One of the traits I referred to and read about recently in “The Good Among the Great” was realistic.  Being realistic however, is not always that easy.  There are many things that get in the way of being realistic and hopefully these can help you avoid them and to be more realistic.  Be no means are any of these intended to cause complacency or to stop dreaming, they are more a matter of being realistic to help enable more things in life and easier connections and relationships.  I have always been one to encourage everyone to step out on the skinny branches of life to be adventurous,to have fun and to push the limits of what others like to think possible.  Doing those things while being realistic is certainly possible and here are some ways I think you can do to learn this!

Imagination That is Never Acted On

The imagination is a wonderful thing and can let a person dream, create a hope or idea that is otherwise impossible.  It lets you be creative and it lets you explore life in your mind before you suffer any consequences.  However, using your imagination too often and coming across as a dreamer, you can create a reputation of someone who is too “out there” or dreamy without a down to earth approach.  If you act on your imagination and put some of the dreams you share into reality by doing them and living them, you can not only enjoy the things you imagine but others will believe what you imagine is inf act possible.  So, act on your dreams and make your imagination something you and others will see as reality!

Recognize Needs over Wants

The materialistic disposable world constantly sends us a message of how we are inadequate and need to have so much more.  Seeing past this to separate the things you actually need in life from all the distractions and status objects will help you to be a lot more realistic with your lifestyle.  Change your perspective to the money you need to earn from the amount you want to earn and suddenly everything becomes a lot easier.  You do make enough, you do have enough and no, you don’t need to have that upgrade, the latest device, that new sports car or that 12 room house for you and your spouse.  If you put attention to your needs and needs of others, suddenly there is an immediate realism where the extras do not get in the way to complicate things.

Control Your Extreme Opinions and Thinking

I know from my work that I am regularly faced with evaluating and judging solutions for a problem with software engineering problems.  For me, it is easy to be skeptical of systems and people and I used to express these opinions far too quickly.  Combining that with any amount of exaggeration and you have an extreme opinion that doesn’t typically sit well with others and they think you are being extreme, not realistic.  Its quite easy for other people to be the complete opposite where they are so optimistic that they fail to see some of the obvious risks, again being far from realistic.  It helps to control these extreme opinions and thoughts to present each side when appropriate but not to bombard people with one side of that scale.

Share Your Action Plan

Sometimes a goal may seem unrealistic to others and an easy way to change this is to show them an action plan that gives some evidence that the plan is not only well thought out, but realistic considering some work and effort has gone into putting it into action.

Give Things Time

Most people want to rush everything, have everything right now and to be successful immediately in everything they do.  Perhaps its fortunate, although most don’t see it this way, that things do in fact take time to happen or to learn.  The journey of life teaches us that nearly everything takes time, yet people are more and more demanding and unreasonable when it comes to waiting or developing something over time.  Whether this is a kid asking for some new toy, a new graduate or worker expecting the CEO title to come simply by asking, or salary and jobs to come simply be a desire for them.  The fortunate part I mentioned is that those who realize things take time, they can have the patience and dedication required to get those things others simply demand.

Make Fair Judgments and Considerations

Decisions we make and the how we express our thoughts of others quickly affects what others think of us.  Especially when it comes to being realistic and reasonable.  If we are careful and fair in the judgments we have and mindful in what we consider, we will be considered a lot more realistic than if we make quick or rash decisions without any deliberate consideration.

Pause and Think Before Reacting

Not only the way we think and make decisions affect how realistic but we, but even more so, how we react to situations.  Being realistic requires not blowing up in anger, reacting childish when things don’t go your way or reacting emotionally that would be considered over reacting.  If we can stop and think about our reactions before expressing them, we can eliminate a lot of dangerous things that might otherwise be said or done.  This will result in giving some time to think about a response being having it, which will then be much more realistic than a reaction not yet thought about.

