How Did I Get This Way? – Part 1
One of the most important skills you can have is to recognise your strengths as well as acknowledging the areas you need to address in order to realise your potential.
To understand why you are who you are, you need to look at the Values by which you are conducting your life.
Each of us has our own individual Values System, which is hierarchically structured, based on the choices we have made or the conditioning we’ve taken onboard from external environments.
In order to be proactive, and utilise your human potential to its maximum, it’s useful to be aware of the nine (9) major groups which have influenced you in the past, and which continue to influence you in varying degrees.
In actual fact you are constantly engaging in your own life coaching to maximise your self-improvement success.
Let’s take a broad focus on the major influences from which your Value System developed.
Overtly or covertly, these nine groups still affect you as an adult. The choices you make within these groups will determine the quality of your life, and that of the people with whom you interact.
Of enormous significance will be the Values you consistently portray to children through your behaviour, as children mimic adults more than most of us realise.
You are their role model, especially in the Imprint Period of their development, ages 0 to 7.
Over the next few postings, we’ll look at the environmental groups affecting who you have become.
You can then be aware of their current influences on you so that you can modify or eliminate those that are not serving you well.
We are largely going to use the questioning method, and for you to get the most out of it, it would be great if you would write down your answers:
1. HOME
Your family environment has had a very strong impact in the formation of your core Values.
• Did you grow up in a family?
• Was it a single-child family? If not, where in the age-hierarchy do you fit in?
• What gender are you? Was there an obvious preference for one gender over the other where you grew up?
• Was your family warm and loving or was affection withheld? If so, to what degree?
• Were you often praised?
When results came from school or exams, were you praised or were you told “you could you have done better”, followed by a tirade of how things need to be improved? Do you get the picture?
How you grew up will have a strong influence on how you see yourself in the parenting-type role.
Gloria made a conscious decision to have her daughter grow up in a different environment from the one she had.
Next week, we’ll look at Friendships, Finances/Work, and Health and Fitness.
Don’t forget to give us your feedback, especially on how the article helped you get over some issues.
Till then, have a great week.
