Month: December 2017

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Reflection and Potential

With 2018 fast approaching it is the perfect opportunity to reflect on 2017 and think about how you would like 2018 to be better.  After all, we all want stuff to keep getting better right?

I think the first question to you all is; What is your potential?

Even if you have an idea what your potential is, you first should seek to find or establish your starting point.  Many years ago, I was advised to read a poem to assist me in academic writing.  The celebrated English poet and author, Rudyard Kipling, promoted his ‘six honest men’ the use of six questions, as a guide for better thinking.

“I keep six honest serving men, they taught me all I knew.
Their names are What and Why and When
and How and Where and Who.”…(R Kipling)

Six honest serving men is an exercise that examines an issue from different viewpoints.  It helped tremendously in my academic writing, but I got more use than that.  I learned to use the ‘what, why, when, how, where and who’ to form the basis of analysis when problem solving.

What do I need to learn?
Why do I need to know this?
When can I use this?
How can I use this?
Where can I use this?
Who can I use this with?

What, Why and When, How and Where and Who do not necessarily need to be in this order.  As this is a blog about self reflection I think we will major on the ‘who’.  I asked in a previous blog; Do we know ourselves?  I want to explore that a little more in depth here.

It’s very difficult to know how we come across to others.  Some of us might think we do know ourselves.  How many times have you heard somebody say; ’I know me’ or ‘what you see is what you get’?  I think the these statements represents us knowing some of our likes and dislikes, thus confirming our limit of potential or settling for a version of ourselves.

Are you completely happy with who you are, or rather, who you believe you are?  Are you content with where you are in life?  Do you accept that; This is as good as it gets?  Is change no longer possible?  If yes then congratulations, you have reached your potential.  But what I really believe is that you are accepting limits of your potential.  I believe improvement is always possible, furthermore I believe that within improvement lies change and change is inevitable.  In embracing change in the right way, we may just also be embracing improvement

There is a saying, I have no idea of the origin but I have heard this many times. ‘You cannot teach the young or the old anything’.  My interpretation of this is, when someone is young they do not yet possess the complexity in thinking or maybe the wisdom to make sense of life’s lessons.  As we get older we often get stuck in our ways, sometimes believing change is just too difficult now.

Where we are now is where we choose to be through a combination of decisions, thoughts, deeds, words, belief and attitude (disability and illness aside). We should not therefore lament our position, it is after all, exactly where we choose to be. If we want to be somewhere else in life then we might analyse; where are we now, why are we here, when did this chain of events that led me here start, how did they start, What do I want to be better, do I want to be a better person in any way?

How can we learn more about who we really are?  The answer might possibly lie through the eyes of those that look upon us?  Especially as we perform different roles in our lives which require us to access different facets of our personality. It is quite possible if not probable that we come across differently to different people all the time.  There may be a number of reasons for this; role, how we feel, how they relate to us, our experiences etc…

It is said that life is a journey and it is the journey we should try to enjoy to its fullest extent.  The destination is, by its very definition, the end of the journey. Why is it then, that at times we stop our journey prematurely?  We have settled for being set in our ways, there is no more learning or change required, I am here, I have arrived.

When does our potential stop?  It stops when we choose to stop it, either consciously or subconsciously.  Do we one day wake up with a different mindset?  Do we one day wake up lazy?  Is it a life changing experience we have or is it the culmination of many smaller impacting experiences that make us decide, this is it. I have reached my zenith.  I am the best I can ever be.  I can’t be bothered anymore?  Why should I change?  Whatever your decision, it is a decision saying, ‘I will stop here – no more potential’.

This leads me onto another saying; ‘If in ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. I personally dislike this saying as it infers stagnation, and within stagnation lies decline. I used to hear this a lot at work, usually from people opposed to change or who had become set in their ways.  I’ve said before, we humans are creatures of habit and stepping outside of our learned patterns of behaviour can be hard and uncomfortable.  Self improvement or life improvement requires us to grow, evolve, it requires us to change.  Therefore for us to improve it requires us to do some work, to do something different to what we have been doing.

It’s good to talk
I have some questions for you. What, more questions I hear you ask? I’m afraid so.  I want you to think about all of your relationships, personal and professional. Do you have problems in any of them? What do you do about it?

Here are some common observations I have made;

Ignore them
Blame others
Acknowledge them
Wait it out (this is different from ignoring it as it requires acknowledgement)
Talk to a third party
Talk to many third parties
Search on the internet for some answers
Talk to the person concerned
Coach that person overtly
Coach that person covertly
Receive coaching from that person
Create distance
Give up and walk away

Which of these have we tried?  What did we learn from our experience?  What would we do if we had the chance of a ‘do over’?  What will we do next time? These are purely rhetorical questions for us to ponder.

From the points above there are some golden opportunities for us to learn, and grow.  These open the door to feedback.  Feedback is a gift, it might sting at times, it be extremely hard to take and even easier to ignore, but it is a gift.  When taken in the right way it will help us evolve as a person and therefore improve some aspect of our lives, perhaps reach greater potential.  Feedback can help us grow exponentially, but there are some golden rules for us to bear in mind when receiving feedback.

