Tag Archives: desire

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Finding your Talent

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Each of us is born with a natural aptitude or skill.   Our challenge is to identify what it is and then leverage that ability to the maximum.   In many cases the latent talent is overlooked and sadly unused during a persons lifetime.

Talent is a special gift granted us through nature but which needs to be grown through nurture to reach it’s full potential.  Unfortunately there are many talent suppressors in our environment and it is rare for to see them blossom.

Perseverance

Human life can benefit from a wide range of skills and abilities ranging from mental to physical.  One person may demonstrate an aptitude for soccer while another excels in performing kerrculations (calculations).

These natural abilities are inherent within of genetic makeup but do require effort to become both apparent and to excel at them (i.e., training and practice).

When exercising our latent talent we must practice both patience and perseverance.  While the opportunity exists for us to demonstrate amazing capabilities by exercising our special talent it is not easy, natural but hard.

Motivation

One of the leading reasons our hidden talents often stay hidden is lack of motivation.  Just being able to excel does not equate to excellence.

We must both have the innate talent and the desire to practice and persevere in order to leverage and excel at our talent.  Surprisingly, given the presence of our gift is natural and unassuming we often do not seize upon it and the lost opportunity leads to waste.

Some of us our fortunate to encounter coaches and mentors to help  unleash our hidden talents while others do not even recognize what they are capable of and so it goes to waste.  It is your choice, do you really want to miss out on your chance?

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Activating Inspiration

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The ability to be inspired lies dormant within each of us, we only need to activate it.  Becoming mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative, is a personal choice.

The opportunity to do so is neither unique nor limited by intelligence, everyone has the capability.   The defining factor is desire.

Passion

Caring or being passionate about something is a great way to ignite inspiration.  Inventors often describe how their passion for a particular topic was a key motivator to create.

The trick is to let your interest flower into a passion, explode as inspiration, and voila a brilliant creative outcome will blossom.  It is just a personal choice.

Something Special

The ability to be inspired is not something special that exists in a select few.    The level of innate intelligence and talent granted to each of us unquestionably has a genetic component.

However, everyone is capable of personal inspiration.  The results of our inspired behaviors are subject to the extent of our capabilities but inspiration will drive results in every case.

Everyone has the ability to choose to stretch themselves, to examine, explore, and be excited by the possibilities around them.  We can use this excitement to drive both actions and ultimately achievement.

Wasted Opportunity

Every missed chance to become inspired by something is a missed opportunity.  When your curiosity is aroused let your interest be peaked, go with the flow and forge onwards.

Take heart in the fact that you can, and only you can, choose to be inspired.  No-one can block you, the only roadblock is yourself.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Skill or Capability

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If you have expertise or experience you should be able to complete a task in an acceptable way.  The better your skill or experience the greater the efficiency or quality.

For example if you have both training and practical experience you can probably perform a plumbing repair more quickly and with less risk than I could, I am not greatly experienced in plumbing.

This is not to say I can’t do plumbing work (in fact I have on a number of occassions) but it has seldom been fast and when problems were encountered I have needed help.

Capability

In the plumbing example, while I do not have extensive skills and experience with plumbing I am capable of doing the job. The extent to which I have the power and willingness to complete a task is my capability.

Selecting Leaders, Group/Team or team members

If you are interesting in a winning combination, when building a team   (sports or otherwise) a business or other organization the mix of skill and ability is critical.

Unfortunately there is no absolutely correct mix of skill and capability.   The best balance varies widely depending on numerous factors.

These include the nature of the role, the overall complexity of the activities, envionmental factors and well, just about everything else.

The key is recognizing that the balance between skill and ability needed in any given situation varies and should be analyzed and determined before selecting someone to tale on the assignment.

This is not an easy task but a very worthwhile one which increases your chance of selecting the best resource for any given role.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Griity People

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Why are some people successful while others are not.  What distinguishes a top leader, manager , sales person, student, athlete and so on.

Are there specific attributes associated with success.  Things like, intelligence, emotional maturity, physical capability?  Intuitively the answer is yes, but is there something else?

Is there an attribute that is always present to a high degree, which is a critical underpinning to skills and capabilities.  This is a question phycologists have been exploring for years.

Being Successful

I recently heard about some interesting studies of sucessfull salesmen, athletes and students that found the top performers sometimes had high intelligence and/or strong emotional maturity and/ or powerful physicality, but not always.

These factors might be present, or might not (just average or low levels).  This leads to the conclusion these factors are not necessarily or perhaps not at all determinent of success.

Grit

The one attribute that was present in high levels, in every case, was grit.  The higher your grit , the greater likelihood you would be successful.

