How to Recognize your Personal Faults and Make a Change

1. Become aware of the results of your actions

The first thing that you need to do is start to become more aware of your actions. It is your actions that often define who you are and how you are viewed in the world so it is important that you start to recognize them.

Everything that you do in this world has a consequence. It is logic, science, truth. Every cause has a result. If you drop an apple it will fall to the ground. If you eat poisoned food you will get sick. If you continue to waste time you won’t achieve your goals.

Start thinking about your actions and the consequences of your actions. If you want to find your most grievous personal faults you just need to look at the results of your behavior. If good things come from the way you act then keep it up. If bad things result from the things you do then it is time to make a change.

2. Become aware of the results of your speech

This is exactly the same as point number one but instead of focusing on the body’s actions we are focusing on your speech. A lot of the time people are held back by their speech. Gossip, harsh words, lies. All of these are faults that can be changed.

Again, we need to look at the results of our speech. Do our words inspire and motivate people to good and betterness or do they make people feel small, ashamed or embarrassed? This is important. Speech is often overlooked by people who are interested in self development but it plays such a major role in our lives.

Try to become more aware of what you say, how you say it and who you say it to. See if it changes how you interact with people and whether or not they open up to you more. Look at people who have excellent speech – Obama, Lincoln, King Jr., Mandella, Gandhi – they have inspired and helped millions.

3. Listen

Listening is something that a lot of people claim to be good at but never really display their skills in. Listening is an art that needs to be developed. It needs to be honed. It is a skill. And when you learn how to listen properly you learn a lot about yourself and other people.

If you want to recognize your personal faults you need to start listening to others. Now, I am not just talking about listening to others when they tell you how annoying you are, I am talking about listening to the more subtle clues that they give.

Let me give you an example.

I have a friend who is an extremely angry person. I love this friend dearly but I cannot stand the anger. It makes me feel cold and uncomfortable and, although I don’t feel it is my place to say anything directly, I do try to give little clues to the fact that his anger is making other people feel squeamish. Of course, he rarely picks up on these clues because he is not a very good listener.

When you learn to listen really well you might start to become more self aware. This will enable you to find faults that you might otherwise have missed and as such provide you with an opportunity to work with them.

Please, however, do not take this to the extreme that some people do. Do not become worried with every little thing that people say about you. Listening is intended to be a tool that allows you to grow as a person. If it is doing the opposite then you need to abandon it.

How to change them

Now that you have a few methods for recognizing your own faults I want to talk about how you can change them for the better. This step is the most important but it is also the hardest. Some strong determination is needed.

1. Be brave

Sometimes to make changes in your personality you need to be brave. You need to be able to overcome the fear of change and do it because you know it is the right thing to do. When you are brave you are able to do so many difficult things. And one of the most difficult things you can do is attempt to change yourself for the better.

2. Understand the outcome

When you do something in life you are doing it with the expectation that it will produce a certain outcome. When you add certain ingredients to a fry pan, for example, you are expecting that it will produce a certain dish. The same is true of self-development. If you understand the results you will be better equipped to make the changes.

For example, if you have recently recognized that you are addicted to procrastination and are taking steps to rectify that problem you can reasonably assume that you will get certain things.

If you are dealing with anger you can expect to become more loving and obtain more friends. If you are dealing with stress you can expect to become more relaxed and peaceful.

When you understand the outcome you are more likely to brave the tough moments on the journey. Constantly remind yourself why you are doing what you are doing. Constantly remind yourself of your goal. This will energize and strengthen you.

Conclusion

Recognizing your personal faults and changing them is not easy. It is hard work and it can, at times, be extremely painful. But the end result is always worth it. Everything in life that is worthwhile doing is difficult. The same is true of this. It is possible to change even the most deep seeded habits.