Personal Development Ideas

The Personal Development Journey: Focusing Our Unique Talents and Purpose February 10, 2007

By consistently  concentrating our focus and sticking rigidly to our purpose, is it possible to elevate our performance to the level of historical geniuses?

The topic of personal development, or self-improvement, and a WordPress blog on the subject, can cover a myriad of categories. In fact, just about any method by which we can improve ourselves can come under the topic of personal development. Among the many categories it can include are: relationships; setting and achieving goals, The Law of Attraction, intentions and manifesting or manifestations; emotional contentment; spiritual growth; finding our life purpose; the concept of gratitude; and more.

Discovering our own particular talents is part of the process of self-development, and of developing self-esteem. Some experts believe that every one of us is endowed with some form of positive uniqueness that we can develop through working on it. An individual can develop an innate talent or learn a new skill to a degree that it is a formidable personal attribute. Just as one person can make a difference in the world, so the nurturing of a personal talent or interest can make a big difference or change for the better in an individual, and accordingly, in an indidual’s self-esteem.

With all the categories that personal development involves, it should not be surprising that many books and other media can be used by us in the process of adding value to our lives.

Although I should probably not “review” a book before I get beyond page two, nevertheless, I just got a book out of the library that promises to be interesting. I’m just starting to delve into this book, titled Discover Your Genius, by Michael J. Gelb (HarperCollins Publishers). At the beginning, I was struck by a comment by Martin Kemp, Professor of the History of Art at the University of Oxford, in the foreword to Gelb’s book.

Kemp says, “Is it daft to attempt to model our selves on the transcendent genius of a Copernicus, Brunelleschi, or Einstein? No, not if we consider that all these great minds applied essential principles of focus and purposefulness to the clarification of their core insights.”
Kemp goes on to say that while we might not agree with the choices of the persons Gelb makes in these profiles of genius, we can agree that the people chosen are “exemplary of what humans can potentially achieve, if only we believe in what we can do.” Michael J. Gelb has written quite a few other books, including, How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci.

Here are some of the chapter titles in Discover Your Genius:
Plato: Deepening Your Love of Wisdom
Copernicus: Revolutionizing Your Worldview
Shakespeare: Cultivating Your Emotional Intelligence
Jefferson: Celebrating Your Freedom in the Pursuit of Happiness
Einstein: Unleashing Your Imagination and Combinatory Play

Discover your Genius is a 350+ page book and it’s not printed in particularly large type, so it may be a while before I finish it. I also usually have a number of books on the go at once. When I do complete reading it, I hope to review it here. The subtitle of the book is “How to Think Like History’s Ten Most Revolutionary Minds.” We’ll see if I turn into a thinker of that caliber and raise my own self-esteem in the process of reading it.