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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

Personal growth and the attraction of opposites May 27, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Goal Setting and Realization, Solving Problems.
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There can be times in our personal growth and development journey when confusion sets in, when the choice of which path to take becomes difficult.

We hear different and often conflicting pieces of advice, suggestions, or ideas – from others, and from our own internal voice.

This does not mean there is something wrong with the methods we are using, or the overall approach we are taking to our self-improvement efforts.

Feeling this way is normal and is a result of the attraction of perhaps equally attractive alternatives.

Having these “dilemmas” is actually what can make the self-development journey interesting, exciting and rewarding.

Mindless, inflexible adherence to one, and one-only, approach to self-actualization can be limiting, unproductive, and yes, boring.
The philosopher Eric Hoffer makes this comment:

“It is the stretched soul that makes music, and souls are stretched by the pull of opposites – opposite bents, tastes, yearnings, loyalties. Where there is no polarity – where energies flow smoothly in one direction, — there will be much doing, but no music.” (1)

(1) Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition