jump to navigation

Personal growth concept: Making irrevocable decisions October 28, 2017

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal growth.
Tags: , , , , , , ,
add a comment

After the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes reached the New World and decided to invade Mexico (Aztec Empire) in the year 1519 it is said that he burned his ships in order to make the decision to invade virtually impossible to change. (1)

The idea of making a decision completely unchangeable, as Cortes did, however, contains the ingredients for two possible likely outcomes:  success or failure. It’s an extreme decision-making approach with virtually no middle ground.

So, maybe not such a a good idea for our self-improvement program.

Making a decision that is totally irrevocable is different from being totally committed to a decision but allowing for the possibility of needing to adapt to changing circumstances.

Tony Robbins suggests that the key to success in making important, and possibly life-altering decisions, is to decide what’s important to you, make that a goal, commit to it, and then take massive action(s) towards making your decision(s) a reality, ideally every day. (2)

Commitment is necessary, but in the majority of cases, doing something radical to make a decision utterly unalterable, could be reckless and result in disaster.

In self-actualization, as in life, moderation and balance, as opposed to extremes, are more likely to result in success.

(1) Actually, he scuttled (sank) them, except for one small ship to be used for communicating with Spain.  Furthermore, Cortes was in reality making a decision which was, less for himself, and more on “behalf” of his 800 soldiers, effectively committing them to his plan of conquest

(2) Tony Robbins in his book Notes From a Friend

—Dennis Mellersh

Personal growth challenge: Less theory, more implementation October 26, 2017

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal growth.
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
2 comments

Study is important, but there’s not much use in having an ambitious personal growth program if we spend more time on the theory than we do on taking actions to actually improve ourselves.  Spending too much time on the theories of self-actualization reduces the time available to accomplish our goals.

We can fool ourselves into thinking that studying can substitute for “doing” when in fact studying too much theory can be an enabler for procrastination.

Excessive time spent on studying “how to be organized”, for example, serves little purpose if we are leaving the action of paying our overdue bills until tomorrow.

Unless the act of studying is, in itself, a major part of our self-actualization program, then we are better off making action the biggest part of our focus.

— Dennis Mellersh