Irony

So I will make one comment about the delay in posts and that is it. It is ironic that as I am working on these character traits and get to follow through that once I start working on that it is almost half a year until I post again. I am going to be working on a new yet similar project next year and hope to capture a good portion of it here. This one will involve George Washington.

In keeping with character and irony, it is character that matters most above anything else. Republican Presidential Candidate Herman Cain seems to be fitting into both of those recently. Keeping it short and sweet, a few weeks ago a couple of different women came out and said he sexually harassed them back in the early 1990s. That becomes a he said she said and we do believe in innocence until proven guilty. Then a couple weeks ago an Atlanta woman came out and stated they had a 13 year affair and she had some documentation to back it up. He had also been providing financial support to her. He did say he had been providing support to a friend that was in financial need. I can sort of understand that but there is the whole avoiding the appearance of evil thing. Now that it has come out that his wife did not know about this woman or the financial support that he had been giving he is dropping out of the race. That is a good decision as character does count for everything and even still going on the premise of innocent until proven guilty, the fact that his wife did not know about all this is a huge indictment of Mr. Cain's character.

So on to the irony of this whole situation which really chaps me after Herman had campaigned as a outside the establishment candidate. Which quite honestly made him very appealing. They are saying that he is going to come out today and endorse Newt Gingrich. Hello! Newt cheated on his wife. He is also the ultimate establishment candidate. So you have one alleged cheater endorsing a known cheater for President.

Does character not count for anything anymore?

In regards to presidential candidates, I firmly believe the only two with great character are Michelle Bachman and Rick Santorum. I think that Romney and Perry are probably decent guys but they lack consistency.

Increasing ability through developing character traits - Tranquility

When I decided to work on the virtue of tranquility I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did. I enjoyed it so much I extended it by about a week. It was an amazing experience and look forward to the next rotation to work on it even further.

How does one work on the virtue of tranquility? It was something that I really did not know where to kind of start. Just before I started this week I heard somebody say, “If you really want to get to know yourself, go for a whole week driving your car in silence.” This would mean no radio, no phone calls, pretty much nothing. The first morning I did this I thought I was going to go crazy. It is amazing how much your mind bounces and wanders when you are left alone with nothing but your thoughts.

I have so much going on in life that it was nice by the end to be spending some time just being quiet. With work, family, school, and all the little projects I am trying to work on life gets really hectic. I really believe that what Franklin meant by the virtue of tranquility is to just be quiet and listen. As someone I know is fond of saying, Shut your pie hole!

Another thing that I did was to make sure that I spent a couple minutes in the morning and evening meditating and praying. I don’t think I am the only that when I pray I kind of say a prayer but don’t pause to listen for an answer. I believe that there is a lot of power in pausing and listening for an answer. Meditation also helped to clear out my head.

With the time I spent just being quiet I had time to recognize more about how my mind works and how I process thoughts. It was a nice additional benefit I did not expect. It has helped me to slow down and focus my thoughts a bit more when I process things. This has helped me to increase patience and truly think before I speak.

I was just thinking that it is funny that after having worked on tranquility I don’t have a whole lot to say about it.

Next week is persistence.

Increasing ability through developing character traits - Visions

“Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

I was first directed to that quote as I was in the Missionary Training Center preparing to serve as a full-time missionary. One of my instructors wrote that down for me as we were getting ready to leave. It is something that I really thought for a long time only applied to the Lord’s work and did not make the connection on how it can be beneficial to one’s personal life.

Fast forward a couple years in life after the mission was over and I started working with a few businesses. One of the first books recommended to me was Think and Grow Rich. I believe a great deal of what is taught about using the principle of vision to increase not only your business life but personal life, comes from this book. There are several ways of looking at applying this principle.

I have personally tried a couple different kinds at different points. I have gone the Think and Grow Rich route, writing out a “vision statement” and reading it once every morning and once at night out loud. I have also worked on daily meditation where I have visualized how I would feel upon achieving certain goals and milestones. Both have worked well to increase vision. It is something that I have not made a truly concerted effort at for some time. I decided this week would be a good time to start working on them again.

I have found a great way to start the day is not only to visualize achieving my goals but to envision how I would feel as I accomplish them. This has tended to put me in a great frame of mind and feel pretty good. My attempts at this the last week or so have been kind of hit and miss.

The next thing I did was to pull out some of my old vision or goal statements and kind of review them. I then started to think through where I would really like to be and start to map out a vision. I did this not only for myself but for my family as well. The latter I need to sit down and chat with my wife about as it is a team effort, but I was looking for a starting point to bring to the table.

Working on the above was a starting point for me. They are also some things that I have worked on hard to do in the past and felt I started to get some results from. However, I am admittedly bad on follow through which leads to another virtue or trait I will be working on later. I have applied these concepts haphazardly across the last few years. I hope to rectify that by my program of self improvement.

One of the sources of my decision to select Vision as a virtue was the list that Benjamin Franklin worked on. As I have gone through this week the following question kept coming to mind. How do you apply vision on a daily basis? How is it something that you can regularly work on? I of course thought of the daily visualizing and the goal statements. I also felt there was something that I was missing. I believe it was in how I view other people.

