Personal Growth and Development

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Personal Growth and Development
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Personal Development - Receptiveness to Change

• Adopt an attitude of continuous improvement
• People who are successful recognize the need to
  strive constantly to change, grow, and improve.
• Wanting to improve has nothing to do with the
  idea that there is something "wrong" with you.

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Classify Your Actions

• Two ways productive and non-productive.
• Productive actions support the achievement of our
  goals
• Non-productive actions do the opposite they
  interfere with or work against the achievement of
  our goals.
• Non-productive actions have their place in life
• Strike a balance between productive and
  non-productive

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Classify Your Thoughts

• Two ways positive or negative.
• Positive thoughts result in our choosing
  productive actions
• Negative thoughts result in non-productive
  actions.
• Negative thoughts often lead negative results
• Positive thoughts increase the probability of
  success

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Achieving Your Goal of Graduating in Engineering

• Requires that you change
• Your actions from non-productive to productive
  ones
• Your thoughts from negative to positive
• Your feelings from negative to positive ones.

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Student Success Model

• Goal
• (B.S. in Engineering)

Productive Actions Behaviors
Non-Productive Actions Behaviors
Productive Thoughts Attitudes
Negative Thoughts Attitudes
Positive Feelings
Negative Feelings
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Making Behavior Modification Work for You Three
Steps to Achieve Change

• Step 1. Knowledge - "You know what to do."
• Step 2. Commitment - "You want to do it."
• Step 3. Implementation - "You do it."

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Non-Productive Vs. Productive Actions Examples
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Non-Productive Vs. Productive Actions Examples
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Step 2. Commitment - You Want To Do It

• A commitment to doing something is really an
  attitude - or type of thought.
• The process of making a commitment to the new
  knowledge base involves making a change in your
  attitudes.
• To do this, you must first become conscious of
  your attitudes, particularly any negative ones
  that are obstructing your growth

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Step 2. Commitment - You Want To Do It Example
of This Process

• A student believes he is failing math because the
  professor is boring, unprepared, never smiles,
  and seems aloof. This student has the attitude
  that "I can't pass a course if I don't like the
  professor. " He sees himself as a victim" in
  which passing his math course is viewed as
  totally in the control of the professor. Once he
  becomes conscious that this is a negative
  attitude (one that interferes with his goal of
  success in school) and he realizes that the
  attitude can be changed, he can go about changing
  it to a positive one.
• An example of a positive attitude would be "I
  can pass a class when I don't like the professor,
  but it is going to require me to adopt alternate
  strategies and to put in more work. " This
  positive attitude might lead to behaviors that
  include sitting in on another instructor's
  lecture, getting old exams, or seeking help from
  students who passed the course last semester.
• As this example illustrates, changing your
  attitudes is a necessary precursor to changing
  your actions.

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Sep 3. Implementation----'You do it!"

• Most difficult step to take.
• Actual change is hard, no matter how
  knowledgeable or committed you may be.
• Why?
• A payoff for you to keep doing what you are
  doing. You have adopted your current behavior
  patterns because they satisfy some need or want
  that you have. Changing to new behaviors will
  require you to give up old behaviors, ones that
  you may like very much
• Making change requires you to accept
  responsibility for your actions and to begin to
  view yourself as the creator of your life.

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Understanding Yourself

• As you grow in your understanding of yourself,
  you will grow in your ability to understand other
  people

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Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

• Self-actualization To become what individual is
  most fitted for

Esteem needs Self Respect, achievement,
reputation
Belonginess and love needs Friends, family
Safety needs Security, freedom from fear, order
Physiological needs Food, water, air, shelter
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Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

• Needs must be satisfied from the bottom up.
• If a lower-level need exists, you will become
  highly motivated to satisfy that need.
• When lower needs are satisfied, higher-level
  needs become important, and you become motivated
  to satisfy those needs.
• To be a successful student, you must be able to
  pursue your need for self-actualization. This
  means that you must first satisfy your
  physiological, safety, social, and esteem needs.

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Self-Esteem

• Self-esteem is made up of two interrelated
  components  
• Self-efficacy - your sense of competence
• Self-respect - your sense of personal worth

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Self-Efficacy

• To be self-efficacious is to feel capable of
  producing a desired result.
• Self-efficacy is related to your confidence in
  the functioning of your mind and in your ability
  to think, understand, learn, and make decisions.

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Self-Respect

• Self-respect comes from
• Feeling positive about your right to live and to
  be happy
• Feeling that you are worthy of the rewards of
  your actions
• Feeling that you deserve the respect of others.

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Healthy Self-Esteem Correlates With

• Rationality Realism
• Intuitiveness
• Creativity
• Independence
• Flexibility
• Ability to manage change
• Willingness to admit mistakes
• Benevolence
• Cooperativeness

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Poor Self-Esteem Correlates With

• Irrationality
• Blindness to reality
• Rigidity
• Fear of the new and unfamiliar
• Inappropriate conformity
• Rebelliousness
• Defensiveness
• Overcontrolling behavior
• Fear of others
• Hostility toward others

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Understanding Others/Respecting Differences

• Engineering, now more than ever, is a
  team-oriented profession.
• Your success both as an engineering student and
  as an engineering professional will be closely
  related to your ability to interact effectively
  with others.
• As an engineer, you will be required to work
  with, manage, and be managed by people differing
  from you in personality styles and thinking
  preferences and in gender, ethnicity, and
  cultural background.

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Understanding Others/Respecting Differences

• How we treat others is closely related to
  self-esteem. If we don't feel good about
  ourselves, it is likely that we won't feel good
  about others
• Seek out opportunities to interact with people
  from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
  You can learn a great deal from them and improve
  your interpersonal communication skills in the
  process

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Silver Rule

• What you would not want others to do unto you,
  do not do unto them.
• If we practiced this simple principle, we
  certainly wouldn't put others down, stereotype
  others, treat others unfairly, resent others, or
  make others the butts of our jokes, since we
  would not like to have these done to us.

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Assessment of Your Strengths and Areas for
Improvement

• If you are committed to personal development, you
  need to start by assessing your strengths and
  areas for improvement

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Personal Development Plan

• What we need is to work on our areas for
  improvement-the very areas we tend to avoid. For
  example, if we do not write well, we avoid
  classes that require writing.
• If we are shy, we avoid people. Avoidance
  behavior ensures that we will not improve in
  areas that need improvement.
• Prioritize areas that need improvement in order
  of importance and choose several of the most
  important to work on.
• For each area chosen, create a personal
  development plan. What are you going to do in the
  next week? In the next month? In the next year?

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Personal Development Plan

• What we need is to work on our areas for
  improvement-the very areas we tend to avoid. For
  example, if we do not write well, we avoid
  classes that require writing.
• If we are shy, we avoid people. Avoidance
  behavior ensures that we will not improve in
  areas that need improvement.
• Prioritize areas that need improvement in order
  of importance and choose several of the most
  important to work on.
• For each area chosen, create a personal
  development plan. What are you going to do in the
  next week? In the next month? In the next year?