How to Achieve Personal Congruence

Let’s discuss how to improve personal effectiveness. What does personal effectiveness mean? It includes a person’s internal congruence, that is, their consistency and integrity. Is a person congruent when interacting with others or when motivating themselves to take action?

Often, when faced with a critical situation, people display their less desirable qualities, such as anger, fear, or restlessness, and later regret their behavior. However, sometimes, even in challenging situations, a person shows their best side. They have learned to control themselves, change their state, and use effective behavioral strategies. But are they truly congruent when they restrain their anger or feel happy for someone else’s success? In other words, are they congruent when displaying their best qualities?

A person who is fully ecological and congruent in their behavior is a positive and whole individual. This raises the question: how can one become such a person? An equally important question is: why should we strive for this, and is it necessary at all?

How to Become Congruent

Let’s first address the “how.” You can’t become a virtuous person simply through discipline, which often leads to internal conflict rather than anything useful. One part of the personality, in its pursuit to be “good,” suppresses another part, which has its own positive intentions, though they may not always be good for others.

In other words, it’s pointless to try not to be greedy, irritable, proud, cowardly, envious, and so on. You can only be congruent and positive, not just try to suppress your negative traits.

A person is virtuous not because they want to be for some benefit, conscious or not, but simply because that’s who they are. It’s their natural state of mind, their worldview. Such a person, even when alone with their thoughts, not only wishes others well but also works toward it. When someone is genuinely virtuous, they don’t even notice it; they live naturally and don’t waste energy on internal conflicts. Such a person is congruent and, therefore, effective.

Ways to Achieve Personal Effectiveness

What are some ways to achieve this kind of personal effectiveness?

• Reframing. The first method is the standard six-step reframing process. With this technique, you can change unwanted behaviors and, step by step, release more internal energy, transforming your entire personality.
• Changing behavior by correcting beliefs. Here, the idea is that every behavior is based on a belief, which in turn has a positive intention. The task is to recognize the belief behind the unwanted behavior and change it using techniques like Robert Dilts’ language patterns or others. For example, if you believe, “I feel down because some people (like John or Mary) have succeeded and I haven’t,” identify similar beliefs and work through them. This way, feelings like envy can be replaced with more resourceful and equally strong emotions, significantly increasing your effectiveness.
• Awareness or changing frames of perception. This involves looking at your behavior and the beliefs behind it from the perspective of your life’s overall meaning. You can also view the situation from the standpoint of an authoritative figure (the “second position” of perception) or find the positive intention behind the belief. A great approach is to realize that emotions like anger, vanity, despair, and fear are not beneficial. You can convince yourself of this by finding many examples in your own or others’ experiences, as well as in books and movies.

Why Become Virtuous?

Now, let’s return to the question: why should we strive to be virtuous? Through reflection, you may conclude that it’s better not to have internal conflicts, that being congruent makes life fuller, more energetic, joyful, and happy.

For such a profound change in your worldview, books by Ken Wilber, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Osho, and Anthony Robbins are highly recommended. If a person realizes that being positive is effective and learns how to achieve it, they will find motivation and, over time, become truly free.

Author: Andrey Petrov