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Personal growth: Bringing the future into the present May 21, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Goal Setting and Realization, Planning.
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In the personal growth and development movement, experts tell us that planning is critically important if we are to make meaningful progress in our self-improvement efforts.

Goals are an important part of this strategy, as is doing some thinking about where we want to go or what our destination is in our journey of growth.

The goals we set for ourselves can be varied, and might include:

* Improving self-awareness
* Learning new skills
* Building self esteem
* Cultivating and building existing talents and strengths
* Improving our quality of life
* Developing greater integrity
* Managing our ego and emotions

Whatever our objectives, planning will be important to realize these goals.

How then does planning help us?

We can’t re-create the past, nor can we actually do anything in the future, because we are not there yet.

I came across an excellent definition of planning while reviewing some of my older notes:

“Planning is bringing the future into the present so you can do something about it now.” (1)

So, by planning, we are actually taking action about the future in the present, the only time segment in which we can really accomplish anything in our growth program.

(1) Unfortunately, I did not make a note of who made this comment, so I am not able to provide a source for further reading

Personal growth: Our past does not equal our future May 20, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal growth, Living in the Now.
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One of the impediments to effectively implementing our personal growth and development programs can be the way we look at our past, and the attributes we apply to our past behaviour.

The past can be a barrier to forward progress in self-improvement if we look at it through a pessimistic and fatalistic perspective.

We might view the past and its problems as a negative indicator of how things will be in the future.

We might look at our past and fill our minds with regret of what we did or didn’t do.

We might negatively assess our entire personality based on our past.

One conclusion is inescapable; our past behaviour does affect our present and future circumstances.

However, can can’t un-do the past. We can only work in the present to build a positive outcome for the future.

In his book, Notes From a Friend, Tony Robbins makes a significant and carefully worded statement about the past and the future:
“Remember that what you did in the past does not determine what you’ll do in the future.”

In other words, we may not be able to change what we did in the past or its influence on our lives today, but we can change how we will act, what we will do, in the future.

In his comment Robbins is emphasising that behavioural change is possible, that our actions now can positively affect our future; that our past behaviour pattern does not have to be our future behaviour pattern.

We can’t un-ring a bell, but we can ring a new bell.

Positive thinking versus negative thinking.