Identifying Your Personal Needs for Your Self-Development

What was your first stage of self-development?

This would have been the first time you realized something that you currently were doing, and had been doing all your life, required improvement.

If you haven’t acknowledged this yet, you might be approaching your first hurdle.

If you know exactly what I’m talking about, you’ve experienced your first hurdle.

Hopefully you have accomplished the self-improvement necessary for you to overcome that first hurdle.

So, how did you realize there was a need?

Then, what did you do to correct it?

These are the journeys we take in life and today we are going to talk about getting over your first hurdle.

Let’s get started.

Survival

What we experience growing up, is what we take with us everywhere we go.

We may scale it accordingly, however our ways of dealing with things that we encounter, all relate to how we perceive the person, the atmosphere or the objects we are faced with.

Whether we are in school, at work, at home, with friends or family, at church, at an event or taking part in an extra curricular activity, the experiences we have effects our thoughts and then our behavior.

A phrase that I like, goes as follows:

• Watch your thoughts for they become your words.
• Watch your words for they become your actions.
• Watch your actions for they become your habits.
• Watch your habits for they become your character.
• Watch your character for it becomes your destiny.

This phrase is very true and no matter how much we think we know the perception we are giving, we often fail to realize how others actually perceive us.

The perception could be caused from your body language, your words or your actions.

Then one day, we are faced with something that we had no idea we were doing, and are faced with choosing to correct it or to ignore it.

Trust

Whether we take the feedback to heart or if we listen intently with desire to change, has a lot to do with who the feedback comes from.

• If it is someone you trust, most will listen and take heed to their feedback.
• If it is someone you don’t trust, or you are unsure if you can trust, you are more likely to not take heed to their feedback.

In atmospheres where you don’t trust the environment, trust can be a difficult trait to have.

This is possibly where the survival portion kicks in and may overrule your thoughts more than it should.

Awareness of surroundings is great for survival, but awareness of self is great for self-development.

At some point, acknowledging traits within yourself that could be improved, is vital.

The First Hurdle

Once you have acknowledged the need to improve something, it is up to you to determine how you will make that happen.

Then once you determine how you will force yourself to correct it, you will do it and evaluate your outcome.

In all situations, your correction to an issue will start with how you perceive the situation that may have caused your actions or thoughts, that could use improvement.

Perhaps you were incorrect in your assessment.

Correcting it in your mind, is the first step to acknowledging how you can improve your action. 

By understanding what your thought was and what your thought should be, you are at the beginning of finding a solution.

Then, you’ll test yourself by altering your mind-state (and/or perception) of the situation, so that your corrected action will follow.

The results of the test, will be your acknowledgment to a realized improvement or your acknowledgement of test failure.

• If you passed and understood the benefit of the change, you’ve reached a growth spurt. You will likely begin to acknowledge more obstacles that you never realized were there (or your second hurdle). Your journey has begun.
• If you failed, you likely did not feel a strong enough desire to commit to the change. You decided the commitment wasn’t worth the effort you’d have to put in. Many things can cause this, but until you feel the end goal is worthy enough for your commitment, you’ll never overcome your first hurdle (to then acknowledge your second hurdles).

My First Hurdle

My first hurdle was realized at work and it was my demeanor.

I presented body language that I learned through survival, where I presented an image of not being approachable.

It appeared that I had a chip on my shoulder to others and I was not aware of it at all. 

In fact, I wanted people to feel they could approach me.

However, my survival instincts were showing different than what I perceived I was showing.

Once made aware of it, I began to really think about my body language, expressions and thoughts as to why I was doing this.

Afterall, I was in a trusting environment that was the most comfortable atmosphere I had ever experienced. 

So why was I still behaving as if the surroundings were untrustworthy?

Here I realized my fault and began to self-correct.

My corrections, started mentally first.

I would think, people had often expressed to me, “Smile more…”

I paid it no attention and thought “Smile for what?…”

In fact, I thought something was wrong with them for telling me to smile more.

They were actually giving me a hint as to their perception of me and my body language.

I gradually changed my thoughts and body language as I began to understand more of what they meant as well as me becoming more self-aware.

As I changed, I saw my relationships improve.

My trust was low for people I didn’t know and I needed to change that. 

Especially in atmospheres where we are a team, and the realization that we were a good team with good trustworthy people, was also true.

I hadn’t realized I was carrying something with me that I Iearned through survival into a place was it was not necessary.

When I overcame my first hurdle, I noticed more hurdles after that.

If I hadn’t overcome the first hurdle I would not have acknowledged and overcome any other hurdles at all.

I would have not accomplished the huge growth spurt I did after realizing the first hurdle.

I ended up being leader in that company 17 years, developing top performing teams and many leaders in many major metropolitan areas. 

In fact, I was sent to locations where the teams needed the most repair.

Thanks for joining faithful readers – future leaders.

I hope today’s article was helpful for you.

Love ya and continue to strive for growth.

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Please comment details involving your first hurdle.