Weng: The Attitude of Growth After Intellectual Failure

By Jamaica Mann MBA

WENG summarizes the author's experiences of twenty years in management, training, leading, and his diligent pursuit of education. With his arrival at the end of an 'intellectual rope', he recognized that we are an untapped powerhouse of potentials. In WENG, he illustrates that:

Sophistication is not a requirement to be excellent, Education does not equal success, Experience is never the limit of the future, Comfortable means we can perform better, Growth is always working beyond the observable limits, and Moving to the next level is the only option to being rendered irrelevant.

WENG uses illustrations, and personal anecdotes to validate the values of personal introspection and discipline in our lives. In WENG, we learn that the limits of our intellectual capacity and academic learning are merely our beginning for achieving personal and collective wellbeing, realizing the purpose of our life, and gaining an abundant harvest. WENG is an account of coming to wits end and now moving on to achieve greatness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 12, 2007
• ISBN: 9780595907960

Jamaica Mann MBA

The author has over twenty years of management and leadership experience. He has always worked with Human Resources Development and in Operations Management. He has earned a BS in Workforce Education and Development and a MBA with emphasis in management. He was born in Jamaica, West Indies, and lives in Florence, SC.

Book preview

Contents

1

Context for Reflection

2

Sharpening Your Focus

3

The American Dream

4

The Principle of Harvest

5

The Inevitability of Change

6

Living on Levels

7

Is Abundance Meant for You?

8

The Awakening at Wits End

9

Securing Your Earthy Compensation

10

Restoration

11

Reinforcing Discipline

12

Dismantling Security Barriers

13

Brain

14

The Power of Nature

15

Reflections

Dedicated to Mechel, Marcia, Fhallon, and Rhyli.

1  

Context for Reflection  

♦

The General Awakening

At any given instant, I am sowing, reaping, or doing both. Time is opportunity and opportunity in any occasion is singular. An opportunity always presents at least two sides, which are success and failure. As my mother use to say, One man’s meat is another man’s poison. Therefore, my success may be your failure and vice-versa. To achieve success I must accept the fact that I am the governing factor in my life. If I waste enough time and effort expecting someone else to deliver success into my life, it is very likely that I will fail. This same principle applies in your life since like me you are the determinant in your life. Your success is especially dependent upon your commitment, efforts, and expectations of any moment. Success also requires the willingness to act on opportunities and some amount of preparations to seize these opportunities as they present themselves. I recall the story of two of my friends Jeff and Mark. Jeff lived in Idaho where he struggled to etch out a living with a challenging business and a difficult marriage. He relocated to Atlanta with his belongings packed in his SUV and today he has a very successful business. Because of his success, he convinced Mark; who lived with his family in Fayetteville, NC and who operated a thriving auto repair business to relocate to Atlanta. Mark looked at Jeff’s material success; stable business, beautiful house, and fancy cars, and off he went to Atlanta. Less than two years later while Jeff continues to prosper; Mark is struggling to make ends meet and possibly recover from bankruptcy, if he chooses that route. You see, in Jamaica there is a common saying, Puss and dogs don’t have same luck. This means that because something works for me does not mean it is the answer to your need. I must be careful to understand whether I am a cat or a dog before I jump into a dogfight. Therefore, personal reflection is critical since it puts me in touch with who I am and my purpose in life.

I have firsthand experience with the costs of college education and the challenges of finding and keeping meaningful employment that is directly related to my college education. Consequently, I often muse at the idea of two people. The first is a man who has spent the last seven years earning a college education, owes sixty plus thousand dollars in student loans, and is convinced he has just wasted a significant portion of his life pursuing meaningless study. Meaningless in this context represents the idea that he is having great challenges translating his learning into earning. He is consequently unemployed and his survival is a challenge. The other is a woman who has nothing of significance happening in her life. She spends her last quarter to purchase the very same first year college textbook that this man dumped at the local thrift shop, she reads the book, and discovers fascinating principles that motivates her. She adapts the principles from the book and goes on to become significantly wealthy. This story is about two different people and one opportunity, similar to the unfolding story of my friends Jeff and Mark and their opportunity—Atlanta. Think for a moment. If you spend lots of time at the tube and need a change in your life, turn off the television and check yourself. You have an opportunity this very moment to become one of the people in the stories you have just read. My intention is to make you realize that your life, like mine, is an opportunity.

Recognizing Your Jp

I find nothing amusing, fascinating, exciting, or amazing about serious contemplation and the places in life where our decisions will take us. Contemplation is a necessary and basic tool for healthy and prosperous living. Encarta Dictionary defines contemplation as -long and attentive consideration or observation of something. In other words, deep meditative reflection will take you to a place inside yourself that we will call your "jump-point."

This jump-point, (Jp), is the place inside of us where we pay enough attention to the detail working of things in such a way that we recognize and understand the principles that makes these things work effectively. It is at the Jp that we are able to make our absolutely best informed decision about a thing or issue. The Jp is the very source of our being where discontent rages; emotions are processed, we evaluate choices, and make decisions. To some people Jp comes across as the little voice from within that provides the answer when everything else fails. Some of us label this voice intuition while others refer to it as gut feeling and instinct. Intellectuals would have us believe that the answers to our challenges are produced exclusively from the intellect and that they ought to fit, some carefully constructed academic guidelines, which are printed in a textbook. They teach that intellectual responses are ideal because they fit a blueprint. Often in the natural, we try to fit everything within the context of things that we have experienced and when we learn that this does not always work as we anticipate or expect, I say we arrive at our WENG.

WENG is the philosophy or idea that only when we come to our Wits End we Now have the courage to achieve Greatness. WENG is the notion of being pushed from within, and being pushed much further beyond our rational limits in such a fashion that we constantly overcome, excel, and succeed in spite of intellectually observable conditions. Intellect is mental power and just as the illumination at the light bulb must have a source, so does the power of the mind. The intellect must feed from a source of power, this is one of the fundamental laws of nature—nothing just happens. Ideas and answers about life’s riddles do not simply emerge from the mind. Although we might be surprised at an event and label it an accident, the only randomness in the event exists in our expectations. Example: Whenever two or more vehicles attempt to occupy the same place in the road at the same time, we have what we call an accident. Classifying an event as an accident is intellectual rationalization. Rationalizing is the intellect’s way of pacifying itself about inaccurate assumptions or its failure to recognize and adhere to basic principles. The basic laws of nature tell us that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time without merging—this is a principle. A vehicular accident occurs because either one or more decision-makers involved in the accident made inaccurate assumptions and failed to adhere to this basic principle. To understand myself I must go to my source. The constant assembling and reassembling of my psyche occurs at my source in the core of my being. Here within my spirit the needed resources are fed into the blueprint that helps me to accomplish my life’s purposes. Additionally, I must understand where and how my purpose fit within the grand scheme and principles of life.

Understanding life and being prosperous does not require head knowledge instead; it requires fundamental acceptance and application of life’s principles plus courage. Courage is required because any decisions I make may be contradictory to intellectual know how. Example: As a poet, I have often heard intellectuals analyze poems and invariably try to fit them into neat categories based on alliterations and onomatopoeia similarly; they try to fit experiences into academic disciplines. Personally, I have never written a poem with consideration to the sciences of formal language. I write my poems to express my interpretations and responses to circumstances and situation. The insistent categorizing and sub-categorizing of life’s experiences reduces art and life to contrived science. Nothing we do fit neatly into some specific and isolated box because life is multi-dimensional. More important than any categories or labels are the underlying principles that make everything work. WENG is the attitude of courage and tenacity