Personal Development: Do You Know Your Three “R’s”?

We’ve been talking a great deal in recent blogs about how to distinguish between reality and your perceptions. You do, we learned, have control over how you feel about a situation. Why is this so important to understand?

Because your flawed or skewed perceptions of reality can actually alter reality. Let me explain: Read more

Personal Development: Can You Choose How You Feel?

Donald nodded. ”Let me ask you to do something. From now on, use the words ‘I chose’ so you really own your experience. You chose to feel hurt. You see?”

Hal shook his head. “I don’t see how I chose to feel hurt. It just happened.” Read more

Personal Development: How Can You Align Your perceptions with Reality?

“You believe what your mind tells you.”

In this series of blogs, I’ve been talking about the impact that our perceptions have on our understanding of reality. Hopefully, I’ve shown you how important it is to address this issue in your own life as you move forward in your journey of personal development. The question now is, how? If you believe what your mind tells you, as John Kelly said in the last blog, why would you think to question how you perceive reality? And how? How can you convince your mind to give up its illusions and look at the cold, hard facts?

• Play detective with your own thoughts. Gather clues and evidence and use them to distinguish between reality and your understanding of reality as filtered by your preconceptions, emotions and mindset.

• As part of your personal development, commit to writing down your thoughts while your emotions are still heightened. It’s nearly impossible to access emotions after the fact, so try to make a habit of sitting down in or immediately after a situation and journaling your emotions and perceptions. Then take another look when you are calmer and then again a day or so later. Continue to journal, sorting facts from assumptions and challenging your understanding.

• List other potential interpretations. Even if you don’t have time to sit and journal in a given situation, make a habit of reinterpreting your perceptions. For example, you call your brother to wish him a happy birthday, and he rings off abruptly. You and he have a history of jealousies and tension, so you are infuriated: “Why do I bother? He doesn’t care about me!” Good! That’s one possible explanation. Now let’s try to find at least 2 more. The more the better, so here we go:

• I guess I caught him at a bad time.
• He must hate having birthdays. Well, since I’m two years older, I can understand that.
• I wonder if he’s upset at something I’ve done lately? Or that I haven’t done.

In this example, you can only really draw one sure conclusion: You don’t know why he hung up suddenly. You don’t have enough information. If you call him again later or he calls you, you might have more information, but in the meantime, you just don’t know.

Why are we spending so much time working on this concept of perception vs. reality? I’m going to go into the why more in my next blog, but in the meantime, think about that last example. Putting yourself in that situation, what feelings do you think resulted from the original conclusion, and the subsequent ones?

Learning to manage your fact processing skills will make a dramatic difference in your personal development. To accelerate your progress even more, join me for the LIVE BIG seminar on March 12 and 13, and you can break free from your illusions for good!

Personal Development: What color are your glasses?

Back when, if someone refused to look at the world realistically, they were said to “look at the world through rose-colored glasses.”  If you read my last blog, then you know how important your perception of reality is to your personal development. Let me give you an example of how this works. Read more

Personal Development: What’s Really Going On?

“ I’ll tell you what I want,” she shouted back. “I want a partner. A friend. A husband who cares about his family as much as he cares about himself.”
Read more

Role Models: What Makes You A Winner?

Why is Brock blindfolded?

In this video from Facing The Giants, the coach asks Brock, “You already written Friday night down as a loss, Brock?”

Brock shrugs.  “Well, not if I know we could beat’em.” Read more

Personal Development: Have You Ever Been Betrayed?

Personal Development:  Have You Ever Been Betrayed?

Hal glanced around the table, hoping that one of his long-time colleagues would speak up on his behalf.  No one, except Charlie White, met his eyes.  Not Keith, his golfing buddy who had lauded his every move – until Charlie’s arrival.  Not Patricia, a single parent who had asked Hal to be godfather to her adopted son.  Not Larry, a friend going back to high-school whom Hal had rescued from a dead-end job to become a partner in Western. Read more

‘Tis The Season

My mother, who passed away seven years ago, has been on my mind these past several days. She loved this time of year—the decorations, the music, the meals, the shopping, the gift making and giving, the surprises and, perhaps most importantly, being with family at a special, even sacred season. Read more

The Stories We Tell

One of my happiest memories from my childhood was climbing up onto the lap of a parent or grandparent and reading a story. Reading childhood stories was a way I bonded with my loved ones. It was entertaining. And it was a way I learned valuable lessons of life. Read more

The Hero Principle

Before people read my book they ask about the title—The Hero’s Choice: Living from the Inside Out. “What do you mean by the hero’s choice? What are you talking about when you talk about a hero?” That is a good question. So, I decided to write a blog about “The Hero Principle.” Read more

A Tribute To The Whitakers

I attended the funeral of a friend earlier this week—Doran Whitaker, who was in a coma for the past four months after a terrible bicycle accident in early June. I have to say that Doran was one of the most positive, kind, and principled men I’ve ever known. From the first time I met him, some 25 or so years ago, I’ve admired Doran’s character and goodwill. He’ll be greatly missed by his family and all who knew him. Read more

