Category: Character Growth

Character alignment reminds me of dogs and Cesar Milan’s Better Human, Better Dog National Geographic series that evolved from The Dog Whisperer series. This article is about how to get to your best self version with character development.

And on that note… let’s begin with the dog analogy.

Dogs could be the first character that pops up in your daily mind especially if you have a Fido running around where you notice whether character intervention is needed 🐾

And in both Cesar Milan dog shows, we learn that each dog’s character comes with some breed born, individual learned, and universal dog traits. We also discover that bad behaviors and characters can be retrained and it’s usually the humans that need the training. 😅

It’s up to dog owners to follow through while exerting their calm assertive energy if they want a happy and peaceful life with their dogs. And that can be you or I, or any of us.

The opposite, undesired behaviors often stems from humans carrying around negative energy like fear as a dominant trait.

Dogs pick up on the human stress and misbehave. Essentially they feel chaos in them because they aren’t being led by a dog pack that is natural in the wild.

In domestic dogs at home, the same inborn traits are there but it’s our job to lead the pack if we want order and not chaos.

Training a dog to get into a calm surrender sit with wagging tail and lay down with tongue loosely hanging is the desired outcome state for a dog owner.

Then we can enjoy, pet, and play with dogs.

Dogs are naturally loving and loyal and ready to get in this submissive state.

They don’t hold grudges for long if at all to anything (even though we can project that on them).

Those points are a couple of the universal traits of why humans love dogs as pet family members.

And as a test, when they can get along with everyone in the family either two or four-legged, then it’s a match made in dog heaven.

…So now you have the gyst of how humans and dogs can better co-exist and blend together.

Finding compatibility among humans in human relationships is not as easy. Because of the disaccords when we want peace and harmony. It gets much more complicated because of our built-in human features and intellect.

We have complex minds and many more moods than probably there are English mood description words for.

We make daily micro decisions based on cognitive reasoning for understanding what’s on the screen in front of us.

Oh, and we have opposable thumbs so we can do more than our canine friends who can barely play with toys.

Dogs can bring us to a simpler lifestyle that’s healthy and healing for us from balancing our digital world vs. real life.

Our best calm surrender defense for ourselves and dogs is letting go of fear, negative, and non-peaceful thoughts.

That keeps us out of trouble. From miles away, dogs can pick up any excessive worrying “scent.”

Character Alignment Growth In Us

When we grow in our character alignment using our moral sensibilities, we can speed up growing out of old, past ways that don’t serve us.

Choosing and being able to live out a healthy, balanced lifestyle  fosters an environment to live this good way that promotes longevity and a life well lived.

The sooner we can make healthy and balanced as a priority, the faster we can work on our character growth that’s aligned with who we are because we can pay attention better.

“Where attention goes, our energy (intention) flows.” – James Redfield

Living out two lives or multiple roles are examples of alignments that are not in order.

When you have to be somewhere because someone else relies on that, then you’re living out someone else’s need. That takes us away from our personal growth, but we can get back on the trail as easily as we hopped off.

When in character alignment, we also feel overall that we’re at peace with ourselves and that extends to what we’re doing. We’re not dissatisfied with what we do because we also get to show up as ourselves.

Consider those times when you were at ease and feeling like you were meant to be where you were, and not worrying.

In those moments, you’re calm and you produce more because you’re not second guessing your moves. You just naturally are attuned in your elements.

You’re also exuding the positive character traits of yourself, the one that others are attracted to.

When you’re in stressful environments, the opposite happens.

If you saw you coming, in truth you’d wanna probably run for the hills. 😉 Most of us have been there.

But that doesn’t have to happen often as we can always choose to rewrite our thoughts and our daily outcomes from our thoughts in our situations we find ourselves in.

In the tough moments, those are opportunities to grow and not fight with ourselves or lean into the old habits.

We can learn the lesson then and not repeat next week in a different situation.

A shortcut way is to challenge our own beliefs.

Are they helping us? 

Do we believe we’re an underdog or not worthy? Do we believe we’re doomed or do we flip the script?

Because something is going to happen anyway, so why lose extra sleep over something you can’t do anything else about?

And when you find something positive that could come out of the situation no matter what, then you’re in an empowered position.

And that’s the healthy feeling you want.

An example: often we come across a problem that could start off as good or a challenge. But now confronted with an issue, finding an opportunity to address the problem-at-hand is a better way. And then after a while it goes away.

And then you can be glad that you were confronted with the potential problem because otherwise you would’ve not come up with this other better way.

Or it showed you something new you would not have seen about yourself or the situation.

Gradually we grow into our better, more wise character by these subtle and micro shifts in thinking and ways of doing things.

We become more patient, less selfish, and more content as side benefits.

Without trials or some stress in our lives, we wouldn’t have picked up these growth ways that all point to our character alignment that helps align our lives.

And like with any life skills, they can be more impactful than even a vocational skill you use as they are transferrable throughout life.

What We Can Do Today To Align Sooner

We can stop being so busy. When we cram everything into the waking hours we have available, we do the opposite.

