ISSUE 149 ISSN 1712-468

I want freedom for the full expression
of my personality.


Mahatma Gandhi

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This Week's Inspiration

From
Why Aren’t You More Like Me?
Third Edition

The Chapter on Holistic Approach to Devlopment
and Understanding of Self and Others
Part Two of Two
 
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Holistic:Of or relating to holism; relating to or concerned with wholes or with complete systems rather than with the analysis of, treatment of, or dissection into parts.
 
A Holistic Approach to Development
and Understanding of Self and Others

Are we Nature or Nurture?

Are we a product of nature (born that way) or nurture (input from our environment)? The answer is we are a combination of both nature and nurture.
  • Each person is born with many parts that form the whole. 
  • We gain knowledge and beliefs (nurture) as we participate in life.
In Part One, Chapter I outlined the impact of Personal Style, Bio-Physical Factors, Self-Worth, and Environmental Systems on your personality. In Part Two, I will cover Social Teachers, Emotional Anchors, and Spirituality.
 
Personality Factors Development Model™

To acknowledge people’s diversity and provide a framework for development and understanding, we created the Personality Factors Development Model. We will focus the balance of this book on your Personal Style, one factor in the model. ur Personal Style greatly influences the many adjunct styles of behavior that you will develop during your lifetime. Personal Style is the foundation for your interpersonal or social style.
 
This framework provides a roadmap for understanding the whole person.
 


You’ll notice the three factors in the top half of the chart are called internal factors; they affect your personality “from within” because they emanate directly from inside your body or mind. The factors in the bottom half are called external factors; they are more dependent on stimulation from phenomena “from outside” yourself.

The factors represent the different kinds of influences present to some extent in the lives of all human beings, regardless of gender, race, or culture. The strength of the influence coming from factors within each of the categories may vary for each individual, however.

For example, everyone’s life is strongly influenced by biophysical factors such as genetics, but not always in the same way or to the same extent. Even when two individuals do have the same disability, the condition does not affect their lives in exactly the same way.

We’ll look at each factor separately to examine the role played by the various factors within each category and the way they influence personality development.

Social Teachers

Another personality development category consists of the significant others whose personality and behavior we have copied. That social learning process is called modeling. We use other people as role models and develop an understanding of which behaviors are desirable and which should be avoided.

Much of the way we behave on a daily basis is learned from watching and imitating other people’s behavior. Frequently, this learning occurs indirectly and often without our being aware of it.

We call the people we imitate the most Social Teachers. A social teacher is anyone who has had a direct or indirect influence on the way you currently perceive, approach, or interact with the environment. Those influences could be either positive or negative. For instance, copying the behavior of social teachers has been shown to influence a broad range of behavior, from aggressiveness in children to the way children reward their own performances.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP: www.aap.org) confirmed that a child's input reflects his or her output. Social teachers can be video games, social media, music, and the like. Exposure to media violence through television, movies, music, and video games can contribute to a variety of physical and mental health problems for children and adolescents, including desensitization to violence and aggressive behavior, nightmares, fear, and depression.  Here is their statement.

Music plays an important role in the socialization of children and adolescents. Popular music is present almost everywhere, and it is easily available through the radio, various recordings, the Internet, and new technologies, allowing adolescents to hear it in diverse settings and situations, alone or shared with friends. Parents often are unaware of the lyrics to which their children are listening because of the increasing use of downloaded music and headphones.

Research on popular music has explored its effects on schoolwork, social interactions, mood, and effect, and particularly behavior. The effect popular music has on the behavior and emotions of children and adolescents is of paramount concern. Lyrics have become more explicit in their references to drugs, sex, and violence over the years, particularly in certain genres. A teenager's preference for certain types of music could be correlated or associated with certain behaviors.

As with popular music, the perception and the effect of music-video messages are important, because research has reported that exposure to violence, sexual messages, sexual stereotypes, and use of substances of abuse in music videos might produce significant changes in behaviors and attitudes of young viewers. Pediatricians and parents should be aware of this information. Furthermore, with the evidence portrayed in these studies, it is essential for pediatricians and parents to take a stand regarding music lyrics.

American Academy of Pediatrics

Input Equals Output

The Social Teacher category always includes the people who raised us from birth—in most cases, our parents. It includes other family members with whom we frequently came into contact, especially those who are older than we are. That would include all your peers while growing up and other significant individuals with whom you have come into contact during your life, such as teachers, pastors, and athletic coaches.

Even media personalities, historical figures, authors, sports celebrities, and movie stars might be included in the category, if they had a significant impact upon your thinking and behavior.