Put Yourself in Someone Else’s Shoes

You have heard this saying a thousand times and it couldn’t be more true when it comes to being realistic when dealing with other people.  Whether its a close relationship, on the job or a political decision, often putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is enough to get you thinking about more than one perspective, and it helps you be realistic.

Be Humble in Your Approach

Humility comes after many other good traits and being humble in your own behaviors helps to ensure you do not put your own perspectives and worth above that of others.  It is to ensure you see yourself and others equally and this can make many situations and decisions much more reasonable.  Knowing you are enough as you are, and that others are equally important can help you consider everyone in discussions, in decisions and in life.  Being humble is a great way to be more realistic as well.

Use Active Listening

Similar to many other items in this list, short sighted views are often what lead us away from realism and towards fantasy.  If you are willing to listen to others, and really stop to actively listen, there are always things to learn from others to help us be more realistic.  Whether it is a best friend sharing a concern about an idea, or a family member pointing out some way they were hurt by you, if you stop to listen, you can get off your own path and put others first.  Even a fantastic idea that you might have will have a number of things to consider once you actively listen to others upon sharing the idea, and it can shed some new light or risks on the plan that you could easily of overlooked yourself.  These additional perspectives are especially useful in work decisions and listening to others and getting some collaboration to help can make you be more realistic.

Ask More Questions

Assumptions are what lead us all to jump in early, take on more than we can chew, think ourselves to be more capable than we are and generally get us into trouble for unseen risks.  All this can be avoided by asking more questions.  Whether this is for a project in your work, a home renovation, a new relationship or commitment in one, or simply an everyday decision, asking more questions before jumping in can help avoid all these pains and to discover something that would otherwise surprise us.

Dream, But Dream With Intention

Similar to the imagination above, dreams let us hope for something greater or something we desire.  Dreams are great but they are not enough if there is no intention of fulfilling them so you must put some intention into that which you dream about in order to make those dreams more realistic.  If you are moving towards a dream, it gets more and more realistic, so be intentional with what you dream about!

Do What You Say You Will Do

People who are realistic are often considered very trustworthy. One way to be very trustworthy is to consistently stick to your promises and do what you say you will do.  From returning phone calls when you say you will, to being on time when you make a commitment, to holding true to a life long spousal promise, doing what you say you will do can be almost at any size, but will built trust and leave people knowing that you are realistic with what you tell them, since you can be trusted.

Ask For Help

Most people like to think they can accomplish everything on their own and that they don’t need help and yet they often can see when someone else is struggling and not asking for help?  Its strange that we let this ego block us from simply stopping and asking for help.  When you do though, especially when everyone can see it already, you admit the need and asking for help makes you seem believable and realistic to see that yourself.  When you put on a facade that you can do it all yourself, you destroy that perception others have and your own truth of being able to handle it on your own.  Usually this leaves some casualties or negative consequences you never intended.

Be Authentic

One of my favorite subjects is authenticity.  It applies here in being realistic because others can easily detect a change in behavior or personality, even when we can’t see it ourselves.  Sometimes we act differently in each circle of our life and that gets exposed by people who cross those circles.  That can destroy our authenticity and we cannot be believed as a realistic person if we are not consistent.  Being real requires that we are consistent all the time and so being authentic about ourselves and our true selves, if crucial to be more realistic in life.

Expose Some Emotion

Everyone has their slip ups, bad days, loss of control and the odd ‘Monday’ that gets the best of them.  Its OK to let out some emotion from time to time and show that we are excited, hurt, upset, joyful, anxious or nervous about something.  These expressions show variety and the ups and downs of life.  If we are always controlled, balanced, non-reactive and seemingly ‘stone faced’ to events around us, its hard to understand that this kind of person is even aware of everything going on.  Some reaction is often better than no reaction at least in extreme circumstances and without it, we can seem distant or disconnected from reality.  Its OK to be expressive at times and just let out some emotion.

