Personal Development: Can you really achieve your goals?

I had a conversation with my sister-in-law about the question of ‘overachievement’. To a great extent, there are people who view the successes we have at AKLTG as a major success. For the owners, we see it as work in progress.

So, I was posed the question: are over achievers dissatisfied with life, put themselves through misery and “trying” to prove themselves even more? My answer was pretty straightforward.

Some people are born into the world like bicycles. They believe they are bicycles and can go up to a maximum of, say 50 km/h. Along comes someone who is born into the world like a Ferrari. But this Ferrari is traveling at 100km /h. All the bicycles are astounded by the speed and ask the Ferrari to slow down. However, deep down inside, the Ferrari knows it can go much faster.

Some of you were born Ferraris. Unfortunately, because of the world of self-help and how people have been victimized by scams along the way, or any other unfortunate circumstance, people have lost the belief in their own birthright.

For example, I believe that everyone can be a great leader. I believe everyone can be a great public speaker. Or a great business owner. Somehow, they stopped believing in themselves and have not yet been awakened. It is this that drives me to keep on getting people involved in their own personal development so that they can become achievers and get past their own mental blocks in life.

I do meet people who idolize such great people. But having an idol and having a role model are two very different things. Having a role model means you’re going to do something about learning from your model. Conversely idolizing means you simply just sit there.

In achieving success, I strongly believe that individuals who have the potential to succeed should push themselves through the fire. Doubt, uncertainty, being victimized by others… all these need to be pushed aside without much care. You, the incoming achiever, needs to know that every step of the way is a step of faith that you can be better. Without this, people would not have broken records, swung the odds in their favor, or made a complete turnaround of a disastrous result. Time and time again, history has proven this to be true: a person who desires to achieve will achieve, and a person who creates resources enables that achievement. Conversely, human beings make rules that prevent them from being far more successful than they should be.

“I’m not good enough” or “I hate myself” or “I’m not worth anything” are common beliefs that cap the potential beyond anything else – self-sabotage. These unconscious beliefs hover like a veil of foul air. Sure, this is my belief. But without going beyond and holding this belief to be absolutely true, I would not have achieved what I have achieved today. And personally, I believe that many of these achievements are simple to do once you know how to do it.

So, are some people really just born as bicycles or as backburner Ferraris? I strongly believe in the latter rather than the former. Sure, a small handful are not endowed with what we might call “normal” skills. Yet, in spite of these appearances, they too go out and achieve the seemingly impossible. Haven’t you seen people born without arms and legs go out and achieve amazing results? Haven’t you seen sprinters with prosthetic legs participate in the Olympics? These stories have been shared to death in the social media online. But we still look at them as “the impossible dream”.

Well, maybe you just have to dream bigger. There’s more out there to live, love and learn. To me, I can’t simply see a great car go to waste. Neither can I see a great person go to waste.

Unleash your potential.

Find a coach. Attend a training. Read a book. Whatever it takes to awaken that sleeping giant, and stir that hurricane-force motivation which is in you to get what you were born to get.

Myers Briggs Personality test: Personality Types

Personality is one of the invisible factors in human relationships I always talk about. In most cases, we’re not aware of this and understand personality merely as traits.

Reflextion
Creative Commons License photo credit: Malin Helene

However, traits can always be present when the need calls for it. For instance, you might be at the workplace that needs you to be serious and logical even though by nature you are a fun loving person. Traits are often stronger and more dominant as a result of habituation and skill training.

Type, on the other hand will be different. According to many different sources, our personality development begins in the womb and stabilizes at the age of around 14 years. Personality Type, therefore, refers to the personality component of you that is unchanging.

The only way to access this is to take an MBTI personality test and ensure that you are in a relaxed mental environment. This is important because if you are under pressure (in legal terms, ‘duress’), it can significantly change your behavior. That doesn’t measure your core personality – it merely measures the effect of the environmental pressure.

By taking the test, you get a chance to know yourself from a psychological point of view and the facets of accommodation you need to make in order to adapt better in the workplace and live a more energized and fulfilling life.

Self-Help: Building The Leader In You

Change of Command Ceremony - United States Army Africa - 10 June  2010

“The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.”

~Colin Powell

Problems, problems, problems. It seems that people are obsessed with problems and don’t know how to solve them. They complain about the problem. In reality, as Colin Powell says, it is a way to build a positive relationship with those around you, in spite of the problems.

Surely problems can also be used in order to create bonding between people. Very often, the problems might also be you. If someone trusts you enough to tell you that you are causing the problem, stop looking so vainly at yourself. Sometimes, one has to look beyond the obvious and consider the intention behind what has been said. If you learn to hold the belief that every behavior has a positive intent, then it’s going to be easier for you to listen not just from the head, but also from the heart.
Creative Commons License photo credit: US Army Africa

Self-Help: Is Your Life Difficult?

“Difficulties increase the nearer we approach the goal.”

~Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Until END.......Creative Commons License photo credit: ieshraq

Has it ever occurred to you that people seldom tell you how good their life is? the only people I know who are truly satisfied with their life are those who have gone through lots of personal trials that have affected them, and they learn to be grateful for what they have.

I recently heard of a young lady who was having some trouble with dealing with her emotions. She had a quick temper and this caused her boyfriend to decide to leave her. At this point, she felt upset and emotionally betrayed and of course, there were a few men who came into her life but she never accepted them because she was still nursing this pain.

For most people, the fastest way to self-help would be to take the difficult moment as a way to sharpen ourselves and strengthen us. She didn’t learn how to appreciate her significant other, and it would have been difficult if she believed that she was betrayed. Consequently, the fastest way to deal with such a situation is to run away.

Oddly enough, this is a pattern of behavior which does not bode well for future development of relationships!

In fact, I’d suggest that you don’t expect to have a life without difficulty. Rather, welcome the difficulty and take it on as a challenge you have to face to bring yourself to the next level of personal fulfillment.