Month: December 2008

Coping with Guilt

Guilt is a natural response a person with a healthy conscience experiences when he believes he has wronged someone, or did not live up to the standards he has set for himself. It acts like a pain sensor that is intended to bring your attention to a matter you need to resolve: you need to do something about what you did or you need to do something to achieve the standard you have set.

And just like pain, guilt is not the end but a means to an end. It brings your attention to a matter so that you can take action on it and not simply suffer the guilt.

The Extremes of Guilt

A healthy feeling of guilt helps you to direct your attention to the issues you need to deal with. No more and no less. Not feeling any guilt may strip you of the motivation to right your wrong, whereas an excessive feeling of guilt will hinder your ability to act.

You must avoid both extremes of guilt (too little and too much) so that feeling guilty can contribute to your growth – which is why human beings experience it in the first place – rather than allow it to act as an obstacle in your life.

Your Sphere of Influence

Since guilt is an emotion that incites you to take action, it is only appropriate for the issues in which you can take action. In other words, you should not feel guilty for matters that are outside your scope, even if it is a wrong that you did.

If the consequences of your action cannot be reversed or mended, you can only learn from what you have done and use the feeling of guilt to ingrain the lessons into your future behavior (if applicable). There are many parents who realize that the way they treated their children during was not ideal, and so they feel guilty for the way they acted as parents.

However, they should only allow their guilt to direct them towards the actions that they can take, such as apologizing or trying to heal a wounded relation. It should not lead them to desire reversing time and undoing what they have done. This is outside their ability and they should not feel guilty for not being able to correct their mistakes.

Release Unnecessary Guilt

If the idea of having treated someone unjustly makes you feel guilty, you should bear in mind that you are treating yourself unjustly when you latch on to unnecessary feelings of guilt. Having high standards for yourself that are unrealistic to accomplish in a single step will not be reached more easily when you are suffering through guilt. It only hinders your progress.

Whenever you feel guilty, identify the cause of the feeling and determine what can be done to correct the situation. Resolve to act on your knowledge if you can take any action, and release any feelings of guilt when you are unable to realistically do anything to correct your mistake.

Success Mindset

Knowledge is NOT Power

I spent a great chunk of my adult life believing that knowledge is power, only to discover that this is not true. And as with many false beliefs, it contains an element of truth, but it’s not the whole truth.

To understand why “knowledge is power” is not true, we have to first understand the role knowledge is meant to play in our lives.

Knowledge is our way of grasping the nature of the reality we are living in and our nature as human beings. We seek to know, then to understand, not for the sake of knowing and understanding, but for the sake of discovering what we should do to effectively deal with our environment.

In other words, knowledge is a stepping stone we use in order to live proper lives, and it is impossible to bypass knowledge. There is absolutely no substitute for it.

But knowledge is not an end, but a means to an end.

It only becomes useful – and powerful – when it is applied through action. If it is not applied, it’s meaningless. The power of knowledge comes through its application and not in its acquisition. You can have all the knowledge of the world accessible to you, but if you don’t apply that knowledge into your life, your chances of survival – let alone success and prosperity – are minimal.

In fact, if you haven’t been applying any of your knowledge into your life, chances are you’re already dead 😛

If you want to win the lottery, knowing what the numbers are will not make you rich.

Knowing the numbers and BUYING THE TICKET will.

To be successful, you must rid yourself of the idea that knowledge is valuable for the sake of knowledge and look for ways in which you can apply your knowledge in order to enhance the quality of your life.

Personal Growth

Better is the Best

The purpose behind personal growth is often presented as: To be your best.

But in many cases, trying to be your best isn’t the best option, and it might even introduce a series of obstacles on your path to personal growth.

Defining “The Best”

The greatest obstacle you might face when striving to be your best is defining what your “best” actually is. What does being at your best involve? How can you be sure that that is your best?

The definition of the word “best” is – practically – very vague and, therefore, hard to aim for.

Your Best or Mine?

One of the main reasons why it’s so hard to determine what our best actually is is that we mix what is possible for us and what is possible for others. We judge ourselves by what others have achieved, which either means we set too high a target for ourselves, or too low a target.

Suppose I found out that a writer managed to write a complete book in 3 weeks. Being a writer (albeit an amateur), I might set that as a target for myself, while overlooking the fact that this writer I heard about may have more talent or experience than I do. I’d be setting a target for myself that’s based on someone else’s capabilities, without first discovering what my own capabilities are!

