Examining Your Own Belief Structure

We each steer our lives around a set of beliefs we have on ourselves, on others and on the world around us.  These beliefs shape our decisions, thoughts and ultimately our actions then as a result whether we know it or not.  It is beliefs that also shape us into the individuals we are and it is these very beliefs that limit or allow us to change and grow in our lives as well.  We all have them, we all have a unique set of beliefs even if many overlap, and we often don’t examine our beliefs enough to truly understand ourselves. Personal development is highly related to these beliefs and without taking time to understand them, we can never achieve the maximum personal growth we desire.  So, in this article we will explore our belief structures as they are in intermingled critical point

It is common to reflect on questions about ourselves, about our character traits and the description we have of ourselves, and most people can do that quite easily but it’s much more difficult to describe one-self entirely on the beliefs that we have.  That is where I feel the true character is revealed and knowledge of those beliefs lets each of us to move those from the subconscious mind to the conscious mind where we can shift our beliefs and decisions more easily by choice.  Without examining your own belief structure, we easily confuse our beliefs and how they steer us, with situational excuses or victimization, both which highly limit our ability to change and grow in areas we are striving for improvement in to become a better person.

Core Values and Principles

Core values and principles are often looked at to define things or a person, but they are unfounded without also looking at the beliefs that shape them.  Values and principle are really just the actions or results we show because of what we believe.  For example, take integrity as a value or principle.  Integrity is something that is shown when a person acts consistently with good judgment.  Well that judgment is really part of the underlying belief.  A person with integrity believes that making the right choice and acting consistently in those actions is worth doing or the right thing to do.  The moral aspect here is not the point, the belief in this moral aspect however, is.  You can have a similar value or principle with a negative side as well that is triggered by a belief.  Some people believe that if they don’t get their way, then they will also lose power and it is a sign of weakness.  The belief of this being a weakness steers that anger.

Activities

Core values then turn into action as we choose our activities in life.  Perhaps our activities come about from circumstances you may think, but I think they are much more in line with our beliefs than we let ourselves realize.  In fact, all of our actions are at the very least, influenced by our beliefs and so our activities are a result of choice, and the choices we each make are a direct result of our beliefs that steer those choices.  So, beliefs impact this area of our lives as well.

Aspirations and Dreams

And finally, the area I so love to write about. Aspirations. Dreams.  Everything we hope to become and do and learn is wrapped up inside our many aspirations.  Our aspirations and dreams are a reflection of character and they define the spirit within that holds them. Our dreams as children create a path for life that could be followed by what imagination places in our minds.  This creative mind is a catalyst to forming new beliefs and generates an internal motivation and drive to make the imaginative aspects reality, therefore also forging the belief the dream is based on into a realization.  If only it were left on its own for this to happen…

Unfortunately, our dreams as children and aspirations through life are not shaped only by our imaginations.  They are also shaped by the endless social aspects that form the majority of our beliefs and it is these beliefs that limit and bound our capabilities.  Some people rely more heavily on these social influences than others, but we are all affected by them to some degree.  The problem with them is that the social aspect makes wild dreams and aspirations something to be avoided, since it is less likely to ‘fit in’ or to be ‘realistic’ as others define it.  To avoid embarrassment, fear of rejection and the many other limiting beliefs, we often succumb to what is more regularly accepted as ‘normal’ and we stop chasing our dreams.  The beliefs that these social aspects are either more important or perhaps more likely shapes the decision we make when it comes to aspirations.  Some of us accept being the social outcast and are willing to take those consequences by still going for their ‘unique’ dream and others ignore their dreams in order to be accepted more by others.  Both are beliefs, the difference is that we easily forget about the daily influences and beliefs that we all wish deep down we were not limited by.

So with all this weighing on your mind and thoughts, I leave you with just a simple question.  What beliefs in your life are the strongest ones you have and how are they shaping your choices?

