12 tips Character Development

What is character?

 A  modern definition is known as the sum of all the attributes, such as integrity, courage, fortitude, honesty, and loyalty, in a person.

Why is character important?

Every decision you make either improves or degrades your character. Why do we care? Because society will break down and the way of life that we enjoy to will fall apart if all of us do not promote and encourage good character. Emerson said, “Men of character are the conscience of the society in which they live.” Our conscience needs improving. Improvement that must begin with each us.

To strengthen one’s character requires dedication, effort and knowledge. Remember, you don’t have to try to improve every aspect of character every day. Pick one and work on it. 

12 tips to improving your character

1. Knowledge: Know what makes up good character. Many traits or aspects make up character. There can be both good and bad traits. Sometimes merely the absence of a good character trait can be a fatal flaw. None of us is perfect, but knowing what makes up good and bad character is a start.

1. Awareness: Know yourself. Being aware of one’s thoughts, feelings and emotions, is key to being able to improve any aspect of their life. You must know your starting point and be brutally honest with yourself about your strengths and your weaknesses.

1. Truth: Seek the truth. Do not lie to yourself. Delusion will not help you improve. Having a good friend or mentor will help. An individual that you trust and respect to tell you the truth.

1. Self-Control: Guard against irrational impulses. Aristotle and Aquinas considered that there are seven human passions: love and hatred, desire and fear, joy and sadness, and anger. While good in themselves, these passions can bypass our intellect and cause us to indulge in the wrong things: eat too much food, fear things irrationally, or become overwhelmed in sadness or by anger. Practice delayed gratification.

1. Contentment: Be content with your lot (not imitating). Appreciate your own values and that which you have. Imagining that the grass is greener somewhere else is a recipe for lifelong unhappiness; remember that doing so is actually projecting your assumptions about how others live. It is better to focus on how you live.

1. Brave: Take calculated risks. Life itself is risk. You can choose to avoid risk, but such action rarely yields results. It is best to face the situation, evaluate it calmly, formulate a plan and press forward. Like forming metal into a useable tool, forging character takes heat and pressure. The heat and pressure of risk and failure.

1. Compassion: Learn to do good and care. Watch for opportunities to extend a helping hand to your fellow person. Sometimes, just a smile to show you care is enough. Maybe the act of simply sharing your lunch with someone or holding a door open for someone with their hands full. Compassion can take many shapes.

1. Help: Get an accountability partner. Having someone to talk to and help you look at your situation honestly is invaluable. Your partner must be someone you trust and are willing to take their criticism of you.

1. Gratitude: Focus on the positives in life. All to often, we dwell on the bad things in life. The troubles, difficulties and challenges. Don’t ignore them, they have to be dealt with, but do not focus on them either. You should think about the good in your life. Cicero said that, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.”

1. Patience: Improvement takes time: Forging character takes time and hard work. You must have patience to allow yourself time to improve. Your accountability partner can help in several ways. They can encourage you, but most importantly they will likely see a change before you do.

1. Diligence: You must guard your hard won character. Take care of your precious character. While creating it takes time and effort, losing it completely can be the result of one poor decision.

1. Record: Keep a journal of your journey. Keep notes on what aspects you are trying to improve. Record your challenges, your failures and your successes. Objectively review this with your accountability partner.

THE POWER OF THE VISION

“I think that the greatest gift God ever gave man is not the gift of sight but the gift of vision,” Dr. Munroe says. “Sight is a function of the eyes, but vision is a function of the heart. When a person doesn’t have a vision, they live by their eyes. That means we live by what we see. That’s one of the reasons why people are so depressed, and that’s why the future never becomes a reality.

“Vision is a source of hope; it’s the source of courage; it’s the source of perseverance in the midst of difficulty.”“The most important thing that I ever discovered was the power of a seed,” he says. “I believe that in every seed there’s a forest. If you have an apple seed, in that apple seed is an apple tree. There’s also apples on that apple tree. So in that one seed you really have a forest.

“How do you get a forest out of a seed is the question you ask. ‘How do I get my vision out of my life?’ The first thing you need to do is to deal with the environment. You take the seed, and you put it in the right environment.

“No matter how old a person is -- they may feel 60, 70, 80 years old. The good news today is if you can get back in the right environment, your dream can still come to pass. It’s not what you’re carrying that’s important. It’s the environment it’s in. I believe that’s why the Bible says, ‘In the presence of the Lord there’s fullness of joy.’

“What you believe in creates your environment in your life and in your heart. It also creates how you see things. Vision really is God exposing the true environment of your life to you in the midst of your present environment. In other words, you see your real self.

“You cannot guide a ship that’s parked. So you find in the book of Proverbs, chapter 16, a very interesting statement made by God. It says, ‘The heart of man makes his plans, and the Lord directs the steps of the plan.’ We’re basically saying, ‘I’m waiting on God.’ God would say, ‘I’m really waiting on you. Why don’t you tell Me what you want to do with your life? Show Me what’s in your heart.’

“People think that their dream is outside of them. So they go looking for prophets – wanting somebody to prophesy to them, going to some crusade, some meeting, some religious leader. You’ll never find it that way. God hid your future in a place where He knew you couldn’t miss it. He hid it within you.

“So what do you desire to do? What do you really want to do as a person? You need to stop and document that; write it down; make a plan; and then God says, ‘I’ll direct your steps.’

“If what you saw in your vision is not what you see now, then what you see is always temporary. So you enjoy what you’re doing now with all your heart because it’s preparation for the next phase.’ I say, ‘Look, you’ve got the greatest asset in the world to begin with. You’ve got your own mind and your own self. You are your best raw material.’

“When you connect that self to Him then you connect yourself to unlimited resources. When you believe in your dream and your vision, then it begins to attract its own resources. No one was born to be a failure.”

PLAN, PURPOSE AND POWER

PLAN, PURPOSE AND POWER

Plan will suffer paralysis without power, it is power that enlivens vision and turns purpose into reality.

Without power vision will turn into delusion and corruption.

Programs without power will end in frustration.

Many have never seen fulfillment of vision not because God has changed his plan but because they fail to generate the power to make it happen.

Fulfillment of vision is at the mercy of power.

As you receive divine plan and program from God with one hand, wait in prayer to receive power to perform with the other hand. Lk. 4:14.

Jesus had the plan but waited for the power. So also, he commanded the disciples never to go ahead with the plan even though available until they be filled with power from on high. Acts.1:5-8.

Moses couldn’t carry out the exodus plan without power. Deut. 32:11, Ex. 3:1-21.

Power from on high is what enables man to perform on the earth.

Ten Principles of Leadership

   When people decide to respect you as a leader, they observe what you do so they can know who you really are.

People then use this observation to tell if you are an honorable and trusted leader, or a self-serving person who misuses authority.

A good leader has an honorable character that selflessly serves his/her organization. In your employees’ eyes, your leadership is everything. Your activities affect the organization’s objectives and their well-being.

A respected leader concentrates on three key areas:

1. “Be” – what he/she is, i.e. beliefs and values

2. “Know” – what he/she knows, i.e. job, tasks, human nature

3. “Do” – what he/she does, i.e. implement, motivate, and provide direction

What makes a person want to follow a leader? People want to be guided by people they respect and who have a clear sense of direction. To gain respect, they must be ethical. A sense of direction is achieved by conveying a strong vision of the future.

The Three Most Important Keys of Leadership:

Studies have shown that trust and confidence in top leadership is the single most reliable predictor of employee satisfaction in an organization.

Effective communication by leadership in three critical areas is the key to winning organizational trust and confidence, and involves:

1. Helping employees understand the company’s overall business strategy.

2. Helping employees understand how they contribute to achieving key business objectives.

3. Sharing information with employees on both how the company is doing and how an employee’s own division or department is doing – relative to strategic business objectives.

So basically, you must be trustworthy and you have to be able tocommunicate a vision of where you are going.

The 10 Principles of Leadership:

1. Know yourself and seek self-improvement. In order to know yourself, you have to understand your “be”, “know”, and “do” attributes. This is possible by continually strengthening your attributes by reading and self-study.

2. Be technically proficient. As a leader, you must know your job and have a solid familiarity with your employees’ jobs.

3. Seek responsibility and take responsibility for your actions. Search for ways to guide your organization to new heights. And when things go wrong, do not blame others.

