“The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too.”

A CEO recently asked me about one of his competitors.  I told him, “You should call them and talk to them about what they are up to.”  The silence on the other end of the phone was deafening.  Finally, this CEO asked me, “Can I really do that?”  It’s funny how we come to such a place of self-preservation that we miss that we should continuously be expanding our perspective, network and understanding of others, even to the point of building up a relationship with our competitors.  You see, there isn’t anymore such a thing as a singular market.  Maybe at one time when our business was the only one in town (think local hardware store) we could ignore the rest of the market and just preserve ourselves.  But in today’s marketplace where everything is interconnected we want to be able to grow our categories, not just our singular business by bringing together the power and leverage of lobbies, consortium, and sheer numbers for greatest impact.  So yes, we have to watch out for ourselves, but beware of letting self-preservation put blinders on us where we miss the bigger picture.

This book I am reading, “Not I, but Christ”, talks about how our tendency towards “self” can be traced all the way back to the choice of Adam and Eve that spawned a nature in all of us to take care ourselves first, which, as we intellectually know is not the spirit of God.  It is true that when I wake in the AM and consider my day, I think of me first and what I need to do.  But what if our attitude towards self-preservation started with what I need to do to serve, help or support others?  Would we change our priorities for the day?  Or would we be able to contextualize what we need to do to be better for others, thereby giving us greater motivation to strive to be better or more complete?  The most happy and productive people I know are those who are in the service of others and their self-preservation revolves around being the best they can be, to preserve themselves for the assistance of others.

Reference: Genesis 3:6 (New Living Translation)