CHAPTER 7: Values and Personality

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Aesthetics and Spiritual values

Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and appreciation of art, beauty and
good taste. It has also been defined as "critical reflection on art, culture and nature".
-It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called
judgments of sentiment and taste.

-In the 1750’s Alexander Baumgarten who coined the term aesthetics, claimed that humans experience
the world in two fundamentally ways—logically and aesthetically.
Logically—that is a thorn, it will hurt if it pricks me
Aesthetically—enjoying a sunset, looking at seashells, enjoying a work of art. These things are beautiful
because you are looking at them aesthetically.

The ideas of aesthetic enjoyment and fine art and artist arose in what we call the modern period (end of
17th century to middle of 20th). Main points of modernist aesthetics

1. Aesthetic experience is non-utilitarian.

2. AE is detached from ordinary self-interested pursuits (is disinterested)
3. Works of art are made to be viewed aesthetically—and so just to be enjoyed (For no other purpose)
4. Everyone can appreciate art just by adopting the aesthetic point of view.
5. Artists see things in a unique way and creatively find innovative ways of communicating that vision
to us.
6. Artists show us how to look at the world, how to understand ourselves, who we are.
7. Works of art express these unusual ideas of artists.
8. Great works of art must be innovative and creative, expressing new ideas in new ways.
9. The history of art is the history of these great innovations by these great artists.
10. Art is not hard to understand—it just requires that we adopt the aesthetic point of view.

What Is Spirituality?
Spirituality can mean different things to different people. For some, it's primarily about participation in
organized religion. For others, it's a non-religious experience that involves getting in touch with their
spiritual selves through private prayer, yoga, meditation, quiet reflection, or time in nature.

What is Religion?
Religion is connecting to the Divine through someone else’s experience. It is primarily concerned with
believing in, following, and obeying the rules created by a certain Deity or spiritual teacher.

Spirituality Religion
Personal Community-oriented
Emphasizes wisdom Emphasizes knowledge
Goal is love and freedom Goal is obedience and salvation
Feeling-based Rule-based
Focuses on experiencing internal Divinity Focuses on obeying external Divinity
Present-oriented (heaven is within you now) Future-oriented (heaven is where you go when
you die)
Oneness-oriented (we are all One) Duality-oriented (good/evil, right/wrong,
heaven/hell)
Creates closeness Creates separateness
Informal Formal
Promotes joy, spontaneity, and compassion Promotes self-sacrifice, duty, and pity for others
Self-directed Authority-directed
Experiential Theoretical / belief-based

Acceptance of Others
Accepting people does not itself mean agreeing with them, approving of them, waiving your own rights,
or downplaying their impact upon you. You can still take appropriate actions to protect or support
yourself or others. Or you can simply let people be. Either way, you accept the reality of the other
person. You may not like it, you may not prefer it, you may feel sad or angry about it, but at a deeper
level, you are at peace with it. That alone is a blessing. And sometimes, your shift to acceptance can help
things get better.

How Do you Do This?

1. Understand that it’s impossible for you to know everything.
The key to accepting others for who they are is to dismantle one’s own ego.
2. Understand that the only person you can change is yourself.
Accepting other people as they are is much easier when you understand that the only person
you can truly change is yourself.
3. Engage in the activities and interests that the person is passionate about.
It’s much easier to accept someone for who they are when you have a better understanding of
that person’s different interests and perspectives.
4. Remind yourself how it felt to be judged about who you are.
A good way to tune into one’s empathy is to remember how we felt when someone judged us
about some facet of our personality.
5. You don’t have to be understanding or accepting of destructive or disrespectful behavior.
The manipulative and destructive people of the world like to throw accusations of judgment to
defend toxic behavior.

