Lesson 1: PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT (Knowing and Understanding Oneself during

Middle and Late Adolescence)

Personal Development- is a process that covers a wide array of areas that includes
awareness of the self, of one’s potentials and identity.

A process of assessing one’s qualities, traits, skills, interests to be able to set life goals
meant to be realized in the near future.

KNOWING THE SELF

The ‘self’ is defined as the individuality of a person which is subject of learning experiences,
varied emotions and thought.

Ideal self- is the self that you aspire to be. It is the one that you hope will possess
characteristics similar to that of a mentor or some other worldly figure.

Actual self- however, is the one that you actually see. It is the self that has characteristics
that you were nurtured or, in some cases, born to have.

The actual self and the ideal self are two broad categories of self-concept.

Self-concept -refers to your awareness of yourself. It is the construct that negotiates these
two selves. In other words, it connotes first the identification of the ideal self as separate
from others, and second, it encompasses all the behaviors evaluated in the actual self that
you engage in to reach the ideal self.

Self-knowledge-is derived from social interactions that provide insight into how others
react to you. The actual self is who we actually are. It is how we think, how we feel, look, and
act.

The actual self-can be seen by others, but because we have no way of truly knowing how
others view us, the actual self is our self-image. The actual self is built on self-knowledge.

The ideal self- on the other hand, is how we want to be. It is an idealized image that we
have developed over time, based on what we have learned and experienced. The ideal self
could include components of what our parents have taught us, what we admire in others,
what our society promotes, and what we think is in our best interest.

Negotiation that exists between the two selves

1. Social roles- that are adjusted and re-adjusted, and are derived from outcomes of
social interactions from infant to adult development. Alignment is important. If the
way that I am (the actual self) is aligned with the way that I want to be (the ideal
self), then I will feel a sense of mental well-being or peace of mind.

2. The incongruence- or lack of alignment, If the way that I am is not aligned with
how I want to be, will result in mental distress or anxiety. The greater the level of
incongruence between the ideal self and real self, the greater the level of resulting
distress.

PERSONAL EFFECTIVENESS
  Personal effectiveness-means making use of all the personal resources – talents,
skills, energy and time, to enable you to achieve life goals.

 Your knowledge of yourself and how you manage yourself impacts directly on your
personal effectiveness.

 Being self-aware, making the most of your strengths, learning new skills and
techniques and behavioral flexibility are all keys to improving your personal
performance.

 Our personal effectiveness depends on our innate characteristics – talent and

experience accumulated in the process of personal development.

 Talents first are needed to be identified and then developed to be used in a particular
subject area (science, literature, sports, politics, etc.). Experience includes
knowledge and skills that we acquire in the process of cognitive and practical
activities.

 Knowledge is required for setting goals, defining an action plan to achieve them and
risk assessment.

 Skills also determine whether real actions are performed in accordance with the
plan. If the same ability is used many times in the same situation, then it becomes a
habit that runs automatically, subconsciously.

Here are some skills that will greatly increase the efficiency of any person who
owns them:

1. Determination- It allows you to focus only on achieving a specific goal without being
distracted by less important things or spontaneous desires. It may be developed with the
help of self-discipline exercise.

2. Self-confidence- It appears in the process of personal development, as a result of getting

aware of yourself, your actions and their consequences. Self-confidence is manifested in
speech, appearance, dressing, gait, and physical condition. To develop it, you need to learn
yourself and your capabilities, gain positive attitude and believe that by performing right
actions and achieving right goals you will certainly reach success.

3. Persistence- It makes you keep moving forward regardless of emerging obstacles –

problems, laziness, bad emotional state, etc. It reduces the costs of overcoming obstacles. It
can also be developed with the help of self-discipline exercise.

4. Managing stress- It helps combat stress that arises in daily life from the environment
and other people. Stress arises from the uncertainty in an unknown situation when a lack of
information creates the risk of negative consequences of your actions. It increases efficiency
in the actively changing environment.

5. Problem-solving skills- They help cope with the problems encountered with a lack of
experience. It increases efficiency by adopting new ways of achieving goals when obtaining a
new experience.

6. Creativity- It allows you to find extraordinary ways to carry out a specific action that no
one has tried to use. It can lead to a decrease or an increase of costs, but usually the speed
of action is greatly increased when using creative tools.

7. Generating ideas- It helps you achieve goals using new, original, unconventional ideas.
Idea is a mental image of an object formed by the human mind, which can be changed
before being implemented in the real world. For generating ideas you can use a method of
mental maps, which allows you to materialize, visualize and scrutinize all your ideas, which in
turn contributes to the emergence of new ideas. These are just some, but the most important
personal effectiveness skills which make the achievement of any goal easier and less costly.

