Personal growth: Confucius’ approach to inner freedom September 21, 2017
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Goal Setting and Realization.Tags: Confucius, inspiration, life, philosophy, psychology, self-actualization, writing
add a comment
For Confucius, at least some of the character traits we would likely think of as relatively benign must have seemed to him like physical restraints.
Consider the language Confucius uses in this passage from The Analects:
“The Master had freed himself of four things: idle speculation, certainty, inflexibility, and conceit.” (1)
“Freedom” from “things.”
Perhaps if we thought of the personal faults we are trying to eliminate in less abstract terms and more as physical shackles or barriers, we might gain more satisfaction from our self-improvement achievements.
(1) As translated and quoted in David Hinton’s Book, The Four Chinese Classics
—Dennis Mellersh
Personal growth: The paradox of persistence and failure March 27, 2017
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Goal Setting and Realization, Uncategorized.Tags: achieving goals, goal setting, goal visualization, life, persistence, personal development, personal growth, philosophy
add a comment
By Dennis Mellersh
In our efforts to realize the goals in our personal development programs we can achieve either success or failure through the character attribute of persistence.
We can persist in working and fruitlessly spending energy and time on a goal when all logic and analysis indicates that doing so is a doomed effort.
Or we can continually establish new goals to replace those goals which are clearly not working.
Author Napoleon hill puts it this way:
[Most people] “meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.”
It’s hard to let go of a failing effort to achieve goals we consider important unless we have equally important goals that can replace them.
Personal Development Ideas 