Admit Your Mistakes or Failures

And finally, one final way to be more realistic is to not protect your blunders, your mistake and failures.  If you only ever expose your best side and hide the messy journey it took to get their, people can have a very hard time relating to your story and in some cases, your success.  Be quick to admit your mistakes, sharing how they happened and how you learned from them.  Don’t be afraid of failures, just use them to your benefit and to benefit others by avoiding the same.  All your accomplishments and your character will be much more realistic when you are willing to admit your mistakes.

Posted by Mike King under Learning | 6 Comments »

Where in your life do you actually seek out and work towards innovation and experimentation?  Do you purposeful have activities that leave you seeking out new ideas and methods of doing things?  Where could you make changes if only you had the time, the courage or perhaps the money to try some new things?  And are you making these activities toward innovation and experimentation a regular occurrence in your life?

Perhaps you are, perhaps you are not.  I do believe there is great value however in experimenting and innovating in life especially when it comes to working your mind for new ideas.

Work and Play

Many people when they think of innovation they associate it with business and perhaps their work environment since that is typically where you hear the word and see headlines and articles about it.  More than likely, your work already has elements of innovation in it especially if you work in technology and other industries where it is common.  However, you should not define your work to have innovation or not, as it can very easily be an individual thing, not specific to a workplace, industry or certain environment.

Innovation is about expanding things, building on others ideas, answering curiosities, converting restless fascination into something new that can be created, and it’s about acting on or developing inspirations.  These are all things that an individual can do independently of an organization.  Are you ready to stop waiting for your organization to push innovation from the top, and are what are you doing about it in your own life and work?

Your free time has even more room in it to be innovative than when you are being paid.  Work usually involved a high degree of following tasks and responsibilities that someone else has set out for you, so you do not always have the freedom you need to be at your creative best. There is always some room for it, but let’s face it, not every workplace is the most experimental and creative support environment.  That can’t be said about your own time, your play time.  The time you have to choose whatever you like in life and it’s in this play time that you can really be innovative and experimental.

Memory and Brain Mapping

A wonderful thing about innovation and experimentation is that it helps to quickly build more synapses in your mind deepening your brain maps for creative thinking and experimentation.  Exploring new methods and learning from that (as does most learning) reshapes the mind to strengthen and develop the connections and associations you have with those activities and thoughts, which over time, continue to build on themselves.

There are many things you can do to be learning when you innovate.  As you make change and create new things, you will be learning, mapping the mind and strengthening your memory.  Memory and brain mapping may not be directly visible or understood, but they strengthen quickly with creative work, when building things directly and when learning anything new.  Interestingly, visual mind maps and memory exercises have a similar effect and so they go hand in hand with innovation and experimentation since you learn in the process.

Discovering Activities and Hobbies

Discovering only comes by exploration.  Discovery is also a part of personal development that I hope if you are reading this, is something you have often found yourself doing already.  The act of change, seeking and exploration allow you to find things you are naturally good at as well as simply new areas to learn that may not come so naturally.

Experimentation requires some level of spontaneity and an open mind.  This will lead you to be in new situations, continuous questions and curiosity. Putting curiosity to work will typically lead to new experiences in work and play and it will have you finding new activities, new things to learn and hobbies that peak your interest.

Tuning Your Life Enjoyment

These new activities and hobbies will lead to much more than just new things to do.  It allows you to find and connect with new friends in activities you might not have ever discovered otherwise.  It helps you uncover passions that would never be found without the exploration and courage to get there and it allows you to have enjoyment in life that could have otherwise been lost in a pool of complacency.

There is much value in tuning your life with the help of new discoveries and it lets you ultimately bring a bit more happiness to your life and gain more enjoyable past time.  I’m certainly not saying you can’t find this without innovation and experimentation, but it certainly helps to know many more of the things you enjoy so you can pick and choose the ones that true are the most valuable to you and your life.  They could be major life changes as a result, yet they could also be very minor.

