Optimism and self-skills

You may think that certain posts I’ve made appear simplistic and obvious and of course I know they are.  The point is, the simplest most obvious thing can sometimes be the hardest thing to understand and until we understand it, it is not obvious or simple to us at all!

Which comes first, is it optimism or self-skills, or are they collectively developed?

The strength of self-skills

Most of us have experienced challenging times.  At some point in our lives we’ve all found ourselves in a situation that appears to be insurmountable, fighting hard to keep afloat and wondering if things will ever get better.  It’s at these points when suddenly; unexpectedly we are thrown a lifeline that can change our perception in an instant from one of desperation to one of hope

It’s at these times that some unseen force pumps regenerating energy into every corner of our being filling us back up with hope, recharging our self-belief and self-confidence and giving us the self-motivation to once more face the challenges that lie ahead. 

Without hope we feel weak and de-motivated, our self-skills give us the strength and optimism we need to move forward toward the “light at the end of the tunnel.”      

Learning styles and self-skills

People matter-people differ.  While we are all different we can assemble people into groups with common behavioural characteristics in order to begin to understand them.  Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist popularised this approach through his theory of psychological type where he describes the traits of introversion, extraversion, thinking and feeling.  Virtually all comprehensive personality trait analysis models used today include Jung’s concepts.

Gordon Willard Allport an American psychologist was one of the first psychologists to focus on the study of the personality, and is often referred to as one of the founding figures of personality psychology. He contributed to the formation of Values Scales and rejected a behavioural approach, which he thought often did not go deep enough.

People share similar traits; the traits indicate behavioural and motivational tendencies, the tendencies point towards inherent skills and interests and suggest motivation toward or away from certain situations or activities.  Understanding a young persons traits can provide valuable insights into the persons preferred style of learning giving parents and teachers the opportunity to tailor their coaching/teaching to the needs of the learner.

Relationships and learning outcomes

Some years ago we were involved in the Scottish Governments “National Debate on Education” which meant we travelled around the country gathering answers to the government’s questions.  During this period we had the opportunity to ask 3 very different groups of people some questions of our own.  Each group, young people, parents/carers and teachers unanimously agreed on the answer to the following question:

“How does the quality of the student/teacher relationship effect learning outcomes?” 

The answer they agreed upon was:

Self-skills - who needs them?

We all do, especially young people.  The value self-skill education offers young people becomes clearer when school leaving time arrives and young people seek to enter the world of work.  

We all know that people make their decisions about others based on their own preconceived ideas about what is good, bad, right and wrong.  We all do this, it takes only moments and we call it “first impressions.”  These first impressions lead us to make “judgments” about others. 

When a young person meets a prospective employer, who it could be argued is even more attuned consciously and subconsciously toward the evaluation of others the true value of self-skill education starts to show itself. 

Self-skills - inertia

Sitting on the fence being unable to make a decision to get off to your right or to your left paralyses many of us at some moments in our lives. 

“Action is the enemy of thought.”

Even the wrong action leads us to recognise what we could/should have done and therefore even the wrong action is good for us! 

Motivation – the magnet effect

When we start looking into ourselves and recognising what repels us and what we are motivated towards we can start to make choices that will lead us to environments and activities that we enjoy. 

For example; a bystander observes someone being in the place they want to be and doing the things they like doing, the onlooker sees a happy person who appears attracted by an unseen energy that they describe as self-motivation.  Like a magnet, if the poles are reversed an equally strong opposing energy can be created.  For example the bystander observing someone being in a place they do not want to be, doing the things they do not want to do sees an unhappy person who appears repelled by an unseen energy that the spectator describes as de-motivation. 

The bystander further distils the two scenarios by adding other observations. 

Self-awareness - perception

Perception is reality.  In other words how we look and feel about a situation dictates our attitude toward it, how we behave and the action we take.

We have a perception about everything.  The stronger our perception is the more obvious it becomes to others how we feel and what we think about the situation.  The more we perceive the situation as either favourable or unfavourable the easier it is to observe our point of view. 

When we are more aware of ourselves we can begin to recognise what we think and how we feel about a situation and therefore we are more consciously able to realise how our perception is affecting our behaviours and actions.

