WHEN PUSH COMES TO SHOVE

Post date: Feb 21, 2018 9:02:06 AM

By:

ARVIN L. PASCUAL, T-I - COBNHS

“The strongest factor for success is self-esteem: believing you can do it, believing you deserve it, and believing you'll get it.”

When times get rough and everything goes south, who would you turn to for help? Where are you supposed to get your strength from? A typical answer would be “my family” or “my friends”. But have you ever thought about relying on yourself for once? It’s not surprising that we usually turn to others when things go wrong. But that has to change. It’s about time we trust our own strength to overcome obstacles without hesitation. And what better way to do it than to focus on personal and professional development?

Professional development – people say as long as we’re working, we’re growing professionally. That’s not entirely true. Just working is not enough. Just doing the bare minimum should never be enough. The more we convince ourselves that doing enough is fine, the more we’re caging ourselves in with the norm. We have to thirst for knowledge, and we need to strive to gain it. As teachers, we can’t impart something we don’t have. Thankfully, we have the advantage of going to seminars and workshops as part of our responsibilities being educators. But don’t let it end there. Just like how students apply what they learn, we also have to keep in mind the things we learn from the training sessions we’ve been to and improve on our teaching skills. As we venture to become better, we also grow in a professional sense.

How about our personal development? How do we attain it? First and foremost, we have to understand that in order for us to know what to improve on, we have to first figure out our own strengths and weaknesses, and have a clear vision of what we want to be and where we want to be in a few months or years from now. By doing so, we’ll be able to set a life goal. Only then can we start planning on different learning processes that may be helpful for our personal development. We can start by honing the skills needed to lead us to that direction. Another crucial thing to do is to record our progress and reflect on it. We can’t just keep pushing forward all the time. It’s also necessary to stop and look back, either at what we did wrong so we can correct it, or what we did right so we can sustain it. And finally, we have to go through the process of self-actualization, which is at the top of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. This refers to the desire “to become everything that we are capable of becoming”. As long as we keep these things in mind, then we’re good to go.

With personal and professional development set in place, we’ll become the best that we can be, we’ll have the confidence to face future challenges on our own, and we’ll have the ability to do so. And then, when push comes to shove, you won’t ask, “Why me?” Instead, you can confidently say, “Try me!”