Knowing Yourself so You May Begin Exploring Your Own True Potential Essays

Knowing Yourself so You May Begin Exploring Your Own True Potential Essays Knowing Yourself so You May Begin Exploring Your Own True Potential Essay Knowing Yourself so You May Begin Exploring Your Own True Potential Essay Trammel Anderson Chef Tiffany Henderson Leadership July 14, 2011 Topic: Personal Leadership Knowing yourself so you may begin exploring your own true potential. There are several questions that must be discussed first to gain access the knowledge of oneself. The first question is â€Å"what is a personal strength? †A personal strength is having self-confidence. It is the ability to communicate with yourself in a positive manner. It is having a vision of who you want to be, how you want to live, how you want to fulfill your vision and then by having the faith to do so, you can achieve success. Personal strength is also about having independence and not depending on anyone else to tell you how to think or feel. It is the ability to make moral decisions that are best for you and then act on them. Lastly, it is about having the ability to laugh at yourself because laughter transforms pain. â€Å"Making the best of ourselves is not an easy task. It is a pleasurable pursuit, it is the reason we were born, but it requires patience, persistence, and perseverance. For many of us it also requires prayer. That is because we find it far easier to learn to live by our own lights when we access a Higher Source of Power to illuminate our path. (Sarah Ban Breathnach) A key aspect of confident people is that they have high self-esteem they hold themselves in positive self-regard. This means that they know how to love themselves and that they acknowledge what theyre good at. These realizations boost their resilience and ability to take on greater challenges. Your ability to take appropri ate, effective action is affected by various things in your life that may seem to have little direct relation to the task at hand. Your values are a good example of this. Your self-confidence is likely to waver if you dont value what you excel at doing. Research shows that if you value what youre good at, youre likely to be highly confident in that area. If you value what youre not so good at, then you will not feel so confident, even though your friends may reassure you that this is not much of a problem at all. Building confidence begins with going with your strengths. If youre great at music, dont beat yourself up because youre not going to play international rugby. Pat yourself on the back, practice accepting compliments for everything you do well, and enjoy the positive reinforcement from others. Respect and honor yourself, and youll find that you get respect and honor from those around you. For confidence to thrive and grow, you must concentrate your attention on what youre good at, rather than trying to turn yourself into something that youre not. The next question is to ask oneself is â€Å"why are personal strengths important to recognize? † If you do not recognize your strengths you will not know your weaknesses. The key to unlock you’re ability to understand and recognize your personal strength’s lies in the understanding of â€Å"self†. Let us take Sigmund Freud and his ID, EGO and Superego theory into account. The Id, ego and super-ego are the three parts of the psychic scheme defined in Sigmund Freuds structural model of the psyche; they are the three theoretical constructs [a construct is a concept, model, or schematic idea] in terms of whose activity and interaction mental life is described. The meaning or explanation of these three psychic schemes starts with the id. The id and its functions lie in the irrational and emotional part of the mind. To give a further explanation of what this means take a baby from birth for instance. At birth a baby’s mind is all Id they possess the want, want, want, mentality. The Id is the primitive mind. It contains all the basic needs and feelings. It is the source for libido. And it has only one rule the pleasure principle: I want it and I want it all now. If I were to use a transference definition I would simple state that the Id best equates to mean child or selfishness. If you are more of an Id person or if your Id is too strong you will normally be bound to self-gratification and uncaring to others. The second part of this scheme starts with the ego. The ego and its functions lie in the rational part of the mind. The Ego develops out of the growing awareness that you cannot always get what you want. The Ego relates to the real world and it operates by means of the reality principle. The reality principle states that, â€Å"the ego controls the pleasure-seeking activity of the id in order to meet the demands of the external world. † The Ego realizes the need for compromise and negotiates between the Id and the Superego. The Egos job is to get the Ids pleasures but to be reasonable and bear the long-term consequences in mind. The Ego denies instant gratification or the child like urges that we as humans possess. It also aids in the delaying of gratification. A term was coined to refer to how well the ego copes with these conflicting forces. This term is ego-strength. To complete or maintain its work of planning,  thinking and controlling the Id, the Ego uses some of the Ids energy. If I were to use a Transference definition I would simple state that the Id best equates to mean adult. If you are more of an Ego centered person or if your Ego is too strong you will normally be bound to be extremely rational and efficient, but cold, boring and distant. The third part of the psychic scheme is the superego. The superego and its functions lie in the part of the mind that’s considered to be the moral part. The Superego is the last part of the mind to develop. The Superego becomes a semi tangible embodiment