Archive for Success
The basics of showing your success when you are happy
Posted by: | CommentsSuccess is not something that is easily hidden. It shows in many ways. Sometimes it can be seen in someone’s improved health—in the new sparkle in the eyes or the bounce in the walk. Sometimes it shows in a changed lifestyle, in the better use of time and the enjoyment of both work and play. Sometimes it shows in the use of money, finally spending it wisely instead of with credit-card impulsiveness or miser-like hoarding. Sometimes success shows in changed relationships with others. Destructive relationships may be discarded and life-enhancing relationships may be developed and cherished. Success shows in any area of life when goals to improve that part of life are established and achieved.
It is important to be clear on how you will know when you reach your goal. The achievement of some goals is obvious. For example, if you are going for a university degree, your goal will obviously be reached when you get your diploma. If you are applying for a new job, your success will show when you get it. If your goal is to lose weight, you will know you have been successful when you buy clothing that is a smaller size. However, the achievement of other goals may be far more difficult to determine. For example, if you have self-contracted with yourself to show less anger over small annoyances in life or if you are attempting to change your relationship with your children to create more positive communication, these goals will often be matters of subjective interpretation. Create signposts—such as a full week without falling back into negative patterns—on your route to success so that you will recognize progress toward your goals.
Reward yourself with a smile when you manage to keep one of your contracts. In fact, why not tell someone else about it who will join you in a smile, give you a pat on the back, and offer praise?
The basics of self-happiness – goal setting for success
Posted by: | CommentsSetting goals that will lead to more success is a major challenge in the pursuit of happiness. Many people set goals that cannot be met because they involve trying to get someone else to change. If the other person wants to change, well and good. If not, failure is inevitable.
The most successful goals are those which involve changing oneself. In self change, specific goals need to be established, then evaluated to see if they are practical and achievable. If not practical and achievable, the goals must be revised until they meet these criteria.
It is also important that progress moving toward a goal can be measured. If, for example, someone wants to cut down on smoking, it is necessary to state the goal in numbers: “I want to go from twenty cigarettes a day to five.” If that person is courageous enough to cut back this much, he then will need to decide if he is willing to forfeit the five. It’s not easy to break addictions. Sometimes a contract to improve one’s life in some small way seems easier.
When goals are overly optimistic or impossible to reach or are not revised (the fate of many New Year’s resolutions), they are not achieved. When resolutions are not kept, then previous beliefs about being inadequate or not being able to trust oneself are likely to be recycled. They get replayed like a badly scratched 78-rpm record that you listen to because it’s familiar in spite of the poor sound quality.
Goals with the potential of success are those that are reasonable and practical and within a person’s power to achieve. When the goals are achieved, the taste of success is sweet, the sound is grand, and the result is, at least, a moment of happiness.
Some people know their goals. They know exactly what they want. Others are not so sure. They just know they want to be happy. Pinpointing the area of life that is not satisfying often leads to the ability to focus on specific goals for improvement. So, the question is, “What do you want to enhance your life?”
Note, the question is not just “What do you want?” What we want may be bad for us or others. It may give us only momentary pleasure or be damaging to our lives instead of enhancing them. Thus, we must be able to recognize wants that are positive, constructive, and healthy. So, my question for goal setting really is, “What do you want that will change your life for the better?”
Success and failure tend to be overlaid with moral significance: it is considered good to succeed and shameful to fail. Parents can become infected by this way of thinking so that, if their son succeeds, it is their success and, if he fails, it is their failure. This can be damaging as well as confusing.
