Skills that Build, Enhance
or Maintain Self-Respect
Part 1
Week Seven
Topics
• The “Big Five” Trait Factors
and Subjective Well Being
• Mindfulness (Consciousness)
• Self-Evaluation Skills
• Giving and Receiving
Constructive Feedback
Re-Visiting the Definition of
Self-Respect
• Self-Respect
– The conviction that our life and wellbeing are worth acting to support,
protect, and nurture
– Assurance of my value
– Confidence in our right to be
successful and happy
• Joy and fulfillment are my natural birthright
– The feeling of being worthy and
deserving
The “Big Five” Trait Factors and
Subjective Well Being
• OCEAN
– Openness to experience
– Conscientiousness
– Extraversion
– Agreeability
– Neuroticism
The “Big Five” Trait Factors
• Openness
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Inventive & curious vs. cautious & conservative
Appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, curiosity, and
variety of experience.
• Conscientiousness
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Efficient & organized vs. easy-going & careless
A tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for
achievement; planned rather than spontaneous behavior.
• Extroversion
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Outgoing & energetic vs. shy & withdrawn
Energy, positive emotions, urgency, and the tendency to seek
stimulation in the company of others.
• Agreeableness
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Friendly & compassionate vs. competitive & outspoken
A tendency to be compassionate and cooperative rather than
suspicious and antagonistic towards others.
• Neuroticism
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Sensitive & nervous vs. secure & confident
A tendency to experience unpleasant emotions easily, such as anger,
anxiety, depression, or vulnerability.
Professor Harris’
“Big Nine” Growth Skills
Skills I advocate for lifelong personal growth
• Seek humility
• Muster courage
• Anticipate setbacks and imperfections
• Foster hope
• Operate with tenacity & persistence
• Practice self-forgiveness
• Build and maintain a support system
• Ask for help
• If none of these work, then let it go and find
peace about it
Mindfulness
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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•
•
•
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Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to
Face Stress, Pain, and Illness
Above all, Mindfulness involves the regular, disciplined practice of
moment-to-moment awareness or mindfulness, the complete
"owning" of each moment of your experience, good, bad, or ugly.
One way to look at meditation is as a kind of intrapsychic technology
that's been developed over thousands of years by traditions that
know a lot about the mind/body connection
Kabat-Zinn states: the normal state of mind is severely suboptimal.
It's more asleep than awake. The mind is someplace else, and the
body is here. In that state, you can't function at your best. The mind
that has not been developed or trained is very scattered. That's the
normal state of affairs, but it leaves us out of touch with a great deal
in life, including our bodies.
Mindfulness techniques include
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Listening to your own breathing
Observing your own mind
Self-Evaluation Skills
• Elements for Helpful Self-Evaluation
– Conduct self-evaluation with purpose &
mindfulness
– Evaluate without judgment
– Practice the skills to develop more
accurate appraisals in the future
– Validate with reflection and feedback
loops
– Evaluation is only helpful when it
results in action or behaviors
• Using the “Siskel & Ebert” model
Giving and Receiving Constructive
Feedback
• Elements for Helpful Feedback
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Seek humility
Muster courage
Consider the source
Utilize tools that limit vulnerability
• Assertion skills
• Suspend judgment
• Practice self-forgiveness
– Ask the right questions
• “We deserve the answers we get, based upon the
questions we ask”
• Risk level should reflect existing level of intimacy and
trust
– Be willing to shelve or discard feedback that is
unconstructive or not a fit
Exercise: Johari Window
• How open are you to feedback from
others?
“Humility is…
accepting the possibility
that someone else knows something about you
that you don’t know about yourself”
• Johari Window measures two scales
– The practice of soliciting (seeking)
feedback
– Willingness to self-disclose