Honesty is personal, the person giving us the feedback is doing so from their own perspective, respect that.
Do not dismiss it because we don’t like it.
Do not be defensive when receiving it.
Reflect on what has been given to us.

When reflecting on feed back, try going back to the questions derived from the six honest serving men poem;
What do I need to learn?
Why do I need to know this?
When can I use this?
How can I use this?
Where can I use this?
Who can I use this with?

How do you seek feedback? Do you seek feedback from others?  Are you open to it?  Does it matter to you?  Can you reach your potential without feedback?

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Style over Substance

Style over substance?

 

What is more important to you, how people see you or, what and who you are? This is of course a bit of a trick question; because we don’t really know how people see us. Indeed, our personalities are multi faceted by necessity. Taking myself for example, I am father, husband, friend, brother, son, uncle and who knows what else. all of these require me to access different facets of my personality. at any given time

“O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us!” (Robert Burns).

How do you dress? What do you post on social media? What matters to you? What is the impression you want to leave people through your use of social media? Personally, looking at what you ate for dinner doesn’t really do it for me. Although I do enjoy seeing people having fun.

I do also enjoy the educational content that is available and becoming more and more accessible. I’ve learned more about autism via YouTube then I did via my psychology degree. I don’t think social media is bad, or is responsible for what I believe is societies leaning to style over substance, it can be benevolent in that it gives us all the freedom to express ourselves. But what I do find interesting is how we choose to express ourselves. I absolutely value some people sharing their experiences publicly thus enabling us to learn from others through their, often very difficult, experiences.

I recently read a very powerful post on a social media site.  “people, if you do something for charity, do it because you care, not so you can put it on facebook”.

Image is tainted. Indicates style over substance. Reputation is actually more complex. Focus on actions as basis for reputation.

I think we are being educated to think looks are more important than content through media, social media, politics, celebrities, films etc… A friend once asked me; does life replicate art, or does art replicate life? It is one of the great philosophical debates. If we were to decide that life replicates art, does that mean that presenting something in an attractive way makes it more right? Just because something is attractive does not make it right.

“My friend, I am not what I seem. Seeming is but a garment I wear — a care-woven garment that protects me from thy questionings and thee from my negligence. The “I” in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, and therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable.” (Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet).

Dress well. Speak well. Use props, pictures and powerpoint. Use panache, verve, flair and elegance. Wow the crowds with your style and they may not notice that your content is not so hot. Use elaborate language that sounds good and fills up the space you have, covering the fact that you may actually have very little to say.

Style over substance is a logical fallacy, which occurs when someone bases their argument on compelling language, obfuscation, and various terms of art, instead of legitimate logical analyses. The fallacy works in two ways; It can propose an idea using style rather than substance, or it can reject an idea by attacking its style and presentation rather than its information content.  But surely what matters is the content of the argument — the substance.

When the arguer embellishes the argument with compelling language or rhetoric, and/or visual aesthetics. This comes in many forms as described below. “If it sounds good or looks good, it must be right!” Marketing is a whole industry based upon this idea. The objective of advertising isn’t always about telling us what is available but sometimes it’s selling us what we neither need or want.

I love the saying that ‘A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.’
In this case, it might be used to imply that a team is no better than the least productive member of that team which is just not true. But if the chain is only as strong as its weakest link, then the chain is equally as strong as its strongest link? Very often the ‘weakest links’ fade away into the background and the strong players lead the team. Or better still, the team will bond around the weakest link and build or encourage a greater contribution.

I cannot help thinking about politics when the subject of style over substance comes up. Well, politics and gossip magazines, same thing really.

How often have we thought that a politician’s speech was style over substance. They didn’t make very good points, but it sounded good. Passion in all the right places.

“If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.”
—W.C. Fields

Across the pond the rise of John F Kennedy famously changed the way the game of politics was played out in America. His presidential campaign marked a step away from the traditional focus on matters of pure policy towards a focus on personality, publicity stunts, fashion and then – and only then – on political issues. We in the UK then followed suit and in my opinion, we still do just that.

If people like you, then they will bond with you and will be unwilling to criticise what you say, or even think ill of you , to do otherwise would cause cognitive dissonance.

“When a political leader spends more time worrying about who he should associate himself rather than the policies he should be enacting, it is ultimately the people that lose out. Look at today’s dissatisfaction with political parties.  Politicians have always linked themselves with popular people for support but the problem today is that this is all politicians seem to focus on.  Is Britain following American politics in its focus on personality and style over substantial policy change?

Let’s face it, in today’s current climate we need politicians who are empathetic, educated, experienced and know what they are talking about. I’d far rather talk to them about their political outcomes and plans, how their actions have benefited the people they are in office to serve, than their holidays, parties or publicity stunts.

“Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance”. (Francis Bacon).

I ask you again. What matters to you? How people see you or, what and who you are. After all, words will always come easy. We are defined by what we do!