How Well Do You Know Yourself?

–John Maxwell

We have a hard time being successful with other people if we haven’t paid the price of success with ourselves. The Law of Awareness is kind of a catch 22. You have to know who you are to grow your potential, but you have to grow in order to know who you are.

You aren’t going to live a different life or become a different person than you are now, without growing. I heard Darrin Hardy of Success magazine say on a CD some times ago,  ” If you want to get out of debt, you have to change the thinking that got you into debt.”

It’s because of paradigms or the way we see things. Some of these paradigms we grew up with.  For simplicity sake, let’s compare paradigms to maps. Suppose you want to go to a place in Chicago, but the map that you have was mistakenly labeled Detroit. Imagine your frustration of trying to get to your destination.  You could change your behavior you could try harder or double your speed to get there, but your efforts would only succeed in getting you to the wrong place faster.

You could work on your attitude—you could think more positively.  You wouldn’t get to the right place but you’d be happy where ever you ended up. The point is, you’d still be lost. Our challenge has nothing to do with behavior or attitude.  It has everything to do with having the wrong map or paradigm in our head.

We have many maps in our heads, with which we see everything. We interpret everything through these mental maps and we seldom question their accuracy. We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they are or the way they should be. Our attitudes and behaviors grow out of those assumptions.

To try to change outward attitudes and behaviors does very little until we examine the basic paradigms or maps from which these behaviors flow. 

If you don’t know yourself, and don’t control yourself, if you don’t have mastery over yourself, it’s very hard to like yourself.  Self-respect comes from this dominion over self and awareness of our deepest wants, needs and desires. The most important ingredient we put into any relationship is not what we say or do, but what we are. The place to begin building any relationship is inside ourselves. Leading ourselves well opens up opportunities for building rich, enduring, highly productive relationships with others.

Our tendency is to project out of our own paradigms what we think other people will want or need. What if those paradigms are a bit skewed, which is normal in most people’s lives?

It starts within.  You have to know yourself to grow yourself. When we begin to lead ourselves well and become aware of where we lack awareness of limiting beliefs that can impact relationships, others respond in ways we never thought possible.

Keep on growing,

Jan

Jan McDonald
The John Maxwell Team

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