The Universal 8 Key Virtues to Live the Greatest Life are critical for anyone looking to develop as a legendary leader. Mastery of virtues is the mastery of life. The virtues are like safety valves to protect you as you gain more power through the development of the leadership strengths.
For new professionals just starting out as leaders or those who want to work better with leaders, the 8 Key Virtues can serve as guideposts. These virtues offer a model to achieve balanced and sustained success and fulfillment in all areas of life. When you develop the virtues to a certain degree of refinement, you naturally become a legendary global leader with the power of influence not only in your career, but also in many important circles. This is not just because of your money or fame, but also because of whom you truly are – an embodiment of the complete model of the highest order of leadership.
Your personal power of leadership success can only be harnessed safely and used for greater good if your personal character is cultured with virtues and inner values. In terms of safety, we are not only talking about the harmful effects of a person's attitude towards others, but also about the danger of hurting one's own growth and end results if one’s character is not cultured.
A reciprocal relationship exists between virtues and faculties. Dictionaries define a virtue as moral excellence or an effective force or power. Virtues are the actual expression of goodness, inner beauty, truth, inner strength and refinement of character. They are both the inner and outer enfoldment of our true essence of ability. But the virtues have be able to be expressed both materially and spiritually to manifest their complete development.
The process of applying a virtue is a faculty. The faculty is an instrument to express virtues and inner values. Each virtue developed corresponds to inner powers acquired and levels of spiritual development attained. The more the virtues are mastered, the greater your power to succeed and be fulfilled.
The following are virtues and corresponding benefits when they are mastered. They are essential for the development of integrated leadership:
- Discipline and Constancy: The key to attaining great achievement constantly
- Will-power and Vitality: The key to speed and continuity of long-lasting performance
- Objectivity and Practicality: Power of discrimination to achieve balanced results – the antidote to fanaticism
- Benevolence: The power to achieve happiness, contentment and right human relations and the key to accessing greater powers safely
- Altruism: The key and power behind long-lasting prosperity and sustained abundance
- Group Consciousness:The key to sustaining power and achieving bigger goals in less time
- Virtue of Sacrifice: The key to greatness and powerful service and the power to become a legend
- Good Health: The key to attaining and enjoying lasting success and fulfillment
Let's discuss each of these virtues and their benefits for leaders in detail.
When one has discipline and constancy, success is predictable! Why are some leaders more successful? Why have they achieved more in less time? It’s not just due to talent because many talented leaders have failed repeatedly in history, nor is it only technological advancement because many scientists and technology experts also fail. It is the discipline and constancy of focus accompanied by constancy of effort that are the most important factors propelling leaders to attain great achievements constantly, any time they want them. The virtues taught by most religions and spiritual schools emphasize the aspects of love, compassion, generosity and truthfulness, yet seldom do they emphasize the practical aspects of the virtues and values like discipline and constancy.
Competitive sports, martial arts and military training have always embodied this virtue, which produces the greatest leaders, the best athletes in the Olympics, the most skillful martial artists and the most decorated soldiers.
The leaders who have mastered the virtue of discipline and constancy become super-achievers. Finish what you start as much as possible. For most successful leaders, this is already a habit, but it can always be improved upon. For new leaders, start with smaller and short-term goals and projects that inspire you to get into the habit of finishing what you start. If you have done this several times successfully with smaller targets, then achieving larger global goals becomes less and less difficult.
- Set your goals and implement them properly
- Go extra miles in effort and time
- Put your strategy and schedule on paper
- Make a habit of finishing what you start
- Focus on results guided by virtues
- Succeed and be alive.
- Have a contingency plan and avoid surprises
- Handle adversity properly
- Get a qualified coach-mentor
- Be creatively adaptable
Many leaders perform great miracles with the virtues of benevolence and altruism; others do well with the virtue of objectivity and practicality, but without will-power and vitality, it is not easy to maintain performance at a greater speed and to continuously sustain effectiveness in life.
Will-power pulls people out of the past and pushes them to the future. With will-power and vitality, benevolence and altruism can be expressed naturally and continually. When leaders are low on vitality and will-power, it is difficult to be effective in life. It is also not easy to be pleasant when your life’s battery is drained.
Will-power and vitality are best expressed as follows:
- Vitality is the fuel for greater performance.
