The choice of maturity and character – helpful and unhelpful attitudes
?? We should always be looking out for ways in which we can add value to other people’s lives. One way is by asking questions which provoke and challenge the people to think about themselves and where they are going in life. We all are on a journey of maturity and growth. The pace that we progress on this journey is going to be determined by our ability and willingness to grow out of old habits into better ones.
With the questions addressed below to each type of helpful or unhelpful attitude, you will have the opportunity to breakthrough from where you currently are in life into something new or better. ??
?? Responsible vs ?? Irresponsible
In a self-discovery process, people need to confront themselves by identifying what behaviours, attitudes or beliefs they have are not working for them, don’t serve them anymore, and take responsibility for these things. Responsibility breeds empowerment! You start to discover and grow yourself once you have taken responsibility for your need to change and your desire to change. The more we take responsibility for ourselves, for our flaws or imperfections or inconsistencies, the more empowered we become to surpass them.
People will not change until the desire to change becomes greater than their desire to remain the same.
Questions to reflect:
? What parts of your life have you consciously taken responsibility of and what parts of your life do you still need to take responsibility for?
? Are there any aspects of your life (beliefs, habits, mindsets or attitudes) which you feel are holding you back in life? What would happen if you stopped thinking these were just "part of who you are" and instead considered them "parts of you that you could change"? Will you take the responsibility for changing them? What would be your next step?
?? Humility vs ?? Arrogance & Pride
It’s humility that serves us the most when we humbly own our flaws, our weaknesses, our imperfections. Within a transformation and changing process, arrogance and pride most of the times take the form of defensiveness (meaning the habits and attitudes that we embrace for the purpose of defending and protecting ourselves). When people are confronted with the idea of challenging and even changing their lifetime habits, their sense of self is attacked, and therefore often they protect their negative way of being for the sake of themselves. Humility is what helps people grow out of their unhelpful habits.
We’ll never move beyond a habit or an unhelpful attitude, until we have accepted the truth about the part that we are playing in the outcome in every stage of our life.
Questions to reflect:
? What aspects of yourself do you get defensive about if someone criticises you about them? How have you responded to criticism of these aspects in the past?
?If you were honest with yourself, what flaws, weaknesses and imperfections do you accept that you have but are willing to address and manage in order to encourage your growth and progression in life?
?? Slow to anger vs ?? Quick to anger
Angry people are not influential people. It’s better to be trusted than feared. When people trust us, they know where they stand with us. When we are slow to anger, we have more time to reflect, think and respond more appropriately. When we respond with anger, our priority is to defend ourselves rather than grow; thus, we become more defensive. Self-awareness breeds self-management and self-management influences the health and stability of our social engagement.
Questions to reflect:
? Are you quick or slow to anger, or are you a mixture of both? Write down scenarios in which you are quick to anger, then write down scenarios where you are calmer. Can you identify the causal difference between the two?
? Write down a case study of yourself when you were quick to anger: note the circumstance, how you were feeling about yourself, how you were feeling about the circumstance and how you felt afterwards. What would you do differently if you could go back?
?? Promoters of unity vs ?? Promoting disunity
Unity is always more character building than disunity. Disregarding people who we don’t agree with, don’t get on with or don’t like is the easy option in life: learning how to live with them in harmony is the challenge. It’s easy to like people who see the same way we do, and even easier to dislike people who don’t. We grow more as people, when we are surrounded by people with different views of world, because by trying to understand them is effectively helping us to grow. ??
Questions to reflect:
?Are you committed to working with and understanding other people, or are you more interested in doing things your own way?
?What changes can you begin making today to better understand others and begin working with other people?
?? Growth seeking vs ?? Seeking of pleasure
Have you ever asked the question whether addiction is an illness or whether it’s just a habit? If it is just a habit, what is that really fuels this habit?
Some people are addicted to alcohol, or drugs, or smoking, or overeating, some people are addicted to success, get addicted to accomplishments or achieving. For people seeking pleasure, enough is never enough: they want more success, more food, more alcohol, more money, more happiness.
