Without beliefs, we have no principles. Without principles, we have no convictions and are not anchored. Without anchors, we are drifting away. And with drifting, we have no control of our destination. Without control, we are at the mercy of life situations.

Surely such life leads to hopelessness.

Control your thoughts, avoid calamities and live better. By Nimroth Gwetsa, 28 September 2017.

Some are comfortable in not taking any stance on difficult issues and situations hoping to avoid controversies. They neither deny nor accept any position and describe their lame stance as maintaining neutrality they claim is good. How can such neutrality ever be good?

Neutrality differs from impartiality. Neutrality is remaining unengaged, whereas impartiality is deliberately removing bias. Neutrality “goes with the flow” while impartiality is about controlling the “flow” to maintain balanced fairness. Neutrality is passive and impartiality is active.

To illustrate the uselessness of neutrality, imagine being wrongly accused and standing before a neutral judge. What hope would you have of justice being served? A neutral judge is not guided by principles, but arguments. An impartial judge, on the one hand, is anchored on good principles, enforcing impartiality while listening to arguments from all sides.

In the neutral judge situation, if your accuser is a talented and more eloquent speaker than you, you would probably be found guilty. In the impartial judge scenario, though your accuser may be eloquent in speech, the judge will first draw strength from what the principles of the law say, then weigh your honest defence arguments against your accuser’s. The judge will then, hopefully, make a sound judgement.

I may not have succeeded in showing the difference between neutrality and impartiality. Nevertheless, I’d be more comfortable standing before an impartial judge than a neutral one waiting to be moved without regard for principles.

In fact, in neutrality, you have actually taken a stance to being unhelpful to either side. You have taken a stance to be worthless to either of them. And from either side’s perspective, you have actually taken a stance in favour of the other side. Neutrality among humans distinguished from ordinary animals by their ability to discern, cannot always be tolerated. Impartiality is more desirable.

We must therefore be careful of what we believe, for, this shapes our actions and behaviour. We must not confuse those who claim they believe something yet act contrary to their beliefs that such shape our actions. Those who act contrary to their beliefs are false believers. They suffer from intellectual assentation. They know causal and effect relationship yet have no courage of turning their knowledge to beliefs that influence their actions.

We cannot afford to entertain intellectual assentation in our businesses. Intellectual assent is on the same side of the “fence” as neutrality. Unhelpful. What we need are beliefs that shape our actions, hence the importance of guarding those beliefs.

Many business people do not realise the prejudice, bias and gestures their oblivious behaviour displays to others. Their actions come without much thought as if they are second nature to them. Unbeknown to them, they might be alienating many real or potential customers. The same applies to how managers treat their staff or vice versa.

If you believe your customers or clients want to steal from you, your behaviour would naturally be more inclined to treat them like suspects, following them around, or hiding some details. Similarly, as a client, if you believe your potential or active supplier just wants to sell to you or is only interested in getting your money or you consider them vulnerable, you are likely to treat them with disdain. Despite the apparent immediate gain, everyone loses out ultimately and our development will suffer.

While care should be taken to be prudent and vigilant against rogue people, we need to be careful not to treat everyone as a baddy, for, we risk alienating genuine people from doing business with us.

Why would anyone who can exercise discretion by opting to do business elsewhere, choose to do business with you while subjected to a bad experience of being treated like a suspect or contemptuously?

We have heard of complaints, for example, by some previously disadvantaged people at their workplace of their experiences, where they are perceived to being incompetent and needing to prove their competence before they could be taken seriously. This form of prejudice applies across a different spectrum of race, gender, physical body ability, age and class among others. While others might be motivated to take prejudice as a challenge worthy of being disproved, other good people might be lost and the company might be the bigger loser afterwards.

Asserting own privileges and rights could affect how others experience your behaviour. I do not advocate exploitation or one’s vulnerability to the whims of those intent on exploiting anyone considered weak, but I urge one to know the principles one is trying to promote in one’s actions taken. Such is an effective principle-driven stance that promotes one’s exertion of power than allowing oneself to be a reactor instead of a catalyst.

Corruption is rife and deeply embedded in many people’s lives nowadays. Corruption has been so normalised that we will soon be debating whether it is congenital or learned. Corruption didn’t become endemic overnight. It started with a few people believing there is no other way of succeeding in life without “bending” some principles and rules. Some even justify it today, saying it is the way of the world and that everyone is doing it. To the contrary, we are not all corrupt or rely on patronage to succeed.

Things don’t come easy when you take a stance against graft. But when you know what the ultimate prize is and the sustainability of maintaining that success, you will realise that momentary gains are not worth the loss of lifetime generational joy and peace of mind that result from perseverance.

If we can develop negative beliefs on which we can base our lives to our ultimate destruction, why can we not develop positive beliefs from the beginning and develop strength and wisdom to endure and overcome our hardships? All stem from our mind. We are captives of our minds. We can only control what we believe. Let us therefore not be victims of our thoughts but active participants on what we believe and base our lives on.

Not all situations can be planned and controlled. Even then, managing your reaction to them should be done proactively to ensure you maintain some control than allowing circumstances to force you to make unpalatable choices.

Without knowledge, as we are told by oracles and are witnesses thereof, we perish. Let us therefore gain knowledge that does not lead us to intellectual assent, but to beliefs that influence our actions, which in turn shape our good behaviour.