How Personal Introspection Can Change Your Life

By Joseph Nendauni

This is the book that will reinvent your life in every area of your life and it will motivate you to bring the best out of you. The book will help to improve your personality, finances, relationship, to think positive and to deal with adversity and problems, moreover it will reveal your strengths and your weakness that will help you to know why you are failing in life and how you can be successful.

A human being is born without experience or training to know how to live, to be successful and to face the problems and suffering of this planet, unlike animals that are born, and walk on the same day. Therefore, as a human being, if you fail to learn the tricks to know how to approach life and how to deal with its challenges and problems, you can end up making a serious mistake, or something unfortunate can happen that can ruin your whole life or cause you to lose it prematurely.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joseph Nendauni
• Release date: Oct 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370692767

Book preview

DEDICATION

I want to thank my parents for raising me. Many thanks to my mother Mrs Mukatshelwa Nendauni who took me to school with her old pension money even though she could not read and write. Furthermore, I want to thank her for her ongoing prayers for me at her age and I wish her many more years to come and good health. To my late father, Mr Frans Nendauni who passed on when I was still young; may your soul rest in peace. I also want to extend my appreciation to my children and to my wife Cecilia Nendauni for often having to steal my time away from them, because I was always busy focusing on writing this book and engaged in other work-related activities and projects. In addition, I want to thank my wife for joining my mother in praying for me and my children.

Lastly, I want to thank God for giving me the strength to write this book and I also want to wish good luck to all the people who will read this book to be inspired by it and help them in changing their lives for good.

Let it be.

From: Mr Joseph Nditsheni Nendauni

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedication

Introduction

The Theme of the Book

Personal Checklist

Personal Introspection

1. Know Yourself and Your Purpose

1. Meaning of life?

2. Know yourself

3. Discover the purpose of your life

4. Discover your talent

5. What is your dream?

6. Achieving your dreams

7. Achieving success

8. What do you want to be remembered for?

2. Know Your Body

9. Physical Appearance

10. Hair

11. Face

12. Dress/clothes

13. Walking

14. Cleanliness

3. Effective Communication

15. Communication

16. Voice and Tone

17. Conveying of message

18. Listening skills

19. Public speaking

4. Know Your Personality

20. Attitude

21. Behaviour

22. Habit

23. Character

24. Personality

25. Lifestyle

5. Know Your Swot

26. Strength

27. Weaknesses

28. Opportunities

29. Risks and Threats

6. Know Your Health

30. Health awareness

31. Mind what you eat and drink

32. Comply with health treatment

33. Healthy lifestyle

7. Know Your Personal Responsibilities

34. Know your responsibilities

35. Responsibilities of parents

36. Responsibilities of a father

37. Responsibilities of a mother

38. Responsibilities of a child

8. How to Deal With Relationships

39. Relationships

40. Relationship with your partner

41. Seven elements of love

42. Relationship with your family

43. Relationship with your friends

44. Relationships at work

45. Role in a Community

9. Five Elements of Financial Management

46. Learn to manage money

47. Five elements to effectively manage money

10. Learning and Reading

48. The importance of learning and reading

49. Understanding

50. Learn from your own and others’ people mistakes

51. Get advice where it is required

52. Learn to use the words ‘W’

53. Learn to apologise

54. Learn to forgive

55. Learn to say ‘No’

11. Effective Thinking and Self-Conscience

56. Thinking

57. Positive thinking

58. Feeling

59. Conscious and subconscious mind

60. Emotions and emotional intelligence

61. Appreciate life and be happy

62. Embrace yourself and your uniqueness

63. Be honest with yourself and be who you are

12. Learn to Deal With Adversity

64. Learn to deal with adversity

65. Stop relying too much on others

66. Decision making

67. Problem solving

68. Stress management

69. Criticism

70. Gossip

71. Judging yourself and others

72. Taking risk

73. Anger Management

74. How to avoid temptation

13 A. Self-Inspiration and Motivation

75. Self-inspiration and Motivation

76. Take responsibility for your life

77. Love yourself

78. Planning

79. Taking action

80. Be Organised

81. Time management

82. Monitoring

83. Commitment and dedication

84. Hard working

85. Self-confidence

86. Passion

13 B. Self-Inspiration and Motivation

87. Focus

88. Priorities

89. Do not give up

90. Perseverance

91. Treatment of each other

92. Respect yourself and others

93. Be human and kind

94. Discipline

95. Self-control

96. Be spiritually inclined

97. Culture and tradition

14 . Skills to Change Your Life

98. Know what you want in life

99. Allow changes to happen in your life

100. Personal change process:

About the Author

Introduction

About the Book:

For me to write this book, I was influenced because of the life of a brother-in-law who was behaving in a unique way or as a lost person who did not know why he was living. I am talking about somebody who was saved from the rope when he was taking his life. Fortunately, I realised the need to assist him, because I saw potential in him.

