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Highly Effective People Deal with “Disruption” in Unique Ways
- John Vespasian
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In today’s episode of “Healing From Within” host Sheryl Glick author of The Living Spirit: Answers for Healing and Infinite Love which share stories of spiritual awakening communication healing energies miracles and ways to use intuition and inner guidance to navigate the world making better choices and decisions welcomes, once again, John Vespasian author of Undisrupted helps us develop a sound plan and strategy to determine if life is running smoothly, always filled with success and happiness, or are we sometimes faced with disruptions and periods of chaos, where we need strategies to help make the best choices for success.
To Listen to other interviews with John go to the radio page of www.sherylglick.com and to May 2019 to listen to John discuss his last book “Sequentiality”
As listeners of “Healing From Within” have come to expect over the years Sheryl and her guests seek new ways to understand our human and energetic duality so we may merge the best of mind body and soul to improve the human condition, ourselves, world, and make choices to further health prosperity happiness and the best version of ourselves no matter what the challenge is.
In today’s episode of “Healing From Within” we will begin to discover the keys to dealing with disruption and times of crisis, as John Vespasian shows us to rely on what we already know and employ skills and assets gathered in the past that we know and trust. We will see that life tends to punish lack of preparedness harshly, and also discover when disruption happens we may not have time to think or look for answers. We must be ready with a few good strategies. John will share stories of dynamic people like Savva Mamontov and Albert Schweitzer and others who were unprepared and therefore, unable to prevent disruption from destroying their own lives.
John helps prepare readers for challenges we may face at some point in our lives. John wrote, “Individuals who thought themselves blessed by fortune will unexpectedly suffer road accidents, get fired from their job, go bankrupt and lose their health, get divorced or get sued in court by friends, business partners or third parties, others will lose their savings in catastrophic investments. Lack of preparedness is dangerous very dangerous. I do not recommend it to anybody. You can be wiped out by factors that are not even mentioned in books about success. Those books will tell you what to do to get ahead in life, but that is not enough. You need to know as well how to deal with disruptions. I cannot emphasize enough the necessity of having sound workable strategies for dealing with disruptions or better still averting them. It’s a life or death question”.
John goes on to tell us the interesting story of industrialist Savva Mamontac and how he could have prevented disruption from destroying his very accomplished life.
This book was actually conceived while John was reading the biography of Davva Mamontov (1841-1918). He is not well known outside Russia but he was one of the most successful industrialists in the late nineteenth century. Mamontov studied in St Petersburg and Moscow and then devoted most of his life to working as a railroad executive. His family was well established in business and he inherited the talent and personal contacts of his father. By the time he was twenty nine in 1869 Mamontov was supervising railroad projects in Siberia and Ukraine—building train connections to remote regions of the Russian Empire.
He enjoyed a harmonious personal life married to Elizabeth Sapoznikova for a life time. By 1883 he was in his forties possessed a large home in Moscow and a home the countryside. Yet neither his education nor his experience had prepared him for dealing with major disruptions. The problems started when Mamontov undertook to create companies outside his field of expertise. Now a days you will see entrepreneurs start additional companies in order to expand their reach.
Sheryl says that she is reminded of President Trump who was a land developer and real estate specialist who in the 1990’s got involved in building casino’s and lost over a billion dollars which they have been talking about on the news the past few days. It is possible he over reached and was not prepared at that time for the disruption to his life but he did survive it.
Getting back to Mamontov who was aware from newspaper stories that US steel magnates such as Andrew Carnegie were busy with steel manufacturing. The idea caught his attention. Since his railroad lines in Siberia and Ukraine were generating positive cash flow he thought of reinvesting his profits in steel manufacturing for wagons and locomotives. Yet Mamontov overlooked an important aspect that when you expand your reach few individual possess such a wide variety of skills to succeed in a new environment or area of work.
Sheryl says… I have learned even when you are well invested and prepared in any area like teaching acting or managing, consulting , it usually takes about fifteen years to become completely competent and proficient in all aspects of that line of work.
Mamontov knew how to finance build and operate railroads but this did not qualify him to run any business on earth. It is a frequent occurrence that entrepreneurs will suffer losses when they enter fields they know little about. Mamontov began to diversify his business interests in 1883 reviewing blueprints for steel mills. Five years later his dream turned into a nightmare. He faced problems he didn’t know how to solve. His whole life was disrupted and his whole future at stake. He became highly emotional got his priorities wrong and made huge mistakes. Andrew Carnegie the best American steel executive had been conscious of his limits and he never attempted to run companies outside his area of expertise.
Mamontov did something incredibly stupid. He started to cover his losses in steel manufacturing by using funds from the railroad to buy time. Shareholders and bondholders filed criminal charges against him accusing him of embezzlement and accounting fraud. His reputation was destroyed overnight. These kinds of errors people commit when they are faced with a huge disruption in their lives. We must have a sound strategy for dealing with disruption. As a result of his ineffective behavior and unpreparedness to handle the challenges of his business losses he spent the last 18 years of his life in abject poverty. Wel look at other individuals who devised strategies for reducing risks and vulnerability.
Some of the keys to dealing with disruption and times of crisis are explored. We see that life tends to punish lack of preparedness harshly and learn when disruption happens we may not have time to think or look for an answer we must be ready with a few good strategies.
The most basic technique for dealing with disruptions….Know what you know: Know what you don’t know…and stay away from the latter. Sounds simple but it is difficult to implement because it’s counterproductive. It is opposed to human nature and opposed to what most people do in times of crisis.