Philosophies in Life
Philosophy is often viewed as pointless to study in these modern times, due to the fact that a
philosophy major is unlikely to lead to a secure and prosperous career. But many of our great
philosophers were the front-runners of science. In fact, in many ways, modern science is built on
the concept of empiricism, the philosophic idea that sensory information is the only true basis
for knowledge. These following 7 philosophies will help change the way you view the world.
Solipsism
Solipsism
revolves around the idea that there is nothing you can confirm except your own existence. If you
think about the brain’s capacity for hallucination, and just good ol’ dreaming, it’s not that hard
to imagine outside manipulation being possible as well. For all we know, we COULD be stuck in
the Matrix, or maybe you’re the only person that exists and the entire world and your
experience of it is just an illusion.

Idealism (Philosophy)
The philosophy of idealism has nothing to do with being idealistic. It has nothing to do with
ideals, but rather ideas. It revolves around the thought that reality is fundamentally something
that exists on a mental level. Kant once defined idealism as “the assertion that we can never be
certain whether all of our putative outer experience is not mere imagining.”

Phenomenalism
Is the idea that nothing can be said to exist beyond the observation of the thing itself. So for
example, you could not argue that the stone exists, only that your sense of it exists. You could
say: “I saw a stone.” but not: “The stone was there.” The only thing that one is able to confirm is
the sensory data of the stone, but not the stone’s existence independent of your own.

Presentism
The idea that only the present exists, and that both the past and future do not. A Buddhist
scholar named Fyodor Shcherbatskoy said the following: “Everything past is unreal, everything
future is unreal, everything imagined, absent, mental . . . is unreal. . . . Ultimately real is only the
present moment of physical efficiency.”

Eternalism
Contrary to presentism, eternalism is the belief that all moments in time, past, present and
future are equally real. Some eternalists believe that because of the nature of time, in this case
that time exists as a whole, not in separate parts, the existing future already exists in a set and
final manner, and therefore we are only capable of experiencing the future, not able to change
it in any way, which one could interpret as the existence of fate.

Nihilism
The most well-known form of nihilism, existential nihilism is focused on the assertion that life
has no inherent purpose, goal, or intrinsic value. (Intrinsic value is the idea of something having
value in and of itself.) Simplified, it’s the belief that life is utterly pointless. The difference
between nihilism and hedonism is that pleasure, or joy, is seen as worthless as well, and
therefore is often characterized as leading to a feeling of despair.

Hedonism
Hedonism is centered around the belief that pleasure is the only thing that has intrinsic value.
Basically, a hedonist makes pleasure the ultimate goal of any and all of his actions and choices in
life. Hedonism is perhaps the philosophy that is closest to our original instincts, in that it
embraces the response of pleasure to things like eating and fornicating wholeheartedly. Instead
of bringing morals into the picture, it focuses on feasting on pleasure, a sensory response that
probably played a vital part in our survival as a species.

Self Esteem
Confidence in one's value as a human being is a precious psychological resource and generally a
highly positive factor in life; it is correlated with achievement, good relationships, and
satisfaction. Possessing little self-regard can lead people to become depressed, to fall short of
their potential, or to tolerate abusive relationships and situations.

Too much self-love, on the other hand, results in an off-putting sense of entitlement and an
inability to learn from failures. It can also be a sign of clinical narcissism, in which individuals
may behave in a self-centered, arrogant, and manipulative manner. Perhaps no other self-help
topic has spawned so much advice and so many (often conflicting) theories.

How to Reach Your Full Potential

Self-actualization represents the pursuit of reaching one’s full potential. The concept is rooted in
a theory established in 1943 by Abraham Maslow. The psychologist set forth a hierarchy of
psychological needs, illustrating an order of human motivation.

At the base of Maslow’s motivational pyramid lies physiological needs, such as the air we
breathe and the food we consume. Once those needs are met, it is possible to pursue needs for
safety, love and belonging, and self-worth.

Self-actualization occurs when the more basic needs are met or in the process of being met and
it becomes possible to strive to add meaning and personal and social fulfillment to existence—
through creativity, intellectual growth, and social progress. As Maslow himself stated, “What a
man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization.”

