Taking Hits – Becoming Tempered through Heat

There are many things we do and things that exist that are so prevalent we don’t even consider how universal they are.

Here is a big one. We spend most of our lives responding to wants.

This one concept is the lynchpin to how you lead your business, how you lead your employees, how you lead yourself.

We live our lives answering the questions, “What do I want to eat?”  “What do I want to wear?”  “What do you want to do?  And that is just the start.

Have you ever said to the mirror, “That was stupid!  Why did I do that?”

The answer, of course, is, “Yes.”  There was a why, a reason, a motive for what you did.

I live my life through my planner, my calendar. Why? Among the reasons is my commitment to live my day with decisions I made in advance. That practice is necessary because left to choices in the moment, I would have a far greater tendency to act based on emotional or desire-sourced decisions.

Even discipline is a want-related decision. It’s precisely an act of discipline because it is a choice counter to your wants.

God loves giving good gifts. You may not have known that about Him.  You may have thought He just liked playing cosmic killjoy.  He also deeply desires our best, and He knows how easily, instinctively, and completely our lives can be dominated by what is detrimental.

So He gives one final command, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”  Were He writing that today the covet challenges would include a different list.

Wants are God-given. Coveting is a distort response to what God has given, a distorted want.

The way you do business, relationships, your daily life are highly affected by how you interact with what you want.  This final commandment, this final law of business, is the capstone of all the others.  

How do you interact with what you want?  What is controlling your life – your desires or the God who gave them to you? 

The ultimate quality of your life is going to be determined by your answer to that last question.

What follows are the principles behind the value of this command.

As already communicated,

1. We spend most of our lives responding to wants.

Chris Voss quotes Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking, Fast and Slow,

It is self-evident that people are neither fully rational nor completely selfish, and that their tastes are anything but stable. 

Voss summarizes this process,

Man, [Kahneman] wrote, has two systems of thought:  System 1, our animal mind, is fast, instinctive, and emotional; System 2 is slow, deliberative, and logical.  And System 1 is far more influential.  In fact, it guides and steers our rational thoughts…

We react emotionally (System 1) to a suggestion or question. Then that System 1 reaction informs and in effect creates the System 2 answer.

2. Wanting itself is not coveting.

The issue isn’t wanting.  Attempting to eliminate your wants is foolish and impossible.  Some have tried to do so, and it creates a psychologically or religiously distorted mess.

Wants and needs are a necessary and enjoyable part of life. 

3. Coveting happens when satisfying my wants becomes the driving force.

Satisfying wants can bring enjoyment.  Making that satisfaction my reason for being becomes destructive and steals my joy and potentially the joy of others. 

Paul’s brilliant insight in the Bible defines the issue,

For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.          (1 Timothy 6:10)

Notice, the issue isn’t money.  It’s the love of money – when the desire becomes dominant.

4. Coveting comes from and creates a distorted view of reality.

This is not merely a religious concept or source of guilt feelings.  This is a highly valuable directive on how to live and, for our purposes, do business.

Coveting messes with your ability to think clearly.  It distorts how you see things and people.  Instead of valuing people and using things, you begin valuing things and using people.  Creating productive business culture or relationships becomes impossible.

5. Coveting comes from a scarcity mindset where I believe for me to achieve it must come at someone else’s expense

It’s like walking past someone’s cart in the grocery store and taking their box of Fruit Loops instead of going down the cereal aisle and getting your own. 

As with many of the other commandments, this harkens back to the first commandment, “Have no other gods before me.”  If your source of life is less than fully trustworthy, you are going to fight or manipulate what exists out of an attempt at self-protection.

Trusting in a God who is trustworthy eliminates the overriding need for self-protection.  It also releases the ability to confidently pursue mutually productive options.

6. Coveting creates a toxic, selfish business culture that undermines teamwork.

Winning the culture of your business is foundational for everything else.  No matter what you produce, you ultimately need positive interaction with people. 

James clarifies,

¹ What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?  ² You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God.  (James 4:1, 2)

This creates a mindset of consuming.  Investing, especially in others, becomes increasingly problematic.

7. Ethical failure regularly stems from self-focused desires dominating one’s thinking and decision making.

Coveting not only undermines positive culture; it creates a destructive one in its place. 

When looking out for oneself becomes the dominant M.O., rationalizing “by whatever means” becomes normative.  Ethics only matters if other people and their welfare matter.

8. Coveting creates inferior thinking because it is consumed by satisfying my wants in the now and not on the value of my decisions.

Thinking clearly without emotional distortion is essential for effective business.  Coveting is an act of grabbing not of developing.  It is not patient.  It is not visionary.  It is obviously not benevolent. 

When I want what you have, I’m rarely or ineffectively thinking about a legitimate process to get there.  Struggle is a key part of development.  It is a catalyst for growth.  Coveting attempts to circumvent the struggle and go straight to possession.  It attempts to convince us that we are entitled.

9. Coveting sabotages your ability to enjoy what you do and accomplish.

Our tendency to covet comes from a desire to have or enjoy something.  Ironically, when that tendency dominates, the source of attraction, the reason for getting or achieving, is ruined.

10. Being thankful, having gratitude, is the greatest counter if not cure for the contagion of coveting.

If a culture of self-focus, coveting, is pervasive, the best antidote is gratefulness. 

Gratefulness was likely not one of the business skills you learned with your MBA.  Yet, it has an unequalled cleansing effect on business culture.  Gratitude is a soft skill that builds teamwork, strengthens resolve, and mitigates against conflict.