Being a parent means doing hard things on a regular basis. In other words, raising a child to be a happy, successful, independent adult will require you to engage many aspects of character strength. Likewise, to succeed in life as an adult, a child will also have to gain character strength.
In a previous article, I affirmed that the strength of a person’s character is based on the strength of many behavior patterns. For example, if you have well-developed behavior patterns for honesty, integrity, and patience, these behaviors will contribute to how people see your character.
The importance of this insight is that the behavior patterns that contribute to your character strength can, like any skill or behavior pattern, be developed. Skills and behavior patterns grow to become more reliable, consistent behavior the more you practice them, the more you repeat them. Each repetition causes related brain cells to grow together and eventually connect into a circuit. When this happens, the behavior becomes comfortable and habitual — how you consistently react in a given situation.
In other words, repeating a character-related skill will make your character grow stronger. For example, after telling the truth time after time, communicating honestly will become your habit and this aspect of your character will grow stronger.
In other words, your character is not a static aspect of who you are. You can do the work to grow stronger character.
The book, Grow Strong Character is a guide for this kind of self-development. It has 36 chapters, each of which is devoted to explaining one of the 36 character-related behavior patterns. Each chapter also has illustrations, motivational insights, and numerous suggested practice activities for establishing the behavior pattern.
The key to success is focus. Choose one character skill and work on it. And partner with someone who cares about your success to support you and encourage you.
