The Best Way To Make Your Point

Today I want to share with you a little story that has powerful, long term implications in our personal lives, our relationships, in customer and employee relations, marketing, branding... everything we do.

According to the Life of Francis d'Assisi, Francis once invited a young monk to join him on a trip to the local village to preach. Honored to be asked and excited to learn from the master, the monk readily accepted.

All day long he and Francis walked through the streets, byways, and alleys caring for the needs of the poor and helpless along the way. They rubbed shoulders with hundreds of people. At day's end, the two headed back home. Not even once had Francis addressed the gathered crowds, nor had he talked to anyone about the gospel. Greatly disappointed, his young companion said "I thought we were going into town to preach." Francis responded, "My son, we did preach. We were preaching while we were walking. We were watched by many and our behavior was closely observed. It is of no use to walk anywhere to preach unless we preach everywhere as we walk!"

So often we want to convince our teenage kids to adopt good habits or avoid bad ones; to get a coworker to act in better ways toward customers and clients; to make a spouse or significant other understand why something they do bothers us so much; to convince someone to do business with us based on what we tell them. We want to do it with words and we want it to take root immediately.

We must develop the patience to close our mouths at times and just "Be the change we wish to see in the world," as Gandhi stated it. If we want to convince others of the merits of what we are trying to say, perhaps we should stop "preaching" it for a while and just start "doing" it and "living" it.

If you haven't seen it already, I encourage you to watch the following video, which I hope demonstrates these ideas better than I can merely talk about them.



Have an Excellent day!
Dan
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