Ora et labora

Every great success starts first with a great idea. It is the art of the creator to choose from a multitude of creative ideas the one that will eventually become his work. A good work is a testimony that a man’s spirit, when open to good things, can create for the blessing of other people. Spiritual people can create many great ideas and have a choice of which to commit to first. Strong personalities know that for success they will have to give more than they will receive and that they must not calculate about the effort to succeed. Such people, by example, encourage others to change and always choose more difficult paths.

Good people will set the best example by their work and help build others. Creative people in responsible jobs are always surrounded by other creative people, aware that the talents they have received and developed are most effectively realized when they are with similar people. Entrepreneurs and managers who are strong characters easily discern untruths and manipulations and have a strong sense for justice.

Strong entrepreneurs and managers are aware that their business organization and results of work belong to everyone according to the rule of “unequal equality.” In other words, all those who have contributed to the result are entitled to an award, but not all are equally deserving. All are equal from the perspective of opportunity, but not all are equally deserving, because the results of work are different from person to person. A feature of strong business organizations, but also prosperous societies, is the opportunity for the best individuals to become excellent and to take responsibility where they work and create.

Whether it is entrepreneurship or politics, success is possible when people with leadership behavior take responsibility. Leadership implies high individual growth in two key traits: character and expertise. Character is built over time, with harder decisions against the current of populism and flattery to all, always in the best interest of the community.

Expertise is gained through time, patient and persistent learning and work. An important feature in the behavior of strong personalities is that their speech and words are predominantly positive and that they are preoccupied with the question of how to create superior products, services, and solutions for the benefit of others. This group of people strives for lifelong growth and education and sees life as an opportunity.

Selfish people are not creative and look to receive more than they can give. Weak characters are full of criticism and dissatisfaction and always choose easier paths. Such create mediocre criteria and have nothing to show, hide their ignorance and look for a way for others to appreciate them by using fear or manipulation, depending on what is available to them. They often tend for others to feel sorry for them as victims of injustice around them.

Man speaks from his heart through speech what his heart is full of.

Laziness and lack of good in many is manifested in speech full of accusations against others, seeking guilt and responsibility on all sides only never starting from themselves.

People who are cowards do not have the courage to look at their lives critically and face the truth about themselves.

It is easiest for them to treat the painful truth about themselves with negative words about others.

Such people want to see themselves as victims, and show injustice so strong that nobody can create anything and go through life, which they are witnesses to, because as righteous they have failed because of so much injustice. Most often, in their eyes, hard-working, honorable and responsible people who went against the current and chose harder life paths and managed to create something through their faith and work, from which everyone else benefits, should die of shame.

Negative people through their (lack of) deeds and ugly speech directly accuse the Lord that with the sacrifice on the cross He did not solve the problem of evil in the world and that everything is absurd in a world ruled by evil. However, we all see in others, and the environment first, what is in ourselves. As we are, we look at other people with such eyes and first notice what our hearts are full of. The change of injustice around us begins first with the changes of ourselves. Choice of blaming others + passivity = frustration. This group of people strives for lifelong dissatisfaction and views life as a threat.

What is it with the considerable number of individuals from our nation that they have fallen into despair so much and that their speech is marked by so much dissatisfaction and accusations, destruction, and absurdity? Without a doubt, there is the problem of excessive expectations that society and the authorities should solve the existential problems of their citizens, because according to many, the government exists for that. However, this socialist idea that the state should think for me and about my future is a thing of the past.

It used to be enough to finish some school and the socialist society would immediately give a job to a young person without special responsibility. A society of equal individuals did not demand responsibility for effective creation. The economies behind the Iron Curtain have therefore lagged behind market economies by almost half a century of development. Unfortunately, many still think that society is obliged to give a job to someone immediately after finishing school, and that it is the injustice of society that young people cannot be employed immediately after finishing school.

However, very few young people are ready to work hard and volunteer for a short time in order to master the necessary skills for the job and thus become in demand. Also, few are willing to start from simpler jobs first to master skills for more demanding jobs. Every successful entrepreneur who worked hard and started from the simplest jobs and built his company, took hard work into account. When a young person is not ready to start from the basic activities and processes as the business owner did, he sends a message that he does not appreciate the employer, but overestimates his diploma.

Many young people expect fast progress, a job with little responsibility and the best possible salary, and if they do not get that, along with their parents they blame society. To their great regret, entrepreneurs do not want such staff, because they see in them future seekers of rights and many problems. No wonder that many with university degrees go abroad and do jobs that the domicile population does not want to do.

Although this is a difficult truth, the good side of this story is that after these trips many experience the realization that, with so much effort and sweat, they could do it all in their homeland. Many have already returned and opened their own companies and are now working successfully. Many parents contribute to the emigration of the young population by speaking out against society, politics and employers instead of encouraging their children to continue to grow and learn with faith and that this is the only way to a better future.

Undoubtedly, the consequences of self-government are still great today and that is why many with such a way of thinking do not see opportunities for creation, but threats and disintegration of everything. It seems to them that everything is collapsing, when in fact their built mental model of thinking about the responsibility of others before any personal responsibility for their own future is collapsing. There are two different approaches to how workers behave when they see a problem.

The first approach: creative people see an opportunity to solve a problem by creating something new and to make it for the benefit of others. Another approach: negative people see a problem that frustrates them and makes them unable to be creative. The first group of people are, in a broader sense, truly enterprising, because they have made an effort to create a solution from the problem that they can offer to others.

The second group of people are not enterprising and for them this first group will have to work harder and create for the whole society to survive. The first group of people think and speak mostly positively, and the second group of people are full of guilt of others. The first and second groups of people are the Y and X populations of workers according to the well-known X-Y theory of occupational psychology. It is true that they are all employed, but not everyone works and not everyone creates. What should the first group of people do?

Uncompromisingly fight for justice and prevent lazy people, cowards, liars and troublemakers from all walks of life, professions and parties from taking the lead in society. Jesus said that “for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.” It has been scientifically proven that people who are lazy and manipulative do everything to keep their positions to the extreme limits of effort, because they are professionals in this craft. The only way to overcome them is by the perseverance of hardworking and good people with persistent prayer, because this is a spiritual battle.

The problem of negative speech is a spiritual problem, its source lies in spirituality and sin. It is true that if we look at injustice and do nothing, we support such a situation through passivity and silence, and we have no right to complain that we have no prospects. It is necessary to send a clear message that this is not my choice! In my life I am asked and no one is stronger than me to take away my faith and hope, nor is evil stronger than good that cannot be created. Negativism, destruction and accusations are free choice.

In contrast, the free choice is that I can make something new right now. There are two ways: wide and spacious (seemingly lighter), and narrow and strait (seemingly heavier). The man who chooses harder choices actually chooses well, because “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light,” says the Lord. “O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him” (Ps. 34:9).[1]


[1] The article was published with minor changes in: Veritas. Glasnik sv. Antuna Padovanskog. Croatian Province of St. Jerome of the Franciscan Conventuals. Zagreb. Sveti Duh 31. No. 3. March 2020. P. 29.

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