Service ethics

Excerpts from Service ethics
Charles Watson & Pamela Johnson, in Executive Excellence

• Genuine satisfaction is achieved when one lives for something outside of oneself instead of doing what one merely enjoys, or doing things that might produce recognition and praise or a sense of self-confidence, or affection and companionship.
• Behaving only to fulfill self-centered needs truncates what a human is capable of experiencing and achieving.
• Those who make lasting contributions, as history reveals, are not the ones who seek happiness for themselves. A sense of fulfillment comes unexpectedly, through sacrifices in the service of others or in some great cause.
• A careful analysis of the happiest people shows that they have succeeded in forgetting themselves while they were all-consumed in the service of something truly worthwhile.
• The good life is achieved not by obtaining valuables for oneself but by serving others in valuable ways.
• By serving others, not ourselves, we derive lasting satisfaction.
• Working to serve others or a great cause not only produces remarkable business results, it also changes dramatically those who chose to do so.
• We can better understand why service leads to a better world and to a better life by realizing that selfless service demands a radical departure from customary attitudes, orientations, and habit patterns. It requires boldness to put oneself second to something greater first. It requires vigilance to monitor one's feelings and actions to maintain these priorities.
• Service calls the individual to subordinate himself as the central focus of life, to make whatever sacrifices are necessary to shoulder his responsibilities and carry the burdens demanded by his cause, and to realize that he steadily builds his own character.
• One indication of whether a person has forgotten himself in the pursuit of a cause is whether he views his work as a privilege, or as a form of drudgery. Those who are concerned mostly with serving and who forget themselves in the process, view their work as a privilege, and in so doing are equipped with the right attitude and mental stamina to bear the difficulties and hardships the work involves.
• Every great endeavor requires great sacrifices; nothing of significance is produced through insignificant efforts.
• Life takes on real meaning when one does meaningful things. Then no demand is too great, no work too dirty, no job unimportant.
• We owe everything to those people who spend their lives without fear, hesitation, or expectation of personal gain and comfort, working for great causes. Only through service do people achieve greatness.
• The great difficulty for anyone is to make himself into the kind of person who gives up what he thinks he owns, to become someone who boldly spends his life in the service of worthwhile ends.