What if you think about it? What do you understand by softness of character? What does "soft man" mean? Are you happy and should he have a pet at home?

Good-natured character. Soft character. Strong character. Stanyukovich. Eccentric character. Goncharov. I advise you for the last time: tame your character a little.

Firmness (ethics)

Kindness without firmness is flawed. Reacting kindly, without a certain firmness, to frankly bad, evil and inhuman things is not kindness. Lao Tzu taught: “If you want to be hard, keep hard with softness; if you want to be strong, protect your strength with weakness. Does he have toughness? She must speak to him very tenderly, but inner firmness must be mandatory. Character is dead firmness, decisions made once and for all.

In psychology, hardness, in addition to perseverance, can be associated with the concepts of hardiness, resilience, and achievement motivation. Hardness is defined as a stable trait that does not require a quick feedback (result). Individuals with a high level of toughness can maintain determination and motivation for a long time despite unsuccessful life experience and misfortune. This means that toughness, unlike many traditional criteria of behavior, is not related to intelligence. Perseverance is a prerequisite for perseverance. Hardness is a character trait, but resilience is a dynamic process.

There are a number of positive qualities that arise in connection with the hardness of a person's character. It does not matter if he has a natural talent or other prerequisites for achieving the goal. He will do everything that depends on him.

When firmness is bad

A firm character must be combined with flexibility of thinking, otherwise it will turn into donkey stubbornness. Let the word "hardness" be more consonant with "strength" than with "stony indifference." Solid people have a very stable worldview, that is, a basis. And its design necessarily changes with time and progress. Hard doesn't mean brittle when we're talking about character.

Of course, like any other character trait, sometimes hardness of mind can be uncomfortable. A person considers his judgments to be absolutely correct, and the opinions of others are insignificant. He knows what, when, in what sequence and how exactly people should do. He will not miss the opportunity to give advice, sometimes in a rude manner, often on topics that do not concern him. Hardness can manifest itself in the form of personality rigidity, which I wrote about not so long ago.

Of course, these principles should ideally deal with important aspects for the individual, for example, adherence to a certain lifestyle, a firm refusal to smoke, alcohol, lies, etc. A solid person, as a rule, does not refuse responsibility for other people or affairs, does not show weakness in solving serious issues.

And one of them was firmness of character. You need to be absolutely clear about what you are interested in and what exactly causes a feeling of admiration. It fills the body with energy that seems to come from nowhere, gives strength to go to bed with confidence in the future and wake up with burning eyes to do something important and meaningful. Consistency and perseverance don't have to be stressful. Without learning to control your time, you will have to put aside the dream and passion of a lifetime in order to constantly respond to the world's requests.

Only a firm and strong character helps to achieve your goals in life. How to develop a stronger character and strong moral discipline?

To state unequivocally that Soft means weak and a loser is just as wrong as Hard means strong and successful. For example, soft and good man, by nature does not like conflicts and does not like to hurt people, whether with words or deeds. By the way, this article prompted me to write one such soft, but I'm sure a strong and purposeful person. In addition, this sensitive, if he is sufficiently strong-willed and confident man, with a strong desire, can correct this character trait of his. No Alena is not necessarily soft means phlegmatic. The fact is that when they say “soft man”, everyone imagines for himself some kind of his own set of qualities inherent in this person. For some, soft is equated to weak, and for another, it is a gentle and affectionate companion. I think such men should not worry.

Toughness of character allows you to freely pursue your goals and at the same time builds your resilience to failure. A strong character gives you the courage to admit your shortcomings, frivolity and weaknesses. Excessive and sensual appetites are a sign of a weak character, while the ability to withhold (suspend) reward and practice self-control indicate strength of character. The ability to find a middle ground is a sign of a strong character that can withstand extremes. Without peace, there is no willpower. Without peace, desires can ignite very quickly, turning into an invincible passion and hindering sound thinking. 16. Have patience - to enthusiastically set, pursue and achieve your goals, whether they are short-term or long-term: that is, to make progress (success). Be a man of your word and avoid the temptation to lie; honesty maintains a strong character.

Of course, the one who, coordinating his personal interests with public ones, achieves his goal, overcoming various obstacles, and the more significant they are, the stronger the will of a person. How to cultivate a strong will and a strong character? Perseverance allows you to move steadily towards the goal: "Start, endure and resist"! A very important condition for cultivating willpower and a strong character is self-control and a critical attitude towards one's actions. Know how to overpower yourself and admit your own mistakes and defeats, speak publicly with criticism of the wrong behavior of your colleagues, friends - this is how character is tempered. To stimulate volitional efforts, use self-encouragement, inspiring yourself, encouraging, instilling faith in success, your strength, driving away thoughts of possible failure.

