by KDMiller | Personal Development
The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential… these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.
~ Confucius
If fear is what’s holding us back from reaching our full potential, how do we overcome that fear?
By redefining it.
I’ve written about this before and it’s worth sharing, again. But, after redefining our fear, what should we do next? It’s not as though that magically changes everything that very moment.
This is where tackling things in baby steps comes into play.
Let’s say that your fear is starting something new — maybe it’s learning a new language. How can you break it down so that learning is less overwhelming and more fun? What supports can you put into place to help you reach your goal? What encouraging words will you tell yourself as you begin your adventure (See what I did there?)
Every step of the way we need to reframe, redefine, and push forward if we want to achieve our full potential in a particular area.
Will it be scarier some days than others? Absolutely.
Will we need to make an effort every day? Yep.
Can we be fabulous doing it? Without a doubt.
All that’s required is unlocking the door, pushing it open, and seeing what’s on the other side.
by KDMiller | Happiness and Well-being
Have you ever been around someone so angry or unhappy that you began feeling the same way?
We all have.
Emotions are as contagious as the common cold. We have our mirror neurons to thank for this, but we definitely want those neurons activating! (They’re what help us to be empathetic and compassionate beings. Without them, can you imagine what the world might be like?)
Just not necessarily all the time.
For example, when we’re in a long line at the checkout, and the people around us become visibly annoyed, it would be best for us to put our shields up! In these moments why would we want to be vested in someone else’s annoyance? Are they being mistreated by having to wait in line? Do we want to feel as awful as they apparently do?
We all have a negativity bias so it’s pretty easy to get wrapped up in another person’s ticked off mood. The challenge for us is to recognize what’s happening before it takes over our brains so that we don’t act in a way that just might embarrass us later.
Reference (s)
Inside the Brain (n.d.) Tag: Mirror neurons. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from https://inside-the-brain.com/tag/mirror-neurons/
Marano, H. E. (2016, June 9). Our Brain’s Negativity Bias. Psychology Today. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200306/our-brains-negative-bias
Positive Psychology Program (2016, December 3). 3 simple steps to overcome your negativity bias. Positive Psychology Program. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/3-steps-negativity-bias/
by KDMiller | Habit formation, Personal Development
“Willpower is trying very hard not to do something you want to do very much.”
John Ortberg
By now, most of us have read articles discussing willpower in some form or fashion. There are two areas where researchers tend to agree. First, willpower is like a muscle. It gets depleted and it can get re-energized; and two, we still can accomplish changes without willpower.
How? Plan. Plan every detail of your new habit including creating a habit you actually want to change. When we try to change a habit for someone else, what happens? Yeah, I know you know.
We have to make changes that are so simple that in our minds we can’t say “no.” It’s all about the baby steps, and if you’ve ever been around a baby trying to learn to walk then you understand just how important this is.
When a baby takes its first step it usually falls. Then, with encouragement, it gets back up. It’s not only willpower making that happen, but it’s also the relationships around the child.
When we want to make lasting changes, we need to remember to surround ourselves with supportive relationships, take baby steps to increase our competency, and when the time is right, strike out on our own running on the tips of our toes toward success.
Sometimes the collective willpower of others can help us achieve the seemingly impossible.
Reference (s)
Hendriksen, E. (2015, December 25). How to change a habit without willpower. Savvy Psychology. Retrieved December 20, 2018, from https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/health-fitness/mental-health/how-to-change-a-habit-without-willpower
by KDMiller | Personal Development
Intrinsic motivation is one of learning’s most precious resources. It bolsters us to stick out the tough moments of a challenge and pursue what we love to do.
Rachel Simmons
That sounds great, but how do we increase or even get intrinsic motivation? This particular topic has been studied repeatedly. The most interesting theory to date (in my opinion, of course) is Self-Determination Theory (SDT).
SDT “is concerned with supporting our natural or intrinsic tendencies to behave in effective and healthy ways (Self-Determination Theory, 2018). It encompasses, among other things, the idea that if we increase our competence, have supportive relationships, and autonomy then we can expect our intrinsic motivation to increase.
If any one of these is missing, then intrinsic motivation suffers.
Think about this for a minute. When you’re being told what to do, how do you feel? Being told can translate into reduced autonomy. When you don’t feel like you understand what you’re doing, how would you rate your competence level? When other people are nay-sayers as you press on, does it feel like a balloon deflating?
A simple truth is that we need to surround ourselves with a supportive tribe; try, fail, and try again, to increase our competency for a task, and when we’ve truly got “it,” then we need to have the freedom to run with “it.”
What does this take?
Courage
Trust
Love
Hope
At the end of the night, we need to be able to look into a mirror and say, “I own this.”
References:
Self-determination Theory, (n.d.) Retrieved December 19, 2018 from http://selfdeterminationtheory.org/
by KDMiller | Meaning and Purpose
What happens when we go from thinking only about ourselves to thinking from the perspective of others? We grow in empathy and that empathy can develop into compassion.
Compassion is actionable.
It’s also a choice that we have to make. It’s deciding to acknowledge that we’re contributors to the interactions we have with others as well as what results from those interactions. The buck begins and ends with us.
Compassion involves opening ourselves up — becoming vulnerable while helping someone else move forward.
Having an “other” mindset allows us the freedom to take full responsibility for the relationships we build or choose not to build. This mindset pushes us to take a step back and see people as they are.
Some are struggling. What would it be like to struggle like the person in front of us? How can we help them?
Outward mindsets are both simple and complicated. It all begins with us taking ownership over our thinking and then stepping into the shoes of the person in front of us.
This mindset boils down to something simple: Treat others the way we want to be treated. Or, as Stephen Covey once said, “seek first to understand, then to be understood.”
References
Covey, S. (1989) 7 Habits of highly effective people. New York: Simon & Schuster.
The Arbinger Institute (2016). The outward mindset: seeing beyond ourselves. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
