Posts

Scott Schwefel

Beyond Success

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Throughout the past few weeks, we’ve talked about success and how to achieve it. Achieving success following this path requires much thought and personal work, but in the end, it will hopefully allow you to reach some of the personal goals you have created for yourself. Using the power of your personality type and what we know about the subconscious mind, we can create successful patterns of living our lives and accomplishing our goals.

Working towards success

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” William Churchill spoke these words as a man acquainted with both great failure and great success. Churchill, Edison, Einstein, and other individuals throughout history had failed many times before they were able to produce the successes they knew they were capable of. Einstein puzzled with the very nature of the makeup of the universe, and his contributions to physics and mathematics were products of asking questions, finding answers, figuring out if they were right or wrong, and continuing on his line of questioning until he reached the end.

When creating the filament wire for the lightbulb, Edison failed over and over again in the quest for light. In Edison’s case, this was finding the literal light in the form of contained electricity. He failed over a thousand times to create the right filament, and yet he continued to work away at this problem until he got it right.

Success and happiness

This isn’t all to say that all the successful people we know aren’t faced with challenges eventually. Albert Schweitzer said: “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” Combining what we are passionate about with what we do every day can have a major impact on our overall success rate as well as how happy we feel about the path our lives are on.

Success doesn’t always lead to happiness – just ask the lottery winners who may be financially successful, but are no happier than they were before they won. Successful professionals may find that their professional success has come with many personal sacrifices and that their passion has waned. However, success in these fields would be extremely beneficial to the person who has planned out their personal and professional goals, done the work to achieve those goals and has remained aligned with their passion for what they do.

Carl Jung opened up an entirely new world with his discoveries, and new discoveries in the psychology of personality and the self are still being made today. Insights Discovery is based squarely on Jung’s theories, and as such, it is an invaluable tool in helping people to understand themselves and others. Schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker, and I will come to your group and address the differences in personalities in a truthful, fun, and easily understood way. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to share my blogs with the color energies you work with!

Scott Schwefel

Success, One Step at a Time

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The path to success isn’t found through a formula. Success doesn’t just happen because someone got lucky, or won the lottery. Success looks different for everyone, which is what makes defining success and following your own path that much more important.

There were eight steps outlined in the last eight blogs to show one way how success can be achieved using your passion and what you want your life to look like. The first step was to find your passion, which is a statement that can seem simpler than it is in practice. Finding your passion can take time, but think about what you would do if you didn’t have to worry about money or time. What would you do?

Steps to success

The second step to success was to define success as it pertained to you; this doesn’t mean success as society, your family, or your job defines it. Step three was to know your personality, what you are good at and who you are at both work and home. Step four was to set goals which align with your passions and can be placed into categories like your physical health, your spiritual life, your family, your friendships, and your financial and work lives.

Step five was to think. Think about your goals once you’ve written them down and work towards attaining those goals, one day and one step at a time. These accomplishments may not seem like much, but in the long term, they reveal much more about who you are and how far you’ve come. Setting your mind to your goals is a powerful tool.

The next two steps were the most essential. Operate with integrity both at home and at work, and execute your plan to utilize your passion every day and find success. Inspiring respect in others is a by-product of living with integrity and executing your personal plan for success on your terms.

This isn’t the end

Of course, finding success isn’t the end of the line. Failures happen, and success is temporary, but continuing to strive towards personal success creates good habits and brings you closer to living out your passions consistently. Giving back to the people who helped you accomplish your goals is essential, as is giving your knowledge and experience back to others who may be on their journeys to success behind you.

Carl Jung opened up an entirely new world with his discoveries, and new discoveries in the psychology of personality and the self are still being made today. Insights Discovery is based squarely on Jung’s theories, and as such, it is an invaluable tool in helping people to understand themselves and others. Schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker, and I will come to your group and address the differences in personalities in a truthful, fun, and easily understood way. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to share my blogs with the color energies you work with!

Scott Schwefel

Giving Back

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You are on a roll! You have accomplished a few of the goals you have set for yourself and are seeing improvements in your personal, professional, and social lives. What happens now? There will always be a few setbacks when it comes to shaping your life and accomplishing your goals, but over time you may find that setting your attention towards your goals makes them easier to attain.