For example we perceive a situation to be exciting, interesting and enjoyable therefore the behaviour and attitude others might observe us adopting will clearly demonstrate to them that our perception toward this situation is favourable.  The more self-aware we become the more we are able to recognise our own behaviours and attitudes toward situations.  The more we are able to determine if our thoughts and feelings are destructive or constructive the more we are able to choose to avoid the destructive and engage with the constructive. 

Intrinsic/extrinsic motivation - self-awareness

They say, “you get what you focus on”.  As a young adult there are lots of pressures influencing us in one direction or another.  Here in the UK we are influenced from a very young age toward what success looks like form societies point of view.  One example of this is the strong pressure to get a job, earn and save so we can buy our own home.  I’m not saying this is bad because clearly owning your own home is a huge advantage in today’s world.  What I am saying is that the values of society are superimposed upon us.  When we are young a great many of us adopt these values long enough to satisfy our basic needs such as building security and stability in our lives via owning a home. 

We are somehow measured by the amount of “stuff” we accumulate; outsiders looking in see those with the biggest flashiest houses as successful.  Often what happens is the individual adopts the extrinsic motivators of society and subscribes to the actions that help them achieve the things that make them appear successful in society.  

The self-skill relationship

Assuming we agree self-awareness, self-confidence, self-belief and self-esteem are core self-skills vital for a person’s achievement and fulfilment then immediately we could ask ourselves certain questions:

“Are they connected/related?”

“What effect do they have on each other?”

So lets consider the first question, “are they connected/related?”  My view is that they are.  Let me attempt to describe a scenario that substantiates this view. 

Cooking our thoughts!

The more often we think the same thought the more we build that thought.  The stronger that thought becomes the more it influences our feelings, behaviour and actions.  As the master chef of our own thoughts it is our responsibility to ensure we “cook” thoughts that lead us toward constructive feelings, behaviours and actions.

Turning thoughts into real things

Every big or small accomplishment achieved by mankind started life as an idea, a thought in a persons mind.  When we have an idea that we believe to be of value we start to focus on it and think about it more often. 

The more we think about it the more we build up our belief and our motivation to take some action.  The more motivated we become the more action we take and the closer we move toward turning our idea into a concrete thing.  The closer we get to turning our idea into a concrete thing the more we build our self-confidence, the more self-motivated we become and the more action we take!

“Cooking” our own success…part 1

Could we draw certain parallels between cake baking and success making?  Before reading further, spend a moment to mentally write a list of all the ingredients you need to bake a cake then read on, answering a few simple questions as you go. 

Who am I and what do I want?

Becoming self-aware is a life long journey.  We think we know everything when we’re young, only to realise later that if we’re really lucky we’ll still be learning about ourselves and growing personally right up till the end of our life!

Have you ever wondered why some people seam so happy within themselves, their contagious behaviour and attitude toward life spilling over and infecting everyone they come into contact with, while others drag themselves through life seemingly up-set with every step they take?

Motivated behaviour – an iceberg!

When we imagine an iceberg in our mind we see the waterline and the peak of the iceberg sticking up above the water.  However we also know that the invisible part of the iceberg below the waterline makes up the bulk of the iceberg and dictates in which direction the iceberg travels. 

When comparing an iceberg to human behaviour and motivation we can draw certain parallels. 

Closing the self-skills gap

The more we become aware of the importance of developing young peoples self-awareness, self-confidence and self-belief the more we realise what building blocks are required in our current educational system in order to bridge the self-skills teaching/learning gap.

Some things in life are nice to have and others are a must have! 

Self-skills education - the next revolution?

We had the industrial revolution and we are deep into the technological revolution, could self-skills education be the next revolution?

The world population has witnessed huge changes over the past two to three decades.  In some ways these changes have sneaked up on us without us realising!  It’s a bit like growing your hair; you look at yourself every day and don’t notice much change, however when you meet an old friend who hasn’t seen you for a long time they immediately see a big change in you. 

Lets think about some of the changes that have quietly worked their magic on us over the past 30-40 years without us really noticing.  These include:

Going nowhere positive…a global challenge!?

Here in the UK 15% of the population of 16-24 year old young people are going nowhere positive…fast! 

The situation is that they have passed through the compulsory educational system, gained little in the way of formal qualifications, learned little that is relevant to the world of work and life out with school and find themselves with little hope, or opportunity.

Soft-skills – how do we get them?

Everyone is aware of the term soft-skills, less people are familiar with the term self-skills. 

