You will learn more about yourself, your happiness, your quality of life, and your wishes. You will find out where you are now and what direction you will take in the future.
Personality
When you know who you are, you know what you want. Many people do not know who they are which causes them to do things they do not like. These people describe their personality based on age, occupation, relationships, and interests. This is not how it works. Your personality describes the totality of you as a person. It describes how you think, how you react, what motivates you, and what emotions characterize you.
The term personality derives from the Latin word ‘persona’. Persona means mask. You have this mask on; you are the person the outside world sees. Your upbringing and environment create your personality. Hundreds of thousands of events have shaped you as a person. And this process will continue. Over the years, your personality will change. This is the result of new events and beliefs.
This is because a personality is shaped by conditioning: the beliefs you have come to believe in as your truth. If as a child you were often told to be afraid of the doctor, you were. This was your truth because you were told this regularly. When we look at adults, we see that new personalities are adopted after certain events and beliefs. People start believing in new things, they built a new persona.
It is essential to know what your personality is. This is step number one for happiness and success. When you know who you are, you know what you want. It is possible to put your personality on paper. By doing this, you can fall back on this document when making decisions or setting goals. When your decisions and goals match who you are as a person, you live in harmony with yourself.
Values
Your personal values form the basis of your personality and behavior. They show which positive and negative aspects of life you attach great value too. Subconsciously, these values form a guideline for you as a person: they determine the choices you make, how you interact with others and how you relate to society. Your values explain why you do what you do.
Be honest
If you are very honest with yourself, you can write down a list of personal values. In practice, you will find that you tend to deviate from those values quite often because they can lead to (internal) conflicts. You adjust your behavior and may find yourself moving further and further away from your personal values. This is often what happens when you have low self-esteem, or when connectedness is an important value for you.
You want to avoid conflict and you act ‘for the sake of peace’. You start trying to please others to get attention and appreciation. Because you quickly eliminate yourself, you disappear into the background, out of the light into the dark. what you are actually doing is sidelining yourself, you no longer play along, and you become a plaything of others.
Assignment
Personal values influence your opinions, and how you react to situations and to other people. They underpin the choices you make. So if you really want to get to know yourself, it is important to spend time and attention on this. There are positive and negative personal values. To help you understand this, we have an assignment for you.
Using the list below, write down your positive and your negative personal values. Then put them under each other in order of priority. It’s all about what you find important, what you value. Take half an hour the first time you do this. Look at your list, again and again, a day later.
The first few weeks you will shuffle within your list or even make big changes. After a while, you will be able to really commit yourself to the values you have written down for yourself. Then it will feel right. However, personal values don’t stay the same all your life, they will change over the years. This has to do with experiences and your view of the world and of your own existence.
What are your 10 to 15 most important positive personal values? Put the value that is most important to you at number 1 and so on.
Examples: freedom, independence, love, health, passion, adventure, success, status, money, financial independence, inner peace, fulfilment, personal growth, social contribution, security, friendship, comfort, fun, creativity, respect, relationships, recognition, gratitude, resourcefulness, luxury, prestige, cheerfulness, tolerance, perfection, relaxation, joy, honesty, passion, lust, leadership, wisdom, tolerance, peace of mind, service, self-reliance, being happy, kindness, peacefulness, trust, self-esteem, power, ease, spirituality, family, connection, loyalty, control, politeness, realistic, religion, appearance, discipline, reliability, caring, empathy, justice, ambition, working, appreciation.
What are your most important negative personal values? Put the value that is most negative for you at number 1 and so on.
Examples: rejection, failure, fear, insecurity, doubt, frustration, boredom, procrastination, not taking responsibility, taking too much responsibility, laziness, pride, selfishness, addiction, neglect, generalising, meddling, manipulation, depression, criticising others, loneliness, sadness, anger, disagreement, melancholy, jealousy, (unnecessary) worrying/worrying, lying, impatience, envy, dishonesty, guilt.
Examples: freedom, independence, love, health, passion, adventure, success, status, money, financial independence, inner peace, fulfilment, personal growth, social contribution, security, friendship, comfort, fun, creativity, respect, relationships, recognition, gratitude, resourcefulness, luxury, esteem, cheerfulness, tolerance, perfection, relaxation, joy, honesty, passion, lust, leadership, wisdom, tolerance, peace of mind, service, self-reliance
Regulation
You can complete your list of personal values by writing down your philosophy of life. The two together then form your personal regulation, a kind of rulebook that is basically always in force. It is the rules you have drawn up for yourself and which you, of yourself, should abide by. It describes who and what you want to be (your personality) and what you want to do.
Stephen Covey explains the importance of personal status in the 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People. It is one of the most effective ways to improve the quality of your life. It forms the basis for personal leadership. It also proves to be an important means of preventing burnout and related symptoms.
A personal regulation gives shape and substance to your existence. It is the basis against which you can test your decisions and choices. Think about how you fill your time and how you deal with situations. Even when you are confused by emotions or can no longer think clearly, you can rely on your personal status. It is a guide for life.
Assignment
Writing down your status forces you to think through your priorities carefully and align your behavior with your personal values. Living the status is even more important than writing it down.
You can write a letter to yourself with recommendations on how you wish to live your life and what rules you should live by to do so. Just writing it down will get you thinking. But more importantly, especially reading your own life rules daily or weekly will lead to your personal success and life as you wish to live it.
Wheel of Life
The Wheel Of Life shows a clear representation of an individual’s circumstances. It gives insight into how to bring balance into one’s life. By making this balance a reality, happiness, and success will pre-flow. The Wheel Of Life focuses on eight components.
1. Work & career
2. Finance
3. Health
4. Family & friends
5. Love & romance
6. Personal growth
7. Relaxation & fun
8. Social contribution
History
The Wheel Of Life is a teaching from Tibetan Buddhism that brings together various Buddhist concepts. However, the Wheel of Life should not be confused with the Tibetan version, which focuses more on awareness of personal mental states. Remember, the life wheel you will be dealing with relates to balance, happiness, and success.
Illustration
The Wheel Of Life is depicted as a circle. This circle is divided into eight points. Each point represents one can of the eight parts. You can download the image listed below so you can use it later.
Assignment
You can fill in your own Wheel Of Life by asking yourself certain questions on each topic. Examples of questions you can use are:
How satisfied am I in this area?
How much happiness am I experiencing in this area?
How much energy do I get from this area?
How much time do I spend in this area?
Make a list of all topics and about 5 questions per topic. Give answers by writing down a mark between 1 and 10 after each question. Then calculate the average mark for each topic. Mark the grade that comes out of this in the wheel of life. An example is shown below.
Balance
Now that you have a clear picture of what your Wheel Of Life looks like, you can see if your life is in balance. If all grades are a pass and your circle is complete, you are well on your way. However, your circle may also show peaks and valleys. If this is so, what feeling do you get from this? Would you like to improve the lower scores?
You can find balance by lifting all grades to the same level. When you have already come full circle, you can try to score even higher. The goals you will set later in this guide can be based, among other things, on your Wheel Of Life. It’s a great tool to use during, and after the process of becoming happy and successful.
Happiness in Life
A happy life, according to Eastern philosophies, is the result of a balanced combination of your outer world (what happens around you, the materialistic), your physical world (your body), and your spiritual inner world (your mind). The spirit gives you happiness, the body gives you health and the material world gives you comfort. When these three elements are in balance, you will experience peace and harmony within yourself.
Quality of Life
The quality of your life is largely determined by your thoughts and your emotions. An emotional reaction can cause people to go out of control and become destructive or, on the contrary, rise above themselves and perform a heroic action. The meaning you give to an event or experience creates an emotional thought that you experience as your truth.
Be aware of what you focus your attention on and what meaning you give to a situation, an event, and your thoughts. The mind is timeless and can move at lightning speed from present to past and future. During thought travel, you can think of positive and negative events. Your feelings correspond to the thought you pay attention to.