The material used to write this book was devised to help him. Consequently, due to a number of ideas that were crossing my mind, I decided to write a book about it. Fortunately, before the book was completed I was able to change the life of a brother in-law to that of a better man.

I decided to give the book a name, ‘How Personal Introspection Can Change Your Life’, because it is a self-reflection about life and how you can take action to change yourself. This is a motivational book and it talks about basic general life and has topics that can help everyone. The book will talk to you, inspire you and assist you to start to see life from a different angle in a way you never knew; furthermore, the book will encourage you to have conversations with yourself and to start to focus at your own life affairs, instead of spending time paying attention to other people’s lives.

In life, when we are living, we see lots of people who are confused, others are successful, while some we just assume he/she is doing well or is happy in his/her corner, whereas this is not the case. Some people need your assistance. This book will give the assistance that many are looking for; on how you need to approach life and be successful.

The book will be your solution to the mystery of life and it will give you a second chance in life to undertake some self-discovery and to reinvent yourself to start your life afresh, because it will give you answers and solutions to a number of questions you have in your life. It will further portray personal life in general from a good perspective and discuss basic life skills and knowledge that will help you to approach life without fear. An added advantage is the inclusion of a personal checklist, which will reveal your strengths and weaknesses to help you to know why you are failing in life and how you can be successful.

This book will help you to know yourself better and motivate you to bring the best out of yourself. It will further help you to discover your purpose in life, to embrace yourself and to live a positive life. It will improve your life in every area; this includes your personality, physical appearance, financial situation, your health, communication and relationships with your partner and other people. The book also exposes the secrets behind human thinking in how to boost your confidence, to think effectively and positively. It will also help you to take informed decisions, to avoid and deal with adversity such as risk, stress, problems, temptations, criticism and self-control. In short, the book offers a number of topics that deal with personal issues and life in general. This book is one of the best gifts you can give to someone to improve and change his/her life.

The Theme of the Book

The theme of the book is ‘the best way to approach life and to be successful’ which also serves as a sub-title of the book. For most people from the time they are born and growing up, their main struggle is searching for their identity to know where they come from, who they are, their purpose of living and what they want to do with their lives. One of the biggest processes in a human being is to determine one’s destiny, which other people have failed to do and some search for their identity for the remainder of their lives without success. I have chosen this theme for the book because I find it suitable and perfect to be able to assist many who have a dilemma in searching for their identity and want to make a difference in their lives. Personal introspection is one of the best ways in which you can identify who you are and be able to approach life without fear.

Personal Checklist

The book also includes personal checklists at the end of each chapter in the form of questions that will be asked for each topic. These checklists need you to be honest with yourself when you give yourself answers. These questions will assist you to know your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT), to ensure you make adjustments to your life where there is need. The checklist will assist you to answer questions you might have or might have ignored in the past, so that you start to move on in life without any unanswered questions. What is important is to have the answer to any question you have in life, because life is not all about what happens to you or about what happened in the past; it is all about what you do about it. When you have many questions to ask, you need to get the answers as well.

The checklists will work as a reference and as a mirror to reflect your life. Furthermore, they will contain questions that need to be answered by providing detailed explanations and by giving ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ answers or by putting a score of 1-10.

The score works as follows:

• 1 stands for the lowest score;

• 10 stands for the highest score;

• If you get a score of 1-4 it means you need change;

• If you get a score of 5-7 it means you need improvement; and

• If you get a score of 8-10 it means good performance, but you can still improve if you want to.

Personal Introspection

Introspection is the process that you can undergo on everything in life and in any field, whether it be in sport, educational activities, traditional and cultural activities or any project you might be engaged in and so on.

However, this book is focusing or talking about personal introspection, which is the process of examining one’s conscious thoughts and feelings. Furthermore, introspection is a process of the research technique used. In psychology, the process of introspection relies exclusively on observation of one’s state of mind, while in a spiritual context it may refer to the examination of one’s soul. Introspection is closely related to self-reflection and is contrasted with external observation. Personal introspection plays a major role in ensuring you become self-aware and live life with purpose to achieve your dreams.