- Will-power is the 4-wheel drive to boost the power of performance and effectiveness in life, especially in your ascent to global success.
- Will-power is the dynamite that enables you to blast through great obstacles and difficulties.
- Will-power is the pioneering force that opens and constructs your road to success where others have not gone before.
The speed achieving your results and the levels and quality of your success are directly proportional to the levels of your vitality and force of your will-power. How many leaders get so frustrated because they fail in the last stage of their projects due to the lack of power at the end? Many leaders usually start strong and enthusiastic, but their will-power runs short and vitality drops before finishing projects. What makes great champions and leaders is not just the starting phase of the game, but the end game. This is true in chess and in sports. It is also true in business performance and personal relationships. The winning edge and the ability to achieve great goals require extraordinary vitality and sustained will-power.
Strategy: Expanding Squats (20-30 times)
For increased will-power and to enhance blood and vitality circulation throughout your body (not recommended for people with knee problems).
- Place your feet at shoulder width and put your palms together at the center of your chest with fingers pointing upwards.
- Inhale fully. Exhale fully as you squat down, bending your knees and expanding your arms fully stretched to the side. Inhale fully as you come up, bringing your palms back to the center position.
After completing all the squats, stand still while concentrating on the top of your head and soles of your feet simultaneously. Breathe slowly and relax for 30 seconds. This technique facilitates the flow of vitality and power throughout your entire body.
We are completing an era during which the martyr complex is common in individuals and groups, and fanaticism through excessive idealism and blind faith are the guiding attitudes of many leaders and their followers. This has created a dangerous world where excessively fanatical sects and militant groups are busy trying to implement their religious or nationalistic ideals.
What is the antidote to this fanaticism and excessive idealism? The virtue of objectivity and practicality develops the power to know and perceive the truth properly and the ability to adopt a method or action that is suitable and appropriate to the situation. It is an attitude of being realistic and grounded.
As there are many levels of truth, you need different levels of faculties to perceive truth and information. Then after concluding the facts properly, act upon and use them appropriately. Perceiving truth accurately is the first step, and expressing the truth or information in a practical manner is the second step. Many brilliant people research information and conclude the facts, but do not use the data for practical application. What a waste of money, time and data! On the other hand, many practical leaders perceive the right information, but due to lack of wisdom, express the data wrong and destructively. Accurate and objective perceptions are musts, and practical application is required.
Practice applying objectivity and practicality daily for simple situations:
- Briefly relax and center yourself for a minute, if stressed.
- Use your physical and emotional instincts to perceive information or a situation fast.
- Evaluate the perceived data using your common sense and concrete reasoning faculties. Check if the data or part of the information seems right.
- Check the data or situation to see if they are good for your life and for others. Make a decision based on your highest principles.
- If the situation is good and beneficial for all parties, go ahead and apply it immediately. If it is destructive and harmful to anyone involved, forget it and drop it immediately.
- Make sure it is in line with your life's important goals and is not only beneficial for the present, but also for the long term.
the key to accessing greater power
This virtue is expressed as being loving, kind and compassionate in a selfless way. Benevolence is a powerful tool to maintain right human relationships and is the key to being loved by many. This is one of the most powerful qualities in great inspirational leaders and motivators. It is a source of power for charismatic people. The absence of benevolence can create conflict and loneliness in life. This virtue also has many offshoots like altruism, which will be discussed separately.
- Start your day by expressing goodwill. Create and project good intentions and wishes to as many people as possible daily. Goodwill begets goodwill.
- Avoid focusing on the negativity or mistakes of others and oneself.
- Express benevolence through pleasant words and communications.
- Practice the principle of forgiveness.
- Express benevolence through active service and applied action.
- Practice the spirit of fairness and a sense of justice.
Goodwill is the first rung in the ladder of success and the safety valve in the acquisition of power. Expressed as good intentions, goodwill is the seed of good actions, which when practiced regularly convert into good habits. A cultured personality is comprised of many good habits. Therefore, positive thoughts, pleasant wishes and right motives are good ways of building benevolence thoroughly. Benevolence is not just an active way of expressing love or kindness, but is also abstinence from harmful thoughts, words and actions. Start and end your day with intentions of goodwill. Humanity as a group is starting to implement this virtue.
Strategy: Technique to Build Goodwill (5 minutes daily)
- Spend 5 minutes right after you wake up to greet your day with gratitude for life and the source of your life. Use the feeling of your heart to express this for 1 minute.
- Silently express your good wishes to your family and loved ones, friends, co-workers and people whom you will be meeting throughout the day. Do this for 2 minutes.
- Visualize or have the intention of a good and successful day and see your whole day's programs and goals achieved. Visualize problems being resolved properly. Focus more on the positive outcomes of your day (2 minutes).
Then, be fair to everyone the whole day. Role-reversal or putting yourself in the shoes of others when making decisions, solving problems or negotiating is a good practice and habit to maintain fairness. Remain detached from the good things you've accomplished so you don’t over-inflate your ego. Do your duties as well as possible, spontaneously, without expecting fame, rewards or applause.
Evaluate yourself each month and at the end of the year. Do this monthly, with special evaluation on your birthday and at the end of the year. And finally, open your heart through applied service to a good cause and let harmlessness be your natural state. The true requirement of the mastery of personal powers is harmlessness through love.
To be altruistic is not just being generous at the financial or material levels, but also at the spiritual, mental, emotional and energy levels and in a more unconditional, unselfish way. At first, people are generous with some hidden selfish intentions in the back of their minds - even subconsciously. This is excusable and understandable in ordinary people because they are still “spiritual children,” but when the heart is developed, the emotional instinct of being altruistic is already a habit.
Abundance in life is not only measured in financial and tangible material assets, but also in many intangible ways like good health, happiness, peace of mind, smooth-sailing projects and life's fulfillment. Good luck and the ability to be entitled to good things go to the people who work for them. There are different levels of expressing generosity and altruism, starting from physical and material levels. When people are financially generous, they tend to become wealthy. Financial and material prosperity are usually the result of not only hard work, but also generosity and abstention from stealing and unfairness. Hard work is not enough to make a leader or organization successful and prosperous or to sustain abundance for a long time. There is also a need for intelligent disciplined work. Intelligent disciplined work equals hard work in a well-organized manner with right timing, plus the good karma of entitlement.
Strategy: Maximize Altruism
- Give what you need most
- Donate to those that have the greatest influence on world evolution and human development for the longest period of time and for the largest number of beneficiaries, human or otherwise
- Give to people, groups or organizations that have helped your life directly
- Invest in good karma through donations before your need arises
- Do not look down on people who have less money or education.
- Avoid pride. The lesson of pride is to be humbled, including in financial status.
- Avoid excessiveness and fanaticism.
Rich leaders and big corporations go bankrupt when they violate this principle. It is natural that as you climb the ladder of fame and success, overhead expenses also increase – most of the time exponentially. But know your limits and always save, not only for the present, but also for the rainy days.
One of the most important requirements for thriving in this highly competitive modern society is the ability to work in an effective team or with a powerful group. This is true in a family, business or spiritual service. With group work, bigger goals can be achieved in less time than if projects are done individually. There are also plans and missions that require many different talents and skills not often all expressed by one person. Behind the great success of any organization or leader is a group or team that made it happen. A great leader can achieve the so-called impossible with a powerful team. Group consciousness is a must in the working and development of effective teams, sustained success and personal influence.
Strategy: What Are the Requirements to Develop Group Consciousness?
Group consciousness is essential to materialize projects and require:
The spirit of interdependence and co-existence
Through the spirit of interdependence and coexistence, one realizes that you cannot exist without others, that the true nature of life and creation is characterized by co-existence.
The spirit of cooperation
Before people want to cooperate, they first need to know the goal and purpose of the undertaking; that the project and work are worth the investment of their time, talent and effort; and that it is aligned to their purpose or goals in life. It is best that the individual group members know the expected results of the project from the outset from their leader.
Proper skills and aptitude
The talents and qualifications of the cooperating person should fit the requirements and expectations of the group and leader.
Right attitude
Whereas aptitude development requires the member to have skills and talents, the attitude requirement is more of the right psychological behavior towards the goal and within the group or team process. The right attitude involves more of a freedom to express creative ideas and clear communications properly and appropriately as long as these proposals are reasonable and do not delay the projects and negate results.