Getting mentally lost in time leads to onerousness in your head and in your body. Be aware of where you are and focus your attention entirely on the present. That doesn’t mean you can’t look back in a focused way or glance ahead. As long as you don’t lose yourself emotionally in falling sentiment and lose your way in the labyrinth of negative thought patterns.
By being strong emotionally, you will find happiness. By controlling your thoughts, you can control what you see and where you go. You influence the quality of your life.
Wishing in Life
‘What do you desire?’ by Alan Watts.
I always ask the question: what would you do if money didn’t matter? In what way would you really enjoy your life? It is extraordinary that, as a result of our education system, most students say, ‘We want to be artists, poets, or writers, but as everyone knows, you can’t make money doing that.’
What would you like to do? If there is something you really want to do, do it! And don’t think about the money for a while. because if money is the most important thing for you, you will waste all your time in this life. You will do things you don’t really want to do and that’s stupid. Better a short-hearted life than a long poor life. If you do something that makes your heart beat faster you will eventually become a master at it. It is the only way to become a master at something.
So don’t worry too much, follow your desire and you will be fine. But it is very unwise to waste your time on something you don’t like and keep doing it and keep doing it. And that is why it is extremely important to think carefully about this question: what do you desire?
Basic needs by Tony Robbins
Everyone has their own desires, their own dreams, and their own way of thinking. But however different we all seem to be, in essence, we have the same basic needs. Tony Robbins, the world-renowned inspirer, life coach, and speaker on the field of personal development, names the six needs every human being has as follows:
1. Certainty, because we want a carefree existence.
2. Variety, because too much certainty gets boring.
3. Sight, because we want to be seen and heard.
4. Love and connectedness, because otherwise, we feel lonely.
5. Growth, because development leads to fulfillment and happiness.
6. Contribution to others or society, because we want to be meaningful.
If you combine your personal values with the six basic needs and add to them your limiting beliefs, you will be able to explain much of your behavior. Then you will understand how your mindset came about, and that this gives you the key to accessing your most beautiful life.
Mindset
Everything happens inside you. You look around you at the outside world, but your perception takes place in your inner world. The perception of your life takes place in your own mind. That is the mind’s playing field. From nowhere, a thought arises and then the dialogue often starts within yourself, you enter into a discussion with that thought. The meaning you give to a thought, an event, or a situation determines everything: your way of thinking, your view of reality, and how you react and then act. Everything you do has a reason.
For every choice you make, there is a reason. There is a reason why you decide to do or not to do something. And that reason gives you direction. The meaning you give to your thoughts determines your personality, your behavior, how you feel, how you react, and the results you achieve.
Everyone lives in their own reality. Everyone believes in their own truth. If almost everything is the result of your mindset, it is high time to become the master of your own mind.
Conditioning
If you want to become the master of your mind, you have to understand how your conditioning came about. Conditioning shapes you as a person. It determines your thinking patterns and the beliefs you believe in. In science, conditioning is also called a paradigm: a complex set of beliefs, a frame of reference from which you interpret the world around you.
It is a filter through which you absorb, color, and organize information. We all look at the world around us through our own unique filters. It shapes your frame of mind and thus your image of the reality you believe in.
How does conditioning work?
How conditioning works and how your thought patterns emerge is easily explained by comparing yourself to a new computer with no operating system. Its hard disk and working memory are empty. From the moment you are brought to life, all outside impressions are stored. This process starts in the womb and accelerates from birth onwards. Especially in your early years, you are in a pure state of consciousness because you do not yet have any experiences to which you can refer. You store all the information you receive, all the things you hear, see, feel and experience.
The hard disk (your subconscious) gradually fills up with hundreds of thousands of stored files (experiences, learning moments, information, feelings, thoughts) and new software programs (skills). the whole thing forms your frame of reference. On this basis, your personal operating system begins to form itself. You can think of it as a software program consisting of countless thought patterns and an accumulation of habits.
You receive both correct and incorrect information but you do not know how to differentiate what you store. Your system contains basic errors. As a result, your hard disk is programmed with countless incorrect data. And each time new corrupt files and viruses invade the domain of the hard disk. but you are so convinced of your own truth that you don’t realize this.
