Mastering Self
To Lead Self and Others
by
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Preface
Mastering Self is practical, biblically based guidance for life’s journey.
It is a compilation of reference points for viewing reality in today’s
culture. It provides a:
paradigm to clarify your core ethos and code of conduct;
template to evaluate your fundamental beliefs, principles, and values;
lens to view your world;
grid to filter your thoughts, decisions, and actions;
linchpin to stabilize your life;
blueprint to comprehend your bearings in life’s journey and destination; and
benchmark to measure your significance in life.
Mastering Self is comprehensive because the manner of living
is serious business before God. It is extensive because mastering
self involves thorough understanding to lead self and others. This
understanding doesn’t exist naturally in the human condition. It is
cultivated by lifelong learning. This handbook is for serious thinkers
who want to clarify their worldview and become what they should be.
Mastering and leading juxtaposed with learning and teaching are based
on timeless truths and virtues for reference, reflection, or contemplative
study.
Mastering Self presents relevant concepts and principles for leading
self and others. Understanding them strengthens personal relationships.
Embracing them increases personal influence. Practicing them benefits
anyone responsible for other people: teacher, supervisor, manager,
administrator, executive, or command officer in military, police, and
fire services.
Mastering Self includes two primers with commentary, a collection
of white papers or essays regarding issues in life, and concludes with
the author’s Scot heritage and memoirs as a police chief and police professor.
It is a reference handbook. A table of contents and an index provide a
convenient reference for 275 topics relative to mastering self and leading
others. The topics are organized into white papers distinctive in purpose
to describe a better way to be and do—particularly for those who desire
to improve their lives and influence others.
Collectively these papers are intended to provide awareness and understanding.
Hopefully, they will persuade. Separately they are intended to provide a
reference according to topic. Some overlap exists with associated themes. Some
papers identify other paper titles for a related topic. These papers may be read
consecutively or selectively regarding individual need or interest. The two primers
are Mastering Self and Leadership. They provide a practitioner’s perspective gained
from twenty-four years as a police chief dealing with the vicissitudes and
exigencies of leading three departments. They result from teaching command officers
at police academies as an adjunct instructor twenty years and teaching a leadership
course fourteen years as a university professor. These primers provide practical,
relevant guidance—not theoretical, abstract speculation—for leaders with
complex missions, viz., in the public arena.
The white papers as essays were written to clarify my worldview
beliefs and core ethos juxtaposed with God’s Word and manner of
living. They provide old-school insight in today’s culture. Some papers
about culture are politically incorrect: written by a curmudgeon and
gadfly with stubborn ideas about stubborn facts that reveal stubborn
problems. These papers result from a deep conviction that God counsels
and confides in those who fear Him (Ps. 25:14). They are the product of
my reading, teaching, writing, and pondering to keep my heart with all
diligence regarding issues in life (Prov. 4:23): contemplations of soul
in solitude.
Donald G. Hanna was police chief in two Illinois cities and at Ohio State University. He earned a BA in police administration from Indiana University and an MA in public administration from the University of Illinois. Scotland by heritage, Indiana by birth, and Hoosier by grace of God.
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Book Details
About the Book
Mastering self—often desired, seldom achieved, and easier said than done. It is an arduous, lifelong process of becoming. A journey—not a destination. A direction—not perfection. A discipline—not a diversion. Mastering self does not naturally exist in the human condition. It must be cultivated by lifelong learning.
Mastering Self is for critical thinkers wanting to become what they should be. It provides:
• a paradigm to clarify your core ethos and code of conduct;
• a template to evaluate your fundamental beliefs, principles, and values;
• a lens to view your world;
• a grid to filter your thoughts, decisions, and actions;
• a linchpin to stabilize your life;
• a blueprint to comprehend your bearing in life’s journey and destination; and
• a benchmark to measure significance in your life.
Mastering Self presents relevant principles and commentary applicable to leading self and others. Understanding them strengthens interpersonal relationships. Embracing them increases personal influence. Practicing them benefits anyone responsible for other people. A comprehensive reference for leaders, this handbook is based on timeless truths and virtues for reference, reflection, or contemplative study. It provides a biblical worldview for perspective and old-school insight for today’s culture.
Mastering Self includes two primers with commentary, white papers regarding issues in life, the author’s Scot heritage influence, and memoirs. The primers are written from a practitioner’s perspective gained from twenty-four years leading three police departments, teaching command officers at police academies, and teaching leadership at a university. The white papers juxtapose personal worldview and ethos with God’s Word and manner of living. They reveal a deep conviction that God counsels and confides in those who fear Him (Ps. 25:14) and honors those who honor Him (1 Sam. 2:30). These papers result from reading, teaching, writing, and pondering to keep my heart with all diligence regarding issues in life (Prov. 4:23)—often in the counsel chamber of God. This work is a labor of love and pertains to life’s ultimate question: God or self?
About the Author
Abundant Life
Advantage and Disadvantage
Adversary
America’s Future
Antagonists
Anatomy of Our Culture
Anatomy of Repentance
Apostasy
Armor for My Soul
Awesome God
Belief System
Beliefs, Principles, and Values
Bema Seat of Christ
Biblical Principles for Well-Being
Calling, Cause, and Conviction
Chore, Commodity, or Calling?
