Here are seven steps you can take to develop your personal character from renowned personal success mentor, Brian Tracy:
1. Being the Best in Every Area:
What is character? Your character is the degree to which you live your
life consistent with high, life–enhancing values. A person who lacks character
is one who compromises on higher order values in favor of lower order
expedience, or who has no values at all. Your adherence to what you believe to
be right and true is the real measure of the person you have become to this
moment.
2. Define What “Excellence” Means to You:
Let us say that one of your values is “excellence.” Your
definition of excellence could be, “Excellence means that I set the
highest standards for myself in everything I do. I do my very best in every
situation and under all circumstances. I constantly strive to be better in my
work, and as a person in my relationships. I recognize that excellence is a
life long journey and I work every day to become better and better in
everything I do.”
3. Organize Your Actions:
With a definition like this, you have a clear organizing principle for your
actions. You have set a standard by which you can evaluate your behavior. You
have created a framework within which you can make decisions. You have a
measuring rod against which you can compare yourself in everything you do. You
can continually grade your activities in terms of “more” or
“less.” You have a clear target to aim at and organize your work
around.
4. Decide What You Want for Your Family:
It’s the same with each of your other values. If your value is your family, you
could define this as, “The needs of my family take precedence over all
other concerns. Whenever I have to choose between the happiness, health and
well-being of a member of my family, and any other interest, my family will
always come first.”
5. Keep Focused:
From that moment onward, it becomes easier for you to choose. Your family comes
first. Until you have fully satisfied the needs of your family, no other time
requirement will side track you into a lower value activity.
6. Shape Your Own Character:
The wonderful thing about values clarification is that it enables you to take
charge of developing and shaping your own character. When your values and
goals, your inner life and your outer life, are in complete alignment, you feel
terrific about yourself. You enjoy high self-esteem. Your self-confidence
soars. When you achieve complete congruence between your values and your goals,
like a hand in a glove, you feel strong, happy, healthy and fully integrated as
a person. You develop a kind of courage that makes you completely unafraid to
make decisions and take action. Your whole life improves when you begin living
your life by the values that you most admire.
7. Action Exercises:
First, create a clear, written description of your values and what they mean to
you. From that point on, resolve to live consistent with your own definition.
Second, discipline yourself to live in complete alignment with the values,
virtues and qualities that are most important to you. This is the key to
character.