Personal Accountability—Do You Know Your Own Influence?

All of us influence someone. We may not be leaders, but we are in leadership. We may not be powerful but we have power. We may not have responsibility but we are responsible. An old adage states, “No man is an Island.” Even those people living the most isolated of lifestyles have influenced someone, are influencing someone or will influence someone. You cannot be human and not influence someone or something in your world. Do you know the power of your personal accountability and the influence you have on the world around you? 

 

As parents, we influence our children. Early child hood experts tell us that a child’s personality is fixed by the age of 5 years old, and in those early preschool years, children lay the foundations for everything they will need to learn for the rest of their lives. As they watch their parents or the significant adults in their lives, they learn as we teach them values, morals and behaviors they see portrayed in us. We influence our children in more ways than we sometimes understand.

 

As members of a work team, we influence the people we work with every day, even if we do not have a leadership responsibility over them. As we interact and work with our colleagues, we challenge work ethics and habits. We help colleagues learn new ways of doing their jobs and to approach time management in a new way. Our influence can help create a harmonious and happy working environment but a lack of team focus by any member or members of a workplace can create an environment of hostility and jealousy that reduces productivity and increases job satisfaction 

 

When we realize the influence we consciously or subconsciously have over other people, we are more willing to accept personal responsibility for our actions and reactions to particular circumstances and situations. It challenges us to consider others needs and the consequence of our actions and words. 

 

There are however those who live with a very self-focused view. This attitude is characterized in advertisements on television that suggest we have every right to focus on our personal rights and to indulge our dreams and desires. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with this attitude unless in the process we forget we are not an island and what we do will always influence others. We lead others by example.

 

Maintaining a Journal to Discover Yourself

Do you keep a journal to record your life journey? Maintaining a journal is an exceptionally good way of making sense of the things you go through in your life. You can tell your journal what you cannot tell other people and as you look back on past entries, your journal is a record of how every experience you go through in life, becomes a mirror that reflects how you have grown through those experiences. 

 

Many people feel they could not keep a journal. If you feel this way, and the reason is that you do not like writing or feel you can’t write properly, do not let this stop you exploring this excellent method of keeping track of the many thoughts and ideas that travel through your mind daily. Journaling is not about needing to write in any style or with grammar. You are the only one who will read the journal. It is your thoughts on paper 

 

Other people have found creative ways to use their journals. Drawings, photographs and poetry or quotes can sometimes depict the stories that you cannot write on paper. It is not the method you use that is important, but it is the concept of keeping a journal; it is the benefit it will be to you and your journey of self-discovery. 

 

Most of us hold our feelings inside, these can have both a stunting effect on our personal growth, and they can lead to health problems if the stress that usually accompanies them remains internal. Expressing thoughts on paper is the simplest way of learning how to express our feelings. Once expressed we can either look at them from a different perspective and deal with them ourselves or we can feel more willing to talk about them with others. 

 

Journaling for self-discovery need not be only for expressing our inner feelings and thoughts. As we travel through life, we inevitably have some great ideas. As we write these ideas down, we can return to them when we are in a position to either follow them up with action or to revisit them in the future. Without writing our ideas down, we often forget them and many of the gems that life offers us are forgotten when we try to commit them to memory. 

 

Once you create the habit of maintaining and writing in a journal often becomes a lifelong habit.

 

10 Questions to Understand Yourself

Do you understand yourself? Understanding yourself helps you to make decisions that help you to choose the best paths for you to take. Often the choices we make without understanding ourselves can be wrong decisions that create problems. Understanding our strengths, weaknesses, what gives us satisfaction and what causes us stress help guide our paths to those experiences that will provide us with the best possible outcomes for our choices. 

 

If you keep a journal these 10 questions may help you to know yourself and to get in touch with inner thoughts and feelings. They can help you make choices in your private life, your working life and in your relationships. 

 

1.  Describe what you believe is truly important in life. Describe anything you would fight for in life to keep and not lose.

2.  Describe what values in life best reflect what you believe are essential values that you treasure about yourself. Describe what gives you happiness and a sense of achievement and what upsets you and causes you stress and anger or frustration.

3.  Describe a dream you have about what you would like to achieve for yourself personally in life. Describe what affect this dream is having on your life currently and what you would hope it to have in the future.

4.  Who is a mentor or major influence in your life and how do they help you make decisions? Why are they an important influence?

5.  What would you like to achieve within the next 10 years in your personal life? 

6.  What do you consider are your special talents and gifts?

7.  What skills would you like to develop in either your personal or working life in the next 12 months?

8.  What would you regret not doing if you look back on your life in 20 years’ time? 

9.  What do you consider your greatest achievement in life until now? 

10. What do you consider is your greatest failure, sadness or disappointment?

 

Remember there are no right or wrong answers for any of these questions. As you answer them honestly and thoughtfully, the answers will provide you with a picture of you and a summary of your hopes and aspirations and the things you can learn from your past choices. Turn your answers into life goals and use them to help make decisions that will shape your future. 