Perspective

“[Dad], can I have a motorcycle when I get old enough?”
“If you take care of it.”
“What do you have to do?”
“Lots of things. You’ve been watching me.”
“Will you show me all of them?”
“Sure.”
“Is it hard?”
“Not if you have the right attitude. It’s having the right attitude that’s hard.”
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance p. 372. Read more

Reality, Responsibility, Results

Like most people, I love music and frequently find myself humming a tune over and over in the back of my mind. I’ve learned to pay attention to the words of these songs and find that they have significance to what is going on in my life at the moment. Rarely is the entire song relevant; just a line or two that my subconscious mind is telling me to pay attention to—perhaps a lesson I need to learn. Read more

Key Moment: An Example

In my last blog I presented the idea of a key moment. Now I’d like to bring the concept alive with an example from the workplace.

Remember the definition. A key moment is a situation or event that presents a challenge and demands a response. How we respond to our key moments determines, to a large extent, our effectiveness in dealing with life. Read more

Beyond Success

One of our core beliefs, at HDI, is that people want to succeed. Nobody wakes up in the morning thinking, “Today I’m going to see how many ways I can fail… or make my life miserable.” The desire to succeed is innate in each of us.

The question is, what is success? Society has taught us that success has to do with the tangible and observable—the size of our bank account, the house we live in, car we drive, personal appearance, popularity, degrees, status, fame, achievements, etc. And, in truth, these are fair measures of success.

The problem arises when we live from the belief that “more is better.” This belief has been conditioned into most of us. I recall when I first graduated from college and opened a private practice. I thought I would have reached success and be happy when I was making around $3,000 a month. Well, that didn’t last long. Soon it was $4,000, then $5,000. It wasn’t too many years and I achieved that level of financial success. My standard then became a six figure income. And on and on.

The point is not that there is anything wrong with setting and striving to achieve a financial (or any tangible) goal. The problem occurs when we believe that achieving such a goal will automatically bring fulfillment, a sense of meaning and contentment.

The inherent and subtle danger when living from “more is better” is that we are never satisfied. We find ourselves living from a scarcity mentality always comparing our lot in life to others and forever aware of what we lack rather than appreciating the blessings and goodness of life.

Do you know people who seem to “have it all” and are not content? People who have achieved incredible levels of wealth, fame, power and yet are unhappy human beings? (Lots of celebrities, both living and deceased, come quickly to my mind.)

Let’s not give up on a success mentality. It is okay to set goals and strive for more, better, and different. But let’s also be clear that achieving “external” success does not automatically bring inner fulfillment—peace of mind, contentment, and joy. That is living from the “outside in.”

This reminds me of a Ziggy cartoon from a number of years back. Ziggy is seated on a park bench, saying, “I’m thankful that somewhere along the way, I stopped waiting for the things I wanted. I gave up waiting and just went on living. I did all the little things that I enjoy. I figured that if I couldn’t be happy with what I got, that I would never be happy. Then a funny thing happened. Once I accepted being content with what I had, I started to get the things that I always wanted, like contentment and happiness.”

I believe that what we want most is already available to us, here and now. Contentment is not a place I “get to” but “come from” as I embrace my life as it is and take full responsibility for my inner experience.

Core Belief’s of the Human Development Institute

We all act from core beliefs or assumptions about ourselves, other people, and life. Although those assumptions are often deeply held and even unconscious, they are powerful determiners of our behavior. For example, a person who believes, “I’m a good, though imperfect person,” is going to respond differently to life than someone who believes, “I’m inadequate.” Likewise, someone who believes, “Life is what I make it,” will experience adversity differently than someone who believes, “It’s a jungle out there.”

Not only do we hold deeply held beliefs or assumptions as individuals but we do so collectively, in our organizations and institutions. I want to make our basic beliefs at the Human Development Institute explicit. What assumptions do we make about humankind, life, our ability to change? The purpose is so you can get to know us and understand something about our philosophy and approach to personal and relationship development.

I need to say that presenting our most basic beliefs and assumptions is somewhat risky because what we believe can’t be proven empirically. Understanding them has to grow more out of their use and practice than a philosophical debate. Columbus and his contemporaries could well have debated until their deaths about the shape of the earth. It simply couldn’t be proven by their limited knowledge. Instead, Columbus had to trust his assumption that the earth was round and test it in order to know its validity.

In the same way, we can’t “prove” our assumptions. It isn’t my intent to do so. I’ll put some of our assumptions out there and offer some evidence, but you’ll have to decide if they “ring true” for you. So here we go.