Posted by Mike King under Learning | 15 Comments »

Passion is an awesome subject as just the very word typically excites people!  The word represents such a powerful expression that it seems to raise the spirits just by its very mention.  Not only that, but there is so much going on to pursue, express, seek and develop passions in people’s lives it’s an excellent subject for personally development.  So what is passion?  Passion is a feeling or expression of great excitement and enthusiasm towards a subject.  It raises spirits and surges energy in however and whoever it is expressed to.  It’s incredibly hard to express passion by writing and I truly wish I was speaking this right now as its much easier to be expressive and enthusiastic with your voice, your body movements and actions.  Doing that with text is nearly impossible unless I started adding large flashy colored text, which I will definitely spare you the pain of.  So, you will have to imagine me speaking this with expressive tone, body language and enthusiasm!  Let’s get to it.

Welcoming Passion

Passion is not visible everyday.  For some it may be, but for most people, it is an expressive burst that is not a regular activity and so when it does show up, it definitely gets noticed.  Passion usually has a benefit of engaging the audience more, which is particularly useful when it is being expressed by speakers.  It makes everything more memorable and builds credibility for a public speaker when they show that they really are passionate about and care for the subject they are speaking on.  This occurs in all areas of life though, not just public speaking.  It can occur in your business, your friendships and even online.  Showing passions in these areas demonstrates with sincere meaning what you are emotionally connected to.

When you have the opportunity to see someone else express their topic or ideas with passion, how do you respond?  Do you encourage it, add to that excitement or make an effort (often subconsciously) to stay calm, non-responsive to balance out that person with a less expressive engagement?  I hope you add to that passion and even if you don’t connect with the content shared directly, you can certainly support the energy and willingness to bring that passion to you.  If you can share in that passion and ensure they know that you are happy to see the passion, by contributing your own energy, you really welcome the passion.  You can also welcome it by reminding people of passions and how you’ve enjoying expressing them or seeing it in others.  This helps to influence people to share their own passions and makes it feel a bit safer. In business this is especially true as we often are so careful to follow the rules and expectations of others around us, we often don’t share or express the things we really love.  Are there passions expressed in your business that could use your support and energy to encourage them?

Expressing Your Own Passions

There may not always be someone else around expressing passions that you can reinforce.  Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t add passion by sharing your own!  What are the things you love to do, love to debate, or have dreams of experiencing.  These are potentially areas of passion for you and they are great to express to bring more vitality to a group of people, friends or business.  Expressing your passions will allow you to reveal something about yourself and to encourage others to share their own as well.  Passions are often contagious because of the energy they activate in people.

Your passions are often seated at a young age in life and so thinking back to your childhood years (around age 6-13) what were the things that you most loved to do?  Where you a creator, inventor, story teller, teacher, dreamer, helper, connector, influencer or follower?  These areas as a child are likely the secret to some deep passion you have today, whether you know it or now.  It’s a sign of who you are or want to be and can often reveal passions not yet explored or dreams worth seeking that develop into great passions.  Expressing these stories from your early years is a great way to discover and express your own passions with others.

Expressing your own passions is sometimes risky.  Anytime you expose something that is meaningful to you, you risk being judged for that and it not being accepted.  The great thing with passions is that people are a lot more tolerant of passions than other characteristics of a person.  I think the reason for this is that when a passion is often expressed, it is expressed with deep connection and even love for that subject.  People tend not to attack or debate things we love and when a passion fits that category of something we really love, it is often protected from that social criticism just because we express the significance of that  subject.

Don’t Seek Passion, Bring Passion

Obviously you can share your passions and seek them out, but its just as possible to learn the symptoms of passion and how to express it, how to connect with a subject and how to feel the passion in areas you love.  Personally, I think passion can go much farther than what you love however, and that you can actually love to be passionate.  Once you learn to be passionate about something, you can choose to bring the passion to anything you do, instead of having to seek it.  Bringing the passion to what you do brings on all those great side effects of influencing people, gaining attraction and momentum because of the excitement and expression.  Even if you were not initially caring about a subject, bringing the passion to it can actually activate you to connect and to feel much more for that subject.  Passions don’t have to be things you seek, it can be something you simply know how to do and to bring into whatever you choose.  That’s what I love about passion and what I’ve learned by studying.  Of course, there are subjects I am more passionate about than others, but the ability to bring passion into anything I do helps me get motivated, stay connected and gain influence through that higher level of enthusiasm and energy towards a subject.  What area of your life do you wish you had more passion for?  Is there a passion you have learned from that you can mimick and bring the benefits of into new areas of your life?  Please share yours!

