In the past, I often facilitated trainings on “stress management” for teachers. They were organized on a voluntary basis – schools would present a list of different topics through which teachers could upgrade their qualifications, and they would choose. What struck me strongly back then was that the people who signed up for the stress management trainings were in fact those who already knew quite a lot about stress. These were people who had already read a fair number of books on the subject, and in our discussions during the training they used precise language and shared insightful reflections. At the same time, from the cases we discussed it became clear that the people who were the main source of stress for them were their colleagues – colleagues who had shown no interest in this seminar.
My impression that those who already know quite a lot in a given field want to know even more in the same field deepened further when I began conducting trainings for business organizations as well. At one such training on the topic of “emotional intelligence,” most of the participants arrived with the attitude: “Let’s get this over with quickly so we can get back to work.” It was a Friday, that is, a working day, and the training was indeed at the expense of their work duties. But I had conducted trainings on Fridays before. This particular group simply was not motivated. The training was not their own choice; it was paid for by their employer, not by them.
I tried to transform their external motivation into internal motivation by creating interest in the topic, but it was very difficult. Only one of them listened to what I was saying with genuine interest and shining eyes. After it became clear to all of us that there was a problem with motivation, and I said that you cannot force something good to happen, he exclaimed with disappointment: “Come on, people, don’t you realize that what the lecturer is telling us is extremely important?! I go to psychotherapy in order to learn these things about emotions! She has come here in person to explain and teach us, and you don’t realize what you are missing!”
The only person who truly understood the enormous role of emotional intelligence for success in life was the one who was in psychotherapy. Thus, my impression that the one who knows more than the others wants to know even more became firmly established. That is why, when I came across a sentence in the book Crucial Conversations, things suddenly fell into place for me.
“People who realize that they need to begin with themselves do what is necessary. By working on themselves, they become skilled at dialogue. But there is an obvious irony here: it is the most gifted, not the least skilled, communicators who constantly work to improve their dialogue skills. As is often the case in business, the rich get richer.” (pp. 47–48)
I am not familiar with statistics about wealthy people, but I already know that this applies fully to people who are interested in psychology. The people who come to the personal development and self-knowledge seminars that I facilitate have higher levels of psychological knowledge than the average person. And this observation is nothing new under the sun. In the Bible it is written: “For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away.” At one time, not only did I not understand what was meant by this, but it also seemed openly unjust to me. Now, I think I am beginning to understand…
To make things about learning and self-development even more interesting, here is another quote from Crucial Conversations:
“Early in our professional development, we (the authors) studied forty-eight managers who were learning how to conduct crucial conversations. We observed them at work and found that only a few of them applied what they had learned in their relationships with subordinates. Unfortunately, most of them did not change at all. But the encouraging thing was that there were also those who diligently applied the skills they had been taught and achieved change.” (p. 261)
Interesting, isn’t it? These were people who had been trained in communication skills by top-level specialists; they had been given special attention in order to develop this basic skill for achieving success and coping with critical situations; they had then been observed to track change … and in the end, most of them remained unchanged. We can look for the reasons for this in many directions, and each of them is probably true to some extent. For me, however, the most important one is related to what you already have within yourself. If you do not have within you the desire to grow and change, to make the effort to bring positive change into your life and into your relationships with other people, nothing can be done by force.
The principle of increasing what we already have and taking away even the little that we have applies not only to material wealth. To the greatest extent, it applies to true wealth – the wealth of the soul. If you are rich in qualities that create friendships, your friendships and your ability to make friends will multiply. If you are kind and warm-hearted, the kindness in your heart will increase. If you are rich in awareness, even more awareness will come into your life. If you are devoted to sport and a healthy way of life, more health will enter your life.
We multiply what we persist in.
At this stage of my life, this is the strange arithmetic of increase and decrease in our lives – and the answer to the question of why the rich get richer.
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
