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Using self-focus to reduce our resentment of others June 3, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development.
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In working our personal growth programs, one of our goals might be to minimize the negativity produced by the component of resentment in our emotional makeup.

Disapproval, envy, jealousy, and irritation with the actions, achievements and/or general behaviour of other people are all subsets of the general emotion of resentment.

Because we are doing a lot of tough internal work with trying to improve our own lives, lifestyle, and overall behaviour, it can be easy to fall into the trap of resenting others who are not following a path similar to ours.

This tendency can be the result of transferring the expectations we have for ourselves onto our expectations about other people.

To avoid this, the ancient Chinese sage Confucius suggests we focus primarily on managing our own individual personal actions and emotions:

“If you expect great things from yourself and demand little of others, you’ll keep resentment far away.” (1)

(1) Confucius, The Analects, as translated by David Hinton in his book The Four Chinese Classics

Personal growth: A willingness to believe and to learn May 28, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development, Personal Development Potential.
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Two significant personality characteristics of people engaged in a program of personal development and growth are:

(1) A willingness to believe that change for the better is possible

(2) A willingness to take the action steps (the work) to implement change

These two emotional and intellectual characteristics are also common to individuals throughout history who have struggled in difficult socio-economic environments and produced significant accomplishments to improve society as a whole.

So, as someone seriously exploring the concept of self-improvement, you are among a select group of believers and doers; you already have a strong sense of identity and a strong bias to action.

Essentially, you are an optimist with a mindset favourable to enabling your self-actualization.

Some critics of the personal development movement contend that personal growth practitioners keep buying self-improvement materials year after year, in a never ending process of seeking new information. The argument being; if personal growth concepts actually work, then why do people need to keep obtaining new information about the process?

This criticism fails to recognize the essential truth that self-betterment is a lifelong and life-oriented learning process, not a short-term problem/solution equation.

The real goal in personal growth is the well-being and growth-attitude generated by the continuous improvement process itself.

You are participating in an educational effort that will pay intellectual and emotional dividends both now and perhaps even more so in the future. And you may end up being much better prepared to deal with the future as it unfolds compared to people not engaged in personal growth.

Here is how the philosopher Eric Hoffer looks at the process of education:

“The central task of education is to implant a will and a facility for learning; it should produce not learned, but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society. Where grandparents, parents, and children are students together…In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.” (1)

(1) Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition