Progressive Change: The Productive Uses of Human Qualities

By Ahmed Sita

PROGRESSIVE CHANGE: The Productive Uses of Human Qualities explains in detail how to acquire general adequate knowledge for the
development of motivation, self-confidence, self-discipline, creativity, determination and perseverance and many other human qualities. Nature gives every person certain faculties. These faculties, if identified,
developed and used on their proper occasions, will always improve any life to a certain desirable extent. This book was written with the strong belief that the life, which is guided by principled behavior, is bound to promote independent thinking. A principled behavior of this kind, productive at any time, is even more rewarding when you are looking for work or decide to be self-employed. Every degree of social acceptability and all continuous career advancements depend on the prudent uses of
the qualities in every person.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781462073252

Ahmed Sita

Ahmed Sita is the founder of Hexton Global Corporation; an International Business incorporated in Ohio. Ahmed Sita believes strongly in the virtues of progressive changes in all areas of life. PROGRESSIVE CHANGE: The Productive Uses of Human Qualities is a practical result of that belief.

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

EXEMPLARY PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT 1

SCOPE AND NATURE OF HUMAN MOTIVATION 2

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF KNOWLEDGE 3

THE DEVELOPMENT OF SELF-CONFIDENCE 4

CAREER AND BUSINESS SKILL DEVELOPMENT 5

PRINCIPLES OF PERSONAL MANAGEMENT 6

HOW TO DEVELOP A CREATIVE MIND 7

THE EXERCISE OF SELF-CONTROL 8

THE CONCEPT OF SELF-DISCIPLINE 9

DETERMINATION AND PERSEVERANCE 10

THE INEVITABILITY OF CHANGE 11

INTRODUCTION

The universal nature of personal improvement is such that none of us can afford to ignore it. Accordingly, the dynamic essence of our world demands the constant input of positive reinforcements to ensure the progressive direction of any activity. This subject is undoubtedly broad. Nevertheless, it can always be broken down to a workable structure in a way to give the easiest approach for the most impact. Everything can be improved with a pointed concentration on it. It is even more so if that focus is done with the application of managerial principles. The degree of skill needed to handle the continuous advancements of the things we do and, by implication our lives, can be acquired. It takes many fronts to accomplish that goal. At the same time, these approaches will be effective only if they are interrelated.

The successful implementations of all affairs depend largely on the administrative involvement of many noble human qualities. These characteristics, even though varied, will not be effective if they are taken individually. There is always strength in numbers. Fortunately, this reality also has general applications. The components of any subject come with their unique suitabilities and contributions. This explains why they can be limited individually whenever it is necessary to put them to broader uses. As a result, the skillful employment of human qualities is a good approach to advance from any lower stage of improvement to a higher one. Components, by their natures, have to be put together in a way to realize their maximum potential that is characteristic of the whole. This is also the reason why the idea of managing our affairs to give the desired outcomes should never be slighted.

The inner execution of management generally has three phases to it. They are Planning, Implementing and Directing. The kind of organizational behavior known to have time-honored reliability in terms of improvement should involve these three managerial principles to be valid. If an activity is to be executed efficiently, it is usually managed to that effect in one form or another. It is also true that we do not always see it as the result of proficient management and so sometimes miss out on the magnitude of its significance. If you, however, consider that everything we do involves a simple thought as its original foundation, the importance of planning would be highlighted in this concept of management.

Human thoughts no matter how deep, still cannot be of much relevance unless they are devised in a detailed formulation likely to be a program of action. Every major plan has many minor plans as its components that must be carried out to continue the progression. Next, we take concrete measures to give the practical effects needed for ensuring the fulfillment of our objectives. Even at this intermediate stage of promise, things can still fall apart if they are left alone. That is why the last stage of management has to be executed in a timely fashion. This is the stage at which activities are controlled. In effect, you have to guide your affairs to their fruitful conclusion, or there will be no future rewards to reap. These managerial principles are capable of developing every situation beyond its current station if they are applied effectively.

Personal improvement as a whole cannot be a one-subject affair. It can be done with the intense application of many disciplines in any order. It is also true that starting with personality development is just as proper as starting with any of the other important instruments of human growth. There are many interesting theories of personality development. Each of them seeks to explain why, how, and what finally constitutes the totality of our characters. Your face may be the symbol of your personality, but that is all there is to it. In this book, you will find that human personality is too complex to be explained with the analysis of a few sets of facts even though they may be plausible enough for that function. It has to involve many principles. In addition to the generally accepted theories of personality development, the concept of human relations should not be ignored. The comparative analysis of such things as pride as against humility and how to regulate human behavior are equally significant. All of these are determining factors to individual advancements.