Lesson 2: KNOWING ONESELF

 Self knowledge-means understanding your own sensations, thoughts,

beliefs, values, and behaviors.
 It's about knowing what makes you tick, why you get out of bed in the
morning, and what you value in relationships.
 Examining yourself requires constant self-awareness and self-
consciousness.

DEFINING THE “SELF”

Adolescence is the time when young people start to ask questions about themselves,
about their future, and even about their religious and political beliefs. During the
adolescent stage of development, the young person grapples with his or her identity.
This may seem very philosophical to some, but to know oneself is the first step in
personal development.

For Socrates, the most important thing to pursue was self-knowledge, and
admitting one's ignorance is the beginning of true knowledge.

SELF

• In philosophical terms, it is the being, which is the source of a person's

consciousness. It is the agent responsible for an individual's thoughts and actions.

• It is an intangible entity that directs a person's thoughts and actions. It is outside the
physical realm of the person.

• It is the essence of a person: his thoughts, feelings and actions, experiences, beliefs,
values, principles, and relationships.

• The "Self" includes a person's life purpose, meaning, and aspirations.

• is defined as the cognitive and affective representation of one's identity, it is then

defined in terms of human characteristics such as behavior and thought.

PERSONALITY
 Referred to as the set of behaviors, feelings, thoughts, and motives that identifies an
individual. It’s the essence of who we are and is the embodiment of one's physical,
psychological, cognitive, affective, and spiritual self.

According to Feist and Rosenberg in 2012,

Personality refers to the unique and relatively enduring set of behaviors, feelings,
thoughts, and motives that characterized an individual.

Gordon Allport defines personality as “a pattern of habits, attitudes, and traits that are
determine an individual’s characteristics, behavior and traits,”

(Sanchez, Abad, and Jao2012)

NATURE, NURTURE, AND PERSONALITY

Personality is influenced by both nature (heredity or genetic make-up) and nurture
(environment). There is no single gene that creates a trait. It is always a complex
combination of genes, environmental exposure and experiences, and cultural
backgrounds. There are common personality traits that cross many cultures.

Trait theory-is an approach in identifying types of personalities based on certain traits or

attributes, which vary from one person to the other.

It was developed over the past 60 years, started by D. W. Fiske (1949) and later pursued by
other researchers including Norman (1967), Smith (1967),Goldberg.(1981), and McCrae and
Costa (1987)

The big five or the five factor model was developed by Psychologists Costa and
McRae in 1992. It is a categorized scheme that described personality. Based on
their research, they discovered the existence of five universal and widely agreed
upon dimensions of personality.

Openness to experience- curiosity, interest, imagination, and creativity to new ideas

Conscientiousness – planning , organizing, hardworking, controlling, persevering, and

punctuality

Extraversion –sociable, talkative, active, outgoing, and, fun-loving

Agreeableness –friendly, warm, trusting, generous, and, kind hearted

Neuroticism –calm, relaxed, and comfortable

PERSONALITY TRAITS
Personality trait is a disposition to behave consistently in a particular way, while personality
is a broader term that comprises of traits, motives, thoughts, self-concept, and feelings.

MEASURING PERSONALITY
There are different ways to measure personality,

 one is by observing people's behavior. This is quite limited as other people may not
be able to observe all aspects of personality such as loneliness, which is internal and
is observed by others very subjectively.

Personality can be measured using different kinds of tests like the Rorschach Inkblot
Test, Inkblot Test, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator(MBTI), and the Keirsey.

The Rorschach Inkblot test-is a projective psychological test in which subjects'

perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed using psychological
interpretation, complex algorithms, or both. Some psychologists use this test to examine
a person's personality characteristics and emotional functioning.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

Katherine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers developed the Myers-Briggs personality model
based on four preferences of individuals. There are:

1. E or I (Extraversion or Introversion) is how an individual prefers to channel his or

her energy when dealing with people, whether it is inward (introversion) or
outward(extraversion)

2. S or N (Sensing or Intuition) is how one prefers to process information, whether

through the use of senses such as being able to describe what one sees, or intuitively
like dealing with ideas.

3. T or F (Thinking or Feeling) is how an individual prefers to make decisions, either

thinking or using logic and analysis, or feeling which uses the cognitive senses based on
values or beliefs.

4. J or P (Judgment or Perception) is how an individual prefers to manage one's life,

whether through judging, which means a planned and organized life, versus perception,
which has a more flexible approach to living.

pp

-The combination of these four preferences produces 16 types of combinations of

personality types, usually represented by their first letters.
- Diagram of popular person's indicated in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
 Lesson 3: DEVELOPING THE WHOLE PERSON

What is Holistic Development

The key Phrase in this chapter that you have to pay attention to is whole person,
emphasizing the complete aspects of a person or his totality. in order to understand what it
means ti perceive a person as a whole organism, we will discuss philosophical theories such
as dualism and holism

Mind and Body Dualism of Descartes

Rene Descartes, one of the modern philosophers of our time, influenced much of
mankind's thinking with his theory of duality or understanding the nature of things in a
 simple, dual mode. Hence, you are familiar with the separation of body and spirit in
western religion, and of the mind and body in the study of human sciences. People
perceive things as dual in character.

