The Three Pillars of Destruction

What do you need to do to become a success? For each person, the road to success is different. I cannot give you those answers. All I can do is assist you on a path of self-discovery. Along the way, you will find the answers within yourself and they will lead you to the success that you envision for yourself. How do we avoid doing the things that make others fail? There are distinctions for failure and distinctions for success.

When it comes to failure, I define the Three Pillars of Destruction as: needy, seedy and greedy. Throughout my life I have recognized and dealt with the three pillars on countless occasions. Allow me to go into a little more depth about what they are and how to avoid them. When one or more of the Three Pillars materializes in our lives through the actions of others, it can lead us down the path of devastation. When one is present in our own actions, we set ourselves up for failure. When we operate outside of these three pillars, we are in a Position of Neutrality.

In order to recognize when one of the pillars is present, we look closely at the actions and motivations of ourselves and others. Always use intuition, when something doesn’t feel quite right, it deserves a closer look. What are the motivations behind an action? This is obviously something easier to determine when looking at one’s own actions, but through an exercise of discovery by asking questions, we can often reveal the motivations of others.

Needy

Why is being “needy” bad for us? People that come from the needy pillar could have a blind spot that lets ‘the tail wag the dog.’ These blind spots could enable a person to accept unacceptable behaviors. Needy people often feel like they are in danger of losing something. The needy person does not feel like they are enough. We've all had these moments in our lives and the good thing about them is to be aware and recognize it for the fallacy they are, take a deep breath and reevaluate the reality of the situation. Is this going to lift me up or take me down.

She doesn’t have an alternate way to survive, put food on the table, and take care of her children. She takes the abuse from her job and lives a caustic life because she is coming from the needy pillar of destruction. It is truly destroying her life.

I don’t want to focus on the negative aspects of stories like this, but what I do want to focus on is how she pulls herself out. She has the power to grow herself to a new place by identifying the neediness and chip away at it a little bit at a time. When she decides that she is strong enough to pull herself away and operate from a position of neutrality, she can start down her own path of success and take care of business.

Seedy

People that operate from the seedy pillar are being deceptive, sordid and disreputable. Their dishonorable actions and motives arouse distaste and contempt among those whom they interact with. Seedy lasts a while, but it usually doesn’t last too long. People are always found out.

When a person operates from the seedy pillar, their deceptions degrade the trust they build with others. Distrust leads to lost opportunities, relationships, and successes. When the seedy pillar reveals itself as a lack of trust, honor, and integrity with others will lead to destruction.

Seedy deceptions are usually intended to keep other people down. Instead of elevating a relationship, it leads to one's own self destruction.

The seedy tradesman may be artful at his craft, but he has the desire to go out and cheat everyone in his actions and his conversations to get what he wants in life. He utilizes trickery to make people think they are getting more value for their dollar than they actually are. He would start off saying something is going to cost a certain amount, but then start adding a little bit here and a little bit there, and before you know it the project costs triple the amount of the original bid. The seedy client, on the other hand agrees to a fixed amount on a project and then keeps adding a little of this, and a little of that all to fall under the same fixed amount, forcing the tradesman to work for less than the value of his time. If both client and tradesman take a position of neutrality, there would be a fair business transaction and both would feel empowered that the project was successful and would look forward to working with each other again.

Recognizing the seediness in others again requires removing our blinders, and revealing the motivations of others through the power of asking questions. Trust, but verify. Your power lies in your questions. The answers to these questions will guide you down your own path of success.

Greedy

When operating from the greedy pillar, one thinks only for oneself. The desire to control others is the driving force. Avaricious behavior with a complete disregard for others is a key characteristic of this pillar. With greed only one person wins which is actually a loss. As you will learn in another article of mine titled "Win Win Win," in order to truly win you need 3 wins.

