Fear: The enemy of our personal development potential March 4, 2017
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Personal Development Potential.Tags: Hope, Insipiration, life, personal development, personal growth, personal improvement, philosophy, positive thinking, self-improvement
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By Dennis Mellersh
The author of one of my personal development books suggests that fear is one of the primary causes of procrastination.
And from our own personal experience we each know that not only can fear result in “putting off” doing something until a later date, it can also result in putting it off altogether and never doing it.
As such, fear can be the enemy of our self-improvement efforts.
In his landmark television series, Civilization, Sir Kenneth Clark suggests that one of the primary causes of the collapse of two of the greatest advanced ancient civilizations, the Greek and Roman empires, was fear.
Fears such as invasion by the barbarians, fear of plague or war, and fear of the supernatural.
The result in Clark’s view was a significant decrease in citizens’ confidence and energy, the two main drivers necessary for building a successful and viable civilization with staying power.
Similarly, creating a successful personal growth program for ourselves requires confidence and energy, as well as a desire, coupled with effort, to push through our fear to accomplish things.
Paradoxically, we can be in the position of starting a personal development program in part to reduce our fears but then allow our fears to impede our progress.
How come?
Seth Godin believes that one of the major reasons that we do not follow through with our new project efforts is our fear that “This might not work.”
However, the need to push through our fears, such as ‘this might not work’ is easier to say than to do.
That’s when we need to draw on our energy.
“Today is a better day”: A goal for personal growth April 9, 2014
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development, Goal Setting and Realization.Tags: achieving goals, Edward de Bono, life, personal development, personal development potential, personal growth, philosophy, self-improvement
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In his book, Handbook for the Positive Revolution, Edward de Bono sets a goal for people working on a program for implementing their particular concept of personal development.
In discussing self-improvement as part of his “positive revolution”, de Bono suggests that we each have a new greeting when we meet people.
Instead of the usual “How are you?” he suggests we say instead, “Today is a better day.”
De Bono’s reasoning is that “…whoever you are talking to is one day older than yesterday and as we should all be improving with each day we live, then today that person is better than he or she was yesterday.”
He adds that self-improvement is a day-by-day, slow process and needs to be there all the time.
De Bono says that self-improvement can take place in any of four directions:
(1) Developing positive attitudes, habits and skills.
(2) Reducing the domination of bad habits and attitudes
(3) Getting better at whatever it is (work, job, task) that you are doing
(4) Acquiring specific new skills
An interesting idea and worth considering as part of realizing our personal development potential.
Further reading:
Edward de Bono, Handbook for the Positive Revolution, Viking Penguin, New York, 1992, 176 pages
Personal Development Ideas 