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Moderation is the key to success in personal improvement May 3, 2018

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in personal development ideas.
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Sometimes over-zealous work on our personal growth programs can lead to an imbalanced life, whereby we spend so much time and effort on a self-improvement program, or a personal goal within the program, that other important aspects of our lives can suffer from lack of attention.

Our personal growth efforts can actually suffer if we spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to ensure positive results.

Running or jogging, for example, has benefits for improving our health, but these benefits are of little use if we skew the rest of our life out of balance by constantly trying to include more and more running.

Or, we can spend so much time researching and studying personal development that we do not spend enough time on those action steps needed to bring our goals to fruition.

Doing community work to excess can interfere with the time we should be spending with our own family.

As psychologist and self-actualization thinker Carl Jung has observed:

“Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, or morphine, or idealism.”

—Dennis Mellersh

Personal growth concept: Making irrevocable decisions October 28, 2017

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal growth.
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After the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes reached the New World and decided to invade Mexico (Aztec Empire) in the year 1519 it is said that he burned his ships in order to make the decision to invade virtually impossible to change. (1)

The idea of making a decision completely unchangeable, as Cortes did, however, contains the ingredients for two possible likely outcomes:  success or failure. It’s an extreme decision-making approach with virtually no middle ground.

So, maybe not such a a good idea for our self-improvement program.

Making a decision that is totally irrevocable is different from being totally committed to a decision but allowing for the possibility of needing to adapt to changing circumstances.

Tony Robbins suggests that the key to success in making important, and possibly life-altering decisions, is to decide what’s important to you, make that a goal, commit to it, and then take massive action(s) towards making your decision(s) a reality, ideally every day. (2)

Commitment is necessary, but in the majority of cases, doing something radical to make a decision utterly unalterable, could be reckless and result in disaster.

In self-actualization, as in life, moderation and balance, as opposed to extremes, are more likely to result in success.

(1) Actually, he scuttled (sank) them, except for one small ship to be used for communicating with Spain.  Furthermore, Cortes was in reality making a decision which was, less for himself, and more on “behalf” of his 800 soldiers, effectively committing them to his plan of conquest

(2) Tony Robbins in his book Notes From a Friend

—Dennis Mellersh