An example of a social teacher is your first employer. I grew up on a dairy farm; I was taught to work hard and that taking time off was a treat. After my parents married, they worked 14 years without a single day off.

When I came home from college and wanted to have a couple of weekends off per month, they quickly adjusted my request from 2 weekends a month off, to 2 half-days a month.

As my first full-time employers, my parents taught me that hard work comes first and there is little time for play. In every position I have held since, I have put 110% into my efforts—no matter the working conditions or the pay being offered. The work ethic was instilled into my mind long ago as an important value.

A list of the social teachers who might have had some lasting impact upon your thinking, personality, and behavior include the following.
Parents In-laws Girlfriends
Brothers School Teachers Boyfriends
Sisters Coaches Actors
Grandparents Friends Rock Stars
Aunts Peers Supervisors
Uncles Neighbors Authors
Cousins Religious Leaders Artists

Even today, your values are being shaped and influenced by the input you are allowing into your space and mind.

It's time to be brutally honest with yourself.
What are you allowing as input?

  • What kind of books or magazines did you buy—if any—last month? Are they positive and educational or frivolous, like People Magazine and the National Inquirer?
  • If I looked at your library, what would I find?
  • What about other media—TV, music, DVDs, movies? What was the content? How much time did you spend in each of those media? North Americans watch 6 to 8 hours of TV a day. That's a lot of input.
  • If you have children, what input are you allowing them to absorb?
  • What about family and friends? Can you educate them on the impact of the input they are allowing into their lives?

Some of your choices and behaviors will be driven by your core values and behavioral values, many of which have been developed through Social Teachers.  To confirm your core values and behavioral values, we have designed the Values Preference Indicator to help you understand your top values and how they need to be present for you to have a fulfilled life. We will discuss them in a later section of this book.

Emotional Anchors

This category consists of any experience that has in some way caused us to feel pain or traumatized us or created a strong reaction, either emotional or physical. After a major event shocks or affects our systems, we are never the same again. The memory of it penetrates beyond our reasoning into our subconscious and leaves us “different” from who we were before the event happened.

Growing up on the dairy farm, my siblings and I were always conscious of safety around farm equipment. That was never clearer to me than through the following event.

My father was harvesting silage—cutting grass for winter storage. After school, I hitched a ride in one of the silage wagons. They had chains and sharp spikes to unload the silage at the storage location. The driver pulled the silage wagon up to a powerful blower that threw silage six storeys high.

But in the process, he had forgotten I was in the silage wagon. He had already turned on the belt that fed the blower and was about to turn on the silage wagon. I knew I had to get out of the wagon or I would be injured or killed. I jumped out of the wagon and slipped on to the conveyer belt that fed into the blower. I was 2 seconds from death when the hired hand pulled me off the belt.

Needless to say, I never rode inside another silage wagon. That experience has made me extremely safety conscious and cautious around any type of equipment. Just ask my kids. My three favorite words are safety, safety, and safety. That is called an Emotional Anchor.

Emotional experiences need not start out negatively, but they can end up that way. For example, a woman who gives birth to triplets may be overjoyed at first, but, due to the extra amount of work involved in taking care of three infants, she might end up feeling quite resentful because she has no time to herself. While she loves each one of the children, the overall experience has become an Emotional Anchor.

Notice I said might end up feeling resentful. The same experience might not have the same effect on another individual. For instance, one person who has been in a very serious auto accident may be emotionally scarred for life, whereas another person may quickly get over the accident and still love to drive.

A few years ago, a firefighter saved a 5-year-old who had fallen into an old abandoned well. That seemingly simple act of courage turned into a disaster for the firefighter. As media outlets from around the world called to interview him, he began to get attached to the attention.

Before long, his attitude (ego) toward his other colleagues became too hard to handle and he was fired from his position. Even his family abandoned him, leaving him with nothing. A seemingly positive event turned into a negative Emotional Anchor.

Some people go through life without having many of those kinds of experiences and others have more than their fair share. We all have personal examples. Even if two people have had very similar experiences, that doesn’t mean they both were traumatized. Different things affect different people in different ways.

The Emotional Anchor experience category is the “window” through which counselors and therapists often examine personal behavior. If you have unfinished business from your past—fear or bitterness, for instance—perhaps talking to someone trained in helping people with those types of experiences would be beneficial for you.

The main point is that after we have a traumatic experience, our personalities and behavior change in some way; we do not remain the same.

Are you aware of how you have been affected by your experiences?

Examples of Emotional Anchors

Negative possibilities: Divorce, physical abuse, death of a loved one, failure, moving, job loss, natural catastrophes

Positive possibilities: A lot of children, a promotion where the new job overwhelms you, winning the lottery and being unable to manage your new-found wealth, being a hero and not able to handle the media attention

Each individual will respond uniquely to similar events.

