Aditya Kothadiya's Blog

Targeted Audience: Entrepreneurs, Students, Recent Graduates

Background: Renowned leadership expert and author John C. Maxwell describes how anyone can improve his or her relationship skills with 25 principles in his book Winning With People.

I plan to cover each of his principle in this series.

Please read more principles here: Winning With People

John Maxwell’s “The Mirror Principle”

People unaware of who they are and what they do often damage relationships with others. The way to change that is to look in the mirror. Consider these truths that we must learn about ourselves:

Self-Awareness
Human nature seems to endow people with the ability to size up everybody in the world but themselves.

Self-Image
Your image of yourself restricts your ability to build healthy relationships. A negative self-image will keep a person from being successful. If those with a poor self-image do somehow achieve success, it won’t last because they will eventually bring themselves down to the level of their own expectations.

Self-Honesty
Comedian Jack Parr quipped, “Looking back, my life seems like one big obstacle race, with me being the chief obstacle.” What can save us is a willingness to get honest about our shortcomings, faults and problems.

Self-Improvement
Critic Samuel Johnson advised that “he who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief which he purposes to remove.”

Self-Responsibility
No significant accomplishments can be achieved by individual effort. However, every significant accomplishment begins with the vision of one individual. Once we possess the vision, we must take responsibility for carrying it to others.

Wow! What a terrific insight! Though this principle is about winning with people, it teaches us not to focus on the “people” aspect, but first start focusing on the “me” aspect. Once we develop our positive image, and are honest in identifying our short comings, then we need to focus on overcoming those shortcomings. After we do some progress on the self-improvement front, we should take a responsibility to lead. 

Once we are sure that who we are, what we have, and what we want to achieve, its less probable that others will be confused about ourselves. And when they are not confused, I don’t see any reason that they will not help us in achieving our dreams. And that’s how you win with people.

To read more principles from this series, please visit: Winning With People