How to Fall in Love with Yourself

Do you love yourself? Most people probably take a deep breath when they hear that question, but it is a valid and important question and one if we could all answer yes to, would change the way we feel about ourselves and give us self-confidence to achieve the dreams and desires we have for our lives. 

 

Someone once asked the question “how can we expect others to love us if we don’t love ourselves” and this demonstrates the importance of learning to love the unique person we are. It is accepting that we have own special place in this world. Feeling unloved and unworthy is a very lonely feeling. If you cannot find anything to love about yourself, you are probably struggling on the inside with a whole range of feelings. 

 

Learning to love yourself is possible. To love yourself, you must challenge the negative feelings inside that center our thoughts and self-wealth feelings on external things like how successful we are in our roles as mothers or husbands or how well we can sing even how good looking we are. While acknowledging their role in our life, our self-worth and self-acceptance is about the person we are, the person we are comfortable being around when everyone else has left and we are alone. If we are not comfortable with that person, we do not love our self. 

 

Take time to sit and write all the things there is to love about yourself. Be honest with yourself. Do not let negative self-talk stop the process. Try to do these five simple things every day and you will find yourself thinking differently about the private you few others see or know.

• Challenge your negative thoughts about yourself by having positive ones written down and read them aloud to yourself often. 

• Learn to self-care and do something every day that you enjoy doing. You deserve it!

• Look in the mirror and learn to love the person looking back at you and tell him or her often she is lovable and why.

• Fill your life with people who love you and tell you often what a special person you are. Accept their words and their love without questioning it.

• Add to your list about the person you are, the good thoughts you have about yourself and read them regularly. 

 

When you have positive feelings about yourself, you automatically begin to love yourself and hence you do a better job at whatever you do.

 

Doing a Self-Assessment for Self-Discovery

To a very large extent, many of us tend to see what is wrong with others without taking in to account or having a close look on ourselves. Taking a self-assessment is vital in making us become the best or have a realization of the best in us. You need somebody is very honest to help you in self-assessment. There are a number of self-assessment tests that you can undertake for self-discovery.

 

Self-assessment entails looking deep into you for an insight thus self-discovery. Here you do not become self-centered but have some time to look at yourself get to learn about the person you see every time you look at the mirror. 

 

The first step to a tangible self-assessment is to be very honest about you. Take a hard look at the mirror and take time to study the person you are seeing. Describe the person that you see in the mirror using up to a total of 25 adjectives. Consider using both good and adjectives that are bad. This is important owing to the fact that you are undertaking a truthful exercise. Consider digging deep down. Uphold utmost honesty. Allow for rediscovery of yourself.

 

After looking at yourself in the mirror, and discovering the person reflected in the mirror. Consider your likes and dislikes. This is vital to allow you identify any potential issues that may help you know the root cause of your likes and dislikes. It will help in prevention of repeating a bad behavior. Keep in mind the fact that failure to focus on your past, you be forced to repeat the same past. Look for the ways you can use to cope with the elements that may be stressing you.

 

Consider the activities that you like doing. Which books do you enjoy reading? What in most cases makes you not tolerate with life? What saddens? For all the answers that you give, provide an explanation. Explore the explanations to depth. 

 

The next exercise is to begin doing a journal. For a whole week, write down all your emotions, actions and thoughts that you might have heard throughout the week. Write down what you do comfortable without much effort but is also very rewarding. A journal is different from a diary in that in it you write personal thoughts and reflections you might have heard. 

Encourage or Fix—What Is Your Style?

Each of us has an approach that we use when people come to us for help with their problems. Some of us like to encourage the person to find the answer within themselves and we stand with them as they put their plans into action and reap the benefits and consequences of choices. Others of us prefer to fix the problem for the person, exploring ideas for plans and actions that will potentially solve problems.

 

Neither style is more beneficial than the other and most people would agree that both styles are necessary qualities. However, as each style affects the way we treat our families, friends and work colleagues, its’ worth knowing which style more clearly emulate in our interpersonal relationships. How do you know if your style is to fix or encourage? Here are some useful things to consider about each style of helping others. 

 

You Like to Help Others by Offering Solutions to Their Problems When They Approach You with Their Problems.

 

Men in general like to fix problems more than listen to others talk about them. Problems need to be fixed and a man using his left sided logic, likes to help develop a plan of action to solve a problem and to seek its resolution by providing solutions.