Assertiveness
What Is Assertiveness?
Assertiveness is a social skill that relies heavily on effective communication while simultaneously
respecting the thoughts and wishes of others. People who are assertive clearly and respectfully
communicate their wants, needs, positions, and boundaries to others. There’s no question of
where they stand, no matter what the topic.

How to Be Assertive
Being assertive is associated with a number of benefits, ranging from less anxiety and
depression to a greater sense of agency and better relationships. Assertiveness is often
confused with behaving aggressively, but they’re not the same at all.
 A person who is assertive clearly communicates his or her wishes and sets boundaries, but does
not necessarily make demands of other people or lash out if requests are not met. Recent
research explores the pitfalls of not asserting oneself while offering practical advice for how best
to do so.

Here are some tips to help you learn to be more assertive.

1. Make the decision to positively assert yourself. Commit to being assertive rather than
passive or aggressive and start practising today.
2. Aim for open and honest communication. Remember to respect other people when you are
sharing your feelings, wants, needs, beliefs or opinions.
3. Listen actively. Try to understand the other person’s point of view and don’t interrupt when
they are explaining it to you.
4. Agree to disagree. Remember that having a different point of view doesn’t mean you are
right and the other person is wrong.
5. Avoid guilt trips. Be honest and tell others how you feel or what you want without making
accusations or making them feel guilty.
6. Stay calm. Breathe normally, look the person in the eye, keep your face relaxed and speak in
a normal voice.
7. Take a problem-solving approach to conflict. Try to see the other person as your friend not
your enemy.
8. Practise assertiveness. Talk in an assertive way in front of a mirror or with a friend. Pay
attention to your body language as well as to the words you say.
9. Use ‘I’. Stick with statements that include ‘I’ in them such as ‘I think’ or ‘I feel’. Don’t use
aggressive language such as ‘you always’ or ‘you never’.
10. Be patient. Being assertive is a skill that needs practice. Remember that you will sometimes
do better at it than at other times, but you can always learn from your mistakes.

CHAPTER 8: Personality and Your Profession

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Personality of Worker

Personality refers to individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and

behaving. The study of personality focuses on two broad areas: One is understanding individual
differences in particular personality characteristics, such as sociability or irritability. The other is
understanding how the various parts of a person come together as a whole.

An individual’s personality is a unique entity resulting from the interaction between a person
and his environment. It can be understood in terms of a person’s behavior, actions, postures,
words, attitudes and opinions. Personality can also be described as an individual's hidden
feelings about the external world.
Components of Personality:

1. Openness to experience- Inventive/Curious vs. Consistent/Cautious

Openness to experience refers to a person's accepted level of imagination and includes multiple
experiences like appreciating art, experiencing various emotions and taking up adventurous
ideas. Someone who is inventive and curious is likely to have a more active intellectual thought
process and multiple/different ways of dealing with a situation or problem.

2. Conscientiousness- Efficient/ Organized vs. Easy-going/ Careless

It represents a planned and organized approach rather than spontaneity and randomness. A
'structured' person puts great value on order and control which reflects a way of
approaching tasks. For example, such a person plans a project to the last detail, in a precise
manner.

3. Extraversion- Outgoing/Energetic vs. Solitary/Reserved

Extraversion implies energy, positive emotions, forcefulness, friendliness, and chattiness.
The extrovert person is sociable, outgoing and attracted to others. However, extroverts can
be impulsive and sometimes take risks without weighing the odds. Contrarily, an introvert is
less concerned with others and is more inward-looking.

4. Agreeableness- Friendly/Compassionate vs. Cold/Unkind

The ability to show compassion and co-operation. It is a personality trait that can help you
be an amicable person in the workplace. Giving a cold shoulder to people you encounter on
a regular basis may not go down well and may hamper your work and progress in the long
and short run.

5. Neuroticism- Sensitive/Nervous vs. Secure/Confident

It refers to emotional stability, control over emotions and impulses, a tendency for anger,
nervousness, despair, or susceptibility. Those with self-confidence are relaxed, optimistic,
enjoy responsibility and like to be tested. Under pressure, they react calmly and in an
organized way, and have faith in their coping ability. At work, they can deal with
unexpected events easily, and present their views confidently.