When doing personal introspection, you need to be honest with yourself when assessing your own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, both within and outside of yourself. If this process is done well, it will reveal your hidden behaviour, habits, character, structure, lifestyle, attitude, sensitive issues and personality, but you need to acknowledge both positive and negative aspects of your life. The results will show the type of person you are, and it will assist you in ensuring that the process of transformation happens smoothly, where you can start focusing on correcting the things you do not want about your life.

Furthermore, introspection provides you with the privilege of accessing your own mental state, not one mediated by other sources of knowledge, so that the individual experience of the mind is unique. Introspection can determine any number of mental states, including sensory, bodily, cognitive, emotions and so forth.

This time personal introspection will focus on the totality of the human being that includes the inner body, inner person, feelings, emotions, dreams, goals, management of funds, communication, problems, mind, reasoning, relationships, life in general and the surrounding environment in which you are connected.

Introspection is a process that needs to be done by everybody on a regular basis to ensure you are paying attention to maximising your potential and you are on track or sticking to the purpose of achieving the dreams, goals, plans and results you originally set for yourself, for anything you want in life. In addition, it also helps you to see how you can come up with new plans, new initiatives and ideas to move forward in achieving your dreams and goals.

After completing the process of personal introspection and getting the results, the next step is to embark on the process of change, and this is a very complex step to take and to complete, because it is a process that does not happen overnight; it is a process that needs dedication and commitment.

To make it easier, I have prepared the personal change process (PCP) in the final chapter and I have explained how you can go about implementing it. I also include the personal change action plan (PCAP), which I am sure will assist you in the process of change, because at that stage you will be in a better position of knowing your SWOT, and you would have finished reading the book.

Chapter 1

Know Yourself and Your Purpose

Meaning of life?

To describe the meaning of life is not easy and I agree the term is broad, that is why you see some people treating life like a joke or a game. Whereas some people are serious about life and they are doing whatever it takes to achieve their dreams, others are confused and they do not know what they are doing or where they are heading. If you can undertake introspection, I hope it will assist you to discover the purpose of your life and why you are here on this planet, and this will make you start to be useful by knowing what you are supposed to do.

Life is a living and changing phenomenon that has a milestone; it is a journey and we do not know when it will end and how. Life consists of flesh, soul and spirit. Life is an ability to see, breathe, eat, sense, feel, hear, communicate, think, grow, plan, take action and make decisions. The life of a human being is above the life of all other creatures. In this life, there are people with different behaviours, characters and personalities; despite the way they behave and whatever they do, all of them are still part of life. Earth is currently considered the only planet which is conducive for human beings to live on.

Life is a journey that starts from the day you were created, over to the stage when you were born, until the day you pass on; during this journey, life passes through different stages. The important question is what is your contribution in this life or what are you doing about your life between the period of being born and dying to make your life useful? Furthermore, what role are you playing on this planet and in other people’s lives and in the environment and life in general?

Life is a gift, but the important thing you need to know is how to use that gift you have and for what purpose it has been designed and intended. Life is a precious gift that you need to protect and live to the best of your ability every moment and you must not waste this precious gift doing useless and wrong things that do not add value and benefit to your life. Life is all about knowing its meaning and what you want out of it. Life is all about taking action and informed decisions. Furthermore, every person has a choice to choose the life he/she wants to live.

Life is measured by time. Life continues while you are sleeping, or while you are still procrastinating to take action about your plans. While you are doing this, others are busy working to achieve their dreams. Life is continuing when you are still thinking about how you will deal with your life; life does not stop and wait for anyone. If your life is stagnating, you must know life is a work in progress and it does not end there, because life always has a next level. Life is an evolution that started at the beginning of time and it has been in progress over the centuries until today. Due to this, the evolutionary lifestyle of human beings is changing all the time, and it is up to you to ensure you are always prepared for the life of today by changing with it.

Life signifies all significant events in your life in the form of segments, such as the day you were born, the day you start school, the day you get married, the day you buy a house, the day you buy a car, the day you give birth to your first child and the day you pass away and so on. This tells you life is like a project, which needs to be managed in stages to achieve its objectives. The objectives of life include achieving the purpose of life, achieving dreams, plans, and loving one another.

Life does not change, despite all the behaviour which is causing global warming; if you go abroad where you will see different places and different things, life will remain the same because there will be a day and a night wherever you are, as usual. What is important is how you view, understand and feel about life and this will play a big role in how you approach life with a positive or negative purpose. Remember that whatever is happening in your life, you are involved in one way or the other, whether it is directly or indirectly.

