of self-employment. This volume focuses on values: clarifying personal values and exploring a values-focused approach to business management. Includes 23 different exercises.
Table of Contents
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Becoming Values-Focused
Opening Up to Possibility
Overcoming Initial Challenges
- Cultivating Relaxation
- Setting the Intent
- Disidentifying from Obstacles to Awareness
Self Assessment
- Looking at Life Right Now
- Assessing Your Current Attitude
- Looking at Your Own Rules of Life
Overcoming Inner Obstacles
- Fear and Anxiety
- Looking Resistance in the Eye
- Overcoming Negative Self-Talk
- Overcoming Low Self Esteem
- Strengthening Your Feelings of Confidence
- Reprogramming the Human Biocomputer
Clarifying Personal Values
- Clarifying Your Vision of Life
- The Five Steps to Becoming More Values-Focused
1. Open Up To Limitless Visioning
2. Practice Active Imagination
- Three Questions: Active Imagination in Practice
3. Write Your Own Creative Eulogy
4. Create Your Personal Statement of Purpose
5. Determine Your Personal Goals
- The Twelve Steps To Accomplishing Personal Goals
Making Your Management Style True To Your Values
Food For Thought
- Twentieth Century Management
- Twenty-First Century, Values-Focused Management
- Leadership Skills Of Values-Focused Managers
- Tradeskills That Characterize Values-Focused Managers
- Working With Power
Resources
Exercises (23 in all)
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Creating a Container for the Work
Setting the Intent
Disidentifying from Obstacles of Awareness
Opening Up to Possibility
Creating a General Guide for Future Work
Assessing Your Current Attitude
Making a Deeper Assessment of Your Attitude
Looking a Life's Rules
Overcoming Negative Self-Talk
The Acknowledgements List
Building Confidence Through Physical and Emotional Action
Building Confidence Through Rational Action
Positive Affirmations
5 Questions to Clarify Your Personal Vision of Life
The Three Questions
Write Your Own Creative Eulogy
Write a Statement of Personal Purpose
What are the three most important goals in your life right now?
20th Versus 21st Century Management
Leadership Skills and Tradeskills
Kinds of Power
Basic Good Business Values
Right Livelihood: Do You Have It?
About the Author
Claude Whitmyer
Claude Whitmyer is the co-author of Running A One-Person Business, and editor of two anthologies, Mindfulness and Meaningful Work: Explorations in Right Livelihood and In The Company of Others: Making Community in the Modern World. As a business consultant with more than 30 years of experience, he has provided resources, training, and guidance to many hundreds of individuals seeking creative and meaningful work in both the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors. He has also worked with managers in such corporations as the American Hospital Association, Apple Computer, Hewlett-Packard, Fujitsu America, NASA, Pacific Bell, and Southland Corporation.
Read more from Claude Whitmyer
Running a Good Business: Self-Assessment for Tradeskill: Running a Good Business, #4.1 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
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Titles in the series (8)
Running a Good Business, Book 2: Becoming a Learning Organization.: Running a Good Business, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRunning a Good Business: Self-Assessment for Tradeskill: Running a Good Business, #4.1 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Running a Good Business, Book 4: Start-Up and Legal Matters: Running a Good Business, #4 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRunning a Good Business - Book 7: Designing Your Space: Running a Good Business, #7 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRunning a Good Business, Book 1: Why Good? Why Now? Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Running a Good Business, Book 5: Setting Up Shop Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRunning a Good Business, Book 3: Becoming Values-Focused Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRunning a Good Business, Book 6: Choosing Technology - High Tech or Low? Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
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Running a Good Business, Book 3 - Claude Whitmyer
~~~***~~~
Running A Good Business
Book 3: Becoming Values Focused
By Claude Whitmyer
Published by FutureU Press, a division of The University of the Future, LLC
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2011 by Claude Whitmyer. All rights reserved.
License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
This ebook is not meant to be a substitute for legal or professional advice. It is the reader's responsibility to verify that the facts and general advice in this ebook apply.