If you are a parent:
* Have realistic expectations and accept him unconditionally
* See success as neutral feedback; it shows what he’s doing right; glory shouldn’t come into it
* Help him feel comfortable with his feelings of delight or disappointment, frustration or sadness
* If his failures become your personal shame, you hinder his chance to learn lessons
* A failure is a sign that he’s at the frontiers of his knowledge; discuss why it happened and what he can do differently next time
* Your son’s success is his; don’t steal his thunder by taking credit for his success
If you are a teacher:
* Always congratulate a student on his success, and give him credit for it
* Describe in detail what he did right and the things that led to his success, so that he knows how to repeat it next time
* Offer some unpressured time at his new level, with time to adjust to and accept his success; then allow him to move forward
* Take the shame out of failure; it merely tells him what he needs to do differently; personal insults will encourage him to hide behind excuses
When parents ‘own’ their son’s success, it is effectively stolen from him and it may lead him to fail in the future. They may do it to make themselves feel good, and run to tell others the good news, or they may take credit for his success, implying that he couldn’t have done it without them. Either way, if success is always taken away, a boy may eventually turn on his tormentors and refuse to play, or burn out through his own perfectionism.
Taking responsibility for his failure is equally unhelpful. A parent’s shame may lead to punishment or to trivialization. Because the son does not take responsibility for his errors, he will be unable to progress.
The Basics of How to Parent Your Boys: Failure Lights the Route to Success
Posted by: | CommentsAll boys experience failure – lots of it. A boy will almost certainly fail when he first tries to walk; he won’t master buttons on his first attempt, ride a bike or tie his shoelaces straight away, yet he is prepared to have another go. Why is it that these early failures don’t make growing boys give up, despite sometimes intense frustration, while later ones can stop them in their tracks and throw them into the depths of misery?
The uncomfortable truth is that adults are often responsible for the change. They start telling children off for failing, teasing them, and making them feel ashamed.
If you are a parent:
* Respond constructively: failure is like a puzzle to be solved, not a disaster to be denied; consider whether the target was too ambitious
* Respond genuinely: be honest about the outcome, and ensure it remains his problem, not yours
* Respond sensitively: however much he may deny it, failure is upsetting and can undermine confidence; accept, understand and let him voice his feelings; don’t be too strict with him; seek success elsewhere to balance a failure
* Show that you love him for who he is, not what he can do
If you are a teacher:
* Describe in detail what went wrong and how to do better
* Let him know you believe he can improve and demonstrate this with a sample piece of work
* Encourage him to self-evaluate as much and as accurately as possible
* Be available if he needs help
* Look for modest, not unreal, success stories: individual boys can explain how, and perhaps why, they turned themselves around
* Find out what might lie behind any unexpected fall-off in performance
* Don’t punish him for failing -he may start to lie or cheat
But failure is not something to be shunned. It provides factual and neutral information on what went wrong and what needs to go right. Failure is an inevitable and essential part of learning, and shows that learning is happening at the frontier of current knowledge. If the lessons to be learnt from failure are taken on board, they will light the path to success. This will not happen if adults deny, ignore or punish failures; making a boy feel he should hide and ignore the truth.
The Basics of How to Parent Your Boys: Don’t Invest Your Self-Worth in His Success
Posted by: | CommentsAlthough parents and teachers are naturally pleased when their sons and students do well, it is very dangerous when adults begin to rely on a child’s success for their own sense of self-worth. It can damage a boy’s self-esteem in a number of subtle ways.
If you are a parent:
* If you want to tell other people about your son’s achievements, ask his permission; then think about who you want to tell, and why
* Avoid setting your son a new target as soon as he has reached one; might you benefit in some way from the pressure you’re putting on him?
* Ask yourself whether you have higher expectations for your sons than for your daughters; do you identify more closely with your son for some reason?
* Remind yourself it’s his success, from his effort, and that it’s his to hold on to
If you are a teacher:
* Good teachers deliver more than results; to stop yourself becoming too hooked on results at times when you’re at the risk of doing so, list some other things you are keen for your students to develop and achieve
* If you think you may become success-dependent, list all the other things you are good at which give you pleasure
* If one group’s results are not good, and you find yourself becoming depressed as a result, put yourself back in control; list the things you could do differently next time that might change the outcome
If parents feel good about themselves only when their child succeeds, they are, in effect, stealing success from him; this will leave him feeling used, confused and empty instead of fulfilled. Only further, and repeated, success will restore his sense of achievement, which often leads to the burden of perfectionism. He will also come to believe that he is valued solely for what he can do, not for who he is.