Life needs to be translated to a tangible and meaningful outcome. Life is an ability to use your talents, skills and knowledge in order to achieve your dream; this includes taking risks, making mistakes, encountering challenges and problems, while in the process you are also learning from those challenges. Life is a struggle that includes failing and achieving. Life is like a game which is fair to some and unfair to others, because it has its ups and downs. Life is all about sharing with others, helping others, loving others and being happy. Life is what you are doing now, anywhere, wherever you are, and it is doing the best you can in the endeavour to achieve your dream.

Know yourself

The fundamentally important thing every person needs to know first in order to face life is to know oneself. Knowing yourself will help you to know what you are capable of; this includes your talents, your weaknesses and your strengths. When you know yourself and what you can do, it will further assist you to focus on pursuing the achievement of the purpose of your life and your dream.

Knowing yourself is a starting point to beginning life on a positive note; it is like opening a gate of your life that will show you where you are supposed to go. If you do not know yourself, it will be difficult to reach your dream, because you do not know what you are capable of. To know yourself better is a process that does not happen overnight and it needs one to introspect so you know what type of person you are. This includes where you come from, your background, your family, your tradition, culture, attitude, behaviour, habit, character, personality, lifestyle, the way you talk, dress, your health, your beliefs and your emotions. It includes what makes you angry, and what you like and dislike such as food, sports and many other things. You do not need to guess or think about who you are; you must know yourself well in all respects.

If you do not know yourself, you will end up being the biggest risk to yourself, because you will engage in or do something which you do not have knowledge of or skill in, and you will embarrass yourself. People do things which surprise themselves; often this happens because those people do not know themselves. When you know yourself, it will be easier to know what you are capable of and plan your life knowing what you can do and what you cannot do. If you know what you are capable of and what you want in life, this will give you clear direction of where you are going in life.

There are people who are rich or successful in life by default if not by luck. When you ask them how they got rich or successful, they will tell you they never thought that they would be rich or be successful; the reason is these people did not know what they were capable of. This tells us you are among those people who are supposed to be rich or be successful; therefore, it is in your hands to search where your potential lies, so that you can discover your own niche that will make you rich or successful. Learning to know yourself is very important, because it will assist you in knowing the hidden potential and capabilities within you, which you need to unearth to ensure that you implement them and become successful as well. When you know yourself, it will assist you to know of other areas of your life where you need to improve.

Learning to know yourself is important because it will assist you to avoid being a victim of circumstance. Some people start to search or discover about themselves when they are in trouble or when they are experiencing problems. As a human being, you consist of flesh, soul and spirit. It is your responsibility to know how all these features make up who you are.

Discover the purpose of your life

Personal introspection cannot be discussed in isolation if I do not touch on the most important fundamental aspect that will assist in discovering why you are living. This is the most important aspect of a human being, because you need to have something to live for or something that makes you wake up every day, something that boosts you or something that pushes you to live. There are people who are just living without knowing the purpose of their life and what exactly they are doing in life. As a human being, you need to discover your own purpose in life.

To have a strong purpose in life plays a big role in making you live with meaning and purpose. Many people have different things that make them live, these include people who want to achieve their goals and dreams. People have families or children who they are living for and many other things as well. When doing personal introspection, the purpose of your life needs to be taken into account as the most important aspect or item that needs to be prioritised, because all the other elements that will also be looked at will be to support and to achieve the main purpose.

Life needs all of us to contribute something in this planet in a different way, based on our strengths, knowledge, skills, talents and everything we have; that is why if you sleep the whole day without doing anything, you will feel like you are sick or tired, because during the day is the time for people to work. Those who are not working need to create something that will make them busy, so that they do not feel bored. Every person has been created to fulfil his/her purpose on this planet; that is why there is a day and a night. This has been designed for you to use them for different purposes. It is obvious that everyone is born to do something and not to sit and watch others.

Life has different stages that a person can go through, either by experiencing difficulties, problems, sickness or other challenges. All these stages have a purpose that might be telling you something, which might be either to take action regarding your life or to change from your current lifestyle, but if you cannot understand that what you are going through is a sign to tell you something, it will be meaningless to you.

The purpose of life is an assignment you are born to fulfil. Every person has a purpose to fulfil in this life and there is no mistake in you being born into your family, in that community, in that year, as well as living in this generation. You must ask yourself a question: ‘Why was I not born in another family or another country?’ This shows there is a purpose for you, and you need to fulfil your purpose in that family, in that community or country at the right time. You might find you are a solution to a problem or to someone, in your family or in your country.

