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What Is Character? How Is It Formed?

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[pic]What Is Character? How Is It Formed? Character is who we really are. It's what we do when no one is looking. It' s the accumulation of thoughts, values, words and actions. These become the habits that comprise our character. That character determines our destiny. A person of character thinks right and does right according to core universal values that define the qualities of a good person: trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship. The CHARACTER COUNTS! Coalition calls these the Six Pillars of Character. Whatever we call them, though, our role as character developers is to guide young people's thoughts, words, actions and habits toward these values, which all people share, regardless of …show more content…

One consequence of such malattunement is that emotional states take on enduring, crushing meanings. The child, for example, may acquire an unconscious conviction that unmet developmental yearnings and reactive painful feeling states are manifestations of a loathsome defect or of an inherent inner badness. A defensive self-ideal may be established, representing a self-image purified of the offending emotional states that were perceived to be unwelcome or damaging to caregivers. Living up to this emotionally purified ideal then becomes a central requirement for maintaining harmonious ties to others and for upholding self-esteem. Thereafter, the emergence of prohibited emotion is experienced as a failure to embody the required ideal, an exposure of the underlying essential defectiveness or badness, and is accompanied by feelings of isolation, shame, and self-loathing. A person with such unconscious organizing principles will expect that his or her feelings will be met by others with disgust, disdain, disinterest, alarm, hostility, withdrawal, exploitation, and the like, or will damage others and destroy his or her relationships with them. A second consequence of significant emotional malattunement is a severe constriction and narrowing of the horizons of emotional experiencing so as to exclude whatever feels unacceptable,

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