I had an experience with the CEO of a company who was operating his business from all three pillars, Needy, Seedy and Greedy pillars of destruction and his pillars had gotten him into trouble. He had seen the fabulous results of my successful win, win, win formula. Instead of working with me, he went out and tried to get more people like me, because he felt that I threatened his company. He wanted more people like me to balance it out. He feared the fact that if I pulled away, his business would collapse, and that fear ruled over him. He didn’t think it through simply and clearly. Instead of elevating and empowering me with more opportunity and letting me create a better collaborative, integrated spot for myself, he chose to go the route of greed and fear so as not to lose his false sense of control.

Position of Neutrality

The opposite of needy, seedy, greedy is the Position of Neutrality, the main distinction for success. It is a state of mind where we are flexible and not attached to a specific result. With the willingness to let something go, we operate outside of the Three Pillars of Destruction and are more prone to successful, desirable results as we draw in things that bring us into the Zone of Success.

When we look back on our life experiences at times when things did not work out, can you discover how you could have been operating from one of Three Pillars of Destruction instead of from a Position of Neutrality? The more we want to achieve a specific result, the more we want to take a step back and force ourselves into a Position of Neutrality. Although it may seem counter-intuitive, this will actually assist you in achieving your desired results. From this position, we can think more clearly, and with crystal clear clarity comes success.

Neutrality means: “I have to win, you have to win, and they have to win.” There must be THREE wins in everything we do. If somebody is going to lose, the whole thing is going to crumble. In the product, the process and the people, find, discover and create the win, win, win. Most people use the cliché “win-win,” but I add a third win because three is the magic number that is intertwined in my entire life as well as in hundreds of thousands of years before me.The magic of success lies in the magic of numbers, which breaks down into three parts. You will notice the number three is a repeating theme throughout my blog. Once you decide to be conscious and aware of it, you can see the number three recurring everywhere around you. Every tiny atom in the universe is made out of threes – the proton, the neutron and the electron. Christianity is based on three: the Father, the Son, the Holy spirit. There are three Great Pyramids of Giza. Each side of a pyramid is a triangle - the strongest shape in architecture, which is made up of three sides. Keep looking, and everywhere you will see threes. Every time there is a defeat in life, allow yourself to accept the defeat. Then God, the Universe, or whatever higher power you believe in will open three more doors with possibilities. Before I learned to accept defeat, I would experience it as an arrow straight to my heart. If you interpret defeat as: “I am bad, wrong and not good enough,” thoughts and attitudes will pull you down. Instead, when there is a defeat or an upset, then just sit and wait, knowing that something bigger or better is coming.

Think about the ornamental bonsai tree. We keep trimming it back, but the more we trim, the healthier it gets. Trimming away the garbage actually helps the good parts to thrive and grow with more health and vigor than before. When we as humans remove the elements in our life that bring us down, it’s called change. Change can be scary for some, but this is how all the old, dead stuff gets trimmed away. The universe has a way of doing that for us, if we let it.

The key to dealing with change is to stay in a Position of Neutrality and evaluate and make distinctions:

What is mine and what is theirs?
What am I in control of and what I am not in control of?

An American theologian eloquently outlined these distinctions in his many sermons in the 1930s and 1940s:

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Reinhold Niebuhr

When it comes to business, staying in a position of neutrality is paramount to successfully solidifying a new relationship. You can achieve a rate of conversion business leads by always coming from a position of neutrality in your introductory emails. Bear in mind that dignity lives in the power of choice, when you choose your words of communication. The following statements are effectively positioned in neutral and empower your potential client or customer to have choices:

We would like to get to know you, see your vision, understand your concerns and educate you on options.
Would it be possible for us to have an introductory conversation to see if and how we could assist you with our specialized opportunities?
If okay with you, please email me available days/times you are open next week.
Our calendar is open on Tuesday, July 25 at this time. Outside of that, there are available various times for us based on your schedule.

These principles can also be applied not only to business but also to parenting. Offer choices to your children based on your life experiences. Let your child make decisions based on a set of choices that you have outlined. They will find it empowering and you will find it useful for guiding them.

