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Don’t surrender your freedom to choose



Boom! by Kevin and Jackie Freiberg Westland

Your most powerful attribute is the freedom to choose, exhort Kevin and Jackie Freiberg in Boom! (Westland).

“Freedom is yours for the taking – even at work,” they urge. “But the problem is that we all frequently fail to embrace what is immediately available and already ours.” Why so? Because many people think, “freedom li es ‘out there,’ in a better boss, a more enlightened culture, a different job, a bigger office, or a more solid customer base rather than ‘in here,’ in them,” the authors rue.

It is tough, though, to see one is free in ‘an age of victimisation, entitlement, and excuse making.’ However, when you work in a high-paying job for a toxic boss who makes your life miserable and you say, ‘I have no choice,’ what you really mean is, ‘I am choosing to prioritise making money over my own job fulfilment,’ decode the Freibergs.

“By rationalising that you have no choice, you are choosing not to recognise legitimate alternatives that are yours for the taking,” they advise. “You are stuck in a comfort zone of inaction that is functional and safe, but leaves you dead and disengaged, perhaps even anxious and stressed.”

Surrendering our freedom to choose may be the worst form of incarceration, because we do it to ourselves, fret the Freibergs. “Worse yet, we get so comfortable with the walls we’ve created that we come to think of them as our safe haven and our excuse for not being a player.” Neither building a bigger, better widget nor having some killer business plan, will always lead to building a great company, the book reminds. Instead, leaders must aim at “having a workforce that is alive, fully engaged, and firing on all cylinders – a workforce that is booming.”

People who are engaged infuse passion into everything they do, the authors observe. “A fire burns within them that stirs their souls and inspires them to make a difference – enabling them to try things that others are afraid to try, and to be the kind of people others yearn to be.”

Powerful messages.

D. Murali

http://BookPeek.blogspot.com

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