When we grow, we are talking about becoming better.
Pleasure is an instant experience which comes and goes, but growth is a process. For those seeking growth, it’s not the end result they expect, but the experience of the process. Those seeking growth are those who step out of the victim mindset and take responsibility for the direction of their life, for their thinking patterns, beliefs and behaviours.
Questions to reflect:
?Do you embrace challenges and look for ways to grow and develop yourself, or do you shy away from change?
?What areas of your life could you start improving in today which would prioritise growth over pleasure?
?? Faith for the future vs ?? Fear of the future
Faith into this material, is a life discovery journey, isn’t a religious concept: it’s a mindset. Without faith for our future, we live in a state of apathy and passivity. People without faith in themselves are too afraid to step outside their comfort zone, because they live in fear. When we operate in faith, we are proactive in our lives, because we’re not worrying about how we will be perceived in the future by others and what will happen to us. So, we will either look to our future from a place of fear or from a place of faith.
Faith goes hand in hand with actions. Do you take action? Do you act your faith? Because if you don’t act in your faith, then your faith is absolutely irrelevant.
Questions to reflect:
?Do you take risks with the faith that things will work out for the best, or do you tend to ‘play it safe’ due to the fear of making mistakes?
?How much more could you achieve with your life if you were to stop exercising fear and start exercising more faith?
?? Decisiveness vs ?? Double mindedness
Decisiveness is a mindset we will adopt because it demonstrates that we have moved beyond our fear of the future and failure. Life is all about making decisions, but sometimes making decisions can be the toughest thing that we can make in life. In order to take a decision, we have to overcome and move beyond any fear that we have about rejections, about future, about failure.
Questions to reflect:
? In what areas of your life do you find yourself second-guessing yourself or changing your mind?
?Can you identify areas of your life where you are only motivated by superficial and selfish things such as money and fame? How can you translate your thinking in these areas to assign a greater motivation?
?? Ruled by facts vs ?? Governed by feelings
A life ruled by facts is one which is stable and constant, whereas a life ruled by feelings is one which is turbulent and susceptible to spontaneous change. Feelings are very rarely based on facts: you could say that ‘I don’t feel like I’m good enough for x’ but that doesn’t mean that you aren’t good enough. We can all achieve anything we commit to and prepare ourselves for: the only thing which impedes our ability is our feelings. Feelings are not facts: they should not have as much power over us as they do.
Questions to reflect:
?Are you completely honest with yourself and others in all areas of life?
?Do you hold yourself back just to keep the peace with others?
?Who could you be more honest with today if you weren’t worried about how others would react?
?? Driven by progress vs ?? Driven by safety
How much life progress do you expect to make in your comfort zone? When most people feel pressure and stress in life, they retreat back into their comfort zone and hide away from responsibility and the difficulties being thrown their way. Why? Because they’re driven by security and self-preservation. The problem is that no amount of growth can be achieved in the limited real of one’s comfort zone. Whilst stress isn’t something which people should encourage in their life, it’s not something which should be avoided but managed. If more people took the time to work out how to manage stress (along with the physical and mental effects it causes), more people would be comfortable and confident in their ability to cope with stressful situations and allow the experience to be a learning opportunity for them, rather than something which pushes them back in life or into a state of petrified stagnation.
Questions to reflect:
? What are the unhelpful and helpful ways you respond to stress?
?What are the most stressful situations you find yourself in that cause you to resort to seeking safe yet ultimately unhelpful coping mechanisms? How are these situations different from the kinds of stressful situations you find yourself capable of managing? Analyse the two different stress-related scenarios and identify what triggers an ‘unmanageable’ stressful situation vs a manageable one.
?? I hope you have enjoyed this article. I admit it's a lot of information. ??
?? I hope the shared insights are provoking some sort of impact inside of you.
?? I hope they brings empowerment and motivation / energy to take action.
?????? Please let me know your input. ??
↗? For the next one, I would approach some challenging ideas about "Who we are vs our identity / roles!"
Hear you ??!
PS: BECOME BETTER!
Source of photo: my own
Source of information: achology.com