4. Make sound and timely decisions. Use good problem solving, decision-making, and planning tools.

5. Set the example. Be a good role model for you employees. They will believe what they see not what they hear.

6. Know your people and look out for their well-being. Know human nature and the importance of sincerely caring for your workers.

7. Keep your people informed. Know how to communicate with your people, seniors, and other key people within the organization.

8. Develop a sense of accountability, ownership and responsibility in your people.These traits will help them carry out their professional responsibilities.

9. Ensure that tasks are understood, supervised, and accomplished.Communication is the key to this responsibility.

10. Train your people as a team. By developing team spirit, you will be able to employ your organization, department, section, etc. to its fullest capabilities.

5 Questions Every Human Being Must answer.

Every human being living on earth is motivated by 5 questions, the homeless man living under the bridge and the man living in the ivory tower, are both trying to answer the same 5 questions.

1. Who am I – This question deals with identity. The average human being has never answered the question, who am I? This is not what you do or did. Most people don’t know who they are, so they die as someone else.

2. Where am I from – this is not an ethnic question. It is not about whether you come from Africa, China, Kenya, China, USA, Busia or Nyeri. No, it is where you are from in regards to your creation. If you can find out where you came from, you can also find out your ability, your strength and your potential.

3. Why am I here – This is a question of progress, why do you exist, what did you come to earth to do. Did you just come to go to work and pay bills and die, as many people think? It has to be more than that. There has to be a purpose for your existence.

4. What can I do – what is my true ability. They say the average human only uses 10% of their brain. No one knows your ability, except the manufacturer. So never let anyone judge you based on their measurements or their tastes.

5. Where am I going – This is a question of destiny. No one was just born to die, we were born to fulfill an assignment. What you are looking for is right where you are all the time. You don’t have to go to US or UK to be great, you can be great where you are.

THE 7 PRINCIPLES OF THE EAGLE

THE 7 PRINCIPLES OF THE EAGLE 

The eagle has very unique characteristics that one can apply as the principles on which to base success in whatever field in life.

Read on to find out how.

1. Eagles fly alone at a high altitude and do not mix with sparrows or other smaller birds like geese, ravens or pigeons.

You should only associate with people who have the same vision as your own, people you can identify and also grow with. You cannot move with failures if you want success.

2. Eagles possess vision. They have a strong vision, which focuses up to 5 kilometers from the air in detail.

Eagles are said to have double sight but one vision, yet they are able to focus on one particular thing at a time for example a rat or a stick. It is known as the most focused bird, it can see everything, yet focus on only one thing. Know what you want to achieve in life and focus on it.

3. Eagles only eat live food.

They only eat live animals. This is because they need new strength every day. Feed yourself new information to make you grow. Your vision needs new strength to make it grow. The people around you are dead meat and they will always ask you things that discourage you. Eagles are not discouraged by pigeons, so you should not let others discourage you simply because they do not agree with your dream.

4. The eagle is the only bird that loves the storm.

Every other bird runs for cover, but the eagle gets a chance to relax. It uses the force of the storm to just stay up there without flapping its wings. Challenges are good for a dreamer, someone with a vision. Storms should make you better. Challenges test your characteristics of solving problems. Face them courageously, and grow the

5. An Eagle always tests before it trusts.

For the female to allow a male to mate with her, she goes to the ground, picks up a twig, flies up two miles and drops the twig. If the male is able to catch the twig, he takes it to her. She flies up once again and drops the twig, and the process is repeated several times, and when she is fully convinced about his capabilities, she allows him to mate with her. Give your juniors or employees assignments and see how well they can perform without your guidance. TRUST IS THE RESULT OF TIME AND TEST.

6. Eagles prepare for training.

It builds its nest in a high cleft on a mountain. The nest is made in such a way that it is very comfortable for the eaglets as they grow, yet it has thorns that are covered with cotton. Then, when they are fully grown, the mother removes the cotton covering the thorns. This makes them uncomfortable and they leave the nest and learn how to fly. Train others who work with you so that they can help you grow in your vision. Invest in training of other people. Companies are built on people, relationships and not on buildings. Make a footprint in this world by making someone else get where they want to be, and at the same time, they help you get where you want to be!