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.