Human motivation and how to activate it, is also an integral part of any endeavor to improve oneself. To manage this critical ingredient of over-all growth, we must learn to link it with our needs and expectations. Such needs have to be obsessional and not marginal to actuate that inspiration. As an instance, every person desires to be healthy, but some people actually take measures contrary to this survival need. In any case, to increase the chances of good health, you should do regular exercise for body strength, dexterity, and motor skills as well as the avoidance of lifestyle decisions that are likely to lead to self-inflicting diseases. This should be a fixation and not a minimal occurrence.

As for our expectations, they must also be made binding and not optional to generate a similar intensity of motivation. In the quest for this needed incitement, judgment should not be clouded by the effect of unrealistic needs and expectations. As with other areas, every person is duty-bound to search realistically for these requirements and anticipations without being a victim of hallucination. To make them acts of determining factors to personal improvement, however, they must be real enough for us to apply our resources constantly in the search for this secret source of motivation.

To any person who needs truly to maintain a life of continuous growth, it should be understood that the unceasing quest for knowledge is inseparable from that line of thought. By implication, the failure to be aware of our ever-changing environment will be maintaining a dangerous flirtation with disaster. If it continues in that direction, the final result will be a future of terminal irrelevance. That is to say, the idea of staying current with the dynamics of a profession of interest should be done with a serious determined effort and comparable to a constant preoccupation to set you in the right direction.

This can be made easier if you take advantage of the effective tools of learning. The efficient understanding of a subject depends largely on the ability to make pictorial representations of related concepts with these tools. In the final analysis, the purpose of this approach to learning is to generate easier comprehension of even the most complicated situations. The eminent value of knowledge is the most powerful inducement toward the removal of the needless darkness of ignorance. Adequate understanding can give any person uncommon wisdom in a particular field of concern. The intrinsic qualities of knowledge are too numerous to list. Some of the major ones such as leadership, various forms of power, and above all, self-confidence, can still be mentioned to underscore the extent of the significance of self-awareness.

The contribution of knowledge to self-confidence even though prominent, is not the only determinant. It also takes the removal of its misconceptions to set the tone toward dismantling the barriers to this requirement for self-improvement. Any manner of wrong interpretation will always do unnecessary damage if it is not controlled. If accurate knowledge can lead to confidence, then the broad miscalculations of events must be unquestionably detrimental to it. The display of self-assurance is finally orchestrated through the defeat of the consuming fear of doing things. The areas that feature prominently are the fear of responsibility, risk-taking, and public speaking. Whenever we are able to overcome these eternal destroyers of self-confidence, it opens a world of possibilities that were otherwise perceived as unimaginable. The effective manipulation of fear in any form, on the other hand, has its origin from adequate knowledge as well as the removal of any related misconceptions.

It takes a great deal of planning, execution, and creative selling for anyone to get ahead professionally. This sounds familiar, as the combination of managerial principles with effective individual marketing is what is needed to accomplish the improvement at work. The planning part involves all the things that you have to do to become prepared for this possible long-term activity that will define your pattern of living. This plan centers on education, training and experience. The prudent application of these essential qualities can do great things for any person’s quest for self-improvement. The ingenious marketing of oneself will still be needed for that expert advancement.

In short, you will need to be involved passionately in a way to give honest contribution, be a team player, and use determination to continue to grow in your field without ruffling the egotistical feelings of others. At the same time, you must avoid pointing fingers each time something goes wrong. Those who have a habit of pointing fingers always have other fingers literally pointing at them. In many cases, they do so to avoid responsibilities and to cover their limitations. That kind of behavior is counter-productive to work gratification. The presence of objective fulfillment is necessary for the satisfactory execution of any career. Where it is lacking for a valid reason without the possibility of improvement, you should be enterprising enough to move on to other things that have more growth possibilities. Entrepreneurial skills, once acquired, will always come in handy when they are needed. This, in turn, depends on the application of an independent energetic spirit toward every vocation.

The development of a creative mind is not only proper at work; it is also a permanent requirement for personal improvement in general. The nature of this discipline is such that every person can be creative, but that contention has specific conditions to fulfill before it can be realized. The proof for this point is that ideas manifest constantly in every mind regardless of what we are doing. What happens to crystallize those ideas is another matter. It requires the mastery of the process of creativity. This area can also be learned by anyone who is determined to do so. Since we are saying that every person has the capability to be creative, you can always discover an area of interest or potential through the process of self-examination. Once that is done, you engage your mind, body, and soul in it to create passionate indulgence. Establishing goals in any area always helps in progressing originality. Then, a long list of related activities follows naturally if you do not quit. These include independent thinking, repetition, visionary behavior, positive attitude, and so on. If you put these components of creativity together, they become catalysts for fundamental change by virtue of their potential to produce personal improvement through imaginative behavior.

