CLICK BELOW TO REDISCOVER HUMANITY
A DECADE+ OF STORYTELLING POWERED BY THE BEST WRITERS ON THE PLANET

How Would You Characterize Your Disposition?

COUNTLESS-JOYS-by-Devaney-Rae-MastheadDo you ever consider how your disposition affects your available choices in life? Even more, how does your disposition impact your existing relationships, as well as the outcomes in your work or project efforts?

Oh, and for the record: your disposition has to do with your usual mood and your tendencies to act or to think in a certain way. Here’s the “technical-of-it” from Mr. Webster:

[message type=”custom” width=”100%” start_color=”#FFFFFF” end_color=”#FFFFFF” border=”#fb7200″ color=”# fb7200″]dis·po·si·tion

Pronunciation: dispəˈziSH(ə)n/
noun: disposition; plural noun: dispositions
1. person’s inherent qualities of mind and character.
Synonyms: temperament, nature, character, constitution, makeup, mentality1[/message]

[su_spacer]

Your Mindset

I had an amazing instructor for my college-level Anatomy and Physiology (A&P) course. Not only did he provide excellent A&P instruction, but he also connected fun stories and songs to the various content in his efforts to help the students recall the massive volume of material. In helping students learn the skeletal system, he connected the catchy children’s song, “The Skeletal Dance”, to his technical instruction. And, yes, we were dancing around the lab in our small group study sessions. Because I know you want the song stuck in your head for days, here are a few of the lyrics:

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones. [Skeleton dance. Move to the left.]
Doin’ the skeleton dance. [Skeleton dance.]
The foot bone’s connected to the leg bone. [Point to your foot, then to your lower leg.]
The leg bone’s connected to the knee bone. [Point to your lower leg, then your knee.]
The knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone. [Point to your knee, then your thigh.]
Doin’ the skeleton dance. 2

Similar to the connection of bones in the skeletal system your mindset is connected to your words. Here’s how the mindset-to-words connection flows: when your established set of attitudes (your mindset) is left unchallenged, over a period of time you generally develop fixed beliefs, strong opinions, and patterned tendencies in your responses and behaviors. These impact your interactions with others about various subject matter, especially your responses and behaviors as reflected through your words. Therefore, your mindset becomes obvious to others through your words.

Here’s the Deal: Are you drawing amazing choices (people and situations) into your life, or do you repel them, through the reflection of your mindset?

Your Brokenness

Whether you are drawing or repelling choices into your life is highly dependent upon your ability to function from a healthy emotional and mental state of being. This position is strongly impacted by your life experiences – both positive and negative.

Altogether, you are not the only person who has experienced unresolved pain in your thoughts and feelings.

No one is immune to the brokenness that life’s experiences bring upon the mind and heart.However, the difference between walking in brokenness and living in victory is how you choose to address the impact of brokenness.

When you choose to allow unresolved pain to dwell in your thoughts and feelings, you are essentially choosing to operate from a wounded position in life.

When you allow wounded thoughts and feelings to shape your mindset, well, your words and behavior will reflect the fruit of brokenness. Here’s how brokenness often looks in action:

[message type=”custom” width=”100%” start_color=”#F0F0F0 ” end_color=”#F0F0F0 ” border=”#BBBBBB” color=”#333333″]

  • Insecurities in your thoughts and feelings lead to dominating behavior. You will generally seek control, authority, and power in every relationship and within every team you are involved with. From this broken position, you will manipulate truth and facts (reality) into what you need your reality to be. This warped, self-concocted reality makes a way for you to deceitfully maneuver your way around the established order of authority within a relationship or a group effort. From this vantage point, you gain your stolen control and authority, thus you are better able to nurse your insecurities as you try to interact with others.
  • Self-focused and self-centered mindsets lead to demanding your rights. You will continually seek to be understood rather than seeking to understand the truth and facts (reality) of situations – and of others. From this broken position, you will talk over and walk over others as you blindly seek to have your way. You will do this with a total disregard for the best interests of others – even as you declare your undying concern for everyone being protected in the matter. From this vantage point, you create continual drama scenes that serve to distract and exhaust the best efforts of everyone involved. Within the chaos of your self-focused drama, you are better able to nurse your “Me, Myself, and I” mindset as you try to interact with others.
  • Disrespect of others and of processes leads to the creation of discord and turmoil. Not only do you chronically criticize, but you have a total disregard for the value of anyone else’s contribution. This is reflected in your behavior of grabbing all of the core work and doing it yourself, or assigning the work to your controlled minions. From this broken position, you over-value your gifts and talents (and those of the people you bring into the game). At the same time, you sarcastically reduce everyone else’s value to the ground beneath your feet. From this vantage point, you are able to add the bullets of domination and self-focused efforts right into your machine gun of disrespect.[/message]

Wrapping Up the Mood and Tendencies of Disposition

Clearly, it is not an easy, walk-in-the-park proposition to honestly assess your disposition. Nor is it easy to make the necessary changes when it is discovered that “the ugly” dominates your general mood and tendencies. However, it is certainly a worthy cause and effort as it relates to drawing amazing choices (people and situations) into your life.