 

Men and women instinctively want to fix a problem when faced with one, be it their own or someone else’s problem. Many people need and want this help in their lives. Whilst it may not be considered empowering the other person, sometimes life needs create a need in us to find this style of helping. 

 

You Encourage Others to Talk about Their Problems and Help Them to Find Their Own Solutions.

 

If you are the sort of person who likes to encourage your friends and family to talk about their problems and help them create their own solutions you are more likely an encourager than a fixer. Women instinctively do this amongst themselves when they “share” their problems with their friends. Men often do this with each other when they play golf or drink together, or join mentoring groups facilitate talking and sharing. 

 

Most of us use both styles of helping others interchangeably in our lives depending on who we are talking to and what their needs are. Learning to be selective on who we use which style with is a journey of self-reflection and of personal discovery. 

Have You Ever Encountered Yourself?

Actor James Baldwin once said, “I have encountered a lot of people in Europe, I have even encountered myself” It begs the question, have you encountered yourself? To encounter means to meet by surprise or unexpectedly, amongst other meanings. When was the last time you experienced that type of surprise meeting with yourself? 

 

Have you been in a situation where you found out you liked something you didn’t think you would enjoy? Maybe tried a new food, or a new sport. Maybe started a new hobby? When this happens without you orchestrating the situation you are encountering yourself. Many people stay in their comfort zones, and rarely find themselves in a situation where they are challenged by encountering themselves in an unexpected or surprising ways. 

 

As a personal challenge take time to do something different today. Take a walk on the beach or through the forest and use your senses to experience the sights, smells and tastes around you. Walk slowly and keep a journal close. Allow your self-time to experience things you may usually walk past and write down the things that you become aware of. Write about the way they impact you and if they bring back childhood memories or other significant thoughts, write them down as well.

 

If you are taking a journey of self-discovery, encountering yourself is the first step to learning about the person you are. Another meaning of encounter relates to conflict and confrontation. Much of the time we prefer not to confront ourselves and we certainly don’t want to know inner conflict, but for self-discovery to be successful, we must be willing to consider even the inner conflicts we have constantly raging inside us, some more low key than the others. We must be willing to confront the unjustifiable fears and assumptions we make often with no reason. 

 

Our lives can sometimes be like that of a small child who looks at what the food on his plate looks like and decides what he feels about it simply by looking. If it looks good, he will try to eat it, if it looks bad he will tell you he doesn’t like it. We try to encourage children to try food before they say they do not like it. This is the key to self-discovery and personal encounters. Giving ourselves permission to unexpectedly find ourselves and challenge our preconceived ideas.

Knowing Your Real Self

Knowing your real self can be a daunting task. It demands understanding your personal aspirations your emotions and even the spiritual values. It also entails knowing how best to fulfill the requirements you want in life. Self-discovery leads to having a long-lasting peace of mind, happiness and you will tend to be contented. To a very large extent, we are able to acquire knowledge, develop talent and skills in areas that we are comfortable in handling.

 

The first step towards knowing yourself is to look the needs of your soul. It is important to note that we are not just a body but rather we have an inner self that comprises of the soul that also yearns for satisfaction. Research has it that the soul is immortal.

 

You should always aspire to remain connected with yourself and draw attention or move away from distractions that may come from outside. In most cases our attentions are drawn to meeting outward desires and most cases this do not add up. In most cases satisfaction of one of these external desire leads to another one cropping up. In most instances we are busy with the desire to meet needs of the body and this is what makes as loose the self. Taking time to meditate will help you realize and know yourself better. It is a practice that can help us discover ourselves better.

 

Real self to a large extent remains to be in love with other fellows despite having differences that are external. It gives us glimpses to our inner self. When we cling to what we absolutely love with other individuals. This to a very large helps in discovering of the inner self. Negative emotions to a large extent led to reduction of discovering our inner self.

 

Another thing that will help you discover your real self is through having commitment towards life. It gives a very good opportunity to have a wide picture of life. When we are committed in life, we tend to focus on intangible values like love honesty and sacrifice. We get contented when we love others; make other people be happy, share the worries of others. These activities to a large extent make you know your inner needs.

 

Having a deep insight into you is vital to having a meaningful and reasonable life. It helps add or make a better you.

When You Know What Makes You Happy You Discover True Gold

Do you know what makes you happy? If you do then you have discovered true gold. We are not talking of the momentary flashes of happiness that come when we eat a favorite desert or drive a beautiful car. These will provide temporary happiness but once the dessert is eaten or the car is returned to its owner, the potential is there for the problems that robbed you of your happiness to return. The happiness being discussed here is the happiness that you can take refuge in, that keeps you at peace with yourself and your world, no matter what is going on around you. 