Always check yourself at the door to make sure that needy, seedy and greedy aren’t present. Make sure that you are coming from a position of neutrality and a position of power. This will open up the door to empower other people to make their own choices. Dignity lives in the power of choice.

How do you overcome the fear of false evidence appearing real? When our mind plays the “what if” game to the point of causing ourselves to fear our future—a future that is unknown and unknowable based not on facts, but falsities—we bring fear on to ourselves. When our ego tells us, “You're not enough. You’re never going to have enough.” What do I have to do to replace my ego? EGO is Edging Out God. When we edge out the universe and edge out what is real, we are unable to get in the moment. Trust the future, just as the past has shown me things always work out no matter what. I do the best I know how to do in the moment and then all my futures will show their faces and nothing will be given to me that I can't handle. It never has been in the past.

How do you overcome fear itself? Most of us are familiar with the famous words from the inaugural address of Franklin D. Roosevelt, “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” There is much truth in that statement. When we experience fear, we are trying to live in the future. When we experience resentment, we are living in the past. The best way to overcome fear is to have faith by being in this moment.

What the heck is faith? Is it in my coffee? No, you get it by living in the moment and trusting in the cycles of life.

What the heck is living in the moment? Some have theorized that through the art of meditation we can live in the moment. There is an old Zen saying that tells us “You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day, unless you're too busy, then you would sit for an hour and meditate.” That is all well and good in theory, but in today’s fast-paced world most of us won’t have the time or dedication to commit that much time to meditation. As a first step, one guru taught me how to meditate in a couple of seconds and shift my mind and my thoughts to be in the moment. The practice is simple and takes only a few minutes:

Keep both feet flat on the ground and your spine straight
Rub your thumb over the tips of your fingers
Wiggle your toes
Take three slow, deep breaths until you notice your fingers and toes in action.

When you do this, all of the sudden you have created a space to think and you become aware of your surroundings. This awareness causes the fears and worries of tomorrow to fade into the background and you are able to get in the moment. Now that you are in the moment, spend another minute to notice your breath and the noises around you, the sounds of your environment. In the moment, there is nothing to fear because you are existing in the present. When I golf, first I get in my stance and then before I swing my club I listen for the birds. Once I hear the birds, my body is in the moment so I am able to swing and I hit it high, straight, and long.

How do we move on from your resentment of the past Live in the moment. We can't change our past. It is what it is. If we've done something wrong, we can make amends and live free and clear. If we feel guilt or shame from past actions remember in the now, in the present, we have no control over what happened in the past. We can learn from it. We can take that experience and use it to teach ourselves how to act in future circumstances, but we have no control over past events. Live in the moment and do the best you can do and all your tomorrows will be taken care of.

We, as humans have the ability to withstand so much. No matter what happens, it all depends on our attitudes. Think about the Holocaust survivors. One man told his story of how he lived in the moment to overcome his fear of tomorrow. Everybody was being murdered or dying of starvation around him he was able to create something different in his mind so he didn't live in the fear.

For the soldiers that we imprisoned in Vietnam. One veteran explained that he visualized and experienced a golf game in his mind. He didn't think about the fear of dying or starving. He created his own moment to move beyond the fear. He created a daily routine everyday in his mind. So attitude and fear go hand in hand.

We all have fears, fear keeps us alert and aware. But we have the power to chose to not live IN fear. We just do all we can for today and tomorrow will work itself out.

How do we move on from your resentment of the past. Live in the moment. We can't change our past. It is what it is. If we've done something wrong, we can make amends and live free and clear. If we feel guilt or shame from past actions remember in the now, in the present, we have no control over what happened in the past. We can learn from it. We can take that experience and use it to teach ourselves how to act in future circumstances, but we have no control over past events. Live in the moment and do the best you can do and all your tomorrows will be taken care of.