Self Improvement Information

There is a lot of talk these days about socialism and communism making its way into the free enterprise system in the United States.  People are concerned that our capitalistic society is becoming bogged down with entitlement programs, unmanageable national debt, and heavy taxes.  Here’s a shocker for you.   A type of socialism has been alive and practiced freely in many corporations in America for years!

Are you shocked by that? I am not saying that corporations are transferring the ownership of their corporations to the government, even though that has happened in the case of insolvency and the bail out of the auto industry.  I am writing about the idea in corporations that no matter what kind of job you do, either good or bad, you will only be compensated a certain set amount.  The idea that the corporation pays a position, not the person.  The practice of compensation of raises is an across the board certain percentage no matter how good or bad the performance of the individual.

I understand this concept from first hand experience.  I have had my income capped and commissions taken from me because my position can only earn a certain amount.  I have done an exceptional job and increased the earning of the company only to be told at raise time that my raise will be the same as my co-worker who has spent their time finding ways to escape doing the same job.  Can you imagine how this effected my happiness and my willingness to do a good job for this company?

As bad as the last paragraph may have sounded, I have been fortunate, also, to have been involved with a company that rewarded individual initiative.  I believe, people need their individual initiative to be acknowledged and rewarded.  This is the “freedom with responsibility” concept and it’s one of the main difference between the free enterprise system and socialism.

How does a company enhance the performance of its individuals within the company?  I believe, feedback is a key element.  That is not an excuse to heap negative performance issues on them.  If those issues need to be addressed it is always good to keep it professional with a coaching attitude and end the session with what you like about their performance.

Feedback also encompasses the vision of how their job fits into the vision for the company.  People can become very disillusioned with their jobs if they don’t understand how it fits into the company vision.  Even the worker on an assembly line can benefit from expressing to them how their performance impacts the company and the overall company vision.

When a person is hired, there is confidence that they can do the job.  Expressing that confidence and increasing their responsibilities as their performance warrants it is a great way to give a person a sense of pride and accomplishment.  People will take ownership of their performance and do the best job they can if they are given the authority and freedom to do the job to the best of their abilities.

Most job related performance issues stem from lack of communication.  Starting the dialogue is a beginning.  Don’t be afraid to share the vision of where you are going and what role people play in the accomplishment of that vision.

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Life can be a joyful ride.  It has many ups and downs.  There seems to be a couple of universal speed bumps.  They are money and relationships.  Two important things that have huge effect on our perception of our ride through life.  In relationships, a tough concept for some is that we teach people how to treat us.  Some of you are saying, “right on, sister, I believe that!”  Some of you are saying, “that can’t possible be true!”

Let me give you an example.  We teach people how to treat us by what we are willing to accept from them.  You have probably heard the old saying, “he/she was born with a silver spoon in their mouth”.  Mine was a different upbringing.  I was born with a “guilt spoon in my mouth.”

Guilt is a very powerful manipulation tool.  It is very effective way to get what you want.  It is, also, a very under handed tool that scars both the user and the recipient.  When I learned that I am responsible for my own life, I believed it.  I didn’t bat an eye at the concept that I create all the things I wasn’t happy with in my life.  What was more difficult, for me, was taking credit for the good things.

Being raised with the idea that everything that happened bad in our household was my fault led to my feelings of inadequacy, depression, and of course that familiar feeling, guilt.  This led to my feelings of being a door mat.  That is what I was projecting and I attracted strong personalities that used guilt techniques to interact and control me.  As long as I accepted guilt, people used it.

We teach people how to treat us by what we project. When I was in my twenties, I started taking horse back riding lessons.  I had always wanted to learn to ride.  In my lessons, I always wanted to ride “Snickers”, a buckskin, who was easy to ride.  She always did what I wanted and my riding experience was fun.  My instructor always made me ride Casper.  He was a white horse with mind of his own.  When I had a lesson riding him, I had to work. I came to realize that when I projected confidence and made him do what I wanted, my riding lesson became more fun and I learned more.  I grew to enjoy the challenge he presented.  I realized that life and relationships, we attract the situations and the people that put us out of our comfort zone to learn from it.

When a relationship is a challenge for me, I ask myself, what am I projecting?  What am I accepting from that person that is making the relationship less fulfilling? Why am I attracting that? What do I need to learn from this particular relationships.  The biggest question I ask myself, is this relationship worth working through the challenges?

As I have grown older and wiser, I have grown more comfortable with what I will accept and what I project.  My relationships with others is much more fulfilling, with less drama.  I feel peace regarding how I teach others to treat me.

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In our world today a lot of press is given to prejudice.  What is prejudice?  There are many definitions of the word.  I would like to refer to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition:   “preconceived judgment or opinion (2)  : an adverse opinion or leaning formed without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge” Even though it receives quite a bit of attention it is not a new phenomena.  It has been around since the dawn of time.  Did it start by helping our prehistoric ancestors survive in a hostile world?  Since I am not an anthropologist, I won’t be able to give you that answer.

Prejudice can effect every area of our lives.  It is a learned response.  We pick up quite a few of these from our parents and our family units.  Unless we question these learned conditioning’s in our lives we will be destined to continue them and pass them to the next generation.

Here’s an example of this learned prejudice.  When I met my husband I was amused by the fact that he had two foods he absolutely hated!  One was raisins and the other, Lima beans.  How could anyone not like raisins?  They’re sweet and chewy and make a great snack.  I thought all children were raised with a box of Sun Maid raisins clutched in their hands.  And, how could a Lima bean make him gag?  I am not a huge fan of that particular bean, but I have never lost my lunch over a plump light green bean!  When I met his family I found out that this profound dislike was shared by all his siblings, his mother and his grandmother.

When discussing food preferences it can be a humorous thing.  But, when that same learned response happens with race, religion, sex and any other thing that stops us from expanding our personal interactions with others it becomes less humorous and downright detrimental to our lives.

Here’s an illustration of this in the work place.  Let’s say that Fred has a realty company and he is looking for sharp individuals for his sales force.  But, Fred doesn’t like people with blond hair.  A young man walks into Fred’s office and sits down to interview for the job.  He is young, ambitious and has all the right answers to Fred’s question.  But, because of Fred’s prejudice to blond hair, this young man’s application automatically hits the rejected pile.  Why does that matter?  There are plenty of applicants waiting in line to be interviewed.  It matters if the man was a young Donald Trump.  By not considering Donald because of his blond hair, Fred has cost his company millions of dollars and changed his family’s financial legacy forever.

As we look at our lives, is there room for prejudice?  How would the world be different if we could eliminate harmful prejudices from our lives?  Is it possible?