When you know the purpose of your life, it gives you reason and hope to live, but if you do not have purpose for living, you lose direction in life and life becomes useless and meaningless, boring and a waste of time. This will make you start to see life in a negative light that can lead you to commit suicide because you will feel as if there is nothing you are living for, but once you know your purpose for living, it will make you live with high hopes and fulfilment. Furthermore, you will act and do the right things or do what is required for you to achieve your purpose. If you do not know your purpose, you will touch everything in vain and find that nothing is working out and you will get confused or give up, because you do not know the purpose of your life.

The secret to discovering your purpose for living is one of the most important discoveries for a human being; discovering your purpose will make you live with complete fulfilment in life because you will be in the stage of knowing what you need and want in life and what you stand for. By knowing yourself, it will assist you in knowing better what you are good at, so that you can focus on achieving what you are good at. The purpose of your life might be a thing you love to do most, things you enjoy most, things you do better or do best. These include purposes such as helping other people, making other people laugh, even your talent such as being an artist, sportsman, musician. Having a career or calling can even be the purpose of your life; these include things such as businessman, engineer, teacher, pastor and so on. When you know the purpose of your life and you die fulfilling your purpose in life, you will die well and peacefully without complaints, because you have accomplished what you came to do in life.

Discover your talent

Talent is a natural and inborn knowledge and skill that enables you to do something extraordinary and exceptional. Other people call it a gift. Talent can be learned. Everyone can have talent; it does not matter where you come from, what colour you are, your age, gender and so on. The secret to discovering your talent or gift sometimes requires you to know yourself first. Other people can also discover a talent in you or see it based on the potential that you have.

You can die without knowing your own talent or gift. This means you can die being poor, whereas you had a talent which could have made you successful or rich. Sometimes talent needs one to first explore different personal skills one has, so that you are able to identify what you are good at. When you have talent, your talent should not benefit you alone; it is gift, which you need to use for people to see, to enjoy and to assist others where possible.

Talents are not the same and can be very different; some talents are difficult to identify, some talents need soul searching, while other talents need to be groomed by doing regular practise for you to become perfect in what you do. Talent which is not visible needs lots of practise to be sure that you have potential in a particular area. This also requires other people who have experience in the same field who will then help to teach you the skills and knowledge so that you become good or perfect. It also depends on how quickly you learn, understand and grasp the knowledge and skill to do that particular thing well.

Most people use a very small percentage of their talent; the reason is because most people do not know their talent. Sometimes talent is not used accordingly because of unknown fear and self-limitations, doubting yourself, undermining yourself, lack of self-confidence, negative thoughts, use of drugs, lifestyle, laziness, thinking you have been cursed, thinking that to be successful is not for you, thinking that you are not talented and that you do not have the skill or knowledge to do something. These are all some of the reasons why people do not use their talents.

Self-doubt and self-undermining prevent many people from using their talents and from becoming successful in life. Some of the major hindrances to using one’s talent are lack of resources, facilities and shortages of infrastructure for people to practise, as well as lack of financial support, logistics and personal support, especially for the people who are based in the rural areas. These are some of the things that are preventing development of sports in the rural areas.

What is your dream?

Every person has a dream which they want to achieve one day, however, the challenge is how to achieve the dream. Some people talk about their dreams, others write them down. Dreams will assist you to keep you living, hoping that one day you might reach your dream, but if you do not dream you become hopeless, and as such there won’t be a reason to live. Some of the dreams and thoughts we hear people talking about include starting a business, others want to study, build a house or buy a car and so on.

There is nothing wrong with having so many dreams, because dreaming is free and easy to talk about and you must keep on dreaming. Do not stop dreaming, because the needs and wants of a human being are limitless and endless and so dreams will always be endless and limitless as well. The unfortunate part about dreaming is that when you reach your dream, if you are not satisfied you will still want to achieve more; that is why dreaming is endless.

Big opportunities and successes happen in big numbers for those who take advantage of their dreams. If you can start to achieve one dream, it will give you courage and hope that you can still do more; as such, achieving a dream will open doors for others to come. A dream should not just be a wish; it must be something that comes from your heart and your instinct, something you are passionate about. A dream must be something which is realistic and achievable. Your dream must be able to be converted into an action plan to produce positive and tangible results.

Every person wants