This person has an inner core, ”they say about people with a strong character. In general, firmness is inherent in strong personalities who have found the key to success, albeit not immediately: Henry Ford, Walt Disney, JK Rowling. Firmness of character is a strong trait that is very difficult to work on without the help of a psychologist or coach. They are natural to humans and require special attention. I recommend starting with books, not exercises from the Internet. Each chapter contains recommendations that can be applied in Everyday life. That's basically all for starters.

It would seem how many words have already been said about the fact that “you can’t even pull a fish out of a pond without effort”, that abilities are half the battle, that the path to long-term goals is never short and that success depends on will and perseverance? However, most of us continue to rely solely on our remarkable talent, expect quick results, be afraid of mistakes, and, of course, motivate-motivate-motivate ourselves in every possible way (although we usually do best only).

Well, the most favorite: "With my mind, and not achieve the goal?".

“But we won’t achieve it,” psychologist Angela Lee Duckworth tells us and drives the final nail into the coffin of our illusions about the world and our prospects. MacArthur Foundation Genius Award winner Angela Duckworth retired from a highly successful consulting job to teach mathematics at a New York high school. During her teaching career, Angela came to the conclusion that the IQ level is far from being the main indicator of the success of students, among whom there were a lot of very smart, but seriously lagging behind guys.

So I left school and went to graduate school to become a psychologist. I began to study children and adults in various very difficult situations. In each study, I asked myself: “Who is successful here and why, what determines success?”. My research team and I visited the West Point Military Academy. We tried to predict which of the cadets would continue military training and which would be expelled. We also visited the National Spelling Bee and tried to guess which kids would get the highest places. We studied interns working in crime neighborhoods, wondering which teachers would stay here to teach at the end. school year? Which one will be the most effective in teaching their students? We partnered with private companies, asking the question: which sales managers will retain their positions? Which of them will earn the most? In all these different situations, one character trait turned out to be an unequivocal key to success. And these are not social skills, not external beauty or health, and not even IQ. It was firmness of character.

The observations that I made during my professional, teaching and psychological activity Angela Lee Duckworth, formed the basis of her scientific research, which is of interest not only from the point of view of pedagogy, but also from the standpoint of the development of any person. In her TED talk, Angela Duckworth goes into more detail about the stages of her work.

In How Kids Succeed, author Paul Toth says the following about Duckworth's work:

Duckworth finds it useful to separate the mechanics of goal achievement into two separate dimensions: motivation and will. Each of them, she says, is necessary to achieve long-term goals, but not sufficient on its own. Most of us have motivation but no will: You can be extremely motivated to lose weight, but if you don't have the will and self-control to give up, you're unlikely to succeed. If a child has enough motivation, then you need to think about how to develop strength of character in him. But what if a person has no motivation to achieve a goal? Then any self-control and similar tricks will have no effect.

According to Duckworth, it is here, at this point of lack of self-control and weak motivation, that toughness of character comes into play, which helps us achieve long-term, abstract goals.

Strength of character is passion and perseverance in achieving long-term goals. Strength of character must be persistent. Strength of character becomes an integral part of your future, day by day, not for a week, not for a month, but for many years of hard work dedicated to making the future a reality. To live with strength of character is to live as if your life is not a sprint, but a marathon.

Angela Duckworth knows what she's talking about. When she began studying the influence of character on student achievement in Chicago public schools several years ago, Duckworth conducted a simple experiment (1): she conducted a simple survey among thousands of students to determine the level of strength of character (teenagers determined how much statements like "I'm a hard worker", " New ideas and projects sometimes distract me from previous ones” correspond to them), and then waited more than a year for the moment of completion to look at the progress of their respondents. As it turned out, children with more toughness of character (as the test showed at one time) often finished school better than children with high IQ, even if they lost to the rest on such indicators as family income, results of general education tests and feeling safe at school. .

On the issue of strength of character, I was shocked by how little we know, how little science knows about how to educate it. Every day, parents and teachers ask me, “How can I develop strength of character in my children? How to teach children to take work seriously? How to keep them motivated? I honestly answer, "I don't know." (Laughter) But I know for a fact that talent won't make you tough. The results of our research clearly show that there are many talented people who simply do not follow through on their commitments. In fact, according to our data, the strength of character often does not depend or is inversely proportional to the amount of talent.

Source: BK/Flickr.com.

Earnestly? In my opinion very much. The only question left is: what to do now? How to develop strength of character, especially if we are no longer 10 years old? According to Duckworth, these questions are currently best answered by Stanford University professor Carol Dweck's concept of "developmental orientation", which is based on the belief that learning is not fixed, but can change depending on one's efforts.

During her research, Professor Dweck came to the conclusion that there are two types of people: some consider intelligence as a certain fixed quality (such people say to themselves “I am like this, and therefore this is what I can”) - Dweck calls them representatives of the essential model ; others, representatives of the incremental model, according to Dweck, are convinced that intelligence is something that changes. All the consequences follow from this: people who are sure that at a certain age training is not able to make them better, limit their capabilities and do not make extra efforts to achieve goals, while adherents of the incremental theory consider their capabilities as unlimited, strive to obtain new ones. skills and succeed. What this separation depends on, Dweck does not know, but she is convinced that the experience of people who continue to improve their skills and constantly achieve new goals suggests that there are no limits other than those that we have invented for ourselves.

So it turns out that the strength of character, which determines our achievements, is largely related to our ideas about whether we are able to learn and develop. And this means that the only option to change something in your life, if this has not happened for a long time, is to discard all thoughts about the impossibility of achieving any results, start learning new things, even if you are extremely far from adolescence, and passionately and persistently move towards your goal.

Recognized masters of their craft tell us the same thing:

Success is going from one failure to another with increasing enthusiasm. Winston Churchill

"Inspiration for amateurs, the rest just work." Chuck Close

“Remember that even a person endowed with the seal of a genius will not give anything, not only great, but also average, if he does not work hellishly.” P. I. Tchaikovsky

“Of course, there must be talent, but talent is a cheap commodity, cheaper than table salt. A successful person is separated from a simple talented one by hard work and long painstaking study, a constant process of improvement. Stephen King

On the cover: Sergei Eisenstein.

Links to sources

1. Duckworth AL, Peterson C, Matthews MD, Kelly DR. Grit: perseverance and passion for long-term goals. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2007 Jun;92(6):1087-101. (http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/Grit%20JPSP.pdf)

2. Carol S. Dweck “What promotes adaptive motivation? Four beliefs and four truths about ability, success, praise, and confidence.” (https://llk.media.mit.edu/courses/readings/Dweck.pdf)

“You have an inner hardness, some kind of strength that can crush metal. Whatever success costs you, you get it." Stephen King

In Christianity, firmness is considered one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, and despondency is considered its opposite. It is the firmness of character that allows us to achieve everything we want. And weakness of character destroys all our plans.

“If a rat is placed in an aquarium filled with water, it will stay afloat for no more than 30 minutes. But if you pull it out of the water in the last seconds of the 30th minute, let it rest, feed it, and after some time throw it back into the water, then it will be able to stay afloat for a day or more. In the hope that she will be rescued at the last minute ... "

So it is with man. We do not believe with our own strength. We give up early. We succumb to the “weakling” within us. How to cultivate firmness of character? Let's take two examples to demonstrate the firmness of character.

Strength of character. How to start playing sports?

You decided to go in for sports and went for a run. But I ran quite a bit and got tired. You decide that the first time is enough. It awakened self-pity. You must show firmness of character and run on ...

After 5 minutes, the body will begin to demand rest, and the inner voice of the “weakling” will beg to stop. You must show firmness of character and run on ...

You're covered in sweat, your muscles don't listen well, and the weakling inside of you is screaming for mercy. You must show firmness of character and run on ...

Don't stop, don't feel sorry for yourself, don't be weak. Do you care about your well-being and muscle pain? It opened up a second wind. Run until you complete the original plan. Only then you have the right to stop, but not before.

As said main character Vincent Freeman, in the sci-fi film Gattaca: “Do you want to understand how I do it? Everything is very simple - I do not save strength on the way back. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, save your strength and give indulgences.

Strength of character. How to quit smoking?

The second example is very significant. Many people want to quit smoking. It just seems to be hard. It's easy if you're not weak.

My grandfather's brother, Uncle Pasha, went through the entire Second World War. He fought with the Germans in the Crimea, was captured and fled from it. Then Uncle Pasha fought in the officer penal battalion, was wounded, fully rehabilitated and awarded medals. He was a very respected man in our small town.

During one feast, he promised to quit smoking, crumpled the pack and threw it away. He never smoked large ones in his life. He said that he even dreamed of cigarettes. But he didn't give in. Uncle Pasha had character.

Do you have character? Or are you a rag? In any case, ruthlessness to yourself and firmness of character are important. Stop giving up, giving up and retreating half way.

We are all from a family that has been victorious for centuries. Don't shame your kind. Stay strong until you win...