Are you needlessly postponing your dreams because of your personal growth program? February 24, 2014
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development, Living in the Now.Tags: achieving goals, delayed gratification, focussing, personal development, personal growth, personal growth program
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In our efforts to maximize our personal development potential we can sometimes fall into the trap of over-prioritizing to the point where our personal growth efforts become unbalanced. This can ha ppen, for example, if we put too much stress, or the wrong emphasis, on the benefits of the concept of delayed gratification – denying ourselves something pleasurable or enjoyable now, for a greater benefit in the future.
Clearly it is better to forgo having that large chocolate sundae now for the future benefit of a healthier body. Similarly it’s probably a good idea to avoid that second latte every day, or other indulgences, in order to put aside some money for a “rainy day” fund for unanticipated expenses, or for a future holiday you would like to have with your family.
However, it’s not necessarily a good idea to constantly future-forward a dream you would like to follow, in order to instead practice today some element of your personal growth program.
To avoid what we might call dream-procrastination, the key is balance.
If, for example you have intellectual development, say reading a significant book, for example, as part of your daily personal growth program, and you also have a dream about writing a book, why not start writing your book a few days each week, in place of reading a book on those days.
Taking time now to pursue your dreams-for-the-future is just as important, if not more so, than daily over-emphasizing and committing too much time to an abstract concept of personal development. Practising delayed gratification of our dreams can hit us hard emotionally when we reach that stage in life when we suddenly realize that there is no longer time to realize and enjoy those dreams.
The Tao Te Ching and the futility of naming March 1, 2013
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Tao Te Ching.Tags: awareness, beyond ego, controlling ego, ego management, eternal tao, Lao-tzu, managing the ego, subconscious desire, Tao Te Ching
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One of the tendencies of the ego (the mind, the voice in our heads) is the propensity to apply labels to everything in life.
Perhaps this is a manifestation of our subconscious desire to feel a measure of control and understanding — a way to intellectually manage or make sense of the universe by categorizing all elements as we perceive them. But the “control” afforded by labelling can be illusory because many of the components underlying the real world cannot accurately be named universally.
By placing labels on phenomena, we are coloring everything with our own brush, which in many cases is not a reflection of the true colors of reality.
There is an interesting reflection on labelling or naming which I found when reading a passage in the Tao Te Ching (composed by Lao-tzu, in perhaps the 400-500 BC period) as interpreted/translated by Stephen Mitchell.*
In Chapter 1 Lao-tzu writes:
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
The unamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.
If we can resist the temptation to label, if we can accept things as they are, if we make a decision to try to not judge, then perhaps we can then better see reality.
*Stephen Mitchell, Tao Te Ching, A new English Version, HarperPerennial edition, 1991, paperback.
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