Born to Win

Kevin Leman Dr.

Description

Firstborns are the natural movers, shakers, and leaders of the world. They can accomplish anything they set their minds to. They're the high achievers, the benchmark setters, the business moguls, the concert violinists, the heads of the PTA. But if they're out of balance, they can be overly perfectionistic, driven, and critical. They can become controllers (everything has to go their way) or pleasers (they exhaust themselves in meeting the demands of others).Now available in trade paper, Born to Win identifies the qualities of firstborns . . . and there's a catch. Just because someone is the firstborn child in the family doesn't mean they'll have a firstborn personality. They can be third in a group of four siblings and still have a firstborn personality! Dr. Kevin Leman reveals why. He helps firstborns understand their natural advantages--while becoming aware of their weaknesses and learning how to sidestep them--for the highest level of personal success at home, at school, at work, and in relationships. And he helps those who live or work with firstborns to understand them better. This fun, informative, and practical book will keep readers engaged and provide many "aha!" moments.

Sujets

• Employabilité, métiers et formations

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 5
• EAN13: 9781441207968
• Langue: English

Extrait

Guess the Firstborn
I’ll give you a pair of names, and you pick the firstborn in each pair. Jennifer Aniston or Courtney Cox Arquette Harrison Ford or Martin Short Ulysses S. Grant or Robert E. Lee Ellen DeGeneres or Oprah Winfrey Bill Cosby or Chevy Chase
If you picked Aniston, Ford, Grant, Winfrey, and Cosby, you’re right. (Ulysses S. Grant not only helped win the Civil War, but he was the only general ever to get his likeness on a fifty-dollar bill.)
Try these next five and see how you do: Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan Steve Martin or Jay Leno Jacqueline Kennedy or Whoopi Goldberg Martin Luther King Jr. or Jim Carrey Matthew Perry or Arnold Schwarzenegger
If you picked Clinton, Martin, Kennedy, King, and Perry, you’re right. See how good at this you are?
“But wait right there, Dr. Leman,” you’re saying. “Why are you calling Steve Martin a firstborn? I happen to know he’s the youngest kid in his family. And there’s no way Martin Luther King Jr. is a firstborn. He had an older sister.”
Ah, but they are firstborns. And you might be too, even if you weren’t the first child born in your family. For why, read on.

