There Is More Right Than Wrong With You!

There Is More Right Than Wrong With You!

Through the Striving Styles Personality System, we gain an understanding of what we need to feel secure and how we are likely to behave when we are self-actualizing which can improve the quality of our life and reduce emotional distress. We all end up in adulthood with some degree of anxiety about ourselves.

Developing self-awareness does not happen overnight and you can’t just think that you are self-aware when you haven’t done anything to develop it. It involves getting feedback about yourself and your behavior, understanding whether others think you are self-protective at times (or most of the time), as well as experiencing and sharing your emotions, your vulnerabilities. Unearthing unconscious patterns of dysfunctional behaviour in your relationships can also be enormously helpful. The process of developing self-awareness demands that you be honest with yourself, leading to mental health.

Certainly everyone feels the need to defend themselves from time to time. It is reasonable when verbally attacked or criticized that we should. However, many people don’t know that they are being defensive as they feel the need to explain and defend their behavior most of the time. The self-protective system of many adults remains the same as it was when they were children and they use the same strategies (bullying, becoming a victim, withdrawing, emotional manipulation) rather than reflecting and using their emotions to achieve the outcomes they desire.

I think, therefore, I am. This statement is the greatest barrier to self-awareness that humans have. We think we are good parents with no training. We think we are mature just because we have aged. We think we should be respected even when we treat others badly. Defensive behavior runs rampant and most don’t even realize that they are doing so. We get caught in a web of blaming others for making us feel “bad” rather than gaining insight into our personality.

One of the greatest pleasures I have when working with clients is when they stop trying to figure out what’s wrong with them and get on with creating the life they want to be living. It’s such a relief to them when they are able to engage their energy in striving for their own need satisfaction. Anyone who wants to know what they can do to be on their path to self-actualization can benefit from reading this book. It explains in laypersons terms the how and why we struggle so much with knowing ourselves and what we need to do to become more self-aware.
Through the Striving Styles Personality System, we gain an understanding of what we need to feel secure and how we are likely to behave when we are self-actualizing which can improve the quality of our life and reduce emotional distress. We all end up in adulthood with some degree of anxiety about ourselves.

Conditioning often leads us to try to be perfect rather than authentic or who we are meant to be. Most of us still spend time trying to fit in and behave the way the others around us do. Our lives can be thrown off course because we don’t want to disappoint, frustrate or anger those we love and whose approval we desire.
Self-awareness is always the first step in personal development and is crucial to our growth. Self-awareness includes recognition of our personality, our strengths and weaknesses, our likes and dislikes. It helps us to recognize when we are stressed or under pressure and how our behavior changes during that time. It allows us to observe our behavior non-judgmentally and to mature emotionally.

Through understanding our Striving Style need and seeking to satisfy it, we can make different choices about what will work best for ourselves in the future. We often stay on the same self-destructive path because we can’t figure out how to get off it without someone judging or having a negative opinion about what we are doing. Even though we may know that trying to be anyone other than who we are meant to be causes no end of anxiety, frustration and unhappiness, we still do it.