Responding to Your Current Circumstances

Shortly (in future articles) we will be discussing Your Current Circumstances at Home and at Work. But at Home and at Work (and in any other dimension of life you experience), there are common and recurring elements, such as dealing with your own perceptions, emotions and responses; dealing with other people; dealing with your natural and human environment; dealing with technology, money and businesses; dealing with community and government organisations; dealing with routine and normal expectations and dealing with emergencies / crisis situations.

No matter where you find yourself, at Home or Work, you need to have a bag of tricks to effectively and successfully deal with Your Current Circumstances.

Today I will discuss what you need in your bag of tricks in order to be well prepared for life.

Your Bag of Tricks

Both rich and poor people believe that life would be much easier to manage if they just had more money. But let me introduce you to another form of money – the elements that equip you to not only make money but use money wisely and generally succeed in life. 

These are the four things you need in your bag of tricks to survive and thrive. Some of these we have touched on in the past articles. Here they are:

• Knowledge and Understanding
• Attitudes, Beliefs, Values, Standards
• Skills, Competencies, Resources
• Habits of Thought and Action

No matter where we find ourselves in life, in order to survive, maintain stability, succeed or be significant, we first need knowledge and understanding of our circumstances or situation. We need to know all we can about what is around us and what is inside us – how it all works, how it got there, what changes or trends are occurring, what forces and movements are happening and why.

Secondly, we need to have the right attitude to all these things – not only know what is going on and why, but also what you can do about (or with) it. Know what is totally outside your control; what you can tolerate; what you can embrace or what is totally unacceptable. How powerful are you to change things? And does it even matter? These are all attitudes.

Thirdly, assuming you want to do something about it (because if you don’t you won’t),- after knowledge, understanding and a “got to do something about it” attitude, you need the skill and resources to do something.You can either do something about it yourself or skilfully mobilise others to do something about it. This is such an important area that we will discuss it in greater detail next time.

And finally, we need not just to do all these things once, but repeatedly. To survive, be stable, succeed and be significant we need to do all of these things repeatedly, automatically, habitually.

More important than money, this bag of tricks is full of KASH. Note the acronym: 

K = Knowledge and Understanding

A = Attitude, Beliefs, Values, Standards

S = Skills, Competencies, Resources

H = Habits of Thought and Action

Points to Ponder

• What does it mean to be skilled at something?
• Does skill = performance?
• Does skill = problem solving?

Copyright © 2021 John Harris