Inspiration
Whether dealing with a short-term or long-term plan, groups perform better when they are inspired, happy and enjoy what they are doing. It is not only the leader who is responsible to make the group happy or inspire every member. Each group member should do their best to stimulate inspiration and the sense of joy in the group. The important thing is not to dwell on the negative issues, but rather to pass through them courageously and objectively.
Dispassion and detachment
When a group becomes fanatical, excessive or very emotional, the team can't function properly. The members should not focus on personal likes or dislikes and should subordinate their individual preferences to the good of the group. Any disturbing and disrupting agenda brought by anger, jealousy, envy, violence, fear, separativeness and stress should be minimized or overcome immediately by the group or the leader. The role of the leader and senior members of the group is to dismantle these poisonous qualities immediately.
Group love and compassion
Each member should be considered the other member's keeper. There should be friendship and love for the other members, but not passionate or sentimental love. Most groups and teams are still too emotional, sentimental and sometimes fanatical.
This is the key to greatness and powerful service. Whether in sports, politics, business, family or any endeavor, the virtue of sacrifice stands out as one of the keys to achieving great things and expressing a powerful life of service.
To leave a legacy, one needs this virtue. It is the bottom line of greatness. The best chess players are those who understand the principle of sacrifice in the early stage of the game in order to win at the end. The principle of sacrifice is not what most people think. It is not relinquishing something bigger or greater for nothing or lesser. True sacrifice should not be seen as a trigger of suffering. In fact, it is a cause of joy or bliss. It is usually giving up a penny for a hundred dollars. Sacrifices almost always deserve greater rewards of contentment, joy and a feeling of greatness.
Strategy: 7 Steps to Intelligently Apply the Virtue of Sacrifice
- List your most important goals in life that are the highest priority.
- List all the less important goals and activities that can be reduced
- Determine the physical, emotional and mental attitudes and aptitudes that block or disrupt your effectiveness to achieve your important goals.
- Identify your personal desires and preferences that need to be relinquished or changed because they are not supportive of your new priorities. Many peope fail because they are so attached to the past.
- Constantly focus on higher goals focus to justify the sacrifice.
- People who do not have this virtue yet should start practicing by sacrificing smaller things within their capabilities. As it becomes a habit, then bigger things can be relinquished for greater goals.
- The reward of being able to serve a great cause that contributes to life and society should justify the sacrifice, not just financial reward or fame. Many rewards supersede money and glory. Many have exemplified the virtue of sacrifice and service to humanity. The good news is that we can do it too and it is never too late.
Most people have never considered that good health is a virtue. Therefore, I am obliged to declare good health a virtue and one of the most important aspects of leadership. All the other virtues are not easy to master and execute without good health. When a person is sick, will-power and vitality are more difficult to maintain even when you know techniques to master them.
As the Arabian proverb says, ‘He who has good health has hope and he who has hope can do almost anything.’ Talents and educational degrees aren’t that useful when people are bedridden or suffering with life-threatening diseases, so it should be clear that good health is one of the most important virtues. Wealthy leaders will understand their powerlessness when they are between life and death. Titles, success and money do not mean much in the end. If you have undergone a near-death experience, you will understand what I mean.
Strategy: How Do You Enhance Your Total Health and Well-Being?
Good health is not only the absence of physical ailments or discomfort; it is complete physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well-being. It is wholeness and balance of all aspects as a leader. Since there is no one single solution on all the levels of health for now, we need to itemize the levels of care of human bodies and consult different experts. The levels of care are:
- Physical health
- Vitality health
- Psychological health
- Spiritual health
It is important to know that great world evolution has been achieved little by little through these constant practice of thee positive virtues that have endured the test of time. The same is true with your personal evolution – the positive change can be slow, step-by-step.
The game of life can be lost at the finish line if leaders are not on guard until the very end of their lives. The single most important factor that brings the highest value to success is the 8 Key Virtues. They are the most important keys that set apart merely successful leaders from fulfilled human beings who leave a great legacy. At the end, self-fulfillment is a by-product of self-mastery. Consider this: Knowledge through the mind brings success and wisdom through virtues brings fulfillment. May you enjoy this higher path of leadership, achieving the great missions you’ll set for yourself and becoming one of the most loved, liked and respected leaders of leaders in the world.
Think benevolently;
Speak wisely;
Act fairly;
Work intelligently;
Share altruistically;
Serve selflessly;
Live moderately;
Success follows...
Fulfillment thereafter.
