True Perspective: Why leading with the truth always wins

By Joe Hart

This book will help you to deliver on intentions, through honest action.

We all hold conflicting views of self, multiple perspectives of who we are and how we should act. Juggling these selves is a constant tightrope walk as we negotiate family, work, and other commitments, a balancing act that leaves us unhappy, unsatisfied, a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hambone Publishing
• Release date: May 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781922357311

Joe Hart

Joe Hart is the CEO of Dale Carnegie & Associates. Since 1912, Dale Carnegie Training has helped millions of people and businesses around the world improve their performance. In over eighty countries and in more than thirty languages, the company applies Dale Carnegie’s founding principles to inspire individual and organizational transformation, excellence, and success by tapping into each person’s potential. Take command of your business performance, career, and your future by visiting DaleCarnegie.com to learn more.

Book preview

prologue.jpg

Iwake up with a shudder, not a bad one, but a wave of energy that ripples through my body like a slow surge of electricity. It’s 4:15, way too early to get out of bed, but there is an uneasy feeling that I can’t shake. I peel myself off the mattress and hesitantly welcome the day, somehow knowing what it will bring.

It’s been half a decade of anticipation, fear, denial, discussion, avoidance, frustration, tension and now… here we are at Destination Unknown. The point at which we all inevitably arrive: death. Dad has been slowly dying for five years, suffering internally while smiling to the external world. He’s lived a double life, born out of a desire to ‘stay positive’, while those around him have watched him slowly fade. His death has been hard to watch and difficult to accept. It has presented a profound lesson on what it means to consciously create the experience others have of you. Dad held on to the perspective that his cancer was something he could beat right up until his last couple of weeks of life. Those around him could see that he was dying, but no matter how they tried to share their perspective with him, he seemed to reject it. About a month before he passed, he asked me for my perspective, and I assumed he wanted the truth. I told him that I thought he was ‘at the pointy end’, meaning that he didn’t have long but also wasn’t sure how long he could hang on. He gave me a confirmatory nod as if to say, ‘I knew you didn’t believe in me’ then said, Thanks for being honest. In hindsight, I know Dad was asking for some hope, a reason to keep fighting when he felt he didn’t have any fight left in him. But, as harsh as it sounds, I wanted him to face the truth. I wanted him to take my honesty and use it to fuel the courage he needed to accept his fate. At that moment, I wanted him to experience the power of seeing his predicament from a perspective other than his own. I wanted him to have True Perspective.

There is nothing more certain about life than the moment we no longer wield it; a moment so certain, it can conjure up great uncertainty. Death is known to us all as much as it is unknown. Only in your final breath will you fully appreciate what it means to die and what it means to have lived. Death signifies change as much as change signifies death, and they are the only certainties we have, but they will always remain unknown beyond their labels. To embrace the certainty and uncertainty of both death and change simultaneously requires a broadened perspective. True Perspective incorporates the paradox that the end signifies the beginning as much as letting go of something old allows you to grasp hold of something new. True Perspective is about acceptance of ‘what is’ that precedes adaptation toward full expression of authenticity.

Authenticity, in my opinion, is the highest form of intelligence. We are drawn to those who can achieve full expression in their chosen field, from business leaders to athletes, musicians, sculptors, entrepreneurs, inventors, painters, poets, writers, and actors. Their uniqueness is undeniable, and their genius fills us with curiosity and awe. They enable us to connect with their expression by allowing us to experience all of who they are, even the parts we may not like.

Oftentimes, we choose to live vicariously through our authentic idols, seeing them as the unattainable ‘other’. Similarly, many of us spend our lives imitating them, creating versions of ourselves that live up to the expectations others have of us and those we have of ourselves. However, in our last moments, the truth about what is most important to us will be revealed. This True Perspective is an unwavering clarity, a dazzling simplicity, an undeniable knowing and the reconciliation we have been seeking all our lives. In our final moments, we can no longer lie to ourselves, and avoid the truth of it all, we must simply bask in our own authenticity.

The one thing we all share is the inevitability of facing death. Be it our own death, that of a family member or friend, or even somebody we don’t personally know but know of. Death and the change that it brings is an inevitable part of all our lives. It is the great equaliser for us all, a bridge-builder for relationships, an attention grabber and the bringer of True Perspective.

In what was to be my last conversation with Dad, he shared that he’d often wondered what his last breath would be like. He didn’t elaborate any more than that, but I understood his curiosity. His exploration then made me wonder what happens in that moment between your second-to-last breath and your last. You see, I think that second-to-last breath is when time stands still, and we start flicking through the highlight reel of our lives. We know we only have that one last breath to go before we die, so it’s the most focused we will ever be.

It’s in this second-to-last breath that we get to reflect on our lives and on the love that we have for others, and truly experience what is most important to us in that moment. We put everything in perspective, only that which matters takes our energy, not even time has meaning, we simply experience the truth of the moment. This is True Perspective. That second-to-last breath is our opportunity to relax; to let go one last time and breathe our final sigh of relief signifying a life lived, expired, and spent. At least, that’s what I’d hope for: a final letting go, resignation, followed by peace.

I’m aware that this may sound to some like a very morbid view, which is heavily biased toward the end of one’s life. If this is you, then I challenge you to consider how you can fully embrace life – and all it has to offer – if you’ve never considered the prospect of death or change. If we imprison ourselves by limiting our perspective to what we know, we compromise, stagnate, and stifle our growth. True Perspective is about seeking to unearth the unknown, that which you don’t know you don’t know. This requires gathering perspectives beyond your awareness that can only come from external sources.

intro.jpg

Brett Whiteley, a master of translating life into art, is one of my favourite artists of all time. I was a keen art student in high school and spent many hours studying Whiteley’s work. While doing so, I stumbled across the following statement: CHANGE = DEATH . At first glance, it appears to be somewhat morbid and potentially a by-product of his well-documented drug abuse, which sadly ended up killing him. Upon deeper reflection, the simplicity of this insight explains why change continues to be the greatest instigator of fear and resistance in our lives.

With all change, comes death at one point or another. The challenge for us all is that when someone or something dies (i.e., ceases to exist) be it a person, job, relationship or idea, we struggle to see beyond the starkness of its end. We aren’t taught to embrace the unknown change that necessarily stems from the death of someone or something, despite it being a fundamental part of life. We aren’t taught how to consider multiple perspectives before formulating what we deem to be true.

In organisations, we are constantly facing change. Through Brett Whiteley’s artistic lens, this change represents death, and with that comes the need to accept and let go. I’d like to build upon Whiteley’s perspective by adding life into the equation: CHANGE = DEATH = LIFE. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s work describes the five stages of grief (since adapted by John Fisher and relabelled as the organisational change curve).

While originally inspired by work with terminally-ill patients, the applicability of this model to help people accept and work through changes within an organisational context has proven to be very powerful. The core purpose of this work is to help people understand what they are feeling in response to a significant change in their lives, to accept it and to make it okay. By understanding these feelings, we make sense of our experience. This gives us perspective. When we do this consciously, it enables us to take our experience and generalise it across various contexts. It enables us to empathise with others more powerfully, express ourselves more honestly and consciously create the experience we want others to have of