Self-control is another human quality that fits well with any search for self-improvement. This subject in general is compatible with professionalism where a cultured and calm disposition is used to deal with others. On the contrary, the person who has a high-tension personality and a volcanic temper is always incapable of maintaining the smooth and self-assured image required for good human relations. Such people are never able to employ the humane approach to effective communication. By any account, the absence of self-control is contrary to authoritative conduct at any point. The management of self-restraint begins with the control of thoughts and consequently emotions. Human thoughts lead to emotional experiences if they are not regulated. This, in turn, can overwhelm the capacity to make sound judgments. The knowledge of when to accommodate or retaliate in the face of a provocation is an act of determining factor for self-possession. The virtue of patience is what determines the presence and level of self-control.

On a related topic, which is self-discipline, a progression from self-control is always a requirement to maintain any conduct that is subject to regulation for improvement. It is possible, through individual training, to make a clear distinction between right and wrong actions. In the same way, all the things we do can be enhanced through the application of the principles of self-discipline. Any time we are able to use a consistent series of steps for an event; we create fertile circumstances for its continuous operation. The chances for completing any project successfully depend greatly on the constant uses of the available means. Self-discipline has widespread uses. If it is applied especially to professional and personal circumstances, it would make a big difference between success and failure. Consider the effect self-discipline has on continuous improvement at work, the desire for weight loss, and the obedience of the laws of society. In each of these examples, experience alone shows that any advancement is impossible without the application of this critical human quality.

If self-discipline is the catalyst for enhancing our activities, determination and perseverance are also similar agents for perfecting them. That is exactly what every vigorous and ceaseless endeavor does. Many of the things we do are comparable to the sowing of seeds. It is unlikely that you will always reap immediate rewards from your labor. Good things are worth waiting for. We should expect regular obstacles in one form or another whenever we venture into risky situations. Stonewalls are common scenes to every adventurous person. Closed doors are just as familiar. With that reality established firmly, the problem is what to do about them. For those who are determined to persevere, they often find that stonewalls can have cracks in them. Also, whenever a door is closed, a window can be opened. These metaphors are here to prove a point. If you wish truly to accomplish a noble objective, no amount of counter-influence should shake your drive for it. Anyhow, determination and perseverance do not activate automatically when we think about them. The control of indecision, lethargy, stress, and over-confidence is conducive to that manifestation. Another way of saying the same thing is that procrastination must be defeated if you wish to make advantageous uses of determination and perseverance.

If you know that something is inevitable and that it is bound to affect your life one way or another, it makes sense to persevere to deal prudently with it. All the changes around us are comparable to the phenomenon of day and night. We sometimes lose our sense of reality of whether day precedes night or night precedes day. We are still able to prepare for the arrival of day and night with little effort. The explanation is that the routine nature of this natural phenomenon makes every person expect them to manifest even though we do not always pay attention to the real cause behind that manifestation. Daylight is distinguishable completely from nighttime and we plan our activities generally to match these natural occurrences.

The connection of these natural occurrences to progressive change is that if we accept the inevitability of changes, there would be a high probability that we will be resolved enough to prepare for them. To begin with, no one should be afraid of changes. One should rather be open-minded to all changes regardless of when and where they come from. That kind of determination allows people to train themselves in such areas as the benefits of flexibility, the anticipation of future needs and the uses of personal responsibilities to improve their lives. The sincere belief in the inevitability of change is a catalyst that makes all the driving factors outweigh the restraining factors in all the things that we do. In the end, all changes are meaningful only if they are enacted on the basis of professionalism, ethics, and beneficence.

EXEMPLARY PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT 1

All human beings are different in many ways. This distinctness is particularly prominent in the totality of qualities and traits that identify every person. The particular behavior that develops from the aggregate of these characteristics is what is known as personality. From this definition, we can observe that the development of any person’s complete nature is not easy. It should, however, appropriately involve the examination of the major principles of this subject as well as some of its primary contributing factors. Over the years, many interesting theories have been advanced to explain the development of human personality. The four major ones that have gained wide recognition are the humanistic, psychoanalytic, constitutional, and social learning theory.

According to the humanistic theory, all of us have specific natural talents, capabilities, and ways of doing things. Put together, these characteristics are always different from one person to the next. Whenever an opportunity is created, we act or react accordingly to situations in specific ways. It is true that many people have traits unique to them and their family members. Such human characteristics are hereditary because of the presence of common genes. A typical example is the manner in which we use patience or impatience to react to situations. These human traits can be identified generally with members of the same family even though there may be some exemptions.

The psychoanalytic approach to the explanation of personality development also makes use of innate qualities. In this case, the theory explains that every person has natural needs, which constantly clash with those of society. This continuous conflict between our needs and the requirements or regulations of our environment determines to some extent how we behave. Psychologists who profess the psychoanalytic theory to personality development do so because of the resulting actions or reactions between our innate needs and experiences.