of the parental and societal values that were instilled in you. It stores and enforces rules. It constantly strives for perfection, even though this perfection ideal may be quite far from reality or possibility. Its power to enforce these rules comes from its ability to create anxiety. This feel anxiety is rooted in the subsystems of the superego. The two subsystems of the superego are the Ego Ideal and the Conscience. The Ego Ideal provides rules for good behavior, and standards of excellence towards which the Ego must strive. The Ego ideal is basically what the child’s parents approve of or value. The Conscience on the other hand the rules about what constitutes bad behavior. The Conscience is basically all those things that the child feels that their mother or father will show disapproval of or punish them for doing. If you are more of a Superego centered person or if your Superego is too strong you will normally be bound to feel guilty all the time or you may even have an insufferably saintly personality (self-righteous). The recognition of the id, ego and superego will allow you to gage your inner strengths and systems of control. This will allow you to recognize your strengths more accurately. I explained all of this to say that you must know yourself first on a deeper level to accurately recognize your strength’s. I believe that many people have chameleon strengths. What is chameleon-strength? Chameleon-strength is a strength that disguises itself as one thing but the true strength lies underneath. Parents or mentors are often the culprit when this happens. They push off their strength on the person or child through transference or synergy. This personal strength which they have effectively delivered to you may not fit your personality type and if it does not it will become a weakness. The next question is how can a person’s strengths be developed? A person’s strengths can be developed by understanding them as I previously mentioned. To understand how to develop them you must first know what development means. The definition of the word develop is to â€Å"expand by a process of growth. †(Merriam-Webster) So take any strength for instance to expand it by a process of growing it you have to look at the potential of what it can become. So in essence you must treat your strength as a weakness to grow in back into strength. For example in sports the majority of people are either right handed or left handed. This is a big deal especially in basketball because the right handed or left handed player are limited to that one hand if they do not develop the weaker hand to become their new strength. Michael Jordan is a prime example of this. When Jordan first arrived in the National Basketball Association he was average shooter and defensive player but these were his strengths. To develop these strengths he had to make his strength his weakness and his weakness his strength. He was a right handed player so he decided to shoot and defend with his left hand quite exclusively. He practiced and exercised this to the point that his dominant right hand was now his weakness. He shot and defended better with his left hand. This would not do. So he began to develop his right hand in the same fashion that he did his left hand. His right hand soon became dominant again. He continued this process until both hands were of equal strength. He had successfully developed his strength. A personal strength is not very different from sports if you speak well and that is your strength you should bolster your lexicon by becoming a word smith. Respect your craft and it will develop. The next question is what are your personal strengths? My personal strengths are having a strong sense of rationality and stability, Unselfishness, Individualism, responsibility, altruism, discipline and a high level of understanding. My ability to rationalize and maintain stability gives me the ability to appreciate the benefit for balance and harmony without losing the sight of the practical side of a situation. My ability to be unselfish gives me the opportunity to help someone meet their needs both internal and external before I focus on my own. The extreme individualistic nature that I possess gives me the strength to have high independence and to project self-confidence. My next strength was honed by the military. This strength is responsibility it gives me the ability to accept the credit or take the blame, with the buck stops here attitude. I also posses the strength to be altruistic I am very concerned for others without giving away everything that I have. I will not give you what I own but I will try if at possible to get you your own. The military also honed this next strength of discipline. With this as a personal strength I follow standard operating protocols and traditional ways to the letter. The final strength is the ability to understand aspects of a situation or subject at an extremely high level. All of these personal strengths combined allow me to stay at a balanced and harmonies state within myself. The next question or statement would be to discuss limitations. What are limitations? Limitations are defined as a shortcoming or defect. My limitations are anger, over confidence, fault finding and mistrust for people. My other limitation is that of the mind. The potential that I have within me is limitless but the removal of these limitations must first occur. The next question is why are they important to recognize? They are important to recognize because you will know where your boundaries lie. Once you know where your boundaries are you can break through them or maneuver around them. The next question would be how will you get around them? To get around my limitations I will have to overcome them mentally. To overcome anger I must first dismiss fault finding and mistrust of people. To delete the fault finding limitation I will