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Personal growth: Applying the power of constructive speech February 8, 2018

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal growth.
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One of the popular concepts in current self-actualization thought is that of the effectiveness of saying/writing positive affirmations to improve our well-being, a concept actually promoted much earlier in the early 1900’s but in somewhat different form.

In 1910, New Thought writer Christian D. Larson wrote:

“When you feel that trouble is coming and express that feeling in your speech, you are actually turning in your path, and are beginning to move toward that trouble…Never give expression to what you do not wish to encourage… When you have something good to say, say it. When you have something ill to say, say something else.…”

He also suggested:

“The more you talk about a thing, the more you move it along. Every word that is spoken exercises a power in personal life and that power will work either for or against the person, depending upon the nature of the word.” (1)

By complaining or being straight-out critical we do not improve the situation and can also be harming ourselves psychologically.

An undercurrent in all of this is the idea that if we are saying something, we are usually also thinking the same thing; and saying/thinking enough negative things will turn our overall outlook into a negative one and affect us at the level of our subconscious as well.

For people familiar with the concept of the Law of Attraction, this advice, like much of Larson’s work, has a familiar feel to it.

The idea of enabling positive outcomes by controlling our speech to eliminate all negativity and  focus it in only in a constructive and productive direction is one that seems worthy of doing, but it’s more difficult than we might imagine.

As someone who has a grumpy side, I am trying to do this, but it’s surprising how easily critical, non-constructive comments can roll of the tongue when we are irritated, almost from a default position.

(1) The quotations are from Christian D. Larson’s work, Your Forces and How to Use Them, an eight-page chapter which is included in an anthology of Larson’s writings titled The Optimist Creed, published by Jeremy P. Tarcher / Penguin,  New York, 2012.

— Dennis Mellersh

Personal growth: Misconceptions about dealing with stress February 4, 2018

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Solving Problems.
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In our efforts to develop our potential through personal development, our approach to dealing with emotional stress might be the exact opposite of what we should be doing.

Dr. Richard Carlson observes that many of us, when faced with a stress-producing situation,actually add to our stress by trying harder and harder to solve the problem or resolve whatever circumstance is causing the stress.

But Dr. Carlson says that instead, we should be temporarily backing off:

“The more intense the feeling [of stress], the greater is the need to slow down or stop whatever we are doing, but, more importantly, what we are thinking about…when we feel stressed, we lose our psychological bearings, wisdom, and common sense…we lose sight of the big picture and often get lost in the details of our problems.” (1)

He compares coping with mental or emotional stress to dealing with the stress of a physical injury. If we sprain our ankle while jogging, for example, the last thing we would think of doing is to try to make the sprain go away by using the ankle even more.

Similarly, in dealing with our stress-inducing challenges, we should take a thought-break and do something that is not stressful and equally important, for the time being, stop trying to more and more effort towards solving the problem.

(1) Richard Carlson, Ph.D. in his book, You Can Be Happy No Matter What, New World Library, Novato, California, 1997

— Dennis Mellersh