“Today is a better day”: A goal for personal growth April 9, 2014
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development, Goal Setting and Realization.Tags: achieving goals, Edward de Bono, life, personal development, personal development potential, personal growth, philosophy, self-improvement
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In his book, Handbook for the Positive Revolution, Edward de Bono sets a goal for people working on a program for implementing their particular concept of personal development.
In discussing self-improvement as part of his “positive revolution”, de Bono suggests that we each have a new greeting when we meet people.
Instead of the usual “How are you?” he suggests we say instead, “Today is a better day.”
De Bono’s reasoning is that “…whoever you are talking to is one day older than yesterday and as we should all be improving with each day we live, then today that person is better than he or she was yesterday.”
He adds that self-improvement is a day-by-day, slow process and needs to be there all the time.
De Bono says that self-improvement can take place in any of four directions:
(1) Developing positive attitudes, habits and skills.
(2) Reducing the domination of bad habits and attitudes
(3) Getting better at whatever it is (work, job, task) that you are doing
(4) Acquiring specific new skills
An interesting idea and worth considering as part of realizing our personal development potential.
Further reading:
Edward de Bono, Handbook for the Positive Revolution, Viking Penguin, New York, 1992, 176 pages
Self-awareness and choosing personal growth goals April 6, 2014
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development, Goal Setting and Realization.Tags: achieving goals, goal setting, personal development, personal growth, personal improvement, philosophy, self-actualization, self-awareness, self-improvement, setting goals
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The process of choosing our goals needs to be an integral part of our overall personal process of self-actualization if we are to reach our potential in our personal improvement efforts.
In conscientiously and regularly working at a program of self-improvement or personal development, two results will usually occur: we will increase our self-awareness, and we will improve our self-knowledge.
This acceleration in our understanding of ourselves in turn will help us in identifying our strengths and talents and in clarifying our areas of lesser strengths – aspects of our personality in which we may want to increase our effectiveness.
It’s important that our goals be ones that we choose or decide upon after this process of introspection.
As you have probably already discovered, the need for having personal goals is one of the most common recommendations in the literature of the self-empowerment movement.
But the goals must be “ours”, not ones which we think, from our reading, “should” be our goals.
If the goals are not ones we feel passionate about achieving, if they are “should do” goals instead of “want to” or “personally need to do” goals, then failure is a strong probability.
Thought for today
“People are not lazy. They simply have impotent goals – that is, goals that do not inspire them.”
– Tony Robbins
Personal Development Ideas 