Aliceās attitude, which he was comprehending piecemeal by observing her, was that your job was merely one element in a well-lived life. To be doing it right, you also had to go on great holidays, wear clothes that suited you, have fun at parties and many things more. Maybe she was right: maybe there were levels of sophistication higher than single-mindedness. Maybe you could rise above your own ambitions. It was an idea that had never occurred to him.
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Through a series of seeming coincidences, Bilich was presented with exactly that type of job with F.A. Hoyt. And once he got to Hoyt, a leaser of garbage collection equipment, he was able to triple pretax earning in four years - by applying what he had learned during his monastic period about being himself about being himself, about having compassion for himself and others.
I had come to love myself, not in a selfish way, but just to recognize who I am, that I am a person of value, and I have that value to give to my fellow-man. And in giving to that fellow-man I will get something in return for it, but the real joy is giving, not receiving. Once I discovered that, and learned that I could love myself, then I realized that I could truly love others because I knew how it felt.
I donāt think that my actions changed in a way that prompted this; my position did. And what this meant was that things Iād once been privy to became increasingly unavailable to me. Gradually, snarky behavior, grousing, and rudeness disappeared from view - from my view, anyway. I rarely saw bad behavior because people wouldnāt exhibit it in front of me. I was out of a certain loop, and it was essential that I never lose sight of that fact. If I wasnāt careful to be vigilant and self-aware, I might well draw the wrong conclusions.
My attempts to mold him failed, and I felt increasingly frustrated. He thought Iād fire him. Fortunately, for him and me, I began to grasp that he had not failed me; rather, I had failed him by putting him in a role out of frame with his encodings. Furthermore, I felt somewhat responsible for his future; I did not want to see this wonderful young man start his professional life getting fired. So, I began making a series of iterative steps, testing him with different tasks that drew upon what I sensed to be his intellectual gifts, and he showed signs of flourishing.
He couldnāt see how it made any difference to Tescoās grand plans if he gave his presentation on Friday instead of tomorrow. But his manager insisted. It was irritating to be subject to someone elseās arbitrariness. It was just a culture of performative zeal. McKinseyites were supposed to be the shock troops of capitalism, sacrificing themselves to smash through problems. James was supposed to be eagerly hurling himself into the fray. But he couldnāt quite get himself geed up.
And he insisted with every tool of his personality that they see the situation as he saw it, that they feel as he felt or as he convinced himself he did. As he worked on them, they began to tentatively sense ā not as with James, that they were led by a man of admirable vision and ability ā but that they were in this together, and that they wanted themselves to succeed.