Tolerating Setbacks

“Best” and “perfect” usually go hand in hand. When we want to be our best, we expect to be perfect as well. Apart from the fact that “perfect” is also hard to define, we may end up feeling guilty and depressed whenever we experience a setback.

Setbacks remind us that we have not achieved our goal. And since setbacks are very common, they become a constant reminder that we are failing to reach our destination.

A Moving Target

What’s interesting about our best is that it is constantly changing based on our progress. The more we grow, the further away our best becomes, because our potential to grow expands. When we equip ourselves with more knowledge, greater skills and a set of other tools, we can achieve a lot more.

This is definitely not a bad thing, but can be confusing when you haven’t clearly defined what you mean by being your best.

The Next Step

The distinction we need to draw in personal growth is between the destination we aim to reach and the next step we will take towards our destination. Aiming for the best tends to combine the two, so we expect to become the best now, without acknowledging the series of steps we need to take in order to make a complete transition to the person we want to be.

And this is where I believe becoming better is best.

This is when you aim to take a step towards improvement rather than a leap to your destination. You will feel encouraged by the progress you are making rather than feel overwhelmed by the distance ahead.

You will have a more tangible measure of growth rather than aiming for a target you have yet to define.

Habits

Half Habits

I’ve come across quite a few personal productivity experts who recommend that you only attempt to change one habit at a time. That way you don’t end up overwhelming yourself, and can ensure that you have fully developed that habit before moving on to the next.

While this approach certainly has its advantages, I don’t think I have the patience to focus on a single habit at a time. Besides, the bad habits I want to get rid of and the good habits I want to adopt will take me several lifetimes to adopt into my character if I plan on taking on one habit a month.

Instead, I go by an approach I’d like to call “half habits.” Rather than attempt to fully develop a new habit, try to take a step in its direction. Don’t change your diet completely, but make slight adjustments to your meals or snacks. Don’t start a strict exercise regimen, but start becoming more active around the house, or begin with a few exercise sessions a week.

You move in the direction of a positive habit, or away from a negative habit, without feeling pressured or overwhelmed.

With this approach you can take on a great deal of “half habits” at a time, and the likelihood that you’ll stay committed to developing the habits completely is pretty high.

I started waking up early, cut down on junk food, began exercising, write one blog post a day and have mini-habits forming here and there without feeling burdened by the changes. In fact, I think some habits are supporting the formation of other habits, which is making my work much easier!

Give this approach a try, and see if you can begin to change your habits for the better and at a faster pace!

Coaching

How Coaching Works

Coaching can be an extremely effective tool in achieving your goals, but it is largely misunderstood. The common assumption is that you need a professional coach to guide you, but this is rarely the case.

Although there’s a great deal to mention about coaching, I’d like to begin addressing this topic here by first explaining how coaching works.

Thinking and Doing

To achieve any goal, you often have to think things through and get things done. But these are two different roles you are playing. Thinking has its own purpose and processes, and doing has its own purpose and processes.

Your performance might slow down while you are struggling to make sense of some ideas, or trying to come up with a comprehensive plan to achieving your goal. While you are busy thinking, you are delaying the doing.

This can be overwhelming at times, which leads to an eruption of unhealthy emotions, such as stress, worry, anxiety, fear, depression, etc.

So you are now dealing with 3 things: ideas you wish to clarify, actions you want to undertake and emotions you need to resolve. Juggling the three hinders your performance on all three fronts. You won’t be able to think clearly, you can’t get your work done and you can’t control your emotions.

Of course there are many ways in which such situations can be handled. Getting a coach is one of these ways.

Division of Labor

The reason why coaching is so effective is that it divides the labor between yourself and someone else: the coach manages the thinking and you handle the doing.

With this division, the negative emotions you experience will be reduced, because you no longer feel overwhelmed while oscillating between two different functions: thinking and doing.

You can then focus solely on single tasks, without worrying about the tasks ahead of you, or what your plan is. You simply get work done.

If you look at the way a football match is played, you will realize that a lot of thought is put into the way the players play. But do the individual players have to worry about coming up with winning strategies? Do they need to think of how the other players should work on the pitch?

No they don’t. This is handled by the coach. All the players have to worry about is playing their part and doing the best they possibly can.

Coaching can work in a similar way when it comes to achieving personal goals.

We’ll look more into how coaching is carried out in future blog posts!