have to become non judgmental of people. I have to accept people for who they are. When the realization that a person will make mistakes, it is easier to trust them to be just that a â€Å"person†. With the two of these limitations conquered in turn anger will be conquered because the resentment factor will no longer exist within me. The over-confidence limitation can be undone by knowing when to say enough is enough. The all encompassing over comer for all of my limitations are simply to love. Love will conquer a multitude of sins and shortcomings. When it comes to thinking of my strengths and limitations there are several ways to develop myself to become a better leader? The first step to do this is to know myself well enough to deploy these strengths and limitations to increase each other. The first start to doing this is to listen to myself about my shortcomings. Once these things are identified my strengths can be sent in as if they were antibodies attacking a virus or bacteria. If I generate enough love coupled with humility this will serve as a capsule or a command center to regulate all of my strengths to direct them towards my atural ability to lead. Compassion and fairness with meekness will make me a better leader because I will be able to meet the people at their level. Once they see me on the level and they know that I am not here to hurt them or mistreat them they will trust me enough to listen to what I have to say. The goal to becoming a better leader is to get the people to listen. Once I have their attention ou r task or objective will be easily achieved. I am a proven and accomplished leader I always complete my mission. The next question is what role does self confidence play in personal leadership? What is self-confidence? Self-confidence is defined as â€Å"confidence in oneself and in ones powers and abilities. † Self-confidence plays an important role in leadership. In our society the majority of the population will not follow a leader that is not self-confident. If a person does not believe in his or herself they will find that no one will either. Self-confidence is a trust issue. It is a mistrust of oneself. People that are not self-confident are typically this way because something happen in their life which caused them to be embarrassed or feel inferior. To become self-confident they must first overcome this to reassure and repair the mental picture of themselves. Once they repair this mental picture they then can broadcast this mental picture to the people that they are trying to lead. Once the people see this picture they can also cast a positive light on it and follow it as if it were a light house and they were a boat trapped in fog. So to answer the question self-confidence has everything to do with personal leadership. A more in depth explanation of how to overcome self-confidence issues would be to pin point the events that caused the issues and confront them. You can not fix a problem that you will not address. Once you get the problem or traumatic event out in the open talk about it. You should attack it from all angles to see why it’s affecting the person or yourself in this way. Once the cause has found build a confidence foundation. A confidence foundation will be those things that you do right and with enough practice certain parts of the event or issue can be transformed into a confidence brick to add to your foundation. Eventually you will overcome this issue or event and become more self confident. There are three aspects and or dimensions of self- confidence. The three are overly self-confident, self-confidence (normal) and a lack of self-confidence. The best way to approach these three would be established a definition for each. The definition for overly self-confidence is quite simple. This definition refers to people who have an overly high opinion of themselves. The definition for self-confidence relates to self-assuredness in ones personal judgment, ability, and power. The definition for a lack of self confidence would be the reverse of self confidence it states that a person has a lack of self-assuredness in ones personal judgment, ability, and power. The best and simplest explanation for this would be to describe a doubter. Personal Mission Statement I will live each day as if it were my last, building relationships that last a lifetime, focusing first on my marriage, second on my family and third on my friendships. I live to create, build, nourish and grow. I will live life within the constraints that are acceptable to me. I will never live life under the control of values that are not acceptable to anyone but myself. I will never fail in my mission to succeed. I will never quit in my desire to achieve. Opinion Page In my opinion this in depth at my personal strengths and weaknesses has helped me to redefine what I have to work towards to fulfill my duty to mankind. The personal mission statement that I have drafted represents my inner most drive towards self actualization. My biggest challenge will be to work towards a life filled with pure love, humility and meekness. I know that I possess many talents, but these talents have to be used for the greater good not for selfish gain. God gives me my great talents and I know I have to serve his people with these talents. If I cannot make a difference in people’s lives I am nothing. So what this personal strength paper has taught me is that every person has certain strengths and weaknesses that are directly proportional to what they are put on this world to do. The catch to this is that people are often to selfish and caught up with the daily rigor of life to apply their talents for the greater good. Merriam-Webster Online. Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. 27 Nov. 1998 . Inspirational Quotes. 28 January 2009. 20 July 2011. Id Ego and Super-ego. Wikipedia. 09 July 2011. 20 July 2011 .

