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by Rick Baker
On Feb 27, 2017
In our lexicon self-consciousness has a weakness connotation.
We have been conditioned to think of 'self-conscious' people as timid people, people who cower under negative self-images.
Let's give this another think.
Better still, let's replace it all with constructive thought.
Self-consciousness is a good thing:
- It means the person is giving some thought to self...it’s an acknowledgement that thinking about self is an important thing to do.
- It means the person is aware of self...it’s a foundation upon which self-control can grow.
- It means the person is growing knowledge of self…it’s the vital step toward self-improvement.
Like all other skills self-awareness, self-control, self-knowledge and self-improvement require guidance and relentless practise. And practise leads to mastery of skills when its guidance-system is housed in an educated, open and self-conscious mind. So, self-consciousness leads to strength in thought and action. Conversely, strength cannot exist when self-consciousness is absent.
Never should we assume self-conscious thought and awareness is only directed toward the negatives. For each of us, self is the essential ingredient. We ought to be conscious of that. And, we ought to wrap that consciousness in constructive mindsets, allowing as little room as possible for negativity.
We face an awesome choice – we can choose to accept self-conscious thought as the recipe for finding our most-positive things…like our talent, our courage, our confidence, our conviction, & our curiosity.
by Rick Baker
On Feb 20, 2017
Here's to the person who succeeds by...
- refusing to ask questions
- choosing to not listen
- never following
- saying "No" to checklists
- saying "No" to To Do lists
- embracing task indiscipline
- marching on in the face of over-complication
- straying from every path
- doing it until it rings poverty
- overdoing as a matter of principle
- underdoing as matter of principle
- overdueing every payment
- underdueing every collection
- aspiring to perfectionism
- aspiring to obfuscation
- practising engineeringism
- second guessing
- getting communication backwards
These are just some of the joys of contrarianism.
by Rick Baker
On Feb 14, 2017
Sometimes...
Every action, taken on it's own, seems right and feels right.
Yet, when you add all the actions altogether you do not get the result you desired and things no longer feel right or seem right.
That, in a nutshell, is the it-ain't-broken-but-it's-broken problem.
This it-ain't-broken-but-it's-broken problem exists because:
- The rules are not clear or not enforced,
- The goals all are either non-existent or ambiguous, and
- The consequences for failure are either not clear or not taken seriously.
Don't be distracted or dissuaded by that saying, "If it ain't broken, don't fix it".
Sometimes appearances are deceiving. Sometimes actions appear to be done to perfection and yet the desired results do not follow. Sometimes actions are done to perfection and they never had a chance to succeed because they were not the right actions.
And, sometimes, whether things are broken or not, we just know it's broken.
That's the beauty of intuition and the value of gut feel.
by Rick Baker
On Feb 9, 2017
Human beings are easily influenced during their early, developmental years. We are totally dependent on others for quite some time. That’s a fact of life. During our years of infancy, we develop deep and long-lasting relationships with people, many of whom:
- do not have life philosophies or
- have adopted more-or-less by accident the life philosophies of others or
- emulate bits and pieces of the life philosophies of heroes or
- have a fuzzy life philosophy backed by a few good sayings borrowed from others or ancient wisdom.
'Other people' includes parents, siblings, grandparents, kith, and kin. Next, 'other people' includes a variety of relationships with a range of people outside the family and near-neighbours: church people, store people, people who visit parks and playgrounds, caregivers, teachers, figures of other authorities, etc.
During our years of infancy we experience incredible growth, much of it visible to others and even more of it happening beyond visibility. We learn about others. We learn about self. Our learning is rudimentary, practical, and critical. We learn about mothers' smiles. We learn about our hands and mouths.
We learn ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ and we learn ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. And we learn much, much more…at an extremely rapid pace. When we are infants our early learning is captured by our fragile, developing minds. It registers. To the extent it impresses and to the extent it is repeated it becomes our personal set of experiences, knowledge, and memories.
All of our early learning is skewed by the actions, the needs, and the beliefs of other people.
by Rick Baker
On Jan 9, 2017
Forgetfulness plagues us all. At least from time to time, everyone forgets things. We forget things on our shopping lists, we forget the places where things are located on grocery store shelves, and sometimes we forget where we parked our cars in those massive shopping mall parking lots. Forgetfulness comes to us easily. It’s a natural thing. Sometimes we can forget two or more of these things during one visit to the grocery store. When we forget these things [as long as our spouse doesn’t make a big deal out of it] we rather quickly write off our forgetful experiences.
On the other hand, if someone steals that last open parking space we have been zeroing in on then we will have a tough time forgetting their ignorance, rudeness, and self-centeredness.
Most of us can quickly forget and forgive the grocery store people after they pick such good hiding places for the most-important things on our grocery lists. However, many of us will not treat grocery store parking-space thieves so kindly. At the very least, we will ruminate about their ignorance, rudeness and self-centeredness. At most, we will fight the parking-space thieves until one of us is dead. Between these two extremes we will retell the stories of parking-space thievery to our relatives, friends and coworkers until we have exhausted our inability to forget. When we finally let go of such tough-to-forget incidents they will leave no vacancies in our minds because other ignorant, rude and self-centered people will fill the voids by bringing other unforgettable experiences to us.
Sometimes we really struggle to forget things, especially the negative experiences brought to us by others.
Our minds exhibit curious abilities, including:
- our minds are quick to blame others for our negative experiences and
- our minds hold onto negatives and are fully receptive to upgrading negative content by adding fresh, unforgettable negative memories.
These are symptoms of our unforgettable-negatives mindsets. These are weaknesses. These are bad habits.
With persistent work, the bad habit of unforgettable-negatives mindsets can be corrected.
All we need to do is understand and believe forgetfulness comes to us easily and upon that foundation build the good habit of looking our 'unforgettable experiences' in the eye and persistently bidding them, “Adieu”.
by Rick Baker
On Jan 4, 2017
Values are concepts covering things important and admirable to us (our minds). Values are our perceptions of intrinsically valuable or desirable ways of doing things.
Virtues are concepts about good behavior and character, reflecting how other people think of us…perceptions they carry in their minds about us.
Rules are concepts, which set boundaries on thoughts and action. Rules are determined by our values. Actions are things we do. Actions are governed by our rules.
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When you have Integrity – I mean when you have Integrity as I define it - your actions are closely aligned with your values. You say what you mean and you mean what you say…and you do what you say. Put another way, when you have Integrity your perceptions of your values closely match other people’s perceptions of your virtues.
When your values and virtues are closely aligned people find it easier to trust you. Trust grows naturally…organically. You feel no need to advertise your Integrity and other people have no need to witness such advertising. They observe the ‘real thing’ when they see the consistency of your behaviour and that’s the way trust is built between people.
There’s a saying, “Rules are made to be broken.” That’s a fair and accurate statement considering the reality of human behavior. All rules get broken…by someone…sooner or later…(and often we don’t have to wait for later).
Even rules based on our deepest and most-admirable values get broken. As one example – nearly everyone lies…even to the people who mean the most to them. People have their secrets and certain questions defy honest answers. While it is admirable to think people can behave like open-honest books, that expectation is inconsistent with reality. Those who seek perfection in others will find the human condition is laced with imperfections. So, when considering others virtues and drawing conclusions about their personal values and their character it is important to set the bar at a reasonable level.
When people slip up - when people who matter to you clearly illustrate they have broken their own values-rules -
- Fight the urge to question their virtues and write them off [as Covey described the reality of human behaviour] by quickly emptying their ‘trust account’,
- Step back and consider the reality of your own values-rules breaches and try to counteract your natural attribution bias, and
- Be open and candid with the people, but stop well short of dragging them through the coals or humbling them as if you are blessed to administer that right.
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