Personal growth and the need for flexibility April 15, 2014
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development, Tao Te Ching.Tags: emotional flexibility, life purpose, personal development, personal growth, philosophy, positive thinking, Stephen Mitchell, Tao Te Ching
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People seriously working on a program of personal growth realize that having the intellectual and emotional capacity to be flexible is a key requirement for success.
Without having the ability to be flexible, or the willingness to accept or at least consider new ideas, progress in self-improvement will be small or non-existent.
Intellectual and emotional flexibility also contains elements of the state of tranquility, or acceptance, a major ingredient in building peace of mind. And for many studying personal growth, acceptance, or tranquility is and end-goal.
The need for developing an attitude of flexibility is a common thread through wisdom-writing from the texts of the ancients to those of today.
Flexibility or the ability to bend is a quality present in living things – dead entities are not pliable.
The Tao Te Ching (1), for example, alludes to this. Section 76 discusses how dead things are usually stiff, brittle, hard, and dry, and goes on to say:
Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible
is a disciple of death.
Whoever is soft and yielding
is a disciple of life.
The hard and stiff will be broken,
The soft and supple will prevail.
(1) Tao Te Ching: A New English Version, as interpreted by Stephen Mitchell, HarperPerennial, A Division of HarperCollins Publishers, 1991, New York
Concept of personal development: Compassion April 11, 2014
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development.Tags: compassion, negative thinking, personal development, personal growth, philosophy, prejudice, Samuel Johnson, self-improvement
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Personal growth experts often suggest that in order to acquire a virtue or positive behavioural attribute we need to perform positive actions within the definition of the attribute.
So, if we want to develop the personal quality of compassion we should perform acts of compassion. The more compassionate acts we perform, the more compassionate will likely become.
However, an additional approach to becoming more compassionate is to use logic to:
(a) Understand our lack of compassion (and the presence of resentment and prejudice [prejudging]);
(b) Become more compassionate; and
(c) Substantially reduce, and ideally, eliminate our prejudices.
If we understand the reasons for our lack of compassion and the reasons for the presence of our prejudice against certain situations or groups of people, then we will be more successful in correcting our overall attitude and behaviour.
One example of a lack of compassion, and the presence of prejudice might be in the often prevailing attitude that any kind of financial assistance to poor people should be used by them only to buy the “necessities of life” and not for any “frivolous” purposes.
The influential 18th essayist, moralist, and literary critic Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), commented however that there is a logical reason why people in constant financial stress might want some luxuries. He did not see their desire for enjoyment as a deficiency of character. His comment also reveals some of the meanness that can be present in our minds – meanness caused by a lack of understanding.
“Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding; yet for the poor we delight in stripping it still barer, and are not ashamed to show even visible displeasure if ever the bitter taste is taken from their mouths.” (*)
Perhaps we can also apply logic to achieve better understanding of our other prejudices, and thereby increase the probability of our becoming more compassionate.
(*) Samuel Johnson: A Biography, John Wain, The Viking Press, New York, 1975, 388 pages
Further reading
A Wikipedia article on Samuel Johnson can be found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Johnson
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