What happens to a computer whose operating system has basic errors? it needs an update. But the system doesn’t allow you to deviate from that programmed software. The moment you do try, it will do everything in its power to get you back in line. You have to break through that resistance to change the software in your operating system. Your conditioning is a mental program that almost exclusively controls your behavior, how you think, what you do, how you react, and how you feel.
How can you change your conditioning?
You can change your conditioning. This is a matter of being aware of what you are doing and discovering what you can change best to get a different outcome. If you don’t succeed, then change something each time to get a different outcome. Keep changing your approach until you get the desired outcome.
If you want to change something about yourself, your behavior, or your existence, you will have to rewrite your story and your operating system. And in this new story, you must not only believe but you must also really be convinced of it deep inside. However, it is not as easy as it sounds. You want to change yourself, but this simply doesn’t work. Why is this?
Because your operating system won’t allow it. It doesn’t want to be overwritten by an update. it’s a long-standing, deeply ingrained pattern. That pattern features a five-lane highway or the easy way. The new pattern has to create its own new forest path. Certainly not so easy at first.
Because you don’t really want it. You are pretending, but you are fooling yourself. you are unable to program your software update. you lack desire, need, self-discipline, perseverance, and willpower. If you really want something, you do it. No excuses, no fiddling, no excuses.
So, how do you change your conditioning? What really matters is that it takes almost no effort on your part when you really want something. How big is your desire? Or is there a need? the choice is yours to do something or not. It is your responsibility. Wishing and hoping is what you do in fable land. wishing and wanting are not enough. Lots of people ‘want’ all sorts of things, but very little comes of it. Make your want-to a have-to! If you have to, you will do it.
To achieve lasting change, it is important to start by addressing the things that can be changed immediately. Deciding to change does not take time, but procrastinating or avoiding change can waste time. The more strongly you desire or need change, the less discipline, willpower, and perseverance you will need. Remember that you are responsible for your own behavior, and taking responsibility, regardless of the circumstances, gives you control over your own life and personal leadership. It is important to live according to your own rules and values.
Neuro-associative conditioning
Neuro-associative conditioning (NAC) is a psychological technique developed by personal development coach, Anthony Robbins. It is based on the belief that our thoughts and beliefs heavily influence our emotions and behaviors. Through the use of specific stimuli, NAC helps individuals form positive associations and patterns of thought and behavior in order to achieve personal development and self-improvement goals such as increasing confidence, improving communication skills, or overcoming phobias.
Mindset
James Allen in As a Man Thinketh
‘Our mind is a magnificent instrument. We can create symphonies with it when the conductor is skilled enough to maintain harmony in the orchestras. The mind can also be a hideous weapon with which nations and people are enslaved. Between these two extremes are all character traits, and man is making and mastering them.’
Types of Mindset
It is the eternal battle between good and evil that exists within us. The way you are conditioned determines how you think, how you judge, and how you react and act based on it. There are two types of mindsets: a growth mindset and a fixed mindset.
It is not that you have either a fixed or a growth mindset in all cases. One is always dominant, but in daily practice, we move between the two extremes. Sometimes you will be very adamant (fixed) from your conditioning, while at other times you will be receptive and open to a new vision.
Growth mindset
The growth mindset stands for eagerness to learn and being open to improvement. People with a positive mindset see opportunities and ask themselves how they can exploit them. People with a positive mindset think about how they can improve themselves, their services, products, and their environment. They see achieving their goals as a result of the learning process. Their main concern is to keep learning and growing continuously.
Fixed mindset
People with a fixed mindset believe that intelligence, personality, and character are outstanding facts. You are boarded with them; they cannot be developed. From this perspective, you are smart or stupid, talented or average. People with fixed mindsets are focused on proving themselves.
They are quick to think, wrongly, that people have a bad opinion of them. They drop out relatively quickly if something doesn’t work out and can then feel frustrated and rejected. They often have a negative self-image because they constantly compare themselves to others who are better.
