Living in day-tight compartments: Difficult, but necessary June 6, 2017
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Living in the Now.Tags: day-tight-compartments, life, lifestyle, personal development, personal growth, philosophy, self-improvement, visualization, writing
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At some point in our personal development work, many of us will come across the advice that we should try to live in day-tight compartments.
And, although it’s good advice, it’s also very tough to do consistently.
Most of us like to dream about the future, to make plans (often just in our heads) about what we would like to do with our lives. We like to think about all the possible options available to us and imagine our lives unfolding within those options and life-possibilities.
In this mind-frame, self-improvement opportunities are abundant, and we enjoy mentally imagining ourselves within these scenarios.
This type of personal growth projecting provides a pleasant and sometimes even mildly euphoric mental and emotional experience.
It’s enjoyable.
But, if we aren’t careful, it can also evolve into day-dreaming and hiding.
When we are young, the paths of life seem like infinite six-lane highways of potential that we can explore endlessly.
But with each new year, we will find that increasingly, the lanes of opportunity are actually finite and choices need to be made.
We can still plan, we can still dream, but we also need to start “doing” today and every day.
— Dennis Mellersh
Personal growth: The significance of limitations May 25, 2017
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal growth.Tags: goal setting, life, personal development, personal growth, philosophy, self-actualization, setting limits, writing
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In our quest for maximum self-actualization, individuation, and personal development, there is a danger in our not recognizing our limitations; and in turn, not setting limitations on what we can realistically expect to accomplish.
It’s an especially difficult challenge for anyone with ambitious and eclectic interests.
The reality of time
We are limited by many factors, but the chief restraint is time.
When we look at the time available for self-improvement efforts after meeting just work and family responsibilities, for example, there are not many hours available to us.
Additionally, of course, the time available to us decreases as we get older.
Yet, this does not stop many of us from taking on an unreasonable load of self-development goals on our lifetime to-do lists.
The desire to be an expert
We are all largely familiar with the general axiom about acquiring basic expertise in any discipline: the 10,000 hour time-investment rule.
That does not sound like too much over a lifetime, but consider that 10,000 hours represents about 250 steady 40-hour weeks, or five years, devoted solely to the area we want even basic expertise in. Ten years or more, part-time.
So, there’s no defeatism in simply recognizing that we are not likely going to learn to play a musical instrument with even basic expertise. We simply don’t have that amount of time available.
But we don’t need to be experts
If we want to study and practice less than 10,000 hours, we can learn an instrument well enough that it adds to our appreciation of music and enriches our lives.
The same reasoning applies to the amount of work we are willing or able to commit to any area of our personal improvement efforts. We don’t need to gain expert status in any particular field in order to gain personal growth benefits from it.
— Dennis Mellersh
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