Hundred Years War - Joan of Arc and Siege of Orlans

Hundred Years' War - Joan of Arc and Siege of Orlans Siege of Orlà ©ans: Dates Conflicts: The Siege of Orlà ©ans began October 12, 1428 and ended May 8, 1429, and took place during the Hundred Years War (1337-1453). Armies Commanders English Earl of ShrewsburyEarl of SalisburyDuke of SuffolkSir John Fastolfapprox. 5,000 men French Joan of ArcJean de DunoisGilles de RaisJean de Brosseapprox. 6,400-10,400 men Siege of Orlà ©ans - Background: In 1428, the English sought to assert Henry VIs claim to the French throne through the Treaty of Troyes. Already holding much of northern France with their Burgundian allies, 6,000 English soldiers landed at Calais under the leadership of the Earl of Salisbury. These were soon met by another 4,000 men drawn from Normandy by the Duke of Bedford. Advancing south, they succeeded in capturing Chartres and several other towns by late August. Occupying Janville, they next drove on the Loire Valley and took Meung on September 8. After moving downstream to take Beaugency, Salisbury dispatched troops to capture Jargeau. Siege of Orleans - the Siege Begins: Having isolated Orlà ©ans, Salisbury consolidated his forces, now numbering around 4,000 after leaving garrisons at his conquests, south of the city on October 12. While the city was located on the north side of the river, the English were initially confronted by defensive works on the south bank. These consisted of a barbican (fortified compound) and twin-towered gatehouse known as Les Tourelles. Directing their initial efforts against these two positions, they succeeded in driving out the French on October 23. Falling back across the nineteen-arch bridge, which they damaged, the French withdrew into the city. Occupying Les Tourelles and the nearby fortified convent of Les Augustins, the English began to dig in. The next day, Salisbury was mortally wounded when surveying French positions from Les Tourelles. He was replaced by the less aggressive Earl of Suffolk. With the weather changing, Suffolk pulled back from the city, leaving Sir William Glasdale and a small force to garrison Les Tourelles, and entered winter quarters. Concerned by this inactivity, Bedford dispatched the Earl of Shrewsbury and reinforcements to Orlà ©ans. Arriving in early December, Shrewsbury took command and moved troops back to the city. Siege of Orleans - the Siege Tightens: Shifting the bulk of his forces to the north bank, Shrewsbury built a large fortress around the Church of St. Laurent west of the city. Additional forts were built on the Ile de Charlemagne in the river and around the Church of St. Prive to the south. The English commander next constructed a series of three forts extending northeast and connected by a defensive ditch. Lacking sufficient men to fully surround the city, he established two forts east of Orlà ©ans, St. Loup and St. Jean le Blanc, with the goal of blocking supplies from entering the city. As the English line was porous, this was never fully achieved. Siege of Orleans - Reinforcements for Orlà ©ans the Burgundian Withdrawal: When the siege began, Orlà ©ans possessed only a small garrison, but this was augmented by militia companies that were formed to man the citys thirty-four towers. As the English lines never fully cut off the city, reinforcements began to trickle in and Jean de Dunois assumed control of the defense. Though Shrewsburys army was augmented by the arrival of 1,500 Burgundians during the winter, the English were soon outnumbered as the garrison swelled to around 7,000. In January, the French king, Charles VII assembled a relief force downstream at Blois. Led by the Count of Clermont, this army elected to attack an English supply train on February 12, 1429 and was routed at the Battle of the Herrings. Though the English siege was not tight, the situation in the city was becoming desperate as supplies were low. French fortunes began to