You may start to feel better, not only mentally, but physically as well. If one of your goals was to eat better and exercise more, you should feel the physical benefits of this new lifestyle as your body grows healthier and more energetic. If your goals were professionally oriented, you might have gotten closer to a coveted position within your company or finally settled into a new career that is more closely aligned with your passions.

Looking ahead

Looking ahead to the future means continually assessing and evaluating your goals to see what you have accomplished in the last few months or years. Knowing how far you’ve come can give you a much-needed mental boost on those days when you feel like you haven’t accomplished very much. Take this newfound energy and success and channel it not only towards yourself, but towards other people as well.

You can imagine that you are in a place of growth as you accomplish your goals and create a life you are passionate about. This direction leads you towards places of influence over others, whether it is within your family or your professional sphere. As you grow and begin to know yourself better, you can have an incredibly positive effect on those around you. Giving back to the people you interact with every day can be as simple as smiling at the barista at your local coffee shop or not losing your temper when confronted with bad drivers on your commute.

We can’t always control the world around us, but we can control our reactions to the people, circumstances, and situations we find ourselves in. As we enter a new phase of defining and finding success for ourselves, we need to remember that we are in control of our futures and our destinies.

We are what we think

The idea that we are what we think about is nothing new. Everyone from the Greeks to Buddha to figures in the Bible echoes a concept along those lines. If we are consistently thinking about who we are, what we want to accomplish, and how we are going to obtain success, our lives will naturally flow in those directions.

Carl Jung opened up an entirely new world with his discoveries, and new discoveries in the psychology of personality and the self are still being made today. Insights Discovery is based squarely on Jung’s theories, and as such, it is an invaluable tool in helping people to understand themselves and others. Schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker, and I will come to your group and address the differences in personalities in a truthful, fun, and easily understood way. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to share my blogs with the color energies you work with!

Scott Schwefel

Activate Success

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The most successful people didn’t get where they are by accident; they had a plan, worked hard, and were rewarded with successful outcomes. Everyone’s definition of personal success is unique unto themselves, but what we can all agree on is that knowing where you are going and what to do is an important part of being successful.

Executing a plan that will lead to success comes from the goals you’ve already set for yourself. Your goals will ultimately lead you to achieve different objectives in your life, both personally and professionally, and often lead to greater feelings of success. This execution of the plan is the means by which we set out to accomplish these goals.

Step by step

Step by step, goals -and therefore success- are accomplished. You create a list of goals you wanted to achieve in various areas of your life that include physical, spiritual, family, friends, and finance/work goals. The hope is to align these goals with the passions you have in your life to create a happier, healthier, and more successful version of who you are today. These goals may not be able to be accomplished overnight, which is where the execution of the plan comes into play.

Setting goals based on passion and striving towards them with integrity doesn’t mean anything unless you keep at it. Failure happens, yet all too many people give up after failing to meet their goals. Some passions are harder to integrate into your life, just as some goals are harder to accomplish. Not giving up is an essential part of finding success.

Making a plan

Making a plan to accomplish your goals means evaluating them and knowing what you need to do to check those goals off your list. If you’re looking to change careers or get promoted in your current job, who do you need to network with? What other training or tasks can you do to improve your chances? Do you need another recommendation or perhaps networking in a new industry?

Your plan will change, which is just as frustrating as coming up against a perceived failure when trying to reach your goals. Rolling with the changes and re-evaluating your plan can help keep you in touch with what you’re trying to accomplish and spark the passion you have for the things you’re doing in your life.

Our goals are the lighthouse, and failures are the waves that keep us out of sight of our passions and goals. Failure happens, but we can always use the lighthouse to navigate our way towards our goals even if we get a bit off course.

Jung opened up an entirely new world with his discoveries, and discoveries into the psychology of personality and the self are still being made today. Insights Discovery is based squarely on Jung’s theories, and as such is an invaluable tool in helping people understand themselves and others. Schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker, and I will come to your group and address the differences in personalities in a truthful, fun, and easy-to-understand way. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to share my blogs with the color energies you work with!

Scott Schwefel

Investing in Integrity

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When you think of the word integrity, what comes to mind? Do you think of people presently in your life or remnants of characters from days gone by? Is integrity a real and concrete character trait that is being encouraged by our families and societies, or is it something that we’ve pushed into the background?

