If You Want the Secondary Greatness of Recognized Talent, Focus First On The Primary Greatness of Character

People are longing to be asked questions about who they are. The human need to self-present is powerful. Why? Because no one has ever listened to them before, and they’ve likely not even taken the time to listen to themselves. This lack of listening creates a void that many are eager to fill, but they don’t know how.

To begin understanding yourself better, consider these key aspects:

• Your ultimate goals: What do you want to offer the world?

• Your skills: What are you doing when you feel alive?

• Your schedule: How exactly do you fill your days?

The experience of being fully listened to, until the meaning is completely clear to another human being, is extremely rare in life. This means that when you talk with another person, you’re there to assist them in their own creation. You are not there to lead with insights but to receive and ask more questions about the insights the other person is developing. You’re there to make the person feel safe and to be curious. You’re there to encourage deeper honesty.

It’s crucial that you don’t choose to speak and stop listening. Because speaking and listening involve many of the same brain areas, once you go into response mode, your ability to listen deteriorates. It’s about controlling your impatience and listening to learn, rather than to respond.

Be a Loud Listener

When another person is talking, you want to be listening so actively that you’re practically burning calories. The thing we need most is relationships. Yet, the thing we seem to struggle with the most is cultivating our relationships. Social disconnection warps the mind. When people feel unseen, they tend to shut down socially. People who are lonely and unseen become suspicious. They start to take offense where none is intended. They become afraid of the very thing they need most—intimate contact with other humans. They are suffocated by waves of self-loathing and self-doubt. After all, it feels shameful to realize that you’re apparently unworthy of other people's attention. Many people harden into their solitude. This makes us more vulnerable to rejection and heightens our general level of vigilance and insecurity in social situations. We see ourselves as others see us, and when we feel invisible, we tend to fall to pieces.

The Power of Frames

With every comment, you are either making me feel a little safer or a little more threatened. With every comment, I’m showing you either respect or disrespect. With every comment, we are each revealing something about our intentions. Every conversation exists in a frame: What is the purpose here? What are our goals? A frame is a stage in the conversation. It takes place anytime someone is speaking with you. There’s a temptation when anyone else is speaking to us to revert to the frames we feel most comfortable with.

Respect is like air. When it’s present, nobody notices, but when it’s absent, it’s all anybody can think about.

If you're in an argument with someone who does not respect you, you will see their motivations shift: the goal will be to win the argument. The goal will be to show that they are smarter and more powerful. This is also when the mind tricks come into play. Statements like “you’re getting so reactive” or “you’re being irrational.” This power play is called labeling, and it can completely destroy any attempt to reconnect and resolve the situation.

The important thing to remember is that we perceive the world not as it is, but as it is for us.

We project our individual mental experiences into the world and thereby mistake our mental experiences for the physical world, oblivious to the shaping of our perception by personal histories, goals, and expectations.

Rising Above Labels

When we allow others to place labels on us, we create a vision of ourselves that is disjointed. We allow people to place their projections and character weaknesses on us rather than accurately assessing the conversation, situation, and ourselves. You allow the person in that interaction to become responsible for your mind, your actions, and your life.

Instead, rise above the labeling. Realize that you are one of the seldom few who understands that YOU can decide WITHIN YOURSELF how all stimuli affect you. Because regardless of what the stimulus is, it’s within YOUR power to choose your response.

Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.

Proactivity

Proactivity is the understanding that you are responsible for your own life. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen. Proactive people are driven by values—carefully thought-out, selected, and internalized values.

You have two superpowers in life: resourcefulness and initiative.

To maximize the utility of these superpowers in your daily life, you can cultivate four traits that ensure you live a fulfilled life:

• Self-Awareness: Our ability to stand apart from ourselves and observe what we like and don’t like.

• Conscience: Our ability to discern right from wrong.

• Imagination: Our ability to envision new possibilities.

• Independent Will: Our ability to act outside of all other influences.

Be an agent, not a victim. Don’t wait for life to happen to you; make life happen. Be the driver of your life, not the passenger. Live out your imagination, not the past.

Sow a thought; reap an action. Sow an action; reap a habit. Sow a habit; reap a character. Sow a character; reap a destiny.