If you enjoyed this article, why not subscribe today by email or by RSS feed !

Posted by Mike King under Purpose/Passion | 19 Comments »

Author : Matthew Kelly

Well I’ve had this book on my  bookshelf for a few months now as I’ve been catching up my backlog of books and I’m so happy to have finally read it.  I have read a few other recent reviews lately and while they outlined a bit of the content covered in the book, they never expressed a lot of personal effect the book had.  I want to share mine and my main comment is that this is a fantastic book.  Not only for a manager but anyone wanting to manage their lives and the lives of those around them better.  From the title, I expected the book to teach me how to be the dream manager, which I thought would be one that people would dream to have or the best possible manager.  The funny thing is as I started reading and found out quickly what the dream manager was, the book wasn’t directly teaching that at all.  I love the ideas and as I got further into the book and realized that the concepts put in practice do need to be in place by any  manager, I fell back to thinking and definitely think it now, that doing what this book teaches, will make you the dream manager.  A manager who puts the dreams and ambitions of an employee first in order to build them up only on the hope and knowledge that that will pay back more in the future really is what the ideal manager is.  As I continue to learn in so many ways, put people first and the rest falls into place.  The story is captivating as I couldn’t put the book down wanting to find out the impact of the new initiatives and programs put into place in the story.

The book is written as a fable (my favorite style of business book as I find it far more applicable to real life) about a janitorial services company struggling with a massive turnover problem.  An innovative approach that is used and demonstrated in the story is that of a dream manager program.  The program all started out by the company doing a survey to find out what the employees think causes the high turnover.  This led to recognizing some common goals among the employees and the idea that a dream manager hired on at the company could help to facilitate the dreams of the employees.  This would in turn help employees feel like the organization truly valued them and that they would ultimately feel more loyalty to the company and be more productive with their work.  The presented concept in the story delivers many times over with the turnover problem and the company sees massive improvements in employee productivity and profits.

One of my favorite quotes from the book is,

Our employees are our first customers, and our most important customers.

Anyway, I put a lot of value on the ideas presented and to the extent the dream manager program were taken in the book.  I personally believe 100% in developing people first and seeing the results of that back to the organization second and this message is clear through the story.  The book has given me a new spark to maximizing the use of my own one on one times with my team to look at new ways to explore their dreams and help them achieve them.  I definitely want to look for ways to bring this into other practice with other managers and the book provides a number of techniques to start doing this, all of them realistic and quite practical.  The other thing that Kelly does very well with the book is that he adds a practical handbook section after the end of the fable to explore ways to put this into practice.  The best part of this is that he doesn’t limit it to managers.  He covers ways to start no matter where you fit into an organization and even more unique in a “business book” is that he looks and discusses how this can be used in other areas of your life with family and friends.

This is definitely one of the top books I’ve ever read for business and management and it was highly useful and will definitely make an impact on my work and more importantly, the work of others that I manage.  I can’t wait to put some of these into practice and see the effects it will have in the workplace.  I absolutely recommend this book, especially for any manager!

What’s your dream?

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 4 Comments »

I love being known for someone who is always happy and I constantly look for ways to further enhance the joy and happiness I experience in my life. I have 2 specific things that really help with this, one is a great way to start a day and the other, a great way to end it.

Start Your Day Out Right

I read an article by Marshal Goldsmith suggesting an easy way to improve each day is to say hello and smile to the first five people you see no matter when or who they are. You can be in your car, walking to work, at work, at home looking out your window or your family, it doesn’t matter. If you smile and say hello to those first people you see every single day, you definitely start the day off better feeling happier and more positive. Its physically impossible to smile without affecting your mindset since the brain releases chemicals and fires neurons automatically when you smile, whether you want to or not. The brain and these chemicals are what directly affect your physiology, so that simple smile really does make you feel better and doing this everyday can easily turn it into a habit and I can tell you you’ll love doing it once you start practicing it. I’ve made a habit of it now over the past 6 months or so and I can definitely tell you its made a big difference in how I feel each day. And better than that, a couple other people have told me how they’ve noticed my smiles everyday and it also makes them feel better! WOW! So simple, yet so effective.