Success used to be closely associated with integrity. Early business pioneers like Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford were known not just for their business acumen, but for their personal integrity when doing business as well. Integrity wasn’t just something that was reserved for those who found success in their various professional fields, but for everyone who desired to be respected by those around them.

Modern success

Modern definitions of success often leave out integrity. We’ve grown up assuming that success is attained by earning the most money, acquiring the most business experience, or rising in the ranks faster using whatever means necessary. Integrity as a personal and professional character trait has fallen by the wayside and is no longer closely tied to our concepts of success.

This doesn’t have to be the case, however. Although the media sensationalizes the scandals involving celebrities and politicians, less attention is paid to the people who value integrity as an essential part of their business plans. These individuals and organizations have risen, many very quietly, to influence and change the world around them in meaningful ways.

Valuing success means valuing the choices and characteristics that bring success in the long term. If integrity is one of these factors, wouldn’t you want to work with a company and with other people that value the level of integrity you expect?

Bringing integrity

Although modern society’s definition of success may not include integrity as a core principle, many successful businesses have maintained their growth because of the moral integrity of their founder and employees.

Individuals are the beginning of integrity. Without an individual, an organization or business won’t have the integrity it needs to succeed over the long term. Other individuals or organizations may find quick success using less than moral methods, but everything we do (both good and bad) eventually catches up with us. Behavioral change has to occur on an individual level to create a culture of integrity that impacts the professional world we live and work in every day.

Carl Jung opened up an entirely new world with his discoveries, and new discoveries into the psychology of personality and the self are still being made today. Insights Discovery is based squarely on Jung’s theories, and as such, it is an invaluable tool in helping people to understand themselves and others. Schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker, and I will come to your group and address the differences in personalities in a truthful, fun, and easily understood way. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to share my blogs with the color energies you work with!

Scott Schwefel

Learning to Think

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How much time during the day do you spend thinking? Scientists estimate that we only use about 10% of our actual brain power for conscious thought throughout the day. This isn’t to say that we can’t use more of our brain power; we simply don’t utilize the full capacity of our brains when we are sitting in traffic, going through the motions at our jobs, and interacting with the people around us.

Active and conscious thought require effort. When we were young, this active thought came naturally. Our bodies and minds were growing and changing, learning about the world around us every single moment. We were passionate and successful at what we did because we believed wholeheartedly in what we were doing.

Activating thought

We all wanted to be successful at one point in time. When did we forget this motivation? Although we might still have dreams of success, our brains have changed, and success seems harder to accomplish. Forgetting what we are passionate about is part of this decline.

Actively thinking about what we put into our brains is partly unconscious and partly conscious. Part of this unconscious input comes from the sensory input given to us through our eyes, our ears, our sense of touch, and what we taste. What we hear, see, touch and taste informs us about the world around us and dictates part of how we react to situations in our lives. The second half of this active thought is conscious, or: in other words, how we think about the information that we’ve been given to us through our senses. This sixth sense, or intuition, can be vitally important for to how we react to and interact with people and events around us.

Our brains like to make excuses. When we ask ourselves why we’re stuck in a job we hate, our brain clings to what is familiar instead of what might make us happier. When we ask why we’re not good at something, our brains like to remind us that life isn’t fair, instead of coming up with solutions that could lead to changes in our lives.

Rewiring our brains

Changing how we think is a process, but not one that comes without rewards. Changing the negative or neutral patterns of our thoughts from negative or neutral into more positive affirmations can serve as a way to change how we see the world around us. Like a computer modeling program or statistics, the information we put into our brains has to be good to produce a better output. Just like data, what goes in will also come out.

Carl Jung opened up an entirely new world with his discoveries, and discoveries into the psychology of personality and the self are still being made today. Insights Discovery is based squarely on Jung’s theories, and as such, it is an invaluable tool in helping people to understand themselves and others. Schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker, and I will come to your group and address the differences in personalities in a truthful, fun, and easily understood way. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to share my blogs with the color energies you work with!

Scott Schwefel

What’s Your Personality Type?

