This Issue: Strive for Wholeness

Life's an adventure - don't sell yourself short.

--Donald J. Trump

Ever hear the saying “Get the big picture?” It’s a sign that people are not well-rounded when they leave out or ignore big pieces in a picture and pretend nothing is missing. It’s like ordering a pizza and getting a pie with a few slices already removed--and still thinking it’s a whole pie. Wouldn’t you wonder where those pieces went?

I’ve encountered people who don’t wonder about anything. Sometimes I wonder if they are in shock or something. Maybe they’re just afraid to strive for the big picture or the whole pie, or maybe they don’t think they’re worth the whole pie. Whatever it is, not being well-rounded makes you sell yourself short. That’s bad business on every level, even the metaphysical level.

If striving for wholeness means diminishing your competition, then your competition wasn’t much to begin with. A lot of life is about survival of the fittest and adaptation, as Darwin pointed out. It’s not all there is, but it’s an indication of how the world has evolved in historical terms. We’ve seen many empires come and go: the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and so forth. There have always been surges of power. Sometimes they last for centuries. Even so, some of us alive today have never heard of them. In other words, things change. We have to keep up with the changes and move forward, or we will be holding some moldy pieces of the pie.

As the Trump Organization has moved forward, I have very much seen it as a living organism that needs to be fed and replenished. It needs to be well-rounded, which requires many sections fitting together and working together tightly. It is a daily requirement on my part to make sure all the ingredients are there and working together to make the best product possible. I can’t have any missing pieces. I can’t have any ingredients that aren’t the best. Those are my standards, and it’s my responsibility to make sure they are met.

The first step to becoming a well-rounded person is to see yourself as an organization. Pay attention to every facet of your life. What’s strong? What’s weak? What’s missing? What can you do to fill in the big picture? Whatever you do, don’t stagnate. Don’t become complacent. Don’t pretend that 50 percent is enough, whether you’re giving or receiving. Things move too quickly today to fall into that trap.

When I realized how fast the world moves, I decided to double up on my work hours. That wasn’t a big sacrifice because I love what I’m doing, and I’ve always been a hard worker. I’m happier and more productive now than I ever was. But I kept the pace in order to keep up with my environment, which is a fast one. New York is known for being fast. You can adapt or lose out. I chose to adapt. Make your choices accordingly. People who want to compete with me will have to keep up with me.

I had a dynamic, very well qualified, very well educated young man come to work for me. I remember thinking the guy was going to be great. Was I ever wrong. He took so long to explain anything that every time I saw him, I began to dread any kind of interaction with him. He was just too slow. He was thorough and painstaking, but he couldn’t keep up with the required pace. Since he wasn’t a well-rounded person, he couldn’t adapt to his environment, and, despite his qualifications, he was unable to fit into the big picture. It was a happy day for me when he departed. Don’t let that happen to you. Learn to adapt. Learn to keep learning.

Very few of us are completed projects. It’s an ongoing process. Even being a prodigy, Mozart worked at what he did. We have to assemble the bits and pieces constantly in order to achieve the whole. If you think about it, we don’t create, we assemble. But we have to assemble creatively and passionately to get anywhere near the whole. It’s another way of covering your bases for the most effective game. Strive to be well-rounded and you will see the big picture.

"It's not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties."

--Abigail Adams (in a letter to her son, future president John Quincy Adams, when he was 12)

When Abigail Adams wrote those words to her son, she was telling him that he would never become great if he chose a life of ease. At the time, the American Revolution was raging. If he was to become a fully evolved, well-rounded person, he couldn’t sit on the sidelines.

There is a lot of wisdom in that thinking because when a crisis hits, you learn who you really are. Do you have the mental toughness to survive? Is your experience well-rounded enough to make the right decisions and lead people through, or will you simply try to save your own skin?

The truth of this idea was proven recently in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Along the Gulf Coast, we saw ordinary people rise to levels of greatness by helping others. Yet we also saw looters, snipers, and thugs who behaved like subhumans in response to the same crisis.

The annals of history are full of stories of people who discovered unexpected strengths in times of crisis. Winston Churchill was a respected statesman who became an immortal leader by shepherding Britain through the darkest days of World War II. (Learn more about his leadership at http://www.winstonchurchill.org.) Adversity also refined the leadership of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and countless other leaders.

You might be thinking, “That’s all well and fine, but I don’t face disaster every day. What am I supposed to do, go looking for trouble?”