Traits to Develop and Expand

There are so many ways to be innovative and more experimental, it is not a matter of do you have it or not, everyone does.  The question you should ask is where do you have it and how can you use it more.  Here are some of the traits you could rely on to be more innovative and experimental methods in your life:

• Curious – explore what is around you, ask questions, dig deeper
• Rebellious – challenge and question the status quo
• Willing to take risks – keeps complacency at bay to reach out of your comfort zone
• Adventurous – enjoy the unknown and some ambiguity
• Playful / Childlike – asking questions and simply having fun with things lets you be more creative
• Accept Failures – any kind of experimentation will have what seem like failures.  Accept them and move on to the next one
• Imaginative – being experimental in your mind and your ideas
• Flexible/adaptive – open to change and able to adapt
• Thrive on Chaos – some unknowns and discoveries can only be found from unseen and even unwanted events.  Find them in chaos with others get frustrated or over burdened
• Connector – build new relationships quickly and with varying combinations of diversity
• Perceptive – aware and reflective on the environment around you; pondering; contemplative
• Committed to learning – continually seeking growth and knowledge
• Persevering – willing to keep driving forward despite the odds and hardships and able to learn from the experience

Posted by Mike King under Learning | 13 Comments »

Here is another collection of articles, content and links that I have found in the last couple months online and in browsing other blogs.  Please read through these and promote the articles more as they are some of my recent favorites and I know you will like them as well!

Articles

• Tips on Staying Focused and Making the Most of Your Time
• 10 Telling Employment Trends in Academia
• 10 Lessons You Can Learn From Nature

Photography and Great Resource Sites

• Some stunning panorama photography from another photographer in my province…
• A great app site for your PC.  http://allmyapps.com/

Videos

• What is Your Life’s Message?
• Among another of Kikolani’s awesome fetching friday releases, there is a fantastic video showing some impressive time lapse night skies.  Well worth checking this video out!!!
• What is Your Brain Doing While You Are Sleeping?
• 48 Essential LinkedIn Tips Your Teachers Won’t Tell You
• 29 life lessons learned in travelling the world for 8 years straight

Posted by Mike King under Learning | 5 Comments »

There is much more to learning than just gaining knowledge. Unfortunately, a lot of people stop at that point when they finish their schooling and don’t value what learning is really all about, which is where personal development often comes in later in life.   The real value from it comes from application of knowledge and what is done with it and how it impacts a person or others.  This is why learning itself is only a portion of what makes up personal development and exactly why I’ve developed such a passion for the subject, since it can have such an impact on contribution to a better life for oneself and to others!

Personal development and realizing how impacting its cycle can be has become a huge proponent in my life to take on whatever challenges I face and apply my knowledge  in order to let it shape me and things in my life.  You can do the same and allow yourself to change through a learning or personal development cycle.  It takes a long time to understand the cycle through trial and error and its much more effective to have models for things that can be utilized to gain the most from it.  The same is true with the personal development cycle if you understand the whole cycle to be able to recognize it, and all then enable it to occur, you can take on new challenges and shifts in your life much more easily.  I have always loved change and learning new things, so this has become much more of a passion for me, but the cycle can build that passion for anyone who recognizes the value in changing themselves for the better.   Without it, you can easily fall to becoming very conditioned by people around you who are afraid of change and don’t think they can learn things well and you can easily become complacent and stuck within a very small comfort zone.

Make a Choice to Learn Something New

The first step is to make the decision and choose to learn something new.  This is a mental step and is to overcome the internal barrier that often holds us back.  This is more than it sound like as it is so easy to drop into a complacent life without venturing into new activities, learning new things or allowing change to be faced.  Often the security people have in the consistent lifestyle keeps them locked into that and they are afraid to change it as it seems to threaten that security.  The best way out of this is to know that change can bring about even more good things and a more enjoyable life, not less.  Especially in the realm of personal development as most things in it are about improving life, yourself or others and so the change that will occur will almost always result in bringing about more lasting happiness in life.  Who can argue against that just for a little short term work or risk to achieve it?  If you want to develop yourself, you must decide that you are ready and willing and commit yourself to making it happen!

