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Personal growth: The first step to self-awareness May 29, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal growth, Personal Development Potential.
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If one of the goals in your plan for your personal growth and development program is that of increasing your self-awareness or self-knowledge, you have already taken an important foundational step towards accomplishing that goal.

How so?

Because you have already demonstrated that you possess self-awareness in realizing that some aspects of your intellectual and emotional personal makeup require improvement.

Generally people with a low level self-awareness do not realize this, nor do they make a decision to take the necessary actions necessary for improving their lives.

Additionally, by deciding to engage in a regimen of self-improvement, you are also showing that your decision to achieve greater self-actualization is more than just wishful thinking on your part; it is an action-oriented decision.

So I won’t insult your intelligence by offering you something like “7 little-known ways to increase your self-awareness.”

Increasing your perception of your identity is not something that you can accomplish in quick and easy steps. There is no formula; e.g. : a + b + x + y = self-awareness.

Rather, your perception of your true interior self will occur gradually and naturally on its own accord, almost as a by-product of your overall personal growth program.

Personal growth: Our past does not equal our future May 20, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal growth, Living in the Now.
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One of the impediments to effectively implementing our personal growth and development programs can be the way we look at our past, and the attributes we apply to our past behaviour.

The past can be a barrier to forward progress in self-improvement if we look at it through a pessimistic and fatalistic perspective.

We might view the past and its problems as a negative indicator of how things will be in the future.

We might look at our past and fill our minds with regret of what we did or didn’t do.

We might negatively assess our entire personality based on our past.

One conclusion is inescapable; our past behaviour does affect our present and future circumstances.

However, can can’t un-do the past. We can only work in the present to build a positive outcome for the future.

In his book, Notes From a Friend, Tony Robbins makes a significant and carefully worded statement about the past and the future:
“Remember that what you did in the past does not determine what you’ll do in the future.”

In other words, we may not be able to change what we did in the past or its influence on our lives today, but we can change how we will act, what we will do, in the future.

In his comment Robbins is emphasising that behavioural change is possible, that our actions now can positively affect our future; that our past behaviour pattern does not have to be our future behaviour pattern.

We can’t un-ring a bell, but we can ring a new bell.

Positive thinking versus negative thinking.