That’s a fair question. The answer to it just might be a surprising yes. To become a well-rounded person, you need to expose that inner, higher person who can handle the limelight in tough times. And there are ways to do it, even when life seems to be running smoothly.

Push the envelope. While I was watching that great tennis match between Andre Agassi and James Blake in the recent U.S. Open, I heard a television commentator say that early in his career, Agassi intentionally lost a few sets in a match so it would run long. He wanted to be sure he had the toughness to play longer matches. Up until then, he was winning matches quickly because of his raw talent. Agassi was getting himself into trouble so he could gain a more well-rounded experience. Of course, it is foolhardy to take risks like that when a loss would be crippling. But at other times, why not? Why not apply for a job you don’t think you can get and see what happens? Why not try to buy the investment property you really want instead of shooting lower? Remember the words, “Always, always do what you are afraid to do.” That is the life-changing advice that the American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson got from his aunt Mary Moody Emerson.

Recognize the extraordinary aspects of everyday life. Speaking of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882; http://www.emersoncentral.com), he wrote that the stars that come out every night are not ordinary, they are miracles that most of us ignore. The sun that comes up every day is miraculous. Each new person you meet is a universe of new ideas. The birth of every baby is an inexplicable wonder. When you try to remember that life is miraculous, you encounter that “other” person within you--the one who lives life on a higher plane and who is ready for anything.

Treat routine challenges with exceptional energy and integrity. A few years ago, I saw a red car plow into the back of a white car at a stop sign. The driver of the white car, which had been badly damaged, got out and stood waiting at the curb. The driver of the red car, who had done the damage, slumped into her seat and made phone calls for a good three minutes before she got out and started surveying the damage to her car. Even then, she did not have the decency to ask the other woman, “Are you alright?” Life had offered her an opportunity to cultivate her other, higher self by becoming a well-rounded person, but instead she took the low road.

Life is like that. We can be big players, or small. Ultimately, we don’t need to wait for a hurricane or other crisis to reach for wholeness. We can have well-rounded experiences, even on an ordinary day.

The contemporary world presents us with an oceanic array of choices, stimuli, responsibilities, and distractions that often keep us from achieving personal harmony. Many people either fail to realize or are not well-rounded enough to understand the fact that their lives are really a form of controlled chaos. Others are all too aware of this situation and find themselves overwhelmed by the excess, burdened by their inability to incorporate and/or filter out unnecessary or harmful mental input.

Some people, though, have taken on the modern world in all its excess and have found a way to thrive, enjoying a life that is happy, healthy, prosperous, and dynamic. Chances are such people are continuously striving to become well-rounded and have learned the fine art of personal integration.

One key to becoming integrated as a well-rounded person is to incorporate the opposite qualities of those aspects of life we generally think of as positive. For example, cheeriness, charm, and good-humor can only be authentic if one has also experienced some pain and suffering. Good humor is not about denying or repressing the grim things in life, it’s about coming to terms with them and making them a part of us--contained, understood, and even nurtured. Through our struggle to achieve personal integration, we gain insight into living well.

Avoiding the painful and the unpleasant often makes a situation worse. Embracing pain--using it, transcending it--is the way to achieve a higher pleasure. Striving to become well-rounded and achieving it will enhance and elevate the full range of our desires and aspirations.

Being well-rounded means uniting all the aspects of one’s self, integrating all innate capacities, however disparate they may be. Becoming a well-rounded person and finding integration is a daunting task. One of the many obstacles to integration is that people, in a cosmic sense, are small, limited, and inadequate; tiny pieces of a vast, imperceptible whole. This realization can become a source of defeatism, leading one to believe that becoming well-rounded is impossible in such a fragmented world.

As individuals, we experience the various effects of dualism--that separation between essential aspects of ourselves, like mind and body--on a daily basis. Duality is based on the law of attraction and repulsion, and, therefore, creation itself is founded on the principle of duality. It would seem, then, that we are meant to exist in a state of fragmentation, and the noise of media and technology does not add to this situation so much as mirror it. This makes the task of becoming well-rounded that much harder.

It is difficult to talk about a theme like becoming well-rounded or wholeness without lapsing into the abstract and metaphysical. It’s a chimerical topic, but the consequences are very real. The person looking to succeed must have his own house in order and maintain some peace of mind simply to make it to work in the morning. But to thrive and reach the zenith of success, a person needs to do more. It’s a matter of reaching self-knowledge, and taking the next step after that: applying that knowledge in your professional as well as your personal life.