Author: cbarney.45

“What we really are matters more than what others think is us.” – Jawaharlal Nehru

Know who you are, what you stand for, and act in accordance with your beliefs – that is all that matters. It doesn’t matter what someone else thinks of you. Don’t do things for other’s approval or for “likes” on your social media accounts.

Always try your best and stay true to your values. Do what’s right because it is right. If others see it and like it, great. But don’t change your actions to try to please or appease others.

“My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.” – Abraham Lincoln

Everyone fails at some point. If you don’t think you’ve failed it could mean that you’re either delusional or that you’re too stuck in your comfort zone.

If you try new things and want to stretch the limits, failure is inevitable. But failure isn’t bad. It can be one of the best ways to learn how to improve, by noticing what it is that you’re deficient or lacking.

Instead of trying not to fail, realize that it plays a key role in your overall success. But don’t be content with failing for failing’s sake. If you’re failing, the purpose is to learn from those mistakes and to make adjustments to improve your results. By reframing how you view failure, you can put a positive spin on it. Now, anytime you fail at something, you can see it as bringing you one step closer to success.

A team with talent can be good, but they must work together to be great. If you have a group of talented individuals working as lone operators, their ceiling is capped. But if you take that same group of individuals and have them working together towards a shared goal with people they respect, their ceiling is raised considerably. This is the idea of synergy and it goes back thousands of years. Synergy occurs when two or more individuals work together/interact to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate efforts.

This is why you can’t have silos (at home or at the workplace), where team members either aren’t able or willing to work together. If they are separated, working independently of everyone else, then the ceiling of the individuals’ contributions will be limited and the team’s growth will be hindered. This not only will affect how far the team can go for the short term (the next quarter or even year), but it can affect it in the long run as well. Company culture will slowly erode as relationships become nothing more than a brief hello or goodbye when passing each other in the office. The people who you once knew and cared for become just a co-worker with whom you have minimal interaction. You don’t care about them and they don’t care about you, not because you don’t have the capacity to care, but you don’t have the opportunity.

I love being part of a team. That’s why I enjoy team sports. And sports is the perfect way to show that individual talent with no team chemistry does not beat out a great team of lesser talent. The best teams work together to be the best that they can be. How can you start to apply the principle of synergy in your life?

Cognitive dissonance is defined as the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.

When your behaviors conflict with your beliefs, you create internal tension. If you act in a way that goes against your values, or you’re asked to do something that you don’t believe in, you feel a certain amount of internal strife. The more your actions defy your belief system (whether in quantity of actions or in quality of the action), the more conflicted you will feel.

Make sure to act in accordance with your beliefs as much as possible. Ideally, you will always do the right thing, but that’s not realistic. We are all human and we all make mistakes. Do not seek perfection, but instead seek progress. Try to be better than yesterday, to learn from your mistakes, and to not compare yourself to others.

Lastly, if the above quote from Gandhi teaches us anything, it’s that one of the keys to happiness is to be happy with yourself. If your thoughts, words, and actions are not in alignment with each other, you can not experience true happiness.

Character traits to instill in ourselves and our children…

1. Integrity: The power of being honest (with yourself and with others) and of keeping high moral principles…doing what is right, even when it is difficult.

2. Resiliency: The power to recover quickly from difficulty/defeat…not giving up.

3. Dedication: The power of being committed to a relationship, an idea, a task, or a purpose…being faithful and working hard for something in which you believe.

4. Humility: The power of being free from pride or arrogance…understanding your role/importance in life and not overvaluing your contributions to team/family success.

5. Drive/hunger: The power of having a strong desire for self-improvement…always striving to get better/evolve.

6. Patience: The power accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset…keeping cool under pressure.

These traits are fundamental to a lifetime of success. When I define success, I don’t necessarily equate it to money, although most of the time, if the traits listed above are the foundation of your character it will lead to that. No, there is more to life than monetary success. You can have all the money in the world, but if you’re lonely, angry, have poor health, or don’t know God, I hardly consider that “success.” To be considered successful, I think that you should be able to reflect on your life and be content with the decisions you’ve made, the obstacles that you’ve overcome, the relationships you’ve established, the goals that you’ve hit, and the people you’ve coached/how far they’ve come.

While there are many other character traits that are vital to becoming the best person that you can be, but these six are the core traits that I choose to focus on for myself, my son, and my soon to be born daughter. These are the six traits of which we build on everything else.

Do you have core character traits for yourself or your family? Feel free to share in the comments section! I’d love to hear what you have to say.