Employers refer to soft-skills a great deal, seeking to recruit individuals who possess “inter personal skills”, “communication skills”, “positive attitude”, “determined confident individuals” etc.

KPMG, a leading provider of professional services in the UK, has produced a report, Global Skills for Graduates in Financial Services, which emphasises that current graduates entering the sector are usually technically proficient but are very often lacking in soft business skills.  The "soft" skills employers feel many graduates lack include teamwork, good communication, drive, energy and a "can do" attitude.

Ian Gomes, chairman of KPMG's new and emerging markets practice, said:

Self-enabling or self-limiting beliefs – your subconscious doesn't know the difference!

Imagine you’re a paperboy or papergirl walking up a driveway toward a house with your papers and a big dog attacks you and bites your bum!  Firstly, you feel some pain in your bum and secondly, for the first time you’re having thoughts like “some dogs bite” or “why did the dog bite me?”

Imagine you go up the next driveway and another different dog bites your bum.  Again it’s a painful experience for you.  Your earlier thought, that some dogs bite, might now change to “quite a lot of dogs bite”, or “why are these dogs biting me?” 

Imagine you walk up a third driveway and another dog bites you  – your bum is very painful now and you might be thinking and BEGINNING TO BELIEVE that “all dogs bite!” 

Go up the fourth driveway and you see a dog slavering, growling and teeth showing…

“How will you behave when you see the 4^th dog showing its teeth, growling and slavering?” 

Self-esteem and the spiralling effect

Each time we allow ourselves to do something that makes us feel bad we lower our opinion of ourselves.  Continued involvement in such activities can lead us to form destructive beliefs about ourselves.  The more we engage in destructive activities and encourage these negative thoughts and feelings the stronger our destructive beliefs grow, the less we like ourselves and the lower our self-esteem becomes.  

When we know that we have done something good we feel better about ourselves and our self-image improves. Continued involvement in such activities can lead us to form constructive beliefs about ourselves.  The more we engage in constructive activities and encourage these positive thoughts and feelings the stronger our constructive beliefs grow, the more we like ourselves and the better our self-image becomes.  

We believe that one of the most important things every person can do to help build their own self-esteem is to think about their own behaviours and actions and the resulting thoughts and feelings and ask themselves:

The internal workings of self-confidence

One of the greatest challenges that we all face when building our own self-confidence in relation to a particular issue or activity is the internal voice that gives us reasons why we can’t achieve at the thing we are thinking about doing.  I’m sure you have heard the voices inside your own head, you know the ones, “you’re too young or you’re too old”, “you don’t have enough money” or “you don’t have the knowledge or the experience”. 

Another issue that has a significant effect on us is the self-deprecating language we use with ourselves when we do not achieve to our own expectations, we tell ourselves we have “failed”.  This type of thinking acts as additional firepower for our internal voice to use against us in the future.  I’m sure you’ll recognise the thought “it didn’t work last time so it won’t work this time either”.

Experiencing self-awareness

Daniel Goleman brought the concept of emotional intelligence (EI) into the public eye.  One simple interpretation of EI is:

“The ability to recognise and manage your own behaviours and emotions for the benefit of yourself and those around you”

Assuming we accept that in order to successfully manage our own behaviours and emotions we must first learn about ourselves and how others perceive us, then the questions become:

“How do we develop more self-awareness and why is it important to be more self-aware?”

Self-skills fluctuation theory

How about we consider the idea that the below can be described as self-skills?

• Self-awareness
• Self-confidence
• Self-esteem
• Self-belief

Lets also assume that our self-skills can "fluctuate" up or down depending on one or more of the following conditions.  Our emotional state, our level of energy, our awareness of the situation we face, our previous experiences of similar situations, how we behaved in the past and our perception of weather or not we were good/bad, unsuccessful or successful.

OK, lets test this "fluctuation" theory - does it work with each of the self-skills listed above?

What are self-skills?

So where shall I start?  OK, I've thought of an opening, how about thinking of the more commonly referred to soft-skills and asking ourselves if they are related to self-skills, are they part of the same family, are they just friends or neighbours or is there no connection what so ever?  Are there some similarities, is one driven by another?  What are your thoughts?

OK, so I'm aware that it may take some time before you find my Blog!  So here goes......let me start a conversation with myself.