Spark: 5 Essentials to Ignite the Greatness Within

By Tracey Jones

Did anyone ever tell you that you have greatness inside?

The fact may have never crossed your mind, you may have refused to acknowledge it, or you may have grown up with others telling you just the opposite. So many people go through life unaware or unwilling to accept the realization that they can and will be great.
What is hindering you from becoming what you can and need to be?

How can you take the obstacles in your life and turn them into opportunities?

There are five essentials that every successful and resilient person on this planet uses to unlock their inner greatness. The tremendous news is these steps work for every single one of us in every individual situation one hundred percent of the time!
SPARK gives you the blueprint to unfolding and perfecting the highest version of yourself.

It will provide you with the understanding and tools to help you continue refining and redefining your future as your world changes. It's time to claim your greatness. No more waiting; no more procrastinating; and no more doubtful debating. The world needs you to deliver on all that you can. Once you open this book and begin this process, you will never be the same!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Life Management Services, INC.
• Release date: Sep 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005091064

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

A group of junior-level executives were participating in a management training program. The seminar leader pounded home his point about the need to make decisions and act on these decisions.

For instance, he said, if you had five frogs on a log and three of them decided to jump, how many frogs would you have left on the log?

The answers from the group were unanimous: Two.

Wrong, replied the speaker, there would still be five because there is a difference between deciding to jump and jumping.

If you laughed at this story, this book is for you! If you took offense, please step away from the page and put this book down. Seriously though, most of you subconsciously realize by this stage in life that there truly is a world of difference between capability and intentionality. I can remember as a younger leader being taught, if I just give people enough training and get out of their way, they’ll amaze me! Hogwash. A few will; most won’t. That’s because for all the training in the world, we never teach people that the only form of motivation is self-motivation. You may have witnessed friends or loved ones struggling who desperately needed to make changes, only to remain stuck in the sands of self-pity. Or you may have wondered why you can’t seem to get the traction you so desire. In this book I share the tools to help you bridge that gap. Tools are important. But do you know what’s more important than tools? Picking them up and putting them to use. But in order for you to begin swinging the hammer with power, like Thor, you’ll need a source of ignition…..a SPARK.

If It’s to Be, It’s Up to Me

You alone have the keys to unlock your potential. Whether you will or will not is dependent on something called, personal agency. Personal agency is the act of deliberately or intentionally exerting positive influence.¹ Personal agency refers to your capability to originate and direct actions for given purposes. An individual’s degree of agency is influenced by the belief in their effectiveness in performing specific tasks—also termed self-efficacy—as well as by their actual skill.² Hence, we see the link between capability (actual skill) and intentionality (potential skill). Another term researcher’s use to describe personal agency is motivation. Motivation is defined by social cognitive researchers as a process in which goal-directed behavior is instigated and sustained.³

The Perception of Self (It Really is All About You)

The key tenant of self-efficacy is found in the word self. Self-efficacy theory is rooted in the perception the individual holds regarding their own level of performance, as well as development. In essence, life is not about how others view you as much as how you view yourself. The theory of self is what causes each person to feel, think, and act in particular ways. Self-concept refers to a generalized self-assessment incorporating a variety of self-reactions and beliefs such as feelings of self-worth and general beliefs of competence.⁴ Self-esteem has been defined as a type of belief involving judgments of self-worth. It is an affective reaction indicating how a person feels about him or herself.⁵ This self-assessment is quite distinct from self-efficacy perceptions, which involve cognitive judgments of personal capability.⁶ So how you feel about your worth and how you feel about your performance are two different sets of perceptions and emotions. That’s why we get leaders who have high levels of self-esteem yet feel inadequate to successfully meet the demands of the tasks at hand.

Self-observation (also called self-monitoring) is a performance control phase process that involves selectively attending to aspects of one’s behavior or performance.⁷ The more robust your self-regulating behaviors, the greater asset you’ll be to your organization, church, family, etc. This ability to accurately self-assess is an important process because it helps learners differentiate between effective and ineffective performances and helps to isolate the source of error or confusion when one is performing poorly. From a social cognitive perspective, self-regulation has been defined as self-generated thoughts, feelings, and actions that are planned and cyclically adapted based on performance feedback to attain self-set goals.⁸ Development of self-regulatory capabilities requires instilling a resilient sense of efficacy, as well as imparting knowledge and skills. If people are not fully convinced of their personal efficacy, they rapidly abandon the skills they have been taught when they fail to get quick results or it requires bothersome effort. ⁹

The Role of Personality in Self-Motivation

The concept of The Big Five personality traits is taken from psychology and includes five broad descriptive domains. It was during one of my doctoral classes, Personality and Developmental Theory, that I first learned about The Big Five. I am no stranger to self-assessments. I have taken every strength finder and personality assessment under the sun, but I was mesmerized by this simple construct. The most popular current version of trait taxonomies suggests that there are five basic groupings, or five superordinate traits.¹⁰ The Big Five personality traits form the acronym