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Personal growth concept: Are we less optimistic as we age? November 1, 2017

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal growth.
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Are young people by nature optimistic, cheerful, upbeat, and assured, whereas older people are inevitably pessimistic, gloomy, despairing, resigned, and worried?

Although some people seem to be naturally pessimistic or optimistic, for most of us our emotional outlook will vary with our real-time circumstances and how we treat the present moment and our present overall stage in life.

When we are young, life seems like a super-highway, with no speed limits and many off-ramps to significant opportunities. At this stage of our growth all things seem possible. There is “lots of time” to do most everything.

So, we tend to be broadly speaking, optimistic.

As we grow older, however, and as we see time literally starting to “run-out” we come to the realization that all things are not possible, there is not unlimited potential, because, simply put, we will not have enough time to do them all.

At this life-stage, we can still be upbeat and optimistic about “life” in general, but we now know that we need to establish our priorities on the basis of a time-available-focused algorithm.

In our self-improvement efforts, we do not come easily to realizing, and more important accepting, that life has a stop-sign.

— 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