Some will be traumatized; others will not. Don’t judge an event’s impact on a person by the way those experiences might affect you.

Spirituality

In the Personality Development Factors Model, you will notice the side profile of a person. Under the profile is the word Spirituality. We recently added Spirituality to our model because we recognize that a person’s beliefs and spiritual perspective highly influence behavior, choices, values, and life satisfaction.

In the end, each person will make his or her own choice about spirituality. People should be respected in their choice.

Writing about spirituality can be a sensitive issue for some people but that doesn’t make the topic any less important. The oppression we know as political correctness has hindered full engagement of this subject. By not mentioning it, we deny each other access to answers that will bring resolution to our true purpose and meaning in life—and the underpinning to everything we are and do. There is no way to avoid it.

In our Personality Development Factors Model, we are not talking about the humanistic, watered-down version of spirituality that typically refers to core values and unspecific beliefs. We are referring to the foundational beliefs on which our lives exist and function. That is the deepest level of awareness we can seek or achieve.

Here is the reality. Confirming and determining your true calling and purpose in your life includes going on a personal quest to find answers about your spirituality!

  • Are human beings spiritual? How can we know?
  • If we are spiritual, what does that mean? What is the truth on the subject?
  • How can we tell truth from falsehood?
  • Is there a God (Capital G)? Who or what is God?

Those questions and the answers you find will help expand, confirm, or challenge your thinking about your spirituality. The truth will set you free—only if you seek to know it. Approaching the subject with an investigative, inquisitive mindset is important to the process. Of course in the end, you will make your own personal choice.

Our lives operate under natural laws and truths. Regardless of our opinions about those laws, the laws do not change. One example is gravity. Just because we don’t understand it or accept it doesn’t mean gravity does not exist. When people believed the world was flat, their collective opinion did not make it so.

The principle of natural laws and truth applies equally to spirituality. Personal relativism (deciding what spiritual truth or law is true) applies no more to spirituality than it does to gravity. Our focus should be on discovering spiritual truth, not in creating it—because no one can create spiritual truth.

How can you understand self and others unless you have hope? Not easily!

Not long ago, a study was released about the factors that most influenced the happiness (lack of worry) and fulfillment of 8-to-12 year olds. Contrary to the researchers’ premise, “happiness and fulfillment were not always present in a two-parent family, with higher income levels, and physical health. The happiest kids had faith in God. With a capital G.

Children with faith were the most content and well adjusted. Their faith was even more important than the number of parents raising them. Their spirituality provided hope, grounding, and well-being beyond their circumstances.

All individuals should be respected as they go through their spiritual search process. Each journey is intensely personal, even though the destination is the same—to arrive at a place of spiritual truth.

A few years ago, I had the pleasure of listening to a brilliant mathematician and scientist who took the time to calculate the implications of the Theory of Evolution. His presentation documented the fact that it’s not mathematically feasible to have all origins of life come from a single point, as is suggested by some.

From his research, he found that Evolution required genetic mutations and progress of such magnitude, it is simply not possible. He pointed out that current science reveals most species that mutate die out. (Mutations are required for the Theory of Evolution to be fulfilled.)

Everyone has a position on the subject. We include it as part of our CRG development model because your beliefs influence your choices and your success in life.

If you want to learn more about this subject, I have written extended comments and my personal journey at www.crgleader.com. Search for Living On Purpose ezine, issue 129.

So, what about you?
 
 

Note: If you want to learn more about your personal purpose in life, inquire about My Source EXPERIENCE Journal™ – A Personal Discovery Process for Those Who Want to Lead a Passionate and Fulfilling Life. In this 88-page workbook, you will be asked to respond to several questions to lead you on a self-discovery process to determine your purpose and passions in life.

One Final Caution

No single Personality Development factor is more important than another in determining personality and behavior. In real life, any category can override or dominate any or all the other categories at any given time or in any given situation. When one category dominates the others, the others simply don’t disappear or go away. They are still there and can be used to assist a person to increase his or her current level of self-management.

If you are going to contribute at the highest level, you should simultaneously activate awareness of all factors so you can embrace a complete and holistic path of development.


 



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People really do want to live inspired lives.

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  1. CRG's calling is to assist others to live, lead, and work on purpose—including helping people discover their passion and learn how to live it, intentionally, every day. An On-Purpose Person has a vibrant mind, body, and soul. Consider the following processes and assessments.


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Until next time, keep Living On Purpose!

Ken Keis


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