Welcome to Tony Richards Messages

15 Application Pt2

Welcome to this week’s message on leadership, self-confidence, and how to feel good about yourself everyday as you interact with people, in safety and comfort, at home and work.

Last week’s message was all about setting easy goals for yourself, so you can feel the benefits of taking small but positive steps that reinforce your focus on how important YOU are.

If you wish to be reminded of that message, it is also available back on the message page.

This week’s message is about Critical Step 5. Application.

It is the fun step that allows you to display, and share, the positive view you have of yourself, and everyone else in this world, who will want to share your world with you.

Applying the knowledge you have about your value can be a most exciting exercise.

It can be exciting, because if you have reached the stage of exercising the fifth Critical Step, it will be because you are fully utilising the other four Critical Steps.

You can bet that others will notice and admire any displays of strength of character those Steps are providing. These displays of leadership will be as a result of your confidence, developed from the Steps that have put you comfortably into the Cycle of Confidence and Leadership.

You will already be in a position to know that you are capable of almost anything.

“Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings”.

(Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784)

If you have successfully navigated the Five Critical Steps you will be reading your Vision Statement daily and living the principles it contains. Don’t concern yourself if you are just getting a weekly message, as a new subscriber, as we are continuing the process over many more weeks, with many new messages.

To apply what you have learnt is, however, just as imperative as having the knowledge of the other steps, to ensure your ongoing self-awareness. The component of application, putting what you have learnt into practice, will ensure the maintenance of the self-confidence that you have achieved and advanced. It is the maintaining of self-belief that leads to a happy and fulfilled life.

Although the critical steps to attain, advance and maintain self-confidence have been shown to be a complete process, it is also an ongoing one. You mustn’t forget that character development continues for as long as you have life and choose to live it. That is why there is this fifth Critical Step of Application.

“Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life”.

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832).

Recognition of your own character means that others will want to confide in, and talk to, you because they see you as trustworthy, respectable and reliable. (The three principles of self-confidence) This gives you a great opportunity to exercise that view people have of you by listening to their concerns.

Have you ever felt some people are very hard to talk to? That they don’t seem to listen? One of the best listening skills to practice is to listen with the intent of understanding, not with the intent of responding. If you don’t follow that rule, you will no longer be listening, as you concentrate on your response.

So instead of responding as someone is talking to you, pull out a pen and paper and take notes.

You will be surprised at the positive look on their face. (Except if it is with family at breakfast time. They’ll think you’ve lost the plot!)

Another good skill is to respond with positive and empathetic comments such as, “Really! How interesting, tell me more about that”. The more questions you ask the more obvious it is that you are paying attention and listening. There are six important points to asking questions. They are:

1. To get information,

2. To give information,

3. To make the other person feel good,

4. To keep a discussion going,

5. To clarify information and,

6. To gain insights.

Asking questions and listening is a very good Application exercise. When you are listening enough to show you care about others, that is when other will show they care about you.

As most of us are gifted with two ears and one mouth, we should attempt to avoid behaving as if the ratio was the other way around. This is not easy to do but if you can develop that skill you will be greatly appreciated by others.

Take the opportunity this week to exercise Critical Step 5 (Application) and apply the wonderful knowledge you have of yourself by practicing the techniques of listening to others. You will not be disappointed with the response you get from others, who will appreciate your attention to their concerns. People are always grateful when others are prepared to pay attention to them.

Please email me on how you went with the exercise of using your listening skills, and how good you and others may have felt as a result of your action. Also it would be good to hear from you, if you have completed the entire process comfortably, so I can pass on your good feelings, and how it may have improved your life, to others.

Your stories – even short comments – are of great value to inspire others, and I would like to take the opportunity to include your stories, or comments, in upcoming episodes of ‘Special Interest Items’. They will be included as they fit into the theme of the message for that week.

Do you know anyone you can help with leadership issues, or just feeling good about themselves? Forward this message to friends and work colleagues; print it out and place it on notice boards, and give copies to those without computer access. Printing out, and compiling each weekly message in a folder, is a good way to build a total knowledge of self-confidence and leadership. It will provide certainty in dealing with every aspect of your life.

Next week’s message is a Special Interest message in response to an often asked question. It will be followed in coming weeks by the Cycle for Confidence and Leadership and how it impacts your life. It will then, in turn, be followed by messages on the Five Critical Steps.

Until then, please continue to see yourself as a unique and remarkable person, who deserves to feel good about yourself every day.

Tony Richards.

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