Finish Your Day Out Right

I’ve heard before by motivational speakers like Brian Tracy and other others tips to finish your day off positively and I was reminded of this tip by Ced on the manager-tools.com forums. Its to just take 1-2 minutes right before bed to make a point form list of 5 positive or good things you say, did, heard or experienced that day. Simple things that made you feel better or that you noticed others doing. Just jot them down and go to bed. Its a great technique to help you focus on the pleasant things you experience and helps you to realize everything to be appreciative for in life. Developing this habit by jotting them on paper is a great way to practice and you’ll soon be able to just think of many many items each day before bed. Try it out, it can definitely make a positive influence on your mood the next day. Let alone your dreams… I’ll leave that topic for other post though…

Posted by Mike King under Life | 4 Comments »

I last wrote about passion, one of mine specifically and now want to explore how to find your own passions. A few people know already what their passions are, however, many more do not. Passions are not just a single thing or a one time event, it is much deeper than that. Passion can’t be faked, it isn’t something you can turn on and off, and it never fails to survive through any criticism.

Where does Passion Come From?

Passion exists because of many combined experiences and it drives a whole person (mind, body and spirit) to express, utilize, and hold true to core values with joy and enthusiasm. Passion is energetic and lets difficulties be overlooked and ignored to help recognize the positive boundless potential in the people and events in our world.

While that may sound great, finding your passions isn’t easy. Passion is often the cause of pain in people’s life so it gets buried and ignored with an attitude to simply get by in life instead of living it to its fullest and taking the risks needed to continually follow your passions. Whether this is personal or professional, living with passion is often seen to be risky and may reveal truths about you and your true values that are not always convenient from the mind’s perspective. Living safely can seem easier, however, it is certainly not as meaningful.

Finding your Passion

So, what are some of the ways then to find your passion? Here is one method I can recommend for doing this on your own.

1. First, you need to have some serious time to reflect and its best to do it alone with no distractions. At least a couple of hours. Go somewhere you feel very relaxed, calm and comfortable. Use a pen and paper and write out all of the major events in your life that you remember to be very positive and joyful. Then do the same for all the times you have felt crushed, alone, sad, mad, and any other painful or hurting times in your life. Take some time for this, it can easily take 30 minutes or more. Pick events that relate to your career, education, childhood, family, friends, accomplishments, major events, fears, dreams, purchases, emotions, and spirituality.

2. Review the pleasurable side of your list and write out a reason why you think it gave you pleasure in your life. Keep asking yourself why you feel and think that way for each of the items on your list. This helps to explore the meaning behind each item and will drive out your beliefs on each item, instead of thinking of the item itself. Your beliefs are the key with passions and that is what you need to get to the root of.

3. The same thing applies with the pain side of your list. Ask yourself and answer why you belief it was painful or what caused the pain. Keep asking about each response until you get to a value or belief on each item, since this always is the root of any feeling or thought. You need to understand your beliefs in different areas to truly see any of your passions in your life as well.

4. Next, you need to group those beliefs, order them in how you would prioritize them, which ones are reoccurring and which ones contradict each other. Examine and determine which beliefs are most important to you. This is the hardest part, you need to be truly honest with yourself. Don’t answer for anyone else, what you’ve been conditioned to think, or play it safe here. You need to FEEL those beliefs for them to be real. Belief comes from the heart and soul, not the mind.

5. Now, for each of your beliefs, you need to find some commonalities with them. Most beliefs are related and can often just have a painful and pleasurable side. And those are the key to identifying and building your passions. The values and beliefs can be controlled by each individual and making the choices to steer towards the pleasurable and away from the pain, is exactly what a passion is based on. Living consistently and energetically for these values and beliefs while choosing and following that which re-inforces your beliefs, no matter the risk or consequences is exciting and inspiring. Its Passion!

Next I’ll be looking at how to express your passion and the power of it.

Posted by Mike King under Purpose/Passion | 5 Comments »