change in February when Orlà ©ans applied to be put under the protection of the Duke of Burgundy. This caused a rift in the Anglo-Burgundian alliance, as Bedford, who was ruling as Henrys regent, refused this arrangement. Angered by Bedfords decision, the Burgundians withdrew from the siege further weakening the thin English lines. Siege of Orleans - Joan Arrives: As the intrigues with the Burgundians came to a head, Charles first met with the young Joan of Arc (Jeanne dArc) at his court in Chinon. Believing that she was following divine guidance, she asked Charles to allow her to lead relief forces to Orlà ©ans. Meeting with Joan on March 8, he sent her to Poitiers to be examined by clerics and Parliament. With their approval, she returned to Chinon in April where Charles agreed to let her lead a supply force to Orlà ©ans. Riding with the Duke of Alencon, her force moved along the south bank and crossed over at Chà ©cy where she met with Dunois. While Dunois mounted a divisionary attack, the supplies were barged into the city. After spending the night in Chà ©cy, Joan entered the city on April 29. Over the next few days, Joan assessed the situation while Dunois departed to Blois to bring up the main French army. This force arrived on May 4 and French units moved against the fort at St. Loup. Though intended as a diversion, the attack became a larger engagement and Joan rode out to join the fighting. Shrewsbury sought to relieve his beleaguered troops, but was blocked by Dunois and St. Loup was overrun. Siege of Orleans - Orlà ©ans Relieved: The next day, Shrewsbury began consolidating his position south of the Loire around the Les Tourelles complex and St. Jean le Blanc. On May 6, Jean sortied with a large force and crossed to the Ile-Aux-Toiles. Spotting this, the garrison at St. Jean le Blanc withdrew to Les Augustins. Pursuing the English, the French launched several assaults against the convent through the afternoon before finally taking it late in the day. Dunois succeeded in preventing Shrewsbury from sending aid by conducting raids against St. Laurent. His situation weakening, the English commander withdrew all of his forces from the south bank except for the garrison at Les Tourelles. On the morning of May 7, Joan and the other French commanders, such as La Hire, Alencon, Dunois, and Ponton de Xaintrailles gathered east of Les Tourelles. Moving forward, they began assaulting the barbican around 8:00 AM. Fighting raged through the day with the French unable to penetrate the English defenses. In the course of the action, Joan was wounded in the shoulder and forced to leave the battle. With casualties mounting, Dunois debated calling off the attack, but was convinced by Joan to press on. After praying privately, Joan rejoined the fighting. The appearance of her banner advancing spurred on the French troops who finally broke into the barbican. This action coincided with a fire barge burning the drawbridge between the barbican and Les Tourelles. English resistance in the barbican began to collapse and French militia from the city crossed the bridge and assaulted Les Tourelles from the north. By nightfall, the entire complex had been taken and Joan crossed the bridge to re-enter the city. Defeated on the south bank, the English formed their men for battle the next morning and emerged from their works northwest of the city. Assuming a formation similar to Crà ©cy, they invited the French to attack. Though the French marched out, Joan counseled against an attack. Aftermath: When it became apparent that the French would not attack, Shrewsbury began an orderly withdrawal toward Meung ending the siege. A key turning point in the Hundred Years War, the Siege of Orlà ©ans brought Joan of Arc to prominence. Seeking to maintain their momentum, the French embarked on the successful Loire Campaign which saw Joans forces drive the English from the region in a series of battles which culminated at Patay.