We pretty much are leaving our lives up to our tasks and chosen activities that are not always aligned with our daily spiritual walk or purpose.

We can instead prioritize our lives as the only one we get. We can’t do over years but we can start over. And if we’re not doing what we know can be more impactful in our lives when we know or when we can, then we’re not  aligning ourselves fully.

That doesn’t mean quit what you’re doing today, but the tea leaves are out.

And when they are, that means it’s just a matter of time before you can confront the truth set before you or choose to ignore.

Being brave and confronting is going to get you what you want if you take that risk that’s calculated because otherwise the deeper idea wouldn’t be planted inside you.

Ignoring our inner calling prevents us from getting closer to our aligned ways and purposes because of the four letter word… B-U-S-Y.  When we’re too busy to get out of our busyness funk, we can’t think clearly. What could emerge stays hidden from our view.

And when we get to slower paced life seasons either by choice or have more time because of changes that happened to our lives, then we get an opportunity to see where we can improve our lives.

And maybe restart with a fresh start in certain areas.

We don’t have to continue what wasn’t working well or no longer serves where we’re aligned to now. That’s when we can feel lost, something missing, or misaligned.

That includes: relationships, work choices, training humans around us on how to treat us, our habits, attitudes, and outlook.

And one specific area that can help us grow this season is checking in on our pride that can often be a source of misalignment.

Character Alignment Grows Healthy Pride

If we have a dose of unhealthy pride in us that’s very common in modern culture, learning to strip those outward and deeper layers helps us in our relationship communication, motivations, and our healthy blood pressure.

We are healthier and happier as the cure to heavy pride is humility, that gives us the warm and fuzzy feelings inside us.

We feel good quietly in our soul, we’re building up our character, and people remember and respect us in a good way for that.

Compare that to the high pride that we air and we get claps and cheers, but those are short lived and forgotten in our digital era.

Pride is healthy when we’re proud of ourselves for making the finish line or achieving our accomplishments big or small. It’s a good thing we have goals! 🎉

And at the root of unhealthy pride are wrong motivations such as feeling superior over others that an unhealthy fed ego loves.

Pride can swallow us up when situations can tear us down. We want to build a stable environment inside us that’s content whether situations are good or not-so-great.

…What happens next doesn’t make or break you is the empowered feeling.

And then others recognize the humility energy and also give you the accomplishment credit.

You’ll enjoy your life the most that way and avoid the up and down roller coaster life that’s like Monday morning hangover dread after Friday afternoon joy and a weekend of eventful and relaxed bliss.

Dogs and Pride Analogy

…So back to our dogs that we can learn from. Dogs don’t act prideful as they don’t have that gene, but they can act dominant, as in trying to protect their owner and territory.

So in pride and dog analogies, if we build up humility in our dogs for their loving personality traits to come out then they show us their calm side that lets others get close and pet them.

And they respect us as the leader. That’s what we want in ourselves… to be a leader in our lives.

Even when we think we’re humble, there are still traces of unhealthy pride that can be lingering layers deep.

I discovered this in my life when I used to speed past a pedestrian crossway on a major road fare. No one in their right mind who didn’t have to, would cross walk at that dangerous intersection.

I had never seen anyone in my daily drive do so.

But one day, the flashing light beside the walkway suddenly came on without warning just before I drove up there. I had to slam my foot on the breaks. And while that wasn’t an unusual step to do and for the cars behind me, that was a wake up call for me.

In awareness, I realized I still had unhealthy pride in me that I thought I had worked hard to try to successfully rip out.

How was that incident related to character alignment? 

Deeply rooted, I realized I hadn’t taken seriously enough the idea that you can’t be too thoughtful when it comes to signs and other people showing up suddenly out of the blue.

While I know that sounds a little silly and we can all act similarly in that way in our busy lives, when you are getting closer to character alignment in certain areas you’re introspective and observe small details in your life.

When I took that lesson to heart and how my initial reaction and outward layer disregarded other possibilities, I learned to humble myself more deeply in future situations by being more thoughtful and slowing down automatically before the intersection. That was a good alignment test.

And that gave me the peace, calm surrender, and self-control I needed for better humility growth and character alignment.

There are many other traits that similar lessons can apply to, but humility is one healthy trait can help your life out in so many ways.

As much as rescue dogs can be trained to become a new healthy dog, we have the ability too.

We can always make up for lost time in development areas we didn’t gain or need to re-learn.

Sometimes when we don’t have much or live simply, we see this better. And we turn inward and dig deep for help and answers.

This type of growth comes from the inside out that speeds up our progress. We’re each in our own marathon.

Starting with a desire to make specific changes marks the starting point.

After we’re aware, it’s in us and we have a high chance of succeeding as we aspire to make the change.

And then one day that’s usually after many tries, we are transformed into this new better way.

We can’t go back to the old way as it no longer fits us in character alignment.

Along those lines and in your journey, you can pick up good character alignment traits that help you in more ways than one and for the rest of your life.

That’s something to celebrate and look forward to in your bright future!