They do not ask themselves what they could learn from those others. People with a fixed attitude want to maintain their acquired position as much as possible and avoid risks. New challenges that pose a potential threat to the position are therefore preferred to be avoided.
When things go wrong when they undertake something, they will not readily admit that they were responsible, preferring instead to blame someone else or circumstances. This thinking and living attitude has a very negative effect on self-confidence and self-esteem.
Change your mindset
Psychology professor Carol Dweck says: ‘Mindsets are beliefs. They are strong beliefs, but they are still a way of thinking and you can change your thinking. Based on years of research, she dares to say that intelligence and personality traits are not innate but are largely the result of development and practice.
In her book, Mindset, The New Psychology of Success, she also cites Alfred Binet, the inventor of the IQ test. That test was designed to discover whether children needed extra help, not to determine their intelligence level. He claimed that we can increase our acuity, memory, insight, and the quality of our intelligence through practice, training, and repetition.
If you believe that you can develop yourself, you are open to precise information about your current capabilities, even if it is not very flattering. And if you are focused on learning, you need this information to do so effectively. Those with a fixed mindset mainly judge information about their abilities as good or bad. Those with a limited mindset are afraid of failure because it reflects negatively on their basic abilities.
Now it is up to you to analyze your own thinking patterns. In which situations is your mindset fixed and when are you more growth-oriented?
Thoughts
Thoughts are the muscles of the mind. If your thought patterns have been in the wrong position for a long time, it will take time and training to make them flexible again and be able to redirect them. Creating thought patterns is often an unconscious process; you don’t realize it.
Where do your beliefs come from today? How did they get into you? You need to understand how that conditioning formed and how those thought patterns shape your life. Only then can you have control over your existence.
Body vs Mind
To fully understand this section on thought patterns and mastery of your mindset, it is important to understand the distinction between body and mind. According to many scientists, giving our thoughts is a product of the brain, an invention of ourselves.
Renowned brain researcher and professor of neurobiology Dick Swaab says in We are our brain, “I have never heard a good argument against my simple conclusion that they give is the result of our hundred billion brain cells.
Since this statement comes from an expert, this is a very possible proposition. However, Michael Pilarczyk tells it differently in ‘Master your mindset’: ‘From my own experience, I have the view that the mind is an energy field that resides in every cell of the body, including the brain, and that this energy field also moves outside our physical body.
Your body is just a small part, an instrument of your vast mind that consists of your limited consciousness and the infinite subconscious. You can find this view in many ancient philosophies and spiritual ways of thinking. I have never heard an argument that can refute this view.’
Consciousness vs subconsciousness
Through your senses, you receive information. When that information is processed by your brain, you are aware of it. This is your consciousness, the part that thinks and reasons. This part also contains your free will, the power to choose. Consciousness can accept or reject any idea or thought. The subconscious cannot. it, like that hard disk, allows all information in and cannot distinguish between good and bad, reality or fantasy. It doesn’t judge, it is.
All those thoughts, emotions, images, and experiences leave traces in your subconscious. Negative thoughts are weeds in your mind. When you don’t weed it out immediately, it creates proliferation that deprives you of your view.
You do this by consciously choosing what you pay attention to. The thoughts you pay the most attention to will influence your daily life. If you get stuck in negative, angry, insecure, and anxious thoughts, you will not make progress.
Positive, inspiring, happy, and successful thoughts, on the other hand, are more likely to get rewarded with happiness, inner peace, freedom, money, and a beautiful life. When you repeat a thought over and over again, you begin to believe in that thought. Speaking that thought out loud reinforces the way you program yourself. This predominant thought then becomes an automatism, a habit, regardless of whether that thought is good or bad for you.
Changing your thought patterns
The subconscious mind is controlled by the software you put in it and by software received and stored unconsciously. It expresses itself in how you feel, how you react, and what you undertake. If you create predominantly negative thoughts, they immediately influence your behavior and emotions and ultimately the results you achieve.