Here’s a worthy thought: What if you considered that you may not know what you don’t know about any given matter? Could the truths and facts (reality) of a matter cause you to be dead-wrong in your attacking, controlling position?

Have you considered asking the correct people the correct questions before you craft your position and set out on an attacking crusade? Do you really know all of the facts and truth (reality) about the relationship, situation, or project?

It all matters in matters of drawing amazing choices into your world.

Here’s another worthy thought: Are you so rigid because of your brokenness that the very position you are striving to attain could be easily achieved with a little flexibility?

Simply being willing to change or modify your way (so everyone’s best interest can truly be discovered) could create great strides in achieving the results you desire. What if you became more flexible with the rigidity of your beliefs and attitudes? Sometimes it’s all about the approach. You can either continue to hold your finger on the trigger of your machine gun of brokenness, or you can release your tight grip by flowing with a little flexibility.

The choice is really yours: continue killing off every messenger of amazing choices or invest in some valued counseling and lose the brokenness. If you could only see that your cloak of brokenness is ugly and destructive, thus repelling the very opportunities you are striving so negligently to attain!

New flexibility might position you for all you are striving for through your broken behavior. You’d be embarrassed if you could transparently see yourself in the reflection of your broken behavior.

But clear vision requires the very thing you are striving to grab: genuine and mature control over yourself in order to gain the valued, altruistic-focused authority that leads to true power.

It’s a paradox that only the simple, authentic child-like spirit can understand – kind of like the truth and facts (reality) of The Skeletal Dance. The foot bone is connected to the leg bone. And if you try to deceitfully manipulate that reality for self-gain, you will walk in brokenness!

Copyright 2016. Devaney Rae, L.L.C. All Rights Reserved.

References:
1 “disposition.” Merriam-Webster.com. 2011. http://www.merriam-webster.com (4 June 2016).
2 The Skeletal Dance. Super Simple Learning. 2016. Retrieved 4 June 2016 from: <http://supersimplelearning.com/songs/themes-series/halloween/the-skeleton-dance/>

DispositionAffectsChoices_May2016

Devaney Rae
Devaney Raehttp://www.countlessjoys.com/
Devaney’s professional background includes professional Business Development, Leadership, and Life on Purpose Coaching, along with Instructional Design Technology consulting for Training & Presentation Design. Devaney also provides professional consulting within Organizational/ Performance Management for business owners and decision-makers. Devaney also established Life On Purpose with Devaney Rae in early 2018 as a way to connect with others who want to Get From Where You Are Now To Where You Want to Be. This effort connects people with professional coaching and a variety of resources to establish business growth that includes learning to create and manage multiple streams of income. Devaney works one-on-one and in small groups with people to create their own Life Purpose Plan and to develop the correct Business Strategy for Growth. Then, she helps them bring the plan to life so each one can step into their ownMORE! She has enjoyed a successful career in Healthcare Administration, Chemical Manufacturing, Retail Sales, Marketing, and within the Non-Profit Business sectors. Devaney earned her Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Walden University and her Master’s degree in Instructional Design Technology for Professional Trainers from New York Institute of Technology. She also earned a degree in Dental Hygiene with license to practice in Texas and Louisiana. Devaney is a published author of the book, Countless Joys: The Place Beyond Tears (Westbow Press, 2015). The content is her story about how ordinary people are called to do “the extraordinary” in life. She has a passion for impacting others with life-giving hope, joy, and peace. Devaney established a non-profit organization, Countless Joys, Inc. in 2015. The mission of Countless Joys, Inc. is to Touch the Lives of Others with Joy. The specific focus is on Interrupting Human Trafficking of children and teenagers. Altogether, giving back to others is Devaney’s personal life mission and joy. Devaney makes her home in Franklin, Tennessee.

DO YOU HAVE THE "WRITE" STUFF? If you’re ready to share your wisdom of experience, we’re ready to share it with our massive global audience – by giving you the opportunity to become a published Contributor on our award-winning Site with (your own byline). And who knows? – it may be your first step in discovering your “hidden Hemmingway”. LEARN MORE HERE


3 CONVERSATIONS

  1. Devaney, you have given us an excellent illustration of causes, symptoms, and effects of allowing wounds and brokenness to become embedded and solidified until it becomes the only response people know. Thank you for clearly articulating the “worthy thoughts” that serve to feed our own ideas and cognitive processes that end up as behavior. If I don’t want this outcome, then I need to work backward through the symptoms and resolve the source.

TAKE STROLL INSIDE 360° NATION

TIME FOR A "JUST BE." MOMENT?

ENJOY OUR FREE EVENTS

BECAUSE WE'RE BETTER TOGETHER