February 2012

Working Through Change

How do you actually make the change you want in your life to happen? You do something different. Try something new. Then try something else. Then you fail or succeed and try again. Until you find a few small things you love, sometimes they get big, and sometimes they die out. This applies to all of our work activities and mentoring relationships in the same way. If things aren’t working, we try a different way to communicate or relate, or we get stuck in the same old habits. Its choice. Sometimes it is just time to make a different choice.

How do you actually make these changes? Create space for patience. One change at a time.

10 Tips to Succeed

From Earl Nightingale

Earl Nightingale was one of the pioneers in the human potential movement. In fact, he was so influential that many called him “the Dean of Personal Development”. One of the topics that Nightingale spoke of often was self-esteem, and how your opinion of yourself will determine, to a large extent, whether you fail or succeed in life.

In this post you’ll discover ten self-esteem tips from Nightingale that will help you to succeed in life.

Know that Nothing Happens by Chance. A person is alive because they were meant to live, and they have talents and abilities that are uniquely their own. Their job as a person is to get to know themselves; if they do so they will recognize that there are things that they cannot do as well as others, but there are also things that they can do well. Every human being on earth is a potpourri of strengths and weaknesses. A person can increase their self-confidence by concentrating on their strengths, and just being themselves.

If You Don’t Like the Film That’s Playing, Change It. Imagine that you’re sitting in a theater in front of a closed curtain which is hiding a blank screen behind it. You’re waiting for the feature film to begin. The film that you’re about to watch is about the most fascinating person on earth: you.

This theater is in your own mind. You’re the producer, director, writer, and actor (or actress) of the film that is your life. In addition, you’re both the hero and the villain. The story unfolding upon this inner screen is being invented by you. Think of the following:

Will the story have a happy ending?

Is the story full of happiness and success?

Is the story full of sorrow and failure?

If the story isn’t going as you would like it to, you can change it as it unfolds. You choose if you’d like to make it a success story, and a heart-warming tale that will enrich the lives of others. You can also make it a drab tale; a chronicle of boredom. Recognize that it’s up to you; it all depends on the images that you project onto the screen that’s in your head.

Change Your Conception of Yourself. Your self-image is your conception of the sort of person that you are. It’s the product of the following:

Your past experiences.

Your successes and failures.

Your humiliations and triumphs.

The way other people react to you, especially in early childhood.

From these factors, you build up a picture of yourself which you believe is true. The picture may be false, but as long as it’s the conception that you hold of yourself, you’ll act as if it were true. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, it is true. If you have a positive self-image, then that’s fine; however, if it needs some improvement, know that you can change it for the better.

Remove Your Self-Imposed Limits. Our thoughts, our habits, and our abilities are those of the person we believe ourselves to be. We can’t surpass the limits of our current self-image.

There’s a story of a Wisconsin farmer who was walking through his pumpkin patch when his crop of pumpkins was just beginning to grow. Someone had discarded a glass jug in the field, and the farmer picked it up. As an experiment, the farmer poked a very small pumpkin through the mouth of the jug, being careful not to break the vine. Then he placed his experiment on the ground and walked away.

Months later, harvest time came and the farmer saw the jug again. The pumpkin had completely filled the jar; however, having no more room, it had stopped growing. The farmer broke the jar and held in his hands a runt pumpkin: it was less than half the size of the other pumpkins, and exactly the shape of the glass jar it had been imprisoned in.

Your self-image is like the glass jug: it determines who you become. It may be that your self-image is inadequate for the full realization of your potential. However, unlike the pumpkin, you can remove your self-imposed limitations. All you need to do is to enlarge your self-image.

Enlarge Your Self-Image Through Experience. You’ve formed a mental picture of yourself through experience, and you can change that mental picture the same way – through experience. If the actual experience that you need in order to expand your self-image is not available to you, you can create that experience synthetically.