Do you put healthy fruits and vegetables in the blender or alcohol, drugs, and antidepressants? Will it be a healthy smoothie or a toxic cocktail? the result depends on the recipe and the ingredients. It works the same way with thoughts.
The learning process of being positive (not just thinking) starts with the recognition of destructive thoughts. Once you are aware that your negative thoughts lead to negative emotions, e can replace them with positive thoughts.
Questions
When you quiet your mind, clarity arises and from that clarity, you gain insight. Through that insight, fear and uncertainty decrease, and confidence emerges. This allows you to make conscious choices. It’s about gaining insight into your way of thinking. Are you aware of the meaning you give to your thoughts, a situation, or an event? That meaning determines how you feel, how you react, and how you act.
To understand yourself well, to understand what you really think and mean, you need to simplify things. You have to dissect your thoughts and emotions until you get to the core. You do this by asking good questions.
An unclear question will always lead to an unclear answer. Our problem is that we don’t know how to ask good questions and we don’t think about the question, only the answer. A good question is a way to solve a problem because a problem is no different from a question you don’t yet have a good answer to.
If you know how to ask the right question, you are able to understand. If you don’t know how to formulate a good question, you may come up with an answer but that doesn’t mean you understand the essence. So don’t look for answers, but ask the right questions.
Examples of good questions:
1. What can I learn from this?
2. Why do I do what I do?
3. Why do I spend my time doing this?
4. What can I do to improve myself?
5. What can go wrong and what can I do to prevent it?
6. Who can help me with this? What do I need to…?
7. What is the next step to…?
8. What is my (unique) added value?
9. What do I have to offer?
10. Why am I asking this question?
11. What do I really want to know?
12. What do I really mean by this?
Change your life
Neuro-associative conditioning is an automatic process that develops automatically without your conscious involvement. But you can therefore consciously use it as an effective method of reprogramming your conditioning. These are the steps that can lead to consistent and lasting behavioral change:
Step 1 – Determine first what you really want and what is stopping you from doing it now
Do an analysis of your self-image. Why do you do what you do and what is it based on? Then determine what you want. This should be so crystal clear that you can easily draw it out. Clarity is essential to achieving your goals. Next, you need to find out what is holding you back from achieving what you want so that you can systematically overcome those obstacles.
Step 2 – Make your ‘want to’ a ‘have to’
Think of one thing you would like to change about yourself, your behavior, or your current situation. Make up your mind that you really want to change and are going to. Think of all the pain you could attach to your old behavior if you don’t change and what adverse consequences this will have for your life and your sense of happiness. start with the most dramatic consequence. Then think about what pleasurable feelings you can link to what you are going to change. Is this change a must for you? So? What are you going to do?
Step 3 – Break through your obstructive patterns
Without a plan and without discipline, it is just an intention, a good intention. So don’t say: quitting smoking will make you snack and get fat. Well: living a healthy life makes my skin look more beautiful and attractive, I feel much more vital and have more energy. Learning a new pattern or new behavior only works if your desired new pattern is linked to a concrete plan, self-discipline, a positive effect, and a reward.
Step 4 – Reconditioning
You will have to consciously apply the new pattern each time and keep repeating it, only then will it become automatic. Be aware of your behavior and reward yourself every time you make a positive change.
Don’t underestimate the power of conditioning. It may take some time to replace a thought pattern, but once your new pattern is conditioned, you won’t want to go back to your old, negative pattern any time soon. This way, you can eventually become the best version of yourself, the person you wish to be.
Step 5 – Check your new behavior for a lasting effect
Ask yourself: do I feel miserable when I think about my old behavior? Make sure you link – in your mind – intense pain to your old behavior.
Determine whether your new behavior is linked to pleasure and satisfaction so that it makes you feel good.
Ask yourself if your new behavior is in line with your personal values and beliefs. does it align with who you want to be? If it does not, you will need to revisit whether you have formulated your personal values correctly. If your personal values are correct, re-examine why your behavior is not in harmony with who you ‘say’ you want to be.
Check whether you are convinced that your new behavior will only bring long-term benefits in terms of quality of life and well-being. And if not? How do you make sure it does?