Today
The Six Key Attributes for Success
by Doug Manning
Posted July 5, 2006 11:00 AM
Posted July 5, 2006 11:00 AM
Posted in
I have always found it uncomfortable to refer to any individual as 'disabled'. Rick Hanson's statement that, "Everybody is disabled, it's just some disabilities are more visible than others" reminds me that a disability is more an inflexibility of the culture than a problem with the individual. My grandmother's wisdom also rings true. She said, "Your greatest gift is also your greatest weakness," recognizing that the greatness of any human attribute is a reflection of what we value in circumstance.
I prefer to view us all as disabled. Each of us also has talent. The trick is how effective you are with what you've got and have learned. It is true that some disabilities are so severe that self-management is out of the question. However, as long as the individual is capable of making choices, the visibility of a person's disability makes them no better or worse than me. We both can do more, be more.
It is from this context that I refer to the interesting research on the key human attributes influencing life success for 'children with learning disabilities'. The research, "traced the lives of individuals with learning disabilities in an attempt to identify factors that predicted successful life outcomes." The research identifies six key 'success attributes'. As I view us all as disabled in our own sweet way, I think these are great considerations for anyone interested in authoring their own life success.
The six success attributes are:
(1) Self-awareness, (2) Proactivity, (3) Perseverence, (4) Goal-setting, (5) Presence and Use of Support Systems, and (6) Emotional Coping Strategies
None of these should surprise anybody. These are attributes that enable anyone. What is surprising is that we have not made development of these attributes core curriculum in schools. Theoretical studies in Math and English are not enough to build a healthy culture and a robust economy in this century. Experts cannot know all that must be known in a changing economy but they can teach how to know it. A balance of theory and practice is mandatory for both teaching and evaluation in today's schools.
Do you want more success in your own life? Focus on developing these six attributes. Perhaps you can have an approach to life like this person quoted in the research:
"You know, everybody comes with a package. And yeah, there are things that I am good at and things that I am not so good at. Some of my limitations are reading and writing. But boy, when it comes to putting things together, reading plans, and chasing down problems, those are some talents, some skills that I was born with . . . I carved a different path and my whole life has been that way." Reading this study is a great place to start carving your own different path.
Comments
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Posted July 5, 2006 9:43 PM
We are all in some sense "disabled" or "differently abled" from the perspective that we each have differing abilities. We also each have differing learning styles -- something the general trend of public one-size-fits-all education makes all too clear. Thus children who are in the process of discovering their own gifts and passions are all too often led to believe they are "disabled" rather than uniquely abled. Lives are being potentially ruined everyday in grade school classrooms. Then the prejudices, ways of interpreting hierarchies of "ableness" follow into the cultural norm. People develop anxieties about their own abilities, perceive a need to hide who they are and their unique gifts, because those gifts do not express in the socially prescribed range of normality.
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