The human nervous system is incapable of distinguishing between an actual experience, and the same experience imagined vividly and in complete detail. Worry is a good example of this. When a person worries about something they project themselves, mentally and emotionally, into a situation that hasn’t even occurred. For example, if a person is constantly worrying about failing, they’re going to experience the same reactions that accompany actual failure. These will include the following:

They’re going to experience feelings of anxiety, inadequacy, and humiliation.

Eventually, they’ll even experience the physical symptoms that accompany these negative emotions, such as headaches and an upset stomach.

After all, as far as their mind and body are concerned, they’ve failed. If this person continues concentrating on failure they will upset themselves to the extent that they will fail. Worry is a negative use of creative imagination; it’s a negative synthetic experience.

Just as imagination can be used destructively, it can also be used constructively. By visualizing success, instead of failure, a person can develop confidence, poise, and a feeling of well-being. A person can expand their self-image by synthetically experiencing success. Practice holding the self-image of the person you most want to become. Use your spare moments to concentrate on your goals and the success that you seek.

Forgive Yourself. See yourself with kind eyes. Try to forget all the idiotic things you’ve done: the pain you’ve caused others, the embarrassments you’ve suffered, and the mistakes you’ve made in the past. Wipe the slate clean.

Keep Up With Yourself. Don’t worry about what others are doing, or what others have done. Keep your own pace and recognize that it’s different from the pace of others. Your pace is faster than the pace of some people, and it’s slower than the pace of others. Don’t feel guilty if you’re moving ahead of your contemporaries, and don’t feel bad if you’re further back. The only person you need to keep up with is yourself. Live your own life and don’t be concerned about how others are living theirs.

Know That Every Person Is Different. Since every person is different, there’s no standard against which to judge yourself. Therefore, you can’t have either a superiority, or an inferiority complex. You’re not inferior or superior; you’re simply you.

Begin to Appreciate Other People More. Show respect to others and treat them as the unique individuals that they are. When you treat others as valuable human beings, your own self-esteem goes up. Treating others well makes you realize that your self-esteem is not derived from the things you’ve done or the things you own, but from an appreciation of yourself for who you are.

Act Toward People Instead of Reacting To Them. A man was once walking along with a friend and they stopped at a newsstand. The friend bought a paper, and thanked the vendor politely. The vendor didn’t even acknowledge it. The man said to his friend, “Sullen fellow, isn’t he?” And the friend responded, “Oh, he’s like that every night.” When the man asked his friend why he continued to be so polite to the vendor, the friend responded that he decided how he acted; it was not up to the vendor. He added that he acts toward people, he doesn’t react to them.

You can increase your self-esteem by developing a sense of inner balance; know who you are, what you stand for, and how you want to behave. Then, don’t allow others to disturb the equilibrium of your nature. Always remain in control of your own conduct, instead of being a mere responder to others. No one is unhappier than the perpetual re-actor: his center of emotional gravity is not rooted within himself, where it belongs, but in the world outside of him.

Stop being at the mercy of your environment! People who are re-actors respond as follows:

Praise gives them a feeling of euphoria. Then the feeling of euphoria falls, because it doesn’t come from self-approval.

Criticism depresses them because it confirms the shaky opinion that they have of themselves.

Snubs hurt them.

Increase your self-esteem by becoming the master of your own actions and attitudes. Don’t allow others to determine whether you’ll be rude or gracious, elated or depressed. To be constantly reacting to others is to relinquish control of your own personality; it’s to acknowledge your own inferiority by allowing the actions of others to dominate you.

Upcoming Events

As with any other learning opportunity or event at NIH, please be sure to negotiate your time and workload in accordance with your supervisor’s needs before attending.

Reminders

• There are many online courses available in the LMS (after logging in search using key words)
• Check out our website for resources and ideas for things to do in your relationships or drawing boundaries
• Look through past newsletters for articles and activities

Mentoring Quotes

"Everyone who got to where they are had to begin where they were."
~ Richard Paul Evans

“Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.”
~ Unknown

As always, we love to hear from you. Please feel free to email NIHHHSMentoringProg@
od.nih.gov if you have any comments or recommendations.

For more information visit http://trainingcenter.nih.gov/hhs_mentoring.html or 301-496-6211.