Holism and Gestalt

In 1926, General Han C. Smuts, a South African statesman, military leader, and
philosopher, wrote about holism in his book Holism and Evolution. He introduced the
academic Terminology for holism as 'the tendency in nature to form wholes which are
greater than the sum of the parts through creative evolution."

An example of holism and gestalt is evident in music. A symphony cannot be defined by

one of its notes alone. Even the clusters or sums of these different notes do not make up
the whole symphony make up the whole symphony nor characterize the whole
symphony. The interaction and fusion of the different notes in a symphony produce
something bigger and greater than the notes themselves. Another example is a car. A
car is made up of hundreds of different parts. Separately, these parts do not represent
the car, but when [ut together and entirely different from its parts.

The Various Aspects of Holistic Development of Persons

Physiological or the physical attributes including the five physical senses;

Cognitive or the intellectual functions of the mind: thinking, recognizing, reasoning,

analyzing, projecting, synthesizing, recalling, and assessing;

Psychological how thinking, feeling, and behaving interact and happen in a person;

Social or the manner by which an individual interacts with other individuals or groups of
individual; and

Spiritual or the attribute of a person's consciousnessand beliefs, including the values and
virtues that guide and put meaning into a person's life.

Feelings and Emotions

Feelings, moods, and emotions do not exactly mean one and the same. Paul Ekman of the
University of California identified six basic emotions that human beings experience:
happiness,sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust. However, a recent research study
(2014) conducted by the Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of
Glasgow and published in a journal, Current Biology, has concluded that there are only four
basic emotions, these are: happy, sad, afraid or surprised, and angry or disgusted.

Feelings and Emotions

Emotion is taken from the Latin verb “movare” which means to move or be upset or
agitated. It is In a state of strong emotion, the person’s physical responses include faster
heartbeat, profuse sweating and dilation of eye pupils, higher blood pressure, and muscular
tremors, affecting the nervous system in general.

Attitudes and Behavior

Attitudes are a person’s thoughts, feelings, and emotions about another person, object,
idea, behavior, or situation. Attitude is a result of a person’s evaluation of an experience with
another person, object, idea, behavior, or situation based on his or her values and belief
systems. Beliefs and certain values therefore, affect the attitude of a person.

Behavior is a manifestation or acting out of the attitudes an individual has.

Values and Virtues

At the core of every person lies a system of beliefs that adheres to the highest ideals of
human existence. These ideals create meaning and purpose in a person’s life. These ideals
are called values. We will refer to values in this chapter as the universal human values that
transcend culture and race. There are different sets of values identified by different people
and depending on what their order of priorities are, and what they intend to achieve. These
are not in conflict with each other, but rather, a ranking in the order of importance over what
set of values they prioritize.

Shalom H. Schwartz

A psychologist and cross-cultural researcher from the Hebrew University of

Jerusalem, conducted a research which covered many different peoples and cultures
to identify the ten common values people have regardless of their racial and cultural
backgrounds. Schwartz wrote in his report, Basic Human Values: Theories, Methods
and Applications, the findings of his research, which identified the ten basic values
that can be characterized by describing their central motivational goals.

These Ten Basic Values are:

1. Self-Direction–independent thought and action; choosing, creating, and exploring.

2. Stimulation–excitement, novelty, and challenge in life.

3. Hedonism–pleasure and sensuous gratification for oneself.

4. Achievement–personal success through demons- trating competence according to

social standards.

5. Power–social status and prestige, and control or dominance over people and
resources.

6. Security– safety, harmony, and stability of society, of relationships, and of self.

 7. 7. Conformity–restraint of actions, inclinations, and im-pulses that are likely to
upset or harm others and vio-late social expectations or norms.

8. 8. Tradition – respect, commitment, and acceptance of the customs and ideas that
traditional culture or religion provide the self.

9. 9. Benevolence preserving and enhancing the welfare of those with whom one is in
frequent personal con- tact (the ‘in-group’).

10. 10.Universalism-understanding, appreciation, tolerance, and protection for the

welfare of all people and of nature.

The motivational goals that characterize the ten values he identified were:

1. openness to change;

2. self-transcendence;

3. self-enhancement; and

4. conservation.

Virtues

There has been confusion over the definition of values and virtues. Oftentimes, people
interchange these two, and when they write down a list of values, they also include virtues in
this list.
Values are usually nouns, while virtues are adjectives that describe positive and desirable
qualities which usually mirror a value it represents.

Here are some examples:

Values are usually reflected through these virtues, which in turn become eminent in the
attitude and behavior of a person.