© 2008 by Kevin Leman
Published by Revell a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.revellbooks.com
Previously published under the title The Firstborn Advantage
Ebook edition created 2012
Ebook corrections 06.20.2016 (VBN), 10.26.2019
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owners. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
ISBN 978-1-4412-0796-8
To protect the privacy of those who have shared their stories with the author, some details and names have been changed.
Affectionately dedicated to our daughter, Holly Kristine Leman.
Your birth was our wonderful, precious gift from God. As new, excited parents, we made all the mistakes. Yes, we admit we practiced on you. You, our firstborn, were our guinea pig. But what a great privilege it has been for us to be your dad and mom throughout all these years. You’re an achiever with the priceless qualities of grace, compassion, and wisdom. We couldn’t be more proud of you.
Contents
Cover
Guess the Firstborn
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Will the Firstborn Please Stand Up?
Just who are the firstborns?
1. What’s This Birth Order Business About Anyway?
It has everything to do with your place in the family—and your entire life .
2. Who’s on First?
Just because you’re the first child born in a family, does that make you the firstborn? Here’s why . . . or why not .
3. The Firstborn Personality
Firstborns are achievers. They get things done . . . but there’s a flip side to always winning .
4. Why Firstborns Are the Way They Are
From day one, they’re in charge. They always have the thickest photo album. They set the benchmark for every other child in the family .
5. Where Do I Go to Buy One of Those Firstborns?
You can’t buy ’em, you can’t teach ’em (at least not very well). A firstborn has innate skills that are hard to beat if he or she is balanced in life .
6. Has the Critical Eye Turned on You?
If there’s anything firstborns struggle with, it’s criticism. Did you have a flaw picker as a parent? Are you a flaw picker? Here’s how to turn that around—for your own and others’ good .
7. The Firstborn Advantage at Home
How to use your firstborn skills to strengthen your relationships with your spouse and children (who may be the same or a different birth order than you) .
8. The Firstborn Advantage at School
How to use your firstborn nature to set reasonable goals and to encourage both yourself and your children as you pursue excellence . . . not frustration .
9. The Firstborn Advantage at Work
How you can win at business anytime and all the time .
10. The Firstborn Advantage in Relationships
Why birds of a feather flock together . . . but sometimes cause problems in the nest .
11. Making the Most of Being a Firstborn
What do you really want out of life? You can break free of your own and others’ expectations .
Notes
About the Author
Other Books by Dr. Kevin Leman
Back Ads
Back Cover
Acknowledgments
To Ramona Tucker: Thank you for your dedication and hard work in making this book all it could be. I appreciate so much the opportunity to work with you. I love the fact that you shoot it to me straight and that you are a woman of integrity.
Grateful thanks also to Laura Carter, founder of the First Born Girls Social Club (www.firstborngirls.com), for her invaluable insight on what it means to be a firstborn woman; and to Bob Shaff, founder and president of Customers for Life Consulting (www.cflconsulting.com), for his “14 Actions Your Company Can Take to Earn Customer Loyalty.”
Introduction
Will the Firstborn Please Stand Up?
Just who are the firstborns?
H ow many firstborns did you peg in the “Guess the Firstborn” quiz? Total up the ones you got right. Okay, got your answer?
I’d bet my wife and a couple of my five children on the fact that you were able to pick out all ten, or at least nine out of ten.
Now how did that happen? What is it about these firstborns that stand out from the rest? And why?
You don’t have to have a PhD in psychology to figure out who the firstborns in the world are. Firstborns are the natural movers and shakers. They’re the leaders. They can accomplish just about anything.
Think of the governor of your state, the US senators, the mayor of your town, the president of your school board, the head of the company you work for. Chances are, they’re all firstborn children.
If you’re reading this book on an airplane or a commuter train, chances are high that the person across from you doing a crossword puzzle or Sudoku book is a firstborn. If you’re an adventurous sort, why don’t you ask the stranger, “Do you happen to be a firstborn?” Who knows? You might end up with a lively conversation on your hands.
Certain professions also seem to attract firstborns. For example, in my hometown of Tucson, Arizona, there is a group of twelve anesthesiologists. Nine of them just happen to be firstborns, and the other three are only children—the only children in a family—which are basically first cousins emotionally to firstborns. Is this happenstance, do you think? Or is there something about firstborns that attracts them to the precision required for such a career?
Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, was a firstborn (the eldest of three children). All of the Mercury Seven astronauts were firstborns. In fact, of the first twenty-three astronauts in outer space, twenty-one were firstborns. The other two were only children. There wasn’t a middle or youngest child in sight.
The majority of the US presidents have been firstborns. [1] Frank Sulloway, a brilliant MIT researcher who wrote Born to Rebel: Birth Order Family Dynamics and Creative Lives , claims that firstborns tend to be more conscientious, more conservative, more responsible, more achievement oriented, and more organized than laterborns, who tend to be more open-minded and willing to take risks and explode cherished ideas and theories. Firstborns stuck with the status quo and were very assertive about it. No wonder firstborns are in so many of the top positions of leadership. [2]
Take, for instance, the 2008 US presidential election. The final three contenders for the biggest job in the world were an only child (Barack Obama—more later on why he’s considered an only child), a firstborn daughter (Hillary Clinton), and a firstborn son (John McCain).
There is truly something unique about firstborns, the leaders of the pack. You may be one of them. Or you may be one of them and not know it. (More on that in this book too.) But how did they—and you—get to be that way?
Take a look at your own family—your brothers and sisters. Isn’t it true that the firstborn and secondborn are day-and-night different? And if you’re a parent today, isn’t it true that if your firstborn travels east, your secondborn will travel west? These differences can be explained by birth order.
If you’re reading this book, chances are it’s because you’re a firstborn, or you know (and are driven crazy by) a firstborn. Firstborns can take the world by storm—and accomplish more than you think is humanly possible, because they are exacting and precise.
But out of balance they become driven, overly perfectionistic, and critical-eyed. Just imagine a group of firstborns getting together to wallpaper your kitchen. Within thirty minutes there would be blood on the floor, since everyone would want to be in charge. That’s why baby-of-the-family folks like me are so needed. Without the balance of middleborns and lastborns, firstborns can become too intense on completing the task “the right way” (translation: “their way”) and lose the relationship. Then they make their own and others’ lives miserable.
For instance, take Mrs. Marcourt, the den mother of my Cub pack when I was young. I was actually asked to leave the Cub Scouts because she didn’t appreciate my baby-of-the-family antics. She had little tolerance for them. What had happened to bring this about? Well, I ask you, if a bunch of boys were coming over and you wanted to serve them chocolate chip cookies, would you place those cookies on your grandmother’s precious china serving dish?
I destroyed that dish in one fell swoop. All I was doing was diving for the first chocolate chip cookie. What was wrong with that?
Mrs. Marcourt had a lot to say to me about what was wrong with that. And she also told my mother in no uncertain terms what was wrong with that. I di