5 Reasons Why Personality at Work is More Important than you Think

1. It can help you motivate your employees
Sure, monetary incentives and perks can help uplift an employee’s spirits, but how long do you think
that will last? If you knew what types of projects and work environments were linked to their innate
drive, wouldn’t that mean more long-term motivation and happiness? I’ve seen service-oriented people
demotivated in a competitive environment, despite being given bonuses and company cell phones, as
well as managers with no managerial courage, unmotivated in their big corner offices.
Understanding personality at work means being one step closer to finding out what sources of
demotivation may drive away your human capital.

2. It can reduce turnovers

An employee fit assessment can increase retention rates because it ensures your employees are built for
the job, or at least have the innate potential to be successful. Utilising an employee assessment during
your selection process will not only help you see all those things that are not so obvious in the interview,
but also help you ask very pertinent interview questions unique to that individual.

3. It can decrease conflicts and improve collaboration

When personalities clash, it can cause a ripple effect of destruction in your organization. It’s never fun to
see two people go at it during a project, or hearing about why someone is upset with so-and-so for X
reasons.
But what if you could predict which people might need to make more of an effort when working
together and, more specifically, which personality dimensions could be the culprits in these conflicts so
that you know what to work on? One of the many reasons personality at work is an important
determinant of collaboration between your employees.

4. It can prevent burnouts

Do you know who among your employees are more susceptible to high nervous tension, episodes of low
energy or unable to detach? Maybe there’s an employee that you’re concerned about because he is not
performing at his normal standards, or maybe he seems unable to concentrate these days. If you were
to find out his core personality, you may be surprised to find that all he needs is some positive
reinforcement, or maybe he’s holding back some frustrations for fear of causing conflict.

5. It can help you communicate effectively with your workforce

Have you tried explaining something to an employee and he was left with a blank, confused look? It may
not be because you are a poor communicator, but that you both learn and assimilate information in a
different way. You might make quick, complex links with abstract data while this person requires more
visuals and concrete examples of how this idea would be transposed into his day-to-day reality.

How to Develop your Personality

1. Write down five personalities traits about yourself. Think about at least five or more
personality traits that you have. Write them down, and take a few sentences to describe why
you think this personality trait applies to you.
-Make sure at least one of them is a positive, good personality trait that you see in yourself.
-Also, list one personality trait that is negative or bothering you in some way.
-Don't use your physical appearance as a way to describe yourself. Focus only on your
personality.
2. Evaluate the positive and negative. When you wrote down these personality traits, did you
seem to focus on mostly positive or mostly negative traits? For example, did you have four
negative traits, and only one good one?
-Understand if you are only seeing the negative in yourself. You may feel like you're not worthy
or don't believe in yourself. Find ways to boost your self-esteem.
-If you only mentioned one negative trait, you may have greater confidence in yourself, but lack
insight into what needs improvement. Consider evaluating your limits in a healthy way and
finding more humility.

3. Identify activities you enjoy. If you are not sure about how to develop your personality, think
about what makes you happy. What activities do you enjoy? Do you like to spend time with
others, or do more things on your own? Do you like fixing or creating things? Are you more
artistic or science-oriented?
-There are not right or wrong answers about which activities make you a happier or more
personable person. This is just a way to figure out the context of what makes you happy.
-Some people enjoy activities by themselves or with a few people more than others. Some
people love to be at big parties with lots of people.
-No matter the activity, it's important to learn how to interact with and respect others. Good
communication skills with others helps to show the best parts of your personality.

4. Assess what you want to improve. Think about what is bothering you in particular about your
personality. What do you want to see differently in yourself? By having greater insight, this is an
important step to changing. Think about how you could improve in the following areas:[1]
Your anxiety, anger, or temper
-Your shyness, fearfulness, or awkwardness
-Your loneliness, sadness, or depression
-Your stubbornness, irritability, or frustration
-Your lack of trust
-Your arrogance