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The Success Equation |
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IQ (25%) x Achievement Motivation & Time Management (25%) x Character Traits (25%) x Learning Strategies & Encouragement (25%) = SUCCESS in School, Work, and Life |
Basic Ideas:q Families have the best opportunity to boost character traits and promote positive success habits. q Character traits, and effective ways to develop them, apply equally to children and adults. q Parents can effectively teach their children anything they (1) become aware is important, (2) understand, (3) can model in their own lives and (4) communicate to their children. q Developing character traits gives parents and children more in common to talk about and share. Today, the average parent spends only twelve and a half minutes a day communicating with his or her child. Families can increase the quality of their interactions by participating together in learning about and developing character traits important to happiness and success. q Extended families, friends, and volunteers can participate and make important contributions. q The easiest and most powerful way to develop character traits is to make the process regular and part of everyday life. q The processes involved in developing character traits also increase quality of life. Life is composed not so much of material things, but of meanings, awareness, and relationships. The world we live in can be made ever more beautiful and meaningful by the regular infusion of positive character traits. q It is important to our country. You have but to pick up any newspaper or magazine, or watch television, to be reminded how important. Particularly Important Parent Actions:q Model What You Want Your Children to Do q Know What You Need to Teach. Understand Clearly Each Important Character Trait q Make it a Habit to Purposely Develop Each Character Trait q Identify and Correct or Support any Weak Areas (thought viruses) q Set up a Teaching/Learning Wall or Bulletin Board q Schedule Weekly Family Activity Times |
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The Meaning of Character Letters of the alphabet are also known as characters. Character originally meant a distinguishing mark. As letters of the alphabet and other marks that stood for things were invented, they were referred to as characters. But the word character can also refer to qualities within us: our character. As we develop each desired character trait, such as honesty and courage, we are developing our character. Just as letters of the alphabet when combined become the basis of a beautiful and powerful language, so each character trait combines with others to produce a beautiful and powerful person. |
| Build a Powerful and Meaningful Family Support
System It is exciting to develop a family support system that can make a positive difference for generations. Make it a challenge and a habit to establish a major characteristic (distinguishing mark) in your family to support each other's efforts to grow, develop, and live fulfilling lives. First, take time to explore how many ideas or ways everyone in your family can list of how to support each other. Write the ideas on large paper that can be left on the kitchen wall or bulletin board. You might want to do this over a week's time, with daily discussions as to new ways that could be added. When satisfied with your list, have each person choose several of the most important ways he or she would like to be supported. Each person's list should be written on a sheet of paper with his or her name on top and displayed so it can be referred to and reviewed during the next several weeks. Challenge each person to make those ways into lasting habits. |
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Boost Quality of Life and Build a Life of Beauty
Life is composed not so much of material things, but of meanings and relationships. Sometimes, this is referred to as culture. The world you and your family live in and grow in can be made more beautiful and meaningful by the regular infusion of positive character traits. According to Plato,
You know that
the beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of
a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being
formed and the desired impression is more readily taken ....
Shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales which
may be devised by casual persons, and to receive into their minds ideas for the
most part the very opposite of those which we should wish them to have when they
are grown up? We cannot .... Anything
received into the mind at that age is likely to become indelible and
unalterable: and therefore it is most important that the tales which the young
first hear should be models of virtuous thoughts .... Then will our youth dwell in a land of health, amid fair
sights and sounds, and receive the good in everything; and beauty, the effluence
of fair works, shall flow into the eye and ear, like a health-giving breeze from
a purer region, and insensibly draw the soul from the earliest years into
likeness and sympathy with the beauty of reason. There can be no nobler training than that. To the extent you have beauty within you, to that same degree you are able to see it wherever you go. You have probably heard the story of newcomers who asked a farmer to what kind of town they were arriving. The farmer first asked from what kind of town the newcomers came. Whatever their answer, he replied they would probably find this town to be much the same. |
| Increase Communication and Closeness Developing character traits gives you more in common to talk about and share. Did you know the average parent spends only twelve and a half minutes a day communicating with his or her child? Increase the quality of life in your home by participating together in the development of a more beautiful world through the inclusion of character traits. |
| Build Success Power Much of a person’s success in achieving important goals in life is directly connected to character traits. It is at least equal in power to ability, and it magnifies whatever ability a person has. Whether we are talking about academic success in school, occupational success out of school, or success in life in any area, character traits play a major role. |
| Character Development is a Key Purpose of Earth
Life A key purpose here on earth is
to attain virtue by virtue the principles important for Heavenly Father’s
children to learn. The conditions
we find here on the earth are ideal to learn those virtues.
As Helen Keller put it, Life is a
succession of lessons which must be lived in order to be understood. |
| Parents
and Families are Effective in Teaching
Anything They Understand and Value Make it a personal and family commitment and habit to:
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Learn the relationship between character traits and
emotional intelligence (EQ), and why character traits and success habits have
such a large impact on school and life success.