People want to succeed. We have great hope in humankind. Despite lots of evidence to the contrary we don’t believe that people make a conscious decision to fail. The desire to succeed is as natural as breathing, eating and sleeping. No one wakes up in the morning thinking, “Today I’m going to see how miserable I can be.” Or “I’m going to alienate my teenage daughter.” Or, “I’m going to let anger get the best of me as I’m out driving on the highway.” Or, “I’m going to see if I can blow my presentation in front of my customer.” Failure happens, but it is not the result of deliberate intent.

People learn to fail. Failure is learned from growing up in an imperfect world in which we come to false conclusions about ourselves, relationships, and how to survive. A young boy, jealous of his baby brother, hits his weaker sibling. His mother becomes angry and calls him “naughty” and punishes him. The child learns from this experience, probably in ways his mother did not intend. This is a rather mild example. More severe examples happen every day in which children, adolescents, and adults are programmed to have a distorted view of themselves and life. People act on these flawed assumptions in ways that that result in failure, unhappiness, and unproductive conflict.

Life is governed by laws. The chemical formula for water is H20. Never will three atoms of oxygen be combined with two atoms of hydrogen to form water. Its nature is unchanging. Likewise, the law of gravity is pervasive. We are always subject to its consequences. As human beings, we are dependent upon the consistency of these laws. We must all eat, drink, keep our temperature within certain bounds just to survive.

Likewise, we believe there are psychological laws that govern our existence. A few examples of such laws are: We see the world not so much as it is but rather through the filter of our beliefs. The mind seeks to prove itself “right” about whatever it happens to believe. Our beliefs (conscious or not) determine our reactions and behavior. Reality (the ways things are) is neutral—embrace it and experience freedom; resist it and find frustration and pain. Our choices determine our destiny. The source of our experience is inside. Trust begets trust. And so on. Much like physical laws, as we understand and align to psychological laws we find success, fulfillment, joy, peace, love, and happiness.

Some ways of living are more enriching than others. People organize their lives around themes. One theme is fear and scarcity in which life is a battleground over which we don’t feel a lot of control. Another is duty and obligation in which we find safety through compliance, submission, maybe even avoidance. Another is achievement and success in which we continually seek to have and do more, bigger, and better. Another is abundance and goodwill in which we open our hearts to the wonder of life and take full responsibility for our experience, here and now. Each of these four themes (or ways of living) are made up of unique characteristics, core beliefs, and behavioral practices. The meaning of success changes as we move from one way of living to another. Some ways of living are better than others and the people who are happiest and most fulfilled live from the principles, beliefs, and practices of abundance and goodwill. These principles can be learned and incorporated into our lives.

The nature of man is good. To quote John Drinkwater: “We know the hemlock from the rose, the pure from stained, the noble from the base.” Our deepest nature knows what is good. (Hostility does not breed joy.) And our deepest nature desires what is good—joy, peace, love—even when we do and justify that which is “wrong.” I don’t mean for this to sound moralistic. But I do mean to say that something deep inside us knows right from wrong, good from bad, whether we act upon this knowledge or not. This principle is the basis for great hope and trust in humankind. If man can learn to listen, this inner nature will lead him towards fulfillment and growth.

People exist within an interpersonal environment. It isn’t possible to understand an individual without understanding the interpersonal context (family and community) in which he/she exists or comes from. People are shaped by their social environment. The most fundamental beliefs that influence our life experiences are not only learned from others but also through our interactions with others. And many of the greatest challenges we have in life are in our relationships as we try to find the right balance between our responsibility for ourselves and responsibility to others. Our closest relationships are a laboratory for our personal growth and development. We don’t change in isolation. We change in relation to others. Ultimately, nothing is more important or magical than our relationships.

Living from the “inside out.” Living from the “inside out” is a critical strategy to personal growth. It is a refusal to let “out there” determine “in here.” It requires a willingness to no longer live “small” but to recognize that my ability to choose is bigger than whatever is showing up on the doorstep of my life. It requires that I give up waiting…until I feel better… for circumstances to change…for other people to change…for some future event…until I discover the magical formula, and instead take full responsibility for my life today. Doing so is not easy. It is far easier to wait and put the blame elsewhere. But it is the price that comes with living an abundant, joyful, and effective life.

People can change. People can change and transform their lives. Humankind is blessed with awareness and the ability to make choices. We witness incredible personal transformations all the time. It happens as people become acutely aware of the negative consequences (ripoffs) of their worn-out and self-defeating patterns of thinking and behaving, replace these with a compelling vision of what they truly want, and take responsibility to make that happen. Change is accelerated with outside help. Our purpose, at HDI, is to teach you concrete strategies and skills to overcome challenges (internal and external) and make new choices that lead to a positive state of mind from which you can achieve your highest vision.

Roger K. Allen, Ph.D. is an expert in personal and organizational change. The tools and methods Dr. Allen offers have helped tens of thousands of people transform the ways they work and live. To learn more about him and his services, visit http://www.abouthdi.com. To learn more about his new book “The Hero’s Choice: Living from the Inside Out”, go to www.theheroschoice.com. Its also available on amazon.com or any local bookstore.