Ingredients of a lifestyle that keeps disruptions at bay:
Accepting the drawbacks of simplicity and speed
Discard ideas that are keeping you weak and vulnerable
Progress will be smoother if you don't force the machine
Surprising decisions will stir up opposition, so what?
When your best option is to turn your life upside down
A resilient lifestyle and its favorable consequences
.Beware that not all knowledge is created equal
A relentless focus on existing opportunities
Productiveness as a way of life: the underlying philosophy
Solid structures and solid routines keep disruptions away
Less vulnerability, fewer disruptions: an illustration
Accepting the drawbacks of simplicity and speed
Discard ideas that are keeping you weak and vulnerable
John tells the story of a scientist Vladimir Kovalewsky who committed suicide after making impressive contributions in the field of palaeontology. He is the archetype of individuals who succumb to disruption. He almost got it right and failed because he made the same mistake millions of people make when they get in trouble. He considered wrongly that disruptions were giving him extra strength knowledge and skills that were pushing him to undertake projects that he knew very little about and were pushing him to improve.
Like other people portrayed in this book Kovalevsky was ambitious dedicated and hard working. So why did he fail in his battle against disruption. Let’s look at what happened. His language skills wee uncommon so he traveled Germany and France after graduating from St Petersburg University in Russia. His language skills were uncommon and after tutoring the daughter of exiled Russian Revolutionary Alexander Herzen’s daughter the returned to Russia where he had a disruption. He couldn’t find a well paying job.
He decided to contact Darwin and offer to translate his book The Origins of Species by Means of Natural Selection which he had become fascinated with. While translating this 500 page book he met Sophia who was 18 at the time and they shared interest in new scientific ideas. Kovalevsky grew more interested in the theory of evolution and regarded it as the key to understanding the whole universe. They soon married.
He made an amazing discovery that miniature mammals had dealt successfully with disruptions in a way that nature does: by embracing existing conditions they had grown in size but in response to disruptions they had only enhanced pre-existing traits. Similarly business breakthroughs are the result of a company’s determination to strengthen its key capacities.
To his detriment Kovalevsky failed to grasp the implication of his discovery. He did not understand that human beings must rely on existing strengths if they are to surmount disruptions. He failed to use his strengths in his life. The more he improvised the more disruption affected his life.
Sometimes someone like Kovalevsky will choose to leave a career as he did leaving law to become a paleontologist. Such disruptions can end well and should be embraced wholeheartedly if acted from a position of strength from accumulated skills suitable for the field to be entered.
It does not matter whether disruptions are unforeseen or self-created. The reason a person may choose to disrupt their lives is not hard to understand. If you love a particular line of work it will pay off because you will be acquiring knowledge fast. Kovalevsky’s transition was relatively smooth—relying on existing strengths—his knowledge of languages, familiarity with Darwin’s ideas and the savings accumulated from his translation work.
The insight here is: Nature will typically deal with disruptions by enhancing existing strengths NOT by random moves or Improvisation which rarely works
Vespasian discusses the Labor Theory of value which he believes keeps individuals passive and hoping for change and improvement of their economic conditions by simply investing more time and effort in their work practices. They expect someone will receive the full value of their work and have rewards for their efforts. However the Labor Theory suggested by Carl Marx and others is wrong. In real life the amount of labor spent does not determine the value of products and services. The value of products and services is determined by markets-or how much customers in a particular location are willing to pay at that time for the products and services. So it is important to put your efforts into creating services and products that are important to the general population at the time.
John Vespasian author of Undisrupted once again through the historical stories of famous people help us discover ways to value change and improve our decision making process based on knowledge and clarity of mind heart and body so we can be better prepared to avoid human error and improve our destiny.
In summarizing today’s episode of “Healing From Within” we have begun to discover one of the keys to dealing with disruption and times of crisis as we rely on what we already know and employ skills and assets gathered in the past that we know and trust. We see that life tends to punish lack of preparedness harshly and also discover when disruption happens we may not have time to think or look for answers. We must be ready with a few good strategies. John has shared amazing stories of dynamic people like Savva Mamontov and Albert Schweitzer and others who were unprepared and unable to prevent disruption from destroying their own lives but also given us the tools to reassess when a self made disruption or one that happens on its own may be approached with greater awareness of how to make it work for our greatest good.we may not have time to think or look for an answer we must be ready with a few good strategies.
We discovered the most basic technique for dealing with disruptions….Know what you know: Know what you don’t know…and stay away from the latter. Sounds simple but it is difficult to implement because it’s counterproductive. It is opposed to human nature and opposed to what most people do in times of crisis.
Among lessons learned to deal with any disruption were accepting the drawbacks of simplicity and speed, discarding ideas that are keeping you weak and vulnerable, progress will be smoother if you don't force the machine, surprising decisions may stir up opposition, so what?, when your best option is to turn your life upside down, and a resilient lifestyle has favorable consequences. We must beware that not all knowledge is created equal as we concentrate on a relentless focus on existing opportunities. We know that productiveness is a way of life and solid structures and solid routines keep disruptions away, as does creating an environment of less vulnerability so we will experience fewer disruptions.
John and I would have you maneuver disruptions in your life accepting them as opportunities for you to further know your own talents and interests and continue to grow beyond fear and limitation as you employ the skills of self-awareness and master you emotions for defining life in all its miraculous wonderment. The key of course is preparedness and good decision making skills.
