{"id":17,"date":"2006-09-08T08:17:09","date_gmt":"2006-09-08T12:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/excellenceuniversity.net\/journal\/?p=17"},"modified":"2016-01-04T10:56:36","modified_gmt":"2016-01-04T15:56:36","slug":"what-everyone-yes-everyone-wants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.excellenceuniversity.net\/journal\/17\/what-everyone-yes-everyone-wants","title":{"rendered":"What Everyone — Yes, Everyone — Wants"},"content":{"rendered":"

I love to ask the big questions in life. And the biggest question that I’ve ever asked myself is this: “What does everybody (individuals and\/or groups of people) want?”\u00a0 That is the question I asked myself in the late 1990’s as I was founding my company, The Building Blocks to Excllence, and being trained as a Ph.D. level behavioral scientist at the University of Florida. Since I was surrounded by so many brilliant business leaders and psychological minds at the time, I decided to start asking that question to these accomplished people to see if they could shed any light on the answer to my question.<\/p>\n

The response I received from almost every one of them was that there is no single answer. “Everybody wants something different, Brian; there is no one answer to your question,” was their almost unanimous reply.\u00a0 However, I’m a stubborn person when it comes to answering big questions, so even though all of these incredibly bright people told me that my pursuit would be fruitless, I still felt like the answer may be out there.\u00a0 So I continued my quest of finding the answer to this enormous question.<\/p>\n

I began the pursuit of this answer via a combination of powerful resources, beginning with my own personal experience, interviews with other knowledgeable people, and so called “common sense.”\u00a0 It soon became apparent that these resources would get me only so far, since as I’m sure you know, everybody has a different opinion regarding what everyone wants\/needs more of — and many of these opinions can contrast with each other (e.g., “quitters never win” vs. “quit while you are ahead”, “birds of a feather flock together” vs. “opposites attract”).\u00a0 Thus, it became apparent that I had to go looking for my single answer somewhere else; I then decided to delve deep into the research literature to find the answer to my question.<\/p>\n

Thousand of pages of research articles and books provided me with a much more clarity.\u00a0 However, as Sir Frances Bacon once said, “Those who dwell in ivory towers have heads of the same material.”\u00a0 I didn’t want a purely academic answer to my question, so I wanted to go back out into the “real world” and start asking professionals and “experts” who were actually facilitating positive changes in others what they thought about some of the answers I uncovered from the scientific psychological research.\u00a0 Those professionals helped the answer to become even clearer for me.\u00a0 However, I still was not completely satisfied because I felt like I only had the answer to my question in relation to our current era (i.e., the last 100 years or so), and an answer that may only relate to the American culture.\u00a0 So, I turned my focus to looking into the answer to this question across multiple cultures and across many centuries.<\/p>\n

I wanted to know what wise people were saying about the answer to this question in the West, East, and everywhere in between.\u00a0 I was interested in not only what business leaders, scientists, and philosophers were saying, but also religious figures and artists thousands of years ago. I wanted an answer to this crucial question that stood the test of time and that seemed to be true across cultures and across different methods of truth-finding. Finally, after many years of investigating this question so broadly and deeply, the answer to the question “”What does everybody want?” became crystal clear to me.<\/p>\n

The answer is<\/strong> . . . more group\/organizational excellence (including businesses, research teams, and families), personal effectiveness (or, the ability to get things done or experience what one wants to experience), and\/or life satisfaction (or, the experience of a felt sense of well-being).\u00a0 I have yet to talk with anybody who does not want to improve in at least one (if not all 3) areas!<\/p>\n

You may be thinking “Duh Brian — it took you that long to find the obvious answer to your question?”\u00a0 However, this may only seem obvious after hearing the answer.\u00a0 Indeed, I have found that when you ask people the question “What does everybody want?” the answer I found is often not obvious to them until you actually give them the answer (try it with your friends and colleagues and see if they come up with the answer without you giving it to them).<\/p>\n

You may also think that I wasted a heck of a lot of time doing this researching and interviewing to get to such a simple answer.\u00a0 Ah, but the search was well worth the time to me!\u00a0 As I was researching the answer to this question a powerful path to increased excellence, effectiveness, and satisfaction became apparent to me — a path that has helped individuals and groups across the centuries and across cultures; a path that is still incredibly relevant today.\u00a0 That path is made up of what I call 7 “Building Blocks” to increased excellence, effectiveness, and satisfaction. These Building Blocks<\/a> are the foundation for all of our trainings, speeches, and personal consulting experiences.<\/p>\n

By now you’re probably saying “Enough with the introduction Brian, what the heck are these 7 Building Blocks?”\u00a0 Here is a list of these 7 critical components, separated into 3 core areas (NOTE: for those of you who run teams, businesses, and\/or families, you may want to check out the “group audits” underneath each “core area” below):<\/p>\n

The 7 Building Blocks to Effectiveness & Life Satisfaction<\/h2>\n