Take Action to Learn

A choice on it’s own still has to backed up by action.  Goal setting, positive thinking, the law of attraction; whatever methods you use or are familiar with to motivate you, you still must put those thoughts and ideas into action for them to ever become reality.  One of the hardest things in learning something new is just how to start or to take that initial step or action.  The biggest reason for this is that people often make it more difficult than they need to.  Break the problem or goal down into simple steps.  Do some brainstorming to write down all the little steps and pieces that would have to occur to help get started.  For example, instead of looking at learning a new language, you might list a bunch of simple steps that could get you started, such as:

• Research which languages you might want to learn
• Find some online resources for languages
• Talk to some friends to find out who you know that speaks that language already
• Research some books, courses.
• Change your computer’s interface or a favorite program (that you already know well) into that language
• Create a month by month break down of your goals (set subgoals)
• Identify some small but important milestone to reach (learn 50 verbs or the sound of the alphabet in a new language)

Master it to Make it a Habit

Mastery takes time, and plenty of practice. All those small actions that you take will move you closer and closer to mastery and will begin to shift into a need to repeat and practice more of the same to really understand and be competent and confident in your new learned skills/tasks/etc. One aspect of mastery is the concept by Gladwell in “Outliers” about the 10,000 hrs it takes to become an expert in any skill or area.  An expert in a field or on a large topic may very well take this amount of time to truly master, however, it doesn’t mean everything takes that long to master and often something can be mastered in only a few hours of practice.  Whatever the size is of your new personal development, practice what you are learning over and over to make it easy and to gain that confidence to repeat it without difficulty.  The more you repeat something the easier it will become and you will slowly learn to make it a habit.

Let it Reshape Your Beliefs to Create Lasting Change

One of the best methods to create lasting beliefs and change around a new habit is to teach it to someone else. Write about it, show someone or guide a group to learn something that you have already done.  This will truly have you thinking and explaining why something is important, how to learn it most effectively, what are the things that helped or hindered you along the way and last but not least, it really proves that you know your stuff. True mastery of any subject matter or skill can easily be demonstrated when it is taught to someone else and to do it well reinforces your beliefs on the subject. Knowing all the pitfalls and struggles that you had in learning something gives you a significant advantage to help someone else avoid those and learn the skill more easily through your guidance.

Mastery of something will not only change what you know, but also what you believe you know, which is much more powerful.  Beliefs steer much of your decisions and lifestyle and as you change your beliefs on elements you learn, this slow start to also develop the belief that you can learn anything.  To me, this is the real secret of the personal development cycle and once this belief is formed begins to develop that you can in fact learn anything, it can make your choices and learning process much easier and faster.  So, let the cycle of personal development shape your beliefs and utilize that to repeat the cycle in other areas of your life.

You may also check out some information on learning management system from Halogen to quickly and easily see a return on your training investments.

Posted by Mike King under Learning | 6 Comments »

My friend Armen over at TimelessInformation had a great post that really got me thinking in a brief discussion and comment with him and still afterwards now.  His article titled Quality, Traffic and Criticism, included a piece about communities that form within sites or blogs and how some accept criticism and debates and others turn a cold shoulder and send visitors who challenge them away.   This practice of embracing visitors and welcoming a discussion I believe is a true demonstration of keeping an open mind.  On the other hand, bloggers and forums that tell people to leave if they don’t like something or agree with it, shows clearly how close minded they are.

Armen mentioned this is a sign of needing acceptance from their group and I think this very accurate!  When someone is not open minded, they tend to seek approval for what they believe in and don’t have the confidence to consider something else and then defend their point of view constructively or objectively.

Open Mindedness Stems From Beliefs

On the other hand, someone who is open minded will most importantly know that they could be wrong and that beliefs may change and likely will over time.  This is important since so much we do is shaped by our beliefs, having an understanding of those beliefs truly shapes our characters and in this case, how open minded we are.

