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Personal growth: Do we have the power to change our moods? May 13, 2018

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in personal development ideas.
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Psychotherapist Richard Carlson tells us that our moods, particularly the two opposites of low moods and high moods, can have huge effect on our intellectual approach to problem solving, but aside from waiting for a low mood to go away, is there a way to avoid the negative effects of a low mood, or alternatively get into a better mood?

Author Seth Godin, in a blog post titled The Places You Go, writes that we sometimes bring on low or positive moods by choice:

“There’s a metaphorical room I can go to where I’m likely to experience flow—a sense of being in the moment and getting an enormous amount done. Down the hall is the room where there’s a lot of anxiety about something I can’t change. I can visit that room if I choose, but I don’t. And yes, it’s a choice.”

One of the key points here is that Godin is talking about how anxiety can result from constantly revisiting and fretting about “something I can’t change.”

He further suggests that, “Anxiety, flow, joy, fear, exhaustion, connection, contemplation, emotional labor… each one can be visited at will if we choose. Sometimes by entering a real room, but more often in metaphor…”

The post he wrote is more involved and complex than what I have written in this short article, so here is the link if you would like to read it in more detail:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/08/the-places-you-go.html

— Dennis Mellersh

A creative hobby can help improve your personal growth program May 10, 2018

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in personal development ideas.
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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