Tag Archives: behaviour

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Attitude Modification

Leave a comment

Environmental and genetic factors shape your attitude.  Current theory is the impact of nature versus nuture on personal attitudes is not a fixed factor.  It depends.

The type and magnitude of environmental factors can override your genetic template or complement it or even reinforce and exaggerate your basic natural proclivities.

A lot of this information comes from studies with identical twins, particularly those separated at birth and growing up in very different environments.

Changing and adapting your attitude

Through your adolescent and teenage years your foundational attitudes are formed.  These are influenced by your surroundings (nurture) and your genetic template (nature).

Research indicates the balance between nature and nuture influences varies greatly by individual.  This tends to support the theory we control our attitudes to some extent (nurture influences).

Although we often believe you cannot change how a person thinks once they have formed their base personality and personal value system, (usually by their 20’s) you actually can teach an old dog new tricks.

“Tricks” are in fact just behaviors.  Your behaviour can be influenced by others or your own desire to change at any time.  So if others want you to, or you want to, behavioural change can occur.

We often view behavioural change as reflective of our attitude, in fact your value based attitude, your personality might not change (probably doesn’t) at all, just your behaviour.

Conclusion

We can change our behaviour throughout our lives, our base attitude though is probably fixed by our early twenties.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

The key to respect

Leave a comment

Whether interacting with others in a home, workplace or social environment your behaviour is a key foundation to the respect you are granted.

We all percieve the things others do in the context of our own filters.  This perception underlies our reaction and the shape of our interaction with others.

What is respect?

A feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities or achievements. (with a nod to Melania Trump, I copied this from a google search, giving credit makes it a copy not plagiarism.)

How can you ensure a high level of respect?

The question really becomes; is there a way I can behave so that others will consistently perceive ( regardless of their unique filter) high ability, strong values  all underpinned by achievement?

I believe the answer is yes.  There is a key foundational behaviour that can be leveraged  to ensure what ever you do , however you behave,  it will cause you to respected by others.

The practice of self awarness, is the key here.  That is understanding what others need to craft their perception in a specific way.  Then behaving that way, and voila you are respected. Consistently.

Of course the concept is simple, like so many things,  the practice requires hours of study and practical experience to master.  The value of working on this skill is evident, the benefits far outweigh the effort to learn and practice it.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Balancing your behavior

Leave a comment

Whether at work or play how you behave drives your effectiveness.  Getting things done on your own, with others or through others can be efficient or effective or sloppy and slow.  Or anywhere in between.

The behavior impact

The factors that influence outcomes are broad and deep with multitudes of integration points.  Predicting the best approach with absolute certainty is impossible but focusing on and controlling key factors which will have the greatest impact on the end result is a good way to lay the foundation for success.

Your behavior is usually always a large contributor to the result and a discussion of behavior principles is the focus of the rest of this post

Balance

Extreme actions, for example like shouting, swearing at one end or hibernating and allowing yourself to be dragged along at the other can be effective behavioral approaches depending on the context of the situation, however, I personally find this to be the case very rarely.

Balancing extremes and tailoring your direct actions and responses to the other participant,s or if alone to the situation itself, is most likely to give you the best control.   Control lets you adapt and modify what you are doing as you are actually doing it.  This is really continuous improvement in the moment.

To practice the skill of balancing your behavior for optimum results requires a very high level of self awareness.  You need to be able to absorb, analyses and  determine the best response in an instance and constant awareness of whats going on is a prerequisite to this.

Remember as well what you do can change the behavior of others and this is a great tool to help achieve the objective although it needs to be used with caution.

To clarify, getting angry could be an example of using your behavior to changes others.  Don’t be surprised if your getting angry doesn’t cause others to get angry (unless they are practicing strong behavior control themselves you can count on it.)

The key thought here for the best use of personal behavior to drive to your goals is balance.  Use the right actions at the right time.