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Posts Tagged ‘self’

Things we don’t know

October 19th, 2009
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picture of puzzled faceIt’s hardly news to admit that I don’t know everything, and I bet you don’t either. It’s probably not news to say that psychologists don’t know everything either. So it is with some amusement that I ran across this collection of 150 word posts by a group of world-leading psychologists about things they don’t know. The group of posts are part of a celebration of 150 issues of the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest. (Congratulations BPS!)

Here’s a sample post. This one is by Paul Rozin on Time management.

I generally believe that we learn from experience. However, a recent study I did with Karlene Hanko repeats a finding from Kahneman and Snell, that people are very poor at predicting how their liking will change for a new product (in our case, two new foods and two new body products) after using it for a week. We predicted that the parents of our college undergraduates would be better than their children at predicting their hedonic trajectory, but 25 more years of self experience did nothing for them. Nor for me. Every night, I bring home a pile of work to do in the evening and early morning. I have been doing this for over 50 years. I always think I will actually get through all or most of it, and I almost never get even half done. But I keep expecting to accomplish it all. What a fool I am.

Coaching moment: Take a few minutes to think about stuff that you know, and stuff that you don’t. What’s something you don’t know? What does that mean to you? (Whatever it means, it’s part of who you are.)

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Reputation Management

April 17th, 2009
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We have many ways to view our identity. One way that we are known is by our reputation. Our friends and colleagues know who we are. They know us from our acts and activities. They know generally what kind of person we are. For example, we might be known as a kind or loving person, or maybe a jerk, a know-it-all, or a scoundrel.

smileFor a business, the employees are the first line of the company’s reputation. Sometimes employees are not the most diplomatic representatives. In one recently publicized case, a video posted to YouTube by two playful employees caused a public relations nightmare for the company (and later regrets by the ex-employees).

It’s worth noting that while one event can do damage, it’s not the entire picture. Our real reputation is made up of what we do and say over time, what we are consistent about.

Coaching moment: There’s a great lifehacker article, The Importance of Monitoring Your Online Reputation, that talks about this:

These days, if you want to know more about someone, the first thing most of us do is Google them. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that monitoring your online reputation is extraordinarily important.

Go ahead and Google and Yahoo yourself, see what’s out there. Note how much is about someone whose name you share. What picture does this paint? Are you happy with it?

You can’t change the past, but you can change your future reputation. What will you do to paint a better picture of yourself?

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Being Yourself

January 2nd, 2009
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Psychology Today has an article called Dare to be Yourself in which the author explores the notion of authenticity. I laughed when I read their “technical definition of authenticity” because sometimes I can be rather technical.

…the unimpeded operation of one’s true or core self in one’s daily enterprise.

Of course the researchers needed to be technical in order to study what makes up a person’s “self.” They came up with a few key components of authenticity:

The first, and most fundamental, is self-awareness: knowledge of and trust in one’s own motives, emotions, preferences, and abilities. Self-awareness encompasses an inventory of issues from the sublime to the profane, from knowing what food you like to how likely you are to quit smoking to whether you’re feeling anxious or sad.

Self-awareness is an element of the other three components as well. It’s necessary for clarity in evaluating your strengths and (more to the point) your weaknesses: acknowledging when you’ve flubbed a presentation or when your golf game is off, without resorting to denial or blame. Authenticity also turns up in behavior: It requires acting in ways congruent with your own values and needs, even at the risk of criticism or rejection. And it’s necessary for close relationships, because intimacy cannot develop without openness and honesty.

One of the significant questions is do we discover or invent what we consider to be our self. There is some disagreement on this, and recognizing the important constituents of your own self is a tough challenge, especially as an ongoing practice.

Coaching moment: Are you completely happy with who you are? A useful exercise might be to list three of your strengths and three of your priorities in life. Now sit back and think about what’s stopping you from achieving your priorities. Can you think of any way to use your strengths to help facilitate your priorities?

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