Learning Self Correction

I’m not tooting my own horn here but one thing that I am learning is that life is much easier when you learn how to correct yourself. One thing is certain and that is that either you can keep yourself straight or life will straighten you out. Now I know that there are turns, knots, quirks, and curves in my own life. The beauty of me realizing that I have problems is that I know that there are places in my life where I need to be corrected.

We can’t even begin to think about correcting ourselves if we never realize or admit that we can be corrected. Ninety per cent of people never get to the place or point where they can help themselves or be helped because of pride. The first step in any situation in life where you have a problem is to admit that there is a problem. There is not a man or woman on this earth who has everything together. We all have strengths and weaknesses.

The wise man realizes as he overcomes that there is always another mountain to climb. No matter how much we do in life or how far we have come there is always more to do and other places that we can go.

One thing that a boxer or martial artists has to do in order to grow is to face new and different sparring partners. If they face the same old partner all of the time they will never be challenged in all areas. The same old muscles will grow but new muscles and reflexes won’t develop. A boxer should wrestle every once in a while and the wrestler need to do some boxing. This is how they will develop those ancillary muscles that they never use which will benefit them in both sports.

If we never attempt to uncover our own faults we will never grow in multidimensional areas. Growing in all facets of life makes us a complete being. We must desire to be complete before we can even begin to approach this type of growth.

Learn to be objective when it comes to you. I always thought that I was a good public speaker until I spoke into a tape recorder and played it back. My voice always sounds good when its coming right out of my mouth but it sure sounded like something base and foreign when it came from the tape recorder. Since then I have worked on adding force to my speaking voice and I have watched videotape of myself. The videotapes showed me some glaring issues that I needed to resolve and I have taken care of most of them but the point is that had I not taken the look at things from the way that others saw them I never would have improved. We have to make an honest assessment of our abilities before we can improve.

Now we don’t always need to say what others say about us because others can be wrong and most times people are not objective at all. Sometimes people will tell us good things because they don’t want to hurt our feelings and sometimes people will always look for a way to tear us down no matter what we do. Objectivity is the key. We can’t be objective if we are not honest. If you really want to improve you should face the facts about your situation in life.

Never allow yourself to become satisfied to the point where you feel that there is no need to do better. I remember a TV commercial once where a football coach was berating his team in the locker room at halftime because of their performance. Halfway through his tirade one of the players interrupted him to remind him that they were leading by a lot of points. The coach’s answer was that it was not about the game but about becoming better. I believe that if we were to take that approach to life we would all become better people. The Good Life