Strengthen Your Core
I would rather be involved in a bad deal with good people than a good deal with bad people. ~John Sestina
I apologize to those of you who landed on this page accidentally looking for proper plank technique. When I talk about strengthening your core, I am referring to the core of your inner self which will help you to have the proper alignment and foundation to succeed in all other areas.
Your core is your character.
When speaking or writing on personal growth I draw parallels between physical exercise and mental exercise; between athletic championships and personal success. So when I say that character is your core, I mean it is just like the foundational group of muscles that support the rest of you. If you have weak core muscles and only exercise your biceps, eventually you will injure yourself.
Weak character will harm your development in finances, in relationships, in spiritual growth. You may be good at your job and spend a great deal of time exercising your financial muscle. But if that's all you work on, eventually you will sprain a marriage, or strain your spiritual growth, or dislocate a relationship with your child.
(Start humming Cat's in the Cradle by Harry Chapin)
No one wants to trust, associate or depend on someone of weak character. People are naturally attracted to those of strong character. The secret of success is character not talent. So...
What are you doing to strengthen your core? What are you doing to exercise your character?
Four score and two hundred plus years ago, Ben Franklin wrote about the method he designed and implemented into his life to develop his character. He created a list of 13 traits that he regarded as marking someone of good character. His 13 Virtues were: temperance, order, resolution, frugality, moderation, industry, cleanliness, tranquility, silence, sincerity, justice, chastity, humility. He focused on a single virtue each week and recorded his progress including his mistakes and failings in a journal. Over the course of a year he would spend four weeks total on developing each particular virtue.
Frank Bettger, in his book How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success in Selling, developed his own list of 13 traits that he decided to improve using Ben Franklin's 200-year-old technique. His own list of 13 virtues were designed to help him become one of the greatest insurance salesmen that ever lived: enthusiasm, order, think in terms of others' interests, questions, key issue, silence, sincerity, knowledge, belief in others, smile, remember names and faces, service/prospecting, and closing the sale.
Frank Bettger goes out of his way to mention in the book that while he had met many people that had learned about Ben Franklin's training regimen to become a person of character, he had never met anyone that had actually applied it to their life. I heartily agreed with Mr. Bettger, thinking to myself, "Isn't that a shame that so many people would be exposed to such a font of wisdom and choose to ignore it, condemning themselves to a... Oh, wait, I guess I've never done it either." (In my defense I did have my own personal growth plan which may have been discussed in a book I published called Feed The Good Wolf). So all that exposition was just to introduce you to the following bullet points:
- Your success in any field of life will be determined by your character. Weak character equals weak core equals general weakness everywhere (and greater predisposition to injury).
- If you are not consciously exercising your character, it is getting soft and pudgy. Just like your mind and body, if you don't use it, you lose it.
- Don't just blindly decide to "get better," set definite goals and follow a plan. If it helps, make a list of 13 virtues that you would like to improve. Schedule, work your plan, record your progress.
- If you want to see drastic results, hire a personal trainer.
- Photos of women in exercise clothing increase web page traffic. This has nothing to do with helping you to develop your character, I'm just on my "honesty" week.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://mattslawblog.com/strengthen-your-core/