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Personality can be a tricky thing. Often we are so caught up in living our regular lives that we forget that things like personality can have a major impact on how we interact with other people and deal with certain situations. Personality doesn’t explain everything, but it is a foundational part of human interactions and behaviors that we participate in and find around us every day.

The origins of personality science began with Hippocrates in ancient Greece, where the idea of humors became widely accepted as the reason behind the differences in personality people displayed. His four humors were known as sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, and melancholic.

From Hippocrates to the present   

Hippocrates’ ideas on the origin of personality evolved as science itself advanced. Eventual iterations of his beginning personality hypothesis included the Myers-Briggs test, the DiSC methodology, Insights Discovery and much more. All of these concepts regarding personality were built on similar foundations, although they used different labels to categorize each personality type.

Discovery Yourself utilizes the following categories to determine personality type: talker, relater thinker, and director. These are the four main personality types that can be broken up into further personality categories. These four main labels can still bring great insight not only to your personality but to the personality types of those around you.

Thinkers and relaters are typically more introverted, while directors and talkers tend toward extroversion. Thinkers and directors are highly task-oriented, while relaters and talkers are relationally motivated.

Determining personality

Determining your individual personality type can bring you great insight and clarity into who you are as a person, and why you behave the way you do. Do you tend to find energy in solitary activities, or by facing an engaging social situation? Do you find yourself genuinely interested in the other people around you, or do you focus more on the task you are trying to accomplish?

All of these questions can help you determine where you fall on the personality spectrum. Once you’ve found your category or categories, you can begin to notice when in your life you utilize the strengths of that particular personality type. You can also use this valuable information to notice where you might be struggling to work well with others, taking their professional positions and their personality type into consideration. Instead of chalking up misunderstandings to not working well together, you might find that personality holds the key to more than meets the eye.

Jung opened up an entirely new world with his discoveries, and discoveries into the psychology of personality and the self are still being made today. Insights Discovery is based squarely on Jung’s theories, and as such is an invaluable tool in helping people understand themselves and others. Schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker, and I will come to your group and address the differences in personalities in a truthful, fun, and easy-to-understand way. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to share my blogs with the color energies you work with!

Scott Schwefel

Defining Success

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What is your definition of success? Many of us might not have thought much about what success means to us. All too often we accept someone else’s definition of success- a college degree, a career, marriage, kids, a mortgage. These paths aren’t always the right one for individuals to take; each person needs to define success for themselves.

Defining success can be difficult. We often aren’t sure of who we are or what we want to be, even if we have already grown up. What we are passionate about might have been left by the wayside or never discovered in the first place. Defining success for ourselves is a journey, just as life is.
Finding success
Finding success is, of course, as elusive as finding happiness. When we have it, we don’t always know it, and often we are so intent on finding it that we forget to enjoy the moment we are in. These moments, the everyday moments, are the ones in which we can find what success means to us as individuals. Without considering other peoples’ expectations or definitions of success, we can learn to define who and what we want to be.
Finding success starts with a starting point and a goal. Knowing where you are and where you want to go can help define success to you personally. Starting with where you are can mean categorizing certain parts of your life, such as your physical life, spiritual life, family, friends, work, and finances.
Some goals are small; in fact, the smaller the goal, the greater the accomplishments. Life is lived in moments, and successes aren’t just those big life changing moments we occasionally have. Some successes come in increments, making the larger journey that much more attainable.
Success on life’s journey
Success isn’t always where you are today, but where you have come from. Having the ability to look back and see how far you have come in meeting your personal goals is part of defining success on your terms. Success doesn’t always mean climbing a ladder- sometimes it means taking a step back and reassessing what is the most important to you and moving in that direction.

Part of success is also recognizing that failures will happen. Society tells us that to fail is bad; however, failure makes us learn faster and often pushes us towards life lessons that need to be learned. Failure can be beneficial to individuals in the long run when it comes to defining successes later on.
Jung opened up an entirely new world with his discoveries, and discoveries into the psychology of personality and the self are still being made today. Insights Discovery is based squarely on Jung’s theories, and as such is an invaluable tool in helping people understand themselves and others. Schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker, and I will come to your group and address the differences in personalities in a truthful, fun, and easy-to-understand way. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to share my blogs with the color energies you work with!

Scott Schwefel

Discover Yourself: Finding Your Passion

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We talk about passion in an abstract way. Many of us associate passion with the dreams we once had or the hobbies we maintain as adults. Along the path of life, we’ve gotten caught up in things like having to pay rent, keeping up with bills, settling down and maybe raising families. We forgot the dreams of our childhoods and instead opted for the path traveled.

Discovering your passion in life means having to rearrange some of our preconceived notions about what success means. Success for many means the job or career that makes the most money. If you’re making money, you can afford to do the things you’re passionate about on the side, right? All too often we get caught up in the money-making, forgetting that money isn’t the definition of success.

Rediscovering passion

As children, we lived passionately. We ran around our neighborhoods, climbed the tallest trees, and played with abandon. As we get older, these impulses are dulled by the necessity and stress of holding down jobs and paying for the things we need to keep ourselves going. Our former dreams of becoming firefighters or astronauts or scientists may have been lost by the wayside as life happened.
What can we do as adults to rediscover passion? First, we have to define what passion is, what makes us passionate, and how this feeds into our definition of success. Passion can be something that you get to do every day that you love to do, that you are good at, and that pays you well. Many people have a job or a hobby that might fulfill some of these requirements, but not all.
People who are passionate about what they do often understand that success isn’t related to a dollar value. Success means that they are personally fulfilled by what they do; they have goals, can achieve those goals, and have made a living out of something they enjoy doing. Instead of slogging through a work week and relishing their all-too-short weekends, passionate people remain engaged in the game.
Discovering yourself
As an adult, it isn’t always easy to find out what it is you are truly passionate about. You may be entrenched in your job and unable to see a way out that would maintain your social or financial status. You might be unsure as to what it is that you are indeed passionate about. Part of knowing your passion is knowing yourself, and discovering who you are day by day.
Jung opened up an entirely new world with his discoveries, and discoveries into the psychology of personality and the self are still being made today. Insights Discovery is based squarely on Jung’s theories, and as such is an invaluable tool in helping people understand themselves and others. Schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker, and I will come to your group and address the differences in personalities in a truthful, fun, and easy-to-understand way. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to share my blogs with the color energies you work with!

Scott Schwefel

Communicating Personalities

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Getting along with others isn’t easy, especially in a working environment. Not only do we have to deal with our jobs, but we also have to deal with the people around us as well as the individuals who may work above and below us in the professional hierarchy. Being in tune with all these factors is complicated, made all the more so by how we react and interact with each piece of the puzzle.

Understanding how personality fits into all this can add another factor to an already complex arena of life. Personality in the workplace is often underestimated- we expect, or our bosses expect, people to act in a way that is beneficial to them, the company, or the task at hand. With individuals with different working styles, jobs, and personalities whirling about, this can prove to be a chaotic chore.

Working with personality
Utilizing the strengths of each personality type is vital to the success of professional environments. When people feel the freedom to be themselves and feel like their strengths are being acknowledged, great things can happen. When people run up against managers or co-workers that don’t recognize what they have to offer, jobs can become stale, dull, and frustrating.
For instance, a Fiery Red personality does well when they can work quickly and effectively. They may be personally frustrated when they need to work on a project that requires a lot of planning; far from being hasty, Fiery Red personalities are quick and decisive. Working with a Sunshine Yellow personality means that people will come first, and the social aspect of a project is emphasized. Sunshine Yellow personalities can be frustrated when others aren’t considered, or when there isn’t enough time to get to know those around them or that they may work with.
Emphasizing strength
Just as it is with communicating and adapting to each other’s personalities, recognizing each personality type requires patience and clarity. We can’t be expected to know everything about another person, but we can notice their (and our) habits that stem from our personality types. There needs to be an effort made to adapt to one another’s working styles, and understanding how personality plays into that can make a big difference.
Personality isn’t the only thing that makes a work environment successful, but when the power of personality is utilized it can make an average workplace into something much bigger.
Jung opened up an entirely new world with his discoveries, and discoveries into the psychology of personality and the self are still being made today. Insights Discovery is based squarely on Jung’s theories, and as such is an invaluable tool in helping people understand themselves and others. Schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker, and I will come to your group and address the differences in personalities in a truthful, fun, and easy-to-understand way. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to share my blogs with the color energies you work with!