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Personal growth: the “hard work = talent” paradigm May 27, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development, Self-Discipline.
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Planning, goal-setting, establishing deadlines, and ultimately executing the components of our personal growth programs requires ingenuity, work, and yes, talent.

* Talent to recognize the areas of our lives requiring improvement
* Talent to research the ocean of information available on personal growth and choose the best options to pursue
* Talent to focus on executing first things first
* Talent to “keep going” through difficulties
* Talent to bounce back from setbacks
* Talent to “do the work”

Eric Hoffer talks about this:

“They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration, or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience, something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor.” (1)

To be disappointed because our particular concept of personal development is not working fast enough (for us) doesn’t mean we don’t have the talent to make it happen.

Rather, it probably means we are not putting enough work into it.

(1) Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

How inspirational books can assist our personal growth May 23, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Personal Growth Books, Solving Problems.
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Embarking on a journey of personal growth and development often begins with our being in one or more of a number of emotional or life-situation states.

(a) We may be full of confidence and high self-esteem
(b) We may be facing a difficult problem or series of problems in our lives
(c) We may be at a low spot emotionally
(d) We may be generally satisfied with our lives but are looking to move to a higher level of achievement, contribution, and satisfaction

In each of these situational starting points, but particularly when we are facing significant difficulties, inspirational self-improvement books and other media such as DVD’s and videos, can be an important and productive asset in our plan to feel better about ourselves and to thereby have the drive and the energy to realize our life potential.

Effective inspirational media will often give us an emotional lift and bring some light to what may seem to be a dark emotional landscape.

The primary reason inspirational material can help us is that it offers hope – believable hope that positive change is possible within our lives.

Better quality inspiration material will:

(1) Be realistic and plausible and not full of clichés and delusional platitudes
(2) Offer true examples of people overcoming adversity

The best inspirational material will do both of the above as well as provide us with practical action steps that we can take to achieve the improvement we seek in our lives.

Overall, we should allow ourselves to be comforted by words of inspiration; we just need to make sure that we take the necessary action steps to turn inspiration into a personal journey of actual achievement.