Personal growth: Enabling our feelings one day at a time January 25, 2018
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Goal Setting and Realization.Tags: Arnold Patent, inspiration, life, personal development, philosophy, psychology, self-actualization, self-awareness, writing
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In our personal development efforts towards efficiency and effectiveness, many of us start our day with a prioritized to-do list, but in addition to focussing on actions, we may be able to improve our sense of well-being by also focussing on the feelings we would like to develop within ourselves during the day.
Feelings such as:
Calmness and peacefulness
Gratitude for the good things in our life
Trusting in our intuition
Looking forward to the experiences of the day
Thinking about doing what we love.
The suggestion to focus at the beginning of each day on the feelings we would like to develop during the day is a key element in Arnold Patent’s concept of the Ideal Day Exercise.
Patent discusses this and other self-actualization ideas in his his book entitled You Can Have it All : The art of winning the money game and living a life of joy.
He writes:
“The ultimate function of the Ideal Day Exercise is to put us in touch with the only part of us that is real – our joyfulness…Each day that we do the Ideal Day Exercise, we release more joyfulness.”
An idea we might consider trying.
— Dennis Mellersh
Personal growth: Too much thinking and not enough doing January 8, 2018
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Goal Setting and Realization.Tags: achieving goals, inspiration, life, personal development planning, philosophy, psychology, self-actualization, setting goals, writing
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Although it’s generally a good idea not to jump into projects without giving them careful thought, it can be equally damaging to our self-development to over-study and miss opportunities for greater self-actualization by not taking timely action.
A similar, but slightly different variation of this problem can also occur in our efforts to develop our key long-term goals if we over-plan and under-act, thereby postponing doing the necessary goal-directed tasks.
As Shakespeare wrote in his play Julius Caesar:
“There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.”
Sometimes planning can be more enjoyable and appealing to us than the harder work of doing.
— Dennis Mellersh
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