If you are in the bloom of life, take a good look around-other people are wilting.
As you now are, so they were. As they are now, so shall you be.
If you are wilting in life, you may have closed a door and not be aware that you have done so.
As you were, so you shall be again-only not in that way!
Human growth is a natural iterative process that does not end with old age or retirement.
Eric Erikson, in his theory of personality development, suggests that your personality is subject to a continuous process that either ignites or extinguishes.
He suggests that the personality is formed through a series of eight stages. Each stage involves a psychosocial crisis that the individual either successfully resolves or fails to resolve. Failure results in incomplete development of the personality, and inhibits further development of the personality.
Integrity or despair is Eric Erikson’s final psychosocial crisis that we all face. It starts when we encounter our own mortality and ends as we draw conclusions about meaning.
The outcome can be either positive or negative.
Integrity occurs when the individual views their entire life with satisfaction and contentment. The result is wisdom. The outcome is a peaceful countenance.
Despair occurs when the individual views their entire life with a fear and depression. The result is ignorance. The outcome is bitterness, defeat and hopelessness.
In between, we have people who simply are simply presumptuous enough to conclude that they are immune to either wisdom or despair. The outcome is stagnation
How
can you tell?
If you are growing into wisdom, according to Erikson, then you will encounter increased order based on the expansion of inner states of trust, autonomy, initiative, competence, intimacy, self worth, creativity and generativity.
If you are growing into despair, according to Erikson, then you will encounter increased chaos based on the expansion of inner states of mistrust, dependency, passivity, shame, guilt, inferiority, confusion and isolation.
If you are presumptuous, then your world narrows to others who think exactly as you do.
Why?
First, it is what it is. You are
perfectly aligned to receive the results what you are currently getting.
Perception becomes reality.
Thoughts become actions. Actions
become circumstances. Circumstances become reality.
Second, cause and effect is an
absolute and cumulative principle of life. The rich get richer, the poor get
poorer. To those who have more is given. To those who have not, more is taken.
Integrity ignites. Despair extinguishes.
What can be done?
There is always time to do what is
right for you.
It starts right here, right now with
what is right in front of you.
In order to gain control of your
life, you must first let go of control.
It leads to humility and gratitude
for what we have, not what we don’t have.
It works from strength, not to
weakness.
It transforms by correcting that
which is wrong and validating what is right.
It is a choice, unless of course, if
you are presumptuous enough not to need to make a choice.
Want to learn more? Contact me
at douglasross@principledynamics.com
. I want to speak to you about integrity and how it can help you and all of us.
Douglas Ross is an advocate for the
promotion of integrity as a strategy for performance.
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Posted by: Hope | December 15, 2009 at 05:58 AM