~~~***~~~
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Becoming Values-Focused
Chapter 2: Overcoming Initial Challenges
Chapter 3: Self Assessment
Chapter 4: Overcoming Inner Obstacles
Chapter 5: Clarifying Personal Values
Chapter 6: Making Your Management Style True to Your Values
Resources
About the Author
~~~***~~~
Authors Note: The ebook format (electronic text files) doesn't strongly support the use of forms and checklists for interactive exercises within how-to books like this one. To overcome that obstacle, we include enough descriptive material about each exercise so that you can make a quick judgment about whether or not to spend your time on it. You can then take out paper or open a digital file and complete the exercise. However, we also offer nicely formatted PDF versions of each exercise that you can print out and fill in at your leisure. Just visit http://meaningfulwork.com/running-a-good-business/ to download your free copies of the files.
Several of the exercises that follow ask you to find someone to work with. Team learning deepens most learning experiences, so taking this recommendation seriously is a good idea. Remember that you can always visit the discussion forums to find others you might work with. [http://meaningfulworkcom.ning.com/] You can also engage me as your coach and guide. Give me a call or send an email. I'd be glad to help.
I make some interesting assertions in this volume. Some are easy to prove. Some are more challenging. A few must be taken on faith. I didn't make them up, but learned them from someone else. When I first encountered some of them, I thought they sounded rather woo woo. But once I started doing the exercises associated with these assertions, all I can say is that they work. I urge you, therefore, to try them rather than dismiss them out of hand. As the someone once said, No harm in trying.
~~~***~~~
The Tao never strives, yet nothing is left undone.
If leaders were able to adhere to it,
the Ten Thousand Things would develop of their own accord.
If after they have developed,
they experience desires to strive,
they bury those desires under the nameless Uncarved Block.
The nameless Uncarved Block can protect against desire.
When desires are reduced
there will be stillness,
and then all under Heaven will be at rest.
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Ch. 37
~*~
At times when you are very quiet and when desire and emotion have become stilled, you can observe the quiet shaping of yourself from within -- can see the form you are intended to take, the work you should do -- your function in the environment and the scheme of things. It is very important to see this. This is not forecasting as the astrologers and soothsayers do it; it is a deep and intelligent observation of your own nature and propensities. When you have seen yourself clearly, then it stops all the speculation and striving, all the doubt and uncertainty. It puts an end to ambition. In the rarified atmosphere of truth, your words, your thoughts, your acts will bring manifest form to that quiet vision; and it matters not what slothful, ugly and insane influences are abroad in the world.
So much of man's striving is simply to see himself clearly and to interpret the promptings of his own destiny. That destiny may be read in your likes and dislikes, your desires and aptitudes, your strengths and weaknesses. Every life presents a graph in which the destiny may be read. What you might be may be delicately sorted out from the mess of complacency and self-deceit. It may be warmed and succored by the breath of intuition and made impervious to the evil winds that would coax it into bland and stupid oblivion.
Virginia Burden Tower
~~~***~~~
Chapter 1: Becoming Values-Focused
The truth about becoming values-focused
is -- everybody already is. You just may not be sure what those values are. What we're really talking then is becoming more aware of our mental models -- the assumptions underlying our thoughts and behavior.
Most of us pick up our values from our parents, teachers and those with whom we grew up and socialized during the critical developmental period of childhood. We're all aware, for example, of the social challenges of high school in America. Those challenges are so pervasive that they have spawned a spate of TV shows and movies. Think Grease, Dirty Dancing, High School Musical, Glee, 90210, Orange County, Friday Night Lights and so on.
The goings on in high school are driven mostly by biology (think raging hormones). In addition, as we enter and go through high school our parents start expecting us to behave like an adult.
This creates tons of pressure to figure out what that means. For many high schoolers it means acting like our parents. Even in rebellion, we end up mirroring our parents personalities. We just try hard to do the opposite, or, at least go far enough to upset them.
By the time we decided to start our own commercial enterprise, we have soaked up everything our family, community and the media have told us about business, leading to a collection of very mixed messages. For example,
- Small town businesses (Main Street) have the desire and the freedom to be good to folks in their community, but struggle for financial success.
- Big corporations (Wall Street) corrupt everyone who enters and are only interested in profit and power.
Business isn't the only place where this happens. Take a gander at the following short list of some common