Every person has a natural instinct for reward and recognition. The idea of appreciating work well done, no matter how small, is a process that should normally generate proportional response. It encourages actions that are in harmony with good behavior. From a psychoanalytic point of view, reward and recognition should prompt everyone to repeat a good deed and thereby, to progress the development of personality. When these two promoters of values and attitudes are lacking where they are deserved, it can encourage a certain behavior that may not have any value-adding properties.

The same directions toward personality development are equally applicable to our needs for self-preservation and such applicable things as the enforcement of safety laws as well as the human desire for freedom. Any limit on that liberty because of various personal, religious, and secular laws would have the same purpose. In all these cases, whatever actions we take toward satisfying those natural needs in a way are controlled partly by how societies also view them.

The constitutional theory is yet another hypothetical set of facts that uses innate factors to justify our personalities. This theory identifies physiological characteristics as the main determinant of how we behave. Human physique, according this theory, can influence personalities. The persons who are muscular and strong are usually active. Because of that, they are sometimes impulsive. Those who are either fat or thin are more likely to employ defense mechanisms. These defense mechanisms could include more use of the brain or even the avoidance of situations. Human physiological makeup definitely plays a role in how we conduct ourselves.

The other major theory of personality development is the social learning concept. According to this theory, personality can be learned as much as we are able to study all other subjects. It says that the basic principles of learning can be applied to acquire a certain desirable personality if we choose to do so. When we associate ourselves with others for a period, it is only a matter of time before some similarities of characters are noticed. This is because association creates the opportunity for imitation and, consequently, reinforcement.

One good example involving imitation is the case of an admirable quality in someone we see as a mentor. Specifically, if you notice that one person is good at public speaking and the desire to acquire such a skill is strong, it will be a good idea to find out as much information as possible about this person. If you want your style to mirror that of this person especially, you will be in a better position to place yourself advantageously enough to acquire it. This may include physical closeness and any form of biographical examinations. All manners of imitations begin with some form of association.

The idea of imitation is a good example of a socially learned approach to influence our personalities. An even better and faster method is to develop our personalities through the normal process of learning. If we can use the principles of learning such as mental notes, association, and repetition, to assimilate knowledge on many subjects, we should be able to do the same to enhance human personality. As we gain knowledge and understand concepts through study and experience, it becomes easier to modify behavioral tendencies through the same act of learning.

Each one of these theories uses its unique approach to explain human personality development. Behavior, as we have seen from these theories, can be changed or enhanced. Sometimes, this can be done consciously and unconsciously at other times. A close examination of these theories will indicate that none of them can explain satisfactorily why human personality is the way it is. How we articulate change to improve our behavior can be explained better with a combination of these interesting theories. They complement each other in more ways than they conflict.

As for a comparison of which one of them has the most impact on personality development, the social learning theory seems to be in the forefront. Its wide acceptability is because learning can be a continuous affair from infancy to old age. Even with young children, a pattern of personality development is often noticed. At the early stage in life, adult imitation is a major part of growth. Also, behavior modification through instruction should not only be directed to children, it is also beneficial at any stage of human growth. Human personality development is associated largely with, or characterized by, some form of learning more than any other method of behavior modification.

Human Relations and Personality Development

Among all the causes of divisions between people, personality differences play a prominent role. We know that every person is different in many ways as compared to other people. This even happens with identical twins. People perceive, understand, and analyze situations according to their unique personalities. At the same time, all of us are basically human. It means that there will always be a certain level of incompatibility between any two individuals as well as suitability at other times. These diametrically opposing components of human relations are natural reflections of our personality differences.

In our dealings with others, when we allow personality differences to predominate and influence our conduct, it results in incompatibility. If, on the other hand, such differences are nonexistent or minimized, then there is suitability. The problem is that one extreme is undesirable, whereas the other one that is required, is more often fantasy than reality. As a result, the naturalistic approach to improve human relations is a reasonable compromise between the two extreme results of our personality differences and similarities.

A further look at this concept of human relations will help place it in a better perspective. Whenever there are significant differences between people, the preferable approach should be a move by both parties toward finding common ground. This will involve a meaningful give and take. Like a two-way street, each person must be willing to inch closer to the other in a fit of individual special effort. That should be done sincerely for the common good of the whole. With reference to similarities of characters, the same concept still applies even though that may not be obvious at first glance.

Theoretically, it seems possible for some people to agree with each other most of the time. On closer examination, however, everything may not be as glittering as it may seem. The real-life situation is such that it takes a great deal of inside effort to produce the compromising personalities that outsiders see. Another way of looking at this is to do so through a situation involving the exercise of authority. Where there is absolute authority and complete obedience, things may look orderly. In ordinary human terms, authority and obedience cannot coexist without underlying motives for both. This could be because of the exercise of some form of