7 Attributes for Success : Inner Success and Happiness

by Elliot, Patricia

• ISBN13: 9781452027715
• ISBN10: 1452027714
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-06-29
• Publisher: Textstream

Summary

This book is a very practical approach to dealing with life in general. If you want to improve your overall wellbeing it is well worth reading. It is relevant to anyone who wants to improve their wellbeing and to any organisation that wants to couple staff wellbeing with stress legislation compliance.Written in friendly language and being clear, engaging and practical it has the ability to make everyone pause and ponder on their own lives and the lives of others. Reading about, understanding the attributes and using the techniques will increase your awareness, confidence and esteem. You will feel less stressed and by practising the techniques you can and will improve your lifestyle.This book is Patricia's alternative approach to developing people within their own environments. Anyone, no matter how experienced or inexperienced, would be foolish not to have a copy in their possession at all times as it will positively change their lives.'I read it from cover to cover as I was unable to put it down until I had concluded it. As a result, I felt strongly connected to Patricia's philosophies. I highly recommend that you purchase this book'. SM

Excerpts

Self-awareness is finding out who you are and what your strengths and weaknesses are.  It is the first step towards a better way of being. As your self-awareness grows you will start to understand why you feel the way you do, what you feel and why you behave as you do.  Once you understand these things it gives you the opportunity and freedom to change those things you would like to change about yourself and thereby create the kind of life you want for yourself.  Without understanding and being aware of who you are you cannot change things. When you are clear about who you are, you can start to look at what you want and why you want it. This empowers you to make changes and choices.  You also need to challenge past conditioning and beliefs but before that you first need to learn about yourself or you will continue to get caught up in unknown beliefs and allow unknown thought processes to determine your feelings and actions. This is like going through life with the mind of a 'stranger'.  If you are going to move successfully forward to a better life, self-awareness is one of the most important attributes to have and underpins all the others.  Now you might be saying to yourself at this stage that you know who you are and are perfectly self-aware. Don't be fooled. It is not an easy attribute to understand and may even be confused with self consciousness.  So let's start with a definition of both self-awareness and self-consciousness.. There may be other definitions but for now a short one for each will suffice.  Self-awareness is the understanding that you exist as an individual with your own private thoughts. Self-awareness is a unique type of consciousness in that it is not always present.  On the other hand you probably understand the meaning of self-consciousness as being when you are worried about how you appear to others, that is, when you are self-conscious you can feel too aware of your actions and it can impair your ability to perform. Think of a concert pianist or singer, if they are self-conscious their hands may become stiff or throat restricted and worse still they may lose the ability to perform when they notice the audience. However in the context of this chapter the meaning of self-consciousness is about the development of your identity. It is about knowing yourself objectively and this plays a big part in how you behave.   It affects people in different ways and different cultures vary in the importance they place on self-consciousness.  Self-awareness and self-consciousness are linked. John Locke was very interested in human understanding and according to him personal identity (the 'self') depends on consciousness. You are the same person to the extent that you are conscious of your past and future thoughts and actions just as you are of your present thoughts and actions.  Our business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our conduct.  If we can find out those measures... we need not to be troubled that some other things escape our knowledge.John Locke   So how can you become self-aware? Where is it processed? Research by Ilan Goldberg through an MRI experiment showed that self-awareness appears to be processed in the superior frontal gyrus (this makes up about one third of the frontal lobe of the human brain, one of the prominent bumps on the surface of your brain!).  There is also a link between self-awareness, self-consciousness and self-esteem. Most people will have suffered from self-consciousness at some point in their lives. You can probably recall a time when you were self-conscious and how it affected you. Not only did it affect your self-esteem but also your confidence. Past conditioning also affects your awareness such as. Think about how you have been brought up. Were you told not to boast about yourself, after all, no-one likes a big-head? Or were you told .you had a big ego? Ego is discussed later on in section 5.3.  With all these links between self-awareness, self-consciousness, self-esteem, confidence and ego you are probably feeling confused and wondering what it is all about. Briefly:  Ø   You need to be self-aware but not so much that you become too self-conscious Ø   You don't want to be too self-conscious because this affects your self-esteem Ø   If too self-conscious it knocks your confidence Ø   You don't want to be so over confident that you come across as arrogant and big-headed Ø   If you are big-headed then you are thinking of your ego instead of your self-esteem Ø   And so on and so on......  More confused? Don't worry. You are going to read about all these areas and have tips and tools to use to keep you feeling good about yourself.  How do you become self-aware then maintain your self-awareness? In order to make the best of your self-awareness attribute you need to examine your belief system. This may sound easy but you may not want to do this because it means being prepared to face the truth about yourself and this could in all probability be painful.    It is also more than likely that when you know who you are you may have to change! Lots of people just do not want to do this because they are afraid and it takes effort!  In short, self-awareness requires honesty and courage. You will learn more about courage in Chapter 7 which is about 'audacity' the third attribute.  Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, qualities and flaws. If you are anything like me you may often think you have more flaws than qualities! After all you don't want to be thought of as boastful and big-headed.   So how do you find out who you really are? You need to look at your past conditioning and your belief system. Were you encouraged to do things, encouraged when you did well or praised (more on the difference later), or were you told not to boast, not to talk about yourself.  You need to trace your thoughts and behaviour back to the beliefs you have...