When we interact with other people we tend to immediately have some preconceived notions. How can we use vision to guide our actions with others? I believe that when we interact with or see others we should see them for their potential. That is not to say that we should just go along with whatever another person decides to do whether good or bad. People are still responsible for their choices. I did however notice that when I worked with others and kept this in mind my attitude towards them was different. Things that might have annoyed me before really didn’t seem to matter because I could recognize what they were trying to attempt and the potential for it.

How have you been able to apply the principle/trait of vision in your life?

Increasing ability through developing character traits - Faith

Choosing to work on the personal virtue of faith was quite an interesting task. First, I had to decide what aspect of faith I wanted to work on. Do I concentrate on the spiritual? Do I concentrate on faith in myself? When initially looking at it I did not think it would be that complicated to figure out. I did however figure something out. I decided to focus on faith as I went through my daily activities. How would my decisions affect my faith?

Being conscious of your faith in making decisions and reviewing at the end of your day how your decisions proved to be interesting. I found that while a lot of the choices I made would have been the same without this active focus, the focus did help me to see how our choices effect our eternal progression. Would the environment some of my potential decisions put me in have a negative or positive influence on my faith?

In looking at some of my routines and habits I did a couple of things a little differently. First, I wanted to actively increase my faith during the week. I made sure that I read scriptures before going to bed along with books and talks of a spiritual nature. I also continued to pray on my knees before going to bed. I have been doing the latter consistently now for about 3 ½ weeks. It is starting to have a profound impact on my life. I see things much longer term and can see with more clarity the roads my potential decisions would lead me down. Doing both of activities mentioned above helped me to close out on a peaceful note and therefore sleep a little better.

Another decision and change of habit that just kind of came about with this focus was how I spent my commuting time. On average I usually just drop the radio on whatever type of music I’m feeling like. Some occasions I would listen to some talk radio. The last week I haven’t played any music at all while driving. I have either listened to downloaded recording of talk radio shows or listened to some books on tape. This has had the effect of increasing my knowledge both intellectually and in regards to a basic awareness. By focusing on faith I viewed the news of the day and other events through the prism of faith. It is amazing to see how differently you internalize information when viewed through this particular prism.

Jesus Christ in the countless times He healed others during His earthly ministry would often send the recipients off with the phrase, “Thy faith hath made thee whole.” I have always just viewed that as a combination of their being physically healed as well as spiritually healed through a forgiveness of their sins. This week has brought me a new perspective on this. In focusing on my faith it has allowed me to see things much more clearly. It has allowed me to see all the components of my life and how they fit together within the big eternal picture. All of the pieces of my life are now coming into picture as one complete whole. As I slowly bring these pieces together and find balance between them it makes me whole as a person.

As I go through this little experiment of working on a virtue every week and thinking back on it in review, I am just going to continue blogging about them. I will just keep the rotation going and see how each instance builds upon the last.

My virtue for this next week is going to be……vision.

Increasing ability through developing character traits

Cross posted from my other blog.

The two major cornerstones of what I have dubbed “Individualbility” are individual ability and individual responsibility. This week I want to look at individual ability and how it can be increased by developing character traits.

Improving your character is a great way to improve individual ability to achieve success in anything that you do. There are a plethora of character traits one can look at improving upon or acquiring. On our site we mention five off the top.

• Integrity
•Courage
•Persistence
•Faith
•Vision

There are also many others that people would argue you can work on. Our site includes even more, including those things that Benjamin Franklin picked to work on. Franklin made a conscience effort to work on what he dubbed 13 virtues. He would pick one to work on every week and then rotate through them continually. Looking back at his life I would say that he did very well at developing those character traits and is a great example of increasing your chances at success by building your character.

I personally decided to start working on a character trait every week. Last week was my first week working on this and decided to focus on integrity. My focus was not only on being completely honest with those I interacted with but being honest with myself and work to cut out the little internal lies we tell ourselves. It made for a very interesting and eye opening week.

There is one example that really stands out in my mind. I was chatting with some coworkers about midweek and the subject of getting in shape came up. I was comparing notes with a couple people and one of the ladies mentioned that she likes playing the Zumba dance game on the Nintendo Wii. I mentioned that we had a Kinect for our Xbox 360 and loved the dance central game. I was about to say, “I usually play it about once a week, but I want to play it more often.” Well, although it would only be known to me it would be a blatant lie. I haven’t played that game in at least 2 months. Some people would say, that wouldn’t harm anybody because how would they know anyway. As I caught myself and refrained from making that false statement, I thought about my integrity. If it is ok to tell one little lie like that, then where does that lead to?

I do not share the above story to brag, but to illustrate a real life example of making an effort to focus on that weekly character trait. If my focus on developing the character trait of integrity had not been at the forefront of my mind, I probably would have made the statement without thinking about it.

We all have things that we want to improve on and do better in our lives. I firmly believe that by focusing on developing good character traits, those other areas of our lives will start to fall in line. Our personal character really does determine our path. The type of individual we focus on becoming will bring those types of individuals and opportunities into our lives.

As I move on each week focusing on a different character trait, I will post my progress on my personal blog. For a great discussion of integrity, I suggest John Huntsman Sr’s book Winners Never Cheat.

What character traits do you think are the most important develop? Why?