The Great Power of Unity

The First Great power we will examine is the power of unity and its enormous influence in business and life. The very first principle that you as my next millionaire must embrace is that all unity begins from the inside out. That is the first key to unleashing the power of unity. You must be a united being and possess a powerful trait of character called integrity.

The word "integrity" comes from the word "integrated". We all know what it means if something is integrated. Well, when someONE is "integrated", we say that they have internal unity, or integrity.

Now usually, we say that someone has integrity in the sense that they are honest with others and they do what they say they will do. But true integrity, or self-unity, goes even beyond this meaning. It means that a person is not internally fragmented. Believe it or not, such people are harder and harder to find these days.

If we have true integrity, of course we are honest and live up to our words; for we know not to make promises we can't keep...and we know what promises we can and cannot keep. We also have all of our actions and thoughts and feelings expressing a singular unity; thus, for instance, if we are in a marriage we don't just go through the motions of being someone's spouse or parent--we act as we truly feel, and our feelings are engendered by our thoughts and actions and lead us into new thoughts and actions that all flow together. We are consistent. We never try to replace action with mere motion.

When we have integrity, or unity, we can make ourselves move toward a singular, powerful objective. We aren't fighting ourselves. We aren't ambivalent, feeling one way while thinking another and then acting haphazardly and confusedly. We can focus all of our action and concentration upon a singular ultimate goal, feeling deep confidence that what we are doing and what we desire are correct.

So, the power of unity begins on the individual level. From there, it radiates outward into the family, the community, the state, the nation.

It may seem ironic, but only when we are acting in our best interests, with respect for the best interests of others and their similar actions, can we have unity in the family, nation, and so on. Adam Smith, the founder of capitalism , the most powerful economic system ever devised and the one that easily gives people the most liberty and chance for wealth, noticed this fact and called it "The Invisible Hand". He also pointed out that the Invisible Hand arose to turn tens of thousands of little individual actions taken by those not focused on any "common good" but only their own best interests into a grand, orchestrated movement that benefited all of society. It is very interesting that Adam Smith began as a moral philosopher whose goal was to better the conditions of the common English laborer!

The power of unity is evident in all successful businesses and organizations. My favorite example of unity comes from studying the Imperial Roman military. I find that the Roman Legions were able to march in such nearly perfect lock-step with the same pace and stride that highly accurate surveying and measurement methods and units could arise from measuring their marches. For instance, the extremely familiar measurement of the "mile" comes from the Latin "mille passum", which was 5,000 "pes" or lock-steps of the marchers in a Roman Legion. The Power of Rome was in her Legions. The power of unity is why they were feared. It is because of their unity that Europe was united--The only time in recorded history. Napoleon and Hitler both tried and failed.

If you run a business and have employees, you will want them united under the common banner of the business' objective. Of course, this is the greatest possible profitability, but beyond that there must be a way of producing and selling to get those profits. All employees must feel united under your business' banner so that their individual actions integrate with those of you and all the others, creating the best products and selling them at the best possible prices to make your business the most money. Therefore unity, or integrity, is utterly essential to the creation of wealth. The real power of unity is created the moment there is agreement to work toward a common objective.