A creative hobby can help improve your personal growth program May 10, 2018
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in personal development ideas.Tags: achieving goals, creative process, creativity, inspiration, life, personal growth program, philosophy, psychology, self-actualization, writing
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For anyone who is putting a lot of effort into their personal development program, the process can involve a lot of work, and take on the feeling of a job or chore; all of which can have a depleting effect on our physical, emotional, and mental energy reserves.
One way to help overcome this and keep our energy reserves in balance is to add a creative hobby component to our self-improvement routines.
A creative hobby could involve many forms; arts and crafts, such as painting or drawing; making pottery; or learning a musical instrument; creative writing; studying and doing woodworking.
If you Google “creative hobbies” you will find hundreds of suggestions that you might want to investigate.
If you find a find a hobby that you really enjoy it can help put your mind and emotions into a different zone or plane…one where you are so absorbed that you forget for a while the problems and challenges that each of face every day.
Hobbies have a physical and emotional restorative power, and that attribute can inject more energy into our self-actualization work.
The key: Don’t turn your creative outlet into just another “I have to do this” routine; don’t make it a work project.
PS: There’s an interesting article on the mental and emotional restorative value of hobbies, and in particular the dangers of turning a hobby into yet another productivity-oriented chore, in the New York Times:
— Dennis Mellersh
Personal development: The need to implement what we learn December 24, 2017
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Personal Development Potential.Tags: Arnold Toynbee, books, creativity, inspiration, life, psychology, self-actualization, setting goals, writing
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The eminent historian Arnold Toynbee warns obliquely that, for most of us, it is important to convert the knowledge we are gaining, into action; otherwise we are doomed to be constantly frustrated.
In Toynbee’s case, he found he was becoming frustrated in the world of academia by constantly acquiring more and more knowledge for its own sake. His irritation ended when he realized that by using his knowledge for the writing of history, he could be more creative and productive.
Similarly, in our efforts towards personal growth and self-actualization we tend to acquire a lot of knowledge, theory, and opinions, but if we do not put that knowledge and information into practice, it does us little good.
Toynbee found that when he applied the action of writing to his knowledge of history it enabled him to be more focused and selective about what future knowledge he chose to acquire.
Toynbee wrote, “Instead of going on acquiring knowledge ad infinitum, I had started to do something with the knowledge I already possessed, and this active use of knowledge gave direction, for the future, to my acquisition of knowledge.”(1)
(1) Arnold Toynbee, from his memoir, Experiences. Toynbee is best known for his ten volume work, A Study of History.
— Dennis Mellersh
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