Being a gritty person means that the one tends to stick to their goals despite numerous issues, problems, setbacks and failures. The person has firmness of mind and unyielding courage.

The theory is when you treat life as a long term journey, not a series of side trips, struggles are the norm and something to overcome.   Something that in fact can and will be overcome.

There is no need to start over or stew and wine over a bump in the , and there will probably be many, those with grit just soldier on to success.

Aquired Attribute

While only a theory, and techniques how to teach or learn grit are still in early development phases just believing in the value of grit is a start on your path to continued accomplishment and success.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Do you care

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Have you ever wondered why you behave the way you do?  This is not a simple topic with a multitude of variables driving your actions and motivations.

Today’s post I explore how desires (what you want, what you really, really want) affects behaviour?   Desire or wants occur on an emotional level.

Where does it come from?

Things you want are almost exclusively associated with things you care about.  If you don’t care whether rock and roll is playing on your radio you probably won’t want to buy tickets to a rock concert.

Other variables might influence you to buy concert tickets (e.g., going with a friend or an opportunity to win a prize) but you typically need to care about a topic to want to participate.

Shaping Behaviour

A key underlying driver of behaviour is how invested you are in a topic.  The more you care, the stronger the reaction, that is your desire to achieve and excel.

Obligatory Sports Analogy

If you are a rabid soccer fan you are far more likely to want your team to succeed.  The casual fan enjoys the play but is no where near as invested in the outcome as the enthusiastic fan.

If you are a player and winning really matters to you (you care a lot about the result) your playing behaviour is likely to be aggressive and highly competitive.

If exercise is your what you want, the result can be far less relevant, even irrelevant. Your play will usually match your level of emotional investment.

Knowledge Influencing Action

The next time you are aggressively pursuing something, think about your motivations.  Why do you care?  This approach can help you define a successful strategy to achieve your goal.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Because I can

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Sometimes things we do to give us pleasure have no obvious purpose beyond giving a sense of satisfaction.  When asked why, I often respond “Because I can!”

For Example

For multimedia viewing I have set up a playstation, boxi-box, raspberry pi, apple tv, dnla server, qnap media centre and a chromecast.  All of these devices do essentially the same thing, albeit the configuration and specific functional details differ.

I also have four wi-fi subnets, three routers and powerline networking.  I admit it is overkill.  Basically the functional capabilities of my home network far exceed my needs.

In the tablet space, I have both full and small size IOS and android  tablets.

On a recent trip, the security officer at airport security made me take my tablets out for separate inspection (usually this only applies to laptops).  I thinks she was puzzled why someone would travel with three tablets (ultimately they serve the same function).

And my only explanation is because I can.  I have the time, the skills and of course, find it interesting.

Really

This is a bit of a simplistic explanation.  Even I can see  It is a stretch to believe the only motivation is the ability to undertake the task.  There must also be some interest or desire.

The really puzzling piece for me though is fact is the redundancy.  Once you have one media centre what is the value of multiple devices.

I think  the pleasure in surmounting the challenge of getting it to work, (i.e. proving I can) is the real answer here.  Basically what these things do is of less importance to me than getting them to do it.

Like the mountain climber, I do it because it’s there and I can.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Forbidden Fruits Drive Desire

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Reverse psychology is the practice of demanding someone not do what you want them to do.   Observation of basic human behavior has led people to believe this will cause the object of your demand to do just the opposite, which is what you want them to do.  And my own experience is it often works.

Humans love to want what they cannot have.  My parents recognized this and were open and helpful about letting their children access things that were not really bad but forbidden, things like alcohol, sex, drugs and roll n roll.  Most teenagers top four desires.  The idea being, you would learn proper respect for these things early on and then use them wisely.

Liberal Philosophy has it’s place

This early liberal education facilitated by my parents really worked.

For example, when I was thirteen or fourteen I had a party with eight or so friends.  My mom supplied the beer.  Enough for us to get heavily inebriated to the point of being sick and of course well hung over the next day.   My friends had slept over and as we sat down in the kitchen, Mom set a full plate of eggs, sausages, ham and bacon for us to partake.  Of course this just aggravated our already sorry state.

I did not really get it at the time, but this was a teaching moment, in a safe and nurturing environment. I survived but my lifelong respect for alcohol and appreciation for the value of using it wisely began at that early age.

Not Anarchy

No one who knows me well would classify my beliefs as liberal but I do recognize the value of balance between liberal and conservative practices and while there are definitely things that should have restricted access because of the danger they represent (e.g., heroin) there are lots of those other things that restricting their use until adulthood creates desires and opportunities for misuse more than anything else.

(N.B. – I have some good stories about sex, drugs and rock n roll too but I am trying to keep these posts G-rated.)