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Personal growth literature and the timeless quality of human nature July 1, 2018

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal growth.
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Sometimes when, through a period of time, we have delved into a lot of personal development and self-actualization materials, including very old commentary, it may seem that there is really nothing new in much of it.

And the reason is likely that individuals, the people such material is written about and directed to, do not change, even over countless centuries.

As Erich Hoffer writes:

“It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations, past and present, are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual’s hungers, anxieties, dreams and preoccupations have remained unchanged through millennia…

“…If in some manner the voice of an individual reaches us from the remotest distance of time, it is a timeless voice speaking about ourselves.”

It is the individual, rather than any particular society as a whole that is “nearest to our understanding; so near that even the interval of millennia cannot weaken our feeling of kinship,” Hoffer observes. (1)

Historical examples are numerous: ancient philosophical texts, such as the writings of Roman and Greek philosophers, playwrights, and poets; centuries old religious tracts; wall paintings in the tombs of ancient Egypt.

(1) Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition, Harper & Row, Publishers, New York, 1973

Dennis Mellersh

Personal growth: Applying the power of constructive speech February 8, 2018

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal growth.
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One of the popular concepts in current self-actualization thought is that of the effectiveness of saying/writing positive affirmations to improve our well-being, a concept actually promoted much earlier in the early 1900’s but in somewhat different form.

In 1910, New Thought writer Christian D. Larson wrote:

“When you feel that trouble is coming and express that feeling in your speech, you are actually turning in your path, and are beginning to move toward that trouble…Never give expression to what you do not wish to encourage… When you have something good to say, say it. When you have something ill to say, say something else.…”

He also suggested:

“The more you talk about a thing, the more you move it along. Every word that is spoken exercises a power in personal life and that power will work either for or against the person, depending upon the nature of the word.” (1)

By complaining or being straight-out critical we do not improve the situation and can also be harming ourselves psychologically.

An undercurrent in all of this is the idea that if we are saying something, we are usually also thinking the same thing; and saying/thinking enough negative things will turn our overall outlook into a negative one and affect us at the level of our subconscious as well.

For people familiar with the concept of the Law of Attraction, this advice, like much of Larson’s work, has a familiar feel to it.

The idea of enabling positive outcomes by controlling our speech to eliminate all negativity and  focus it in only in a constructive and productive direction is one that seems worthy of doing, but it’s more difficult than we might imagine.

As someone who has a grumpy side, I am trying to do this, but it’s surprising how easily critical, non-constructive comments can roll of the tongue when we are irritated, almost from a default position.

(1) The quotations are from Christian D. Larson’s work, Your Forces and How to Use Them, an eight-page chapter which is included in an anthology of Larson’s writings titled The Optimist Creed, published by Jeremy P. Tarcher / Penguin,  New York, 2012.

— Dennis Mellersh