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The Personal Development Journey: Focusing Our Unique Talents and Purpose February 10, 2007

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Personal Growth Books.
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By consistently  concentrating our focus and sticking rigidly to our purpose, is it possible to elevate our performance to the level of historical geniuses?

The topic of personal development, or self-improvement, and a WordPress blog on the subject, can cover a myriad of categories. In fact, just about any method by which we can improve ourselves can come under the topic of personal development. Among the many categories it can include are: relationships; setting and achieving goals, The Law of Attraction, intentions and manifesting or manifestations; emotional contentment; spiritual growth; finding our life purpose; the concept of gratitude; and more.

Discovering our own particular talents is part of the process of self-development, and of developing self-esteem. Some experts believe that every one of us is endowed with some form of positive uniqueness that we can develop through working on it. An individual can develop an innate talent or learn a new skill to a degree that it is a formidable personal attribute. Just as one person can make a difference in the world, so the nurturing of a personal talent or interest can make a big difference or change for the better in an individual, and accordingly, in an indidual’s self-esteem.

With all the categories that personal development involves, it should not be surprising that many books and other media can be used by us in the process of adding value to our lives.

Although I should probably not “review” a book before I get beyond page two, nevertheless, I just got a book out of the library that promises to be interesting. I’m just starting to delve into this book, titled Discover Your Genius, by Michael J. Gelb (HarperCollins Publishers). At the beginning, I was struck by a comment by Martin Kemp, Professor of the History of Art at the University of Oxford, in the foreword to Gelb’s book.

Kemp says, “Is it daft to attempt to model our selves on the transcendent genius of a Copernicus, Brunelleschi, or Einstein? No, not if we consider that all these great minds applied essential principles of focus and purposefulness to the clarification of their core insights.”
Kemp goes on to say that while we might not agree with the choices of the persons Gelb makes in these profiles of genius, we can agree that the people chosen are “exemplary of what humans can potentially achieve, if only we believe in what we can do.” Michael J. Gelb has written quite a few other books, including, How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci.

Here are some of the chapter titles in Discover Your Genius:
Plato: Deepening Your Love of Wisdom
Copernicus: Revolutionizing Your Worldview
Shakespeare: Cultivating Your Emotional Intelligence
Jefferson: Celebrating Your Freedom in the Pursuit of Happiness
Einstein: Unleashing Your Imagination and Combinatory Play

Discover your Genius is a 350+ page book and it’s not printed in particularly large type, so it may be a while before I finish it. I also usually have a number of books on the go at once. When I do complete reading it, I hope to review it here. The subtitle of the book is “How to Think Like History’s Ten Most Revolutionary Minds.” We’ll see if I turn into a thinker of that caliber and raise my own self-esteem in the process of reading it.

A technique or program to discover our life purpose January 22, 2007

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Purpose.
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Discovering our true life purpose can be a major advance in putting our personal development efforts on a higher level beyond just our everyday personal responsibilities.

Many of us go through a large part of our lives with that vague feeling, that although we are achieving various life and career goals, we may not be doing “what we were really meant to do.” That’s one of the reasons we are interested in personal development.

Although I have had what I would call a successful life in terms of providing for my family and having an interesting line of work, I always kept searching for that elusive commitment to a larger purpose. I was meeting my responsibilities but I felt I might not have been living “my real purpose” in life.

Hence, my reading of many books in an effort to perhaps discover what I was on this earth for. Books on various topics such as just do what you love and the money will follow. The problem, for many of us, in fact, is in discovering what we really love to do – making that determination is harder than it sounds.  Another book, whose title grabbed me and which I have dipped into is: “I Could Do Anything If Only I knew What it Was.”

My favorite, when I was longing to get out of corporate life and into what I considered the freedom of self-employment, or working for myself was: “Breaking Out of A Job You Don’t Like and the Regimented Life.” Many such books line my bookshelves.

At one point in my life, I was looking for a new career direction and a counselor gave me a book by Arnold M. Patent, titled: “You Can Have It All.” At the time, despite reading the book several times, and underlining it copiously, I really didn’t understand it. What it was basically, seeing it in hindsight, was a book about the Law of Attraction, but it didn’t come right out and say that, perhaps because at that time, the term may not have been in vogue. Patent’s book focuses on the abundance available in the universe and how through various techniques we can appreciate that abundance and bring it into our lives. I picked up the book again a few days ago, and I finally started “to get it.”

Right now, I want to talk about an interesting small section of the book in which the author  advises us on how to discover our life purpose. I have read a number of authors’ techniques on this topic, but right now I’d like to concentrate on Arnold Patent’s approach.

Essentially, here’s what he suggests, and I am paraphrasing:

(1) List two of what you consider to be your unique or special qualities. In my case the two were (1) knowledge-seeking and (2) creatively communicative.

(2) Then you write down two ways you enjoy expressing these qualities when interacting with other people. So I wrote down (1) help inform people of what I have learned and (2) encourage people in their efforts.

(3) Then you are supposed to describe your ideal universe as follows:
What does it look like?
How is everyone interacting?
What does it feel like?
Remember that the ideal universe is a fun place to be.

(3) Here are my answers about my ideal universe
It is peaceful, grateful and motivated
Interactions are based on wisdom and win/win in developing solutions to common problems
There is an overriding appreciation of the concept of abundance

Then you combine the three subsets above into a single statement, and that is your life purpose.

Here’s what I have come up with, and remember, this is my first attempt, so I’m going to have to refine it – right now I think it sounds a little presumptuous:

“My purpose is to utilize my knowledge, skills and communicative abilities to inform and encourage people and thereby help them in a meaningful way to be happy, confident and secure within a universe that they regard as having abundance for all.”

It may sound somewhat grandiose, but I consider it an “ideal” life purpose. It’s something to work toward. Moreover, my personal view is that one’s ideal life purpose is not necessarily something they can do to earn their living. It can be for a fortunate few. But it having a stated ideal life purpose is a way that we can live our life through principles.

We all have a main area of responsibility in our lives. For me it is to ensure the well being of my family. But I can bring my life purpose into that responsibility. Also, because my self-employed business involves a lot of writing, I think I can work part of my purpose into that as well.

If you are interested in reading Arnold M. Patent’s book, You Can Have It All, the copy I have is the seventh edition 1988, in a large paperback format, from Celebration Publishing, New York.