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Today, people are drawn away from self-reliance and don’t get to live their life to the fullest they can be. There are several factors that contribute to this. First, social norms contribute to not being self-reliant. In Simply Phycology, the author writes “Most of us, most of the time, conform to the guidelines provided by the roles we perform.” (McLeod) Another reason we aren’t truly relying on ourselves, is our traditions in the past whether it be family tradition or traditions at school or your job. Personally, I’m not fully self-reliant with myself when it comes to me needing to reach my goals. In the past, I haven’t reached a few goals and now I’m not as self-reliant in accomplishing them. Finally, technology is another factor that prevents
One’s life is a personal venture. From the day of birth, people set goals and
---, “Self-Reliance.” The American Experience. Ed. Kate Kinsella. Boston, Massachusetts: Pearson Education, Inc., 2005. 391-392. Print.
One concept that I have to keep in mind about being successful, is that I must ‘Accept Personal Responsibility’. Accepting Personal Pesponsibility allows me to see where I
People need to think intelligently and set goals that are specific to their needs, making it possible to achieve their goals by making sure they are measurable and realistic and making it possible to build a support system around them; furthermore, they also need to set a deadline with time frames that can be met. Chanika Charles stated that “young people are at risk of being gobbled up by despair, overcome by conditions beyond their control” (A17). To avoid this, people need to start motivating themselves and getting excited about what they want to achieve, making sure their goals are relevant to their needs and being more perseverance when situations become difficult. When setting up their goals, they must ask that magic question: is this relevant to my lifestyle, furthermore, what will I do to achieve it?
Nearly everyone in the modern world has heard of the term self-control, a seemingly non-important or uninteresting topic of interest. However, self-control has been related to having one of the most significant impacts on a person. Even some have gone as far to say that self-control is the “biggest predictor of a successful and satisfying life” (Pinker 1), which are bold words for a topic that many merely disregard. The idea of self-control is a concept coined in the Victorian era, and appears immensely throughout the novel, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, written by R.F. Baumeister & J. Tierney. Essentially a self-help book, ‘Willpower’ provides explanations for why humans are doing the things that they do, and why people aren’t always as virtuous as they may be expected to be. Self-control affects many facets of a person’s life, and by looking at how it is presented in psychology, and in Baumeister and Tierney’s novel, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, one will see the correlations and differences between modern research and historical perspectives on the idea of self-control, and ultimately decide if the idea of self-control is an inherent trait or a learned condition.
What exactly is a standard? According to Webster’s dictionary, a standard is a level of quality or excellence that is accepted as the norm or by which actual attainments are judged. Standards are created because someone believes that a fair and efficient form of doing something is necessary. The military is full of these standards. One of the most widely known is the Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT). It tests the maximum amount of push-ups and sit-ups a person can do in two minutes. Along with completing a two-mile run in the allotted time prescribed. The APFT is different from any other standardized test I have ever seen. It is painfully obvious that the test is severely skewed in the females favor.
There are many things that influence our behavior from internal influences to social norms. Social norms are implicit or explicit rules that govern how we behave in society (Maluso, class notes). Social norms influence our behavior more than any of us realize but we all notice when a norm has been broken. Breaking a social norm is not an easy task and often leads us feeling uncomfortable whether we broke the norm ourselves or witnessed someone else breaking it. Sometimes however, you just have to break a norm to see what happens.
People’ self-regulation differs by individual and its development depends on different styles of parenting during childhood. According to Higgins and Silberman (1998), there are parents who consistently focus on encouraging children to behave desirably to achieve positive outcomes, rewarding children when they reach a goal and those who primarily focus on preventing children from creating negative outcomes by teaching children how to avoid potential dangers and punishing them when they behave undesirably. The former parenting style makes children think more about the ideal things they would and would not do whereas the latter parenting style makes children think more about things they ought and ought not to do. The consequences of these parenting styles are the differences in children’ desired goals and in their favorable means to attain those goals (Higgins & Silberman, 1998). On the basis of these parenting styles, Higgins (1996) presents the regulatory focus theory which proposes two separate self-regulatory orientations of individuals: prevention and promotion. Individuals with stronger promotion focus in their goal pursuits concentrate on accomplishment, advancement and aspiration. They are sensitive to attainment so they prefer an eager strategy as it can ensure they could gain and ensure against the presence
“Self-concept consists of knowledge, views and evaluation of the self, ranging from miscellaneous facts of personal history to the identity that gives a sense of purpose and coherence to life” (McCrae and Costa, 1996). With self-concept, we learn who we are by observing ourselves and using our cognitive processes to judge and evaluate our behaviour. However, with self-regulation, we are able to use this knowledge and judgment and apply it to future situations and so predicts behaviour and says a lot about our personality. If we are willing to cognitively analyse past situations and apply it effectively to future situations, this means we are changing our behaviour, thus changing our
For the last 18 years or so, we have been influenced and directed by parents, teachers, and other authority figures. We have been told when to get up, when to work, when to play, when to eat, sleep, come home, go out, etc., etc., etc. Now we are moving on. As we do, let me remind you of two principles we have been taught, the principle of freedom and the principle of success. As adults, a whole new world of personal freedom awaits us.
Self-Determination Theory represents a broad framework for the study of human motivation and personality. It focuses on conditions supporting the individual’s experience of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, to foster the most volitional and high quality forms of motivation and engagement for activities, including enhanced performance and creativity. It begins with the assumption that people are active organisms, with evolved tendencies toward growing, mastering ambient challenges, and integrating new experiences into a coherent sense of self. The motivation and regret level of a person depends on the concept of basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. To the extent that the needs are ongoing satisfied people will develop and function effectively and experience wellness, but to the extent that they are thwarted, people more likely evidence ill-being and non-optimal functioning.
Until recently, my life and goals were driven primarily by what others expected of me.I was always
It was not too long before I discovered the faults in my erroneous living. I finally realized, and truly not a moment too soon, that if I did not start living for the present, my future would soon become my neglected present. I would have wasted my life doing meaningless things and I would have no experience to share with anyone who may be interested in the uneventful life I had led. After I came to this startling revelation, I grew even more apathetic in my depression. I truly felt that there was nothing I could do to remedy this situation and was at a total loss for solutions. Soon enough, though, I concluded that there was no alternative to hard work to change the current state of affairs in my life. It was then that I truly embarked on the most difficult journey of my life thus far. This being the journey of self-alteration and successfully changing my own behavioral patterns.
The necessity of self-reliance becomes more and more apparent if you start to search for examples. For instance, several of my friends had a certain teacher for a physics class, who was often wrong in his teachings, but unwilling to admit to his mistakes. They had to compare what he had taught them with information in other places, to make sure he wasn't teaching the lessons incorrectly. Due to his mistakes, they had to rely on themselves, not the word of the teacher. My parents always tell me that if I don't want homework to be such a chore, that I have to motivate myself. I took their advice with an open mind, and got myself motivated for a history essay. But when the time came to write it, it was just as bad as any other.
In recent discussions of self-reliance, an issue has come up while I was reading a few essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Apology by Plato, I asked myself have I been holding myself back. On the one hand, I feel as if I have, for example when it has come to education I never had to decide what classes to take or decide my schedule. From this perspective most classes were picked for you except for electives, but the classes of real interest are not available until higher education. However I would have to see this from the outside in by examining the structure that society puts most of their youth through to give them a basic foundation to eventually build from, but in this process makes these young students lack in the ability to rely on themselves.