Changing Culture
Character and Virtue
Character Ethos
Chasing the Wind
Chess Applied to Life
Chosen
Comments about Our Culture
Conformed or Transformed?
Confronting Conflict
Confronting Self
Conscience
Conservative Mind
Conservative Thought
Considerations for Reflection
Contemplation
Contentment
Courtroom of God
Critical Leadership Abilities
Critical Leadership Variables
Critical Listening
Critical Reading
Critical Speaking
Critical Thinking: an Introduction
Critical Thinking: the Foundation
Critical Thinking: Intellectual Dimensions
Critical Writing Benchmarks
Dealing with Failure
Deficit Spending
Devolution of Our Culture
Devolution of Our Culture Re-Examined
Differences that Make a Difference
Discernment and Adaptability
Discernment and Casuistry
Discipline of Leadership
Education: a Different Perspective
Education, Other Side
Election and Redemption
Essence of Leadership
Eternal Presence with the Lord
Ethics: the Basics
Extraordinary Living
Faith
Faith in the Faith
Faith or Religion?
Fleeting Ideal
Forget
Full Assurance
Fundamental Affirmations
Fundamental Virtue
God of Forgiveness
God or Self?
God, Self-Existent
God’s Blessings
God’s Great Salvation
God’s Ministers
God’s Omnipotence
God’s Omniscience
God’s Predestined Remnant
God’s Righteousness
Gratitude
Great I AM
Greatest Commandment
Groupthink Mischief
Heart’s Desires
Heaven
Heroes to Emulate
High Places
High Places Revisited
Honor
Hoosier Excursion
Humility
Humility and Integrity
Hypocrisy and Greed
Imago Dei
Infinite Antiquity
Influencing and Inspiring
Inscrutable Infinity of God
Integrity of Character
Integrity Revisited
Integrity: the Essentials
Intellectual Sloth
Introduction
Jealous God
Journal Entry
Just Cause
Keep Your Own Counsel
Knowing and Worshiping God
Knowing God
Knowing God: Essence and Existence
Knowing God Revisited
Knowing God Reaffirmed
Leader Authenticity
Leaders: Born or Made?
Leadership 100
Leadership 101
Leadership 102
Leadership 103
Leadership 201
Leadership 202
Leadership 203
Leadership Admonitions
Leadership and Lifestyle
Leadership and Opposition
Leadership Attitude
Leadership: Basic Lessons
Leadership Character
Leadership Composure
Leadership Discernment
Leadership Fads
Leadership Five Commitments
Leadership Five Concepts
Leadership Five Critical Activities
Leadership Five Obligations
Leadership Illusions
Leadership: Influence and Inspiration
Leadership Integrity
Leadership Lessons: Moby Dick
Leadership Machiavelli
Leadership: Mastering Self
Leadership: Personal Styles
Leadership Primer
Leadership Preface
Leadership: Remaking Reality
Leadership Stewardship
Leadership Sun Tzu
Leadership: the Spiritual Dimension
Leadership: the Way
Leadership Truths to Ponder
Leadership: What Do We Know?
Leadership: What Is It?
Learning and Teaching
Lessons from History
Life Lessons Learned
Life Worth Living
Life’s Basic Questions
Logical Skeptical Mind
Lost Legacy 1789
Lost Legacy: Postscript
Manner of Living
Man’s Basic Needs: Biblical Basis
Master Teacher
Mastering and Leading Self
Mastering Self: an Introduction
Mastering Self Preface
Mastering Self Primer
Meditations of My Soul
Memoirs
Memories Past
Micah Mandate
Monopoly of Service
Morning Praise and Prayer
My Hope
New Pagan
Noble Calling
Pariahs
Paean to God
Perceptions
Personal Responsibility
Perspective to Ponder
Pharisee and Publican
Pharisee and Publican: Postscript
Pharisee, Pagan, and Philistine
Pleading God’s Promises
Political Accountability or Interference?
Political Correctness
Political Maxims for Public Administrators
Politics of Racial Profiling
Ponderable Words
Prayer of Thankfulness
Profess and Practice
Question or Contemplate?
Quietly Effective Leaders
Quintessential Jesus
Quintessential Jesus: a Case study
Reading Quality Books
Realist
Rebel
Reformation
Relevance of Sola Scriptura
Remember
Remnant: the Chosen Few
Renewed Mind
Repentance of Sin
Revelation or Reason?
Sage Advice
Satan: Adversary, Antagonist, and Accuser
Satan as Nachash
Satan’s Deception
Scot Convenanters
Scot Heritage and Memoirs
Scot Within
Scot Within: an Influence
Scot Within: Politically Incorrect
Scots, Backcountry
Secret of the Lord
Secure Future
Self-Education
Self-Education and Great Books
Self-Examination
Self-Examination Re-Examined
Servant’s Heart and Steward’s Mind
Share God’s Salvation
Simplicity
Sinner’s Plea
Solitude
Soul’s Soliloquy in Solitude
Spiritual Discernment and Growth
Spiritual Growth and Maturity
Stewardship
Stewardship: Postscript
Stewardship Principles
Stewardship Re-Examined
Stranger and Sojourner
Stupidity
Subtlety of Self
Sufficiency of Scripture
Survival and Solitude