The Collector Of Paintings
Integrate into your leadership a plus of greatness, reinforcing everything that it is essential at you.
Towards the end of the movie "Pretty Woman (1990,)" the multimillionaire, Edward Lewis, whose only "gift" were the impossible relations, proposes to Vivian Ward (the lady companion that he had paid to spend the week with him) to stay one more night. But, why would she accept this proposal? Why to continue making illusions? Anyway, they must separate forever. So, she rejects his proposal:
- Look Edward, you've made to me a very good offer. And, a few months ago I would have accepted it, no problem. But, now everything is different and you have changed that. And you cannot change it back. I want more...
While making her luggage, Vivian seemed to say in her mind: "Yes, I want more ! Because I love you ! Because you are to me more beautiful, better and greater than all human beings ! I would like to share all my life the happiness with you. Only with you. I do not want to lose you, but I know that I have to destroy the supreme moments of happiness that you have offered me, that God gave me in the exchange for my endless prayers."
But, it was just a moment. I must be strong and to make this step. And, to forget about you, your generosity and your good taste - that flooded my whole being; to forget all the anger, to forget myself, to forget all that life has allowed me while I was yours - yes, yours and only yours; do not longer tie my heart of any hope, to forget that for a moment I felt myself as the most beautiful and the most admired woman in the world, to forget that you were everything to me, and to permanently delete yourself from my wish list. And, to turn again to what I was before, a poor prostitute, and to return to a life without emotions, without feelings, without content."
Do you allow yourself the time necessary to strengthen your self-image belonging to a total loneliness that incessantly cries out to consciousness to renounce the pride of not owing anything to anyone?
A leader manifests all his interest towards leadership if his achievements and successes reflect the more comprehensively his own competencies. In the light of what he really is and what he will become, he puts all qualities, all resources, all knowledge in the service of a type of leadership that promote his welfare first.
The multimillionaire Edward Lewis was such a leader. He practiced a realistic leadership based on prudent policies, on efficiency, on leadership principles, and on strategies, on pragmatic approaches and forecasts - on the way he actually was, typical to a true businessman. However, for this no one has ever awarded his values !
For, when it comes to values, Lewis was alike an excellent builder, which builds up a lot of buildings, but who never finds time to consolidate his own house. He integrated in his leadership only those values that supported his optimal management performance, but these values did not have the right vibration in order to respond to certain circumstances by emotions. In simple words, he had no sentimental ideal.
The pride of not owing anything to anyone, along with the excessive care of your own image, outlines the outlook of a strong passion for what your duty of loyalty to the career requires, under the power of the need to be at the forefront of public attention. Thus, you are forced to put a lower price on that region of influence that is out of sight and that comes under the power of living in the state of acceptance of the spiritual-moral values that make you an exceptional being.
To feel the subtle taste of spiritual-moral values, such as harmony, devotion, generosity, understanding, patience, is to make life an open lesson full of teachings about what can happen when the precaution or balance principle is overlooked.
Can you obtain a positive result from the investigation of your own nature in the content of a "page" you left?
As a leader, Lewis would have to put the foundation to his emotional structure, to reestablish properly his own spiritual experiences, emphasizing his own characteristic feelings. This investigation and gradual evaluation of his nature would have helped him to approach closely the leadership of quality - which incorporates some emotional elements with an especial potential.
Does your values worth getting the prize? Are you capable, through your leadership, to comprise the human intensity and dimension? Can you perceive the other people's inner impulse - just as a doctor perceives, by tactile sensations, the blood or the muscular pressure of the patients?
I do not think you will be able to establish and maintain relations with other people unless you will not gather together all your inner emotional forces that can act positively on them. If you isolate them, if you ignore them, you will not be able to lay bridges between your aspirations and theirs – you will remain only an avaricious collector among his paintings, looking straight at them with an insatiable lust all the time. In this way, it will open in your own destiny that threatening abyss that will separate you from all that is really essential in a leader: strength of mind.
If one day you suffer from boredom, when your good days are no more than an "invention of a mind freed of attachments", or if you are characterized by perpetual dissatisfaction and a constant quest to achieve new dimensions in performance, then make an effort and mimic an hourglass: learn to measure the passage of time with every turn of the page of life. A page that you just left.
The first step towards a radical change is to accept that the "rational" with which you measure all around you is very limited in the face of the possibilities of capitalizing on them.
The collector of paintings highlights your strong points and your weak points. It depends on how much you attach to the "art" that you admire and where you invest your values. Does the art that defines you, reflects more your managerial or emotional qualities?
Are you treating people as if they were paintings with different value? Or, as if they were some very valuable paintings that enchant and warm your soul? Or, you intended to be so avaricious that to treat them as if they were some pictures that do not express anything?
The soul’s guiding mark of the "collector" Edward Lewis was Vivian. Do you need a "guiding mark" that would cultivate respect for your moral values, on which is supported the leadership of quality?
Extremely right was the one who said: "The only enemy of reason is you yourself. To be rational, you must win the battle with yourself."
Conclusion: A leader should harmoniously combine "the technical elements" of leadership with elements related to emotional issues that arise as a result of human relationships. A leader who lacks greatness is nothing but a collector of "selves" whose value he does not know and does not put them in value. By thinking purely technically, do not bring any benefit to you, but valuing Human Resources you can continue what you have started, and success will be by your side.