 

Some people find a sense of happiness in their relationship to God. For some, happiness is found in pursuing a new hobby or learning a new sport. Many find roles in life define their happiness. However, are these things really the source of true happiness? They certainly contribute to it, and probably most people use these as their source of true happiness.

 

Self-acceptance is the key to the true gold that helps us to deal with the everyday trials of life. We may express that self-acceptance in our relationship with God, with others or with things in our lives, but unless we accept ourselves first, nothing will truly satisfy us or make us happy for very long. True inner happiness has its roots in who we are and not on what we do to stay happy.

 

Psychologists have long promoted the idea that the greatest love affair we can have is the one we have with ourselves. This love is not self-seeking, self-promoting, or self-focused. It is a love that accepts that we are unique individuals and the problems we face and the struggles we go through have nothing to do with the person on the inside, the person we live with when we are along with our thoughts and ourselves.

 

Even if we hit are hard by whatever rocks our experiences in life may throw at us, they can’t harm the inner person. We can experience that level of true happiness when we learn to love ourselves and see ourselves as the true gold we are. We can find refuge in self-acceptance, knowing that we are not defined by our experiences, but rather we can define our experiences by our reactions to them. 

The Lesson of the Tortoise

Do you remember the story of the Tortoise and the Hare? One fast and self-assured, the other slow and steady. They set out to have a race and in the beginning, it was the hare that easily bounded ahead of the tortoise and almost made the finish line before the tortoise managed to go very far at all. Yet, the self-assured hare was just a little too self-assured and he decided to sleep before crossing the finishing line and he slept so long and so soundly, that the tortoise eventually crossed the finish line while he was still sleeping. Against all the odds, the tortoise had won the race. 

 

Why did the tortoise win the race? We are often told that “slow and steady wins the race” and there is truth in that. What is interesting about this story is that both the tortoise and the hare were using their natural talents and they used them to the best of their ability. From the point of view of Personal Development maybe we should take a closer look and see what happened in this story.

 

The tortoise, while not fast entered the race with the best of intentions. He knew he probably would not win, but that didn’t stop him participating. No doubt, he went full speed and put his heart and soul in the endeavor. He didn’t just set out on a walk in the park on a sunny day. He full utilized all his abilities and, in the end, it paid off and he won. No one was more surprised than he, to find he crossed the finish line first.

 

The hare likewise used all his abilities, and should have won the race, but he didn’t. He had yet to learn the value of not having too much faith in his own abilities. He became so self-assured that he became arrogant, that caused his downfall, and his ability to win what should have been the easiest of races. 

 

When we compare ourselves to the tortoise and the hare, we can learn some important life lessons that may help us in our endeavors. The tortoise did what he did best, to the best of his ability. He did not let circumstances overwhelm him, but instead he did what was asked of him and he eventually found success. The hare likewise did his best, but he let the circumstances get the better of him and they did overwhelm him and he rested on his laurels rather than continuing to the finish line and he found failure.

 

It is worth asking if in our endeavors we find our successes by having the attitude of the tortoise, or are more like the hare, and rely on our reputation and this explains our failure to succeed. 

Can Writing the Story of Our Life Lead to Self-Discovery?

Discovery is a term that merely means invention. Many famous people have invented many things on this earth, but self-discovery is one thing that all people can do. In fact, to say the truth, all people must do to not only make them happier but also to have a happy world. Since the world comprises of people and they are the unhappy creatures on this earth, therefore, human beings have to be happy in order to make the world a happier place to live in. 

 

Every person in this earth has a story of their own life, but not many write it down. Very few people write the story of their own life. However, often it is seen that writing down stories of life has led to many self-discoveries and self-awareness. Fact is writing the story of your life can make you discover yourself. 

 

Even if you are living abroad, writing a story about yourself will make you think of your past and this thought of the past will make you realize your past mistakes and, in a way, make you discover yourself. When you write a story about yourself, you can connect with the emotion that happened in the past. Further, you release the pent-up anger or feelings that had been accumulating until then through your writing. Releasing these feelings makes you feel lighter and in a mood to think afresh. 

 

If you release the book on the story of your life in the market, then you get a further satisfaction. When you release it in the market, many people read the book and they try to relate their feelings to those written in the books. Moreover, you get the satisfaction that you can reach out to a wider range of audience who reads your feelings. Thus, you are able to deliver your feelings to a large audience and in the process, all your anger that you may have written down on that book soothes you. 

 

It is a simple connection of the mind to your pen when you are writing the story of your life. It is the best if you write story in the first person as that brings more satisfaction to you. Start right from the days of your childhood to the time you are writing this story. Thus, writing the story of your own life is a form of therapy that leads to self-discovery.