• You cannot be open minded and never willing to let a belief change.
• You cannot be open minded and avoiding a debate you have not yet had because of some unknown risk to that belief.
• You can be open minded by knowing how your beliefs have changed in the past.
• You can be open minded by knowing that your beliefs are going to change again as you learn more about yourself and about life.

Kill the Need For Acceptance

So as Armen mentioned, being open minded can have a lot to do with acceptance as well.  To have an open mind, it is important to accept oneself but not be burdened by seeking acceptance from others.  The reason for this is because it is very easy to be locked into a mindset of way of doing things when struggling to be or stay accepted by others.  That struggling for acceptance will limit how open you are to change and new ways of thinking or behaving.  To change this, you must kill the need for acceptance  and be willing to risk change.  Know that there are possibilities to find acceptance in new things and by new people as well, but don’t rely on having or you will struggle to move on to new things.

Have New Experiences

Experiences teach us more than any other activity and the more a person experiences and the more variety in those experiences, the more likely they will be to have an open mind.  Everyone knows someone or has some experience travelling to, learning about or living in difficult cultures and it can be very revealing.  Things can be done differently by others and seeing this helps us to realize that we don’t have to do everything the same way as may have learned it or developed habits with.  Variety in our experiences quickly teaches us to explore life, to seek out new exciting things around us and to not limit to what is already known.  This ties to tightly to learning I am very passionate about this.  Having new experiences gives us a lot to learn from and every time we learn, we carve away our borders of certainty and become a bit more open to change and new ideas.  This is very important for having an open mind.  Locking out new experiences and living life without new experiences creates a type of security in our minds that resists change. And I mean resisting change without a reason for standing up against it.

Embrace Change

So as I just mentioned new experiences bring about change.  Its inevitable and how we react to that change is really what shapes out openness.  Do you embrace the changes you face in life or do you resist them?  Are you optimistic that a change will have a good outcome or do you fear the worst?  Being optimistic and not being afraid of new things will help you embrace change and to have an open mind.  Embracing change is more than just accepting it as well, its really about seeking change and even promoting it or hoping for it.  Change is a powerful tool to shape the way we think and understanding how quickly our thinking is formed lets us look readily for change and what benefits can come about from it.

Expand Your Social Circle

Another way to learn to have an open mind is through your friends and relationships.  Every person is such a unique individual with their own perspective on life shaped their own experiences, there is a lot to be learned in relationships with others.  Having a variety of friends and lots of social interaction inevitably leads to discussions about experiences, stories and shared opinions, debates and likely disagreements.  All these things challenge what you know and think about and its a fantastic way to explore new ideas, learn from others and to create a need to have an open mind.  The social environment with others relates back to the topic of acceptance I mentioned above and its common for people to use acceptance positively in this situation.  Seeking out new friendships and connections often forces some level of compromise and acceptance of the other person in order to get along with them.  This acceptance of other people and their ideas helps you to be more open minded  and willing to consider something you may not have on your own otherwise.  So, if you want to know how to have an open mind, expanding and seeking a wide set of friends and social circle is a great way to do it!

Nurture Your Creativity

Creativity is the last area I consider important in learning how to have an open mind.  Being creative and doing creative activities help to develop right brain thinking, which also enables us to think outside the box and not be as limited and close minded about life and our experiences.  Take opportunities to develop and nurture your creativity by actively taking on hobbies, writing, creative content creation or building things, basically anything that requires you to be creative.  Many people have this opportunity in their work as well which is a fantastic way to truly nurture creativity.  Whenever you can, participate or volunteer for creative projects to practice and develop more creativity.  Natural creativity and open minded thinking go hand in hand, as you must let your mind seek new things and be creative to truly have an open mind.

Posted by Mike King under Learning | 18 Comments »

Posted by Mike King under Learning | 11 Comments »