photo credit: John Ambler
Another Aspect Of Personal Improvement
Personal improvement, despite the word ‘personal’, doesn’t mean it’s a totally solitary activity. Part of personal improvement includes working with others or more accurately, improving yourself in the ability to work with other people.
There are few things in life that you can accomplish totally on your own. The biggest successes in most areas do involve other people whether it’s business or personal. Chances of more success are always higher when you have other people to help you.
However, in order to get other people’s help, you have to work well with them so that they will want to work with you. This is an part of personal improvement that is sometimes ignored or forgotten yet it is one of the most important skill areas to work on in my opinion.
Big Ships Are Great Examples Of People Working Together
Many entities like successful sports teams are perfect examples of people working well together. Even bigger examples of this are on big ships like the giant cruiseships we have today. I’ve been on several cruises and it’s amazing to see how many of the ship’s staff work well together to keep the ship clean and guests happy.
In a similar example to cruiseships, I had the unique experience of going through a real US Navy aircraft carrier when I was in San Diego two summers ago. Now that was really something as I marvelled at the size of the ship. But what really impressed me was the many different functions of the aircraft carrier which must work well together in order for the ship as an entity to be an effective tool for the US Navy out there.
This would be the case during any mission out in the seas as an aircraft carrier would depend on the efforts of every single person on board to work well with each other for any success. I would think that every sailor on board no matter what rank he or she is on an aircraft carrier developed the mental discipline that working well with others on board is paramount to the success of any mission.
This attitude can of course work well for the rest of us non-sailors since our success will also depend much on how we can work with other people as well. That’s why in our own personal improvement, we should always strive to develop our people skills so that we can work well with others.
For your interest, I shot an entire episode of Motivational WebTV taking you through the actual aircraft carrier that I was on. It shows both the upper decks where the various aircraft takes off and lands as well as the many different areas within the big ship itself. It is a very interesting video and if you missed it, see it at Aircraft Carrier Tour.
