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Personal Development: “Cocooning in a new decade” November 22, 2020

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development, Concept of personal growth, Uncategorized.
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Cocooning is a concept coined by social philosopher and futurist Faith Popcorn in the late 1970s, which described the idea of spending more and more time at home as a refuge from the noise/disruptions  of the outside world.

In her book The Popcorn Report (1), published in 1991, she said “cocooning…when we named it, [was] “the impulse to go inside when it just gets too tough and scary outside. To pull a shell of safety around yourself, so you’re not at the mercy of a mean, unpredictable world…”

“Cocooning turned into a major preoccupation, as record numbers of people remodeled, redecorated, restored, and then watched, “This Old House” to relax.”

But, all of this was nevertheless a choice; we made the decision to go inside, to cocoon.

It was part of an enjoyable lifestyle.

But now in 2020-21, and perhaps beyond, pushed inside by a relentless Covid-19 virus and mandated sheltering, we are in the midst of an emotional and physical health crisis.

Instead of comfort reading, we are more likely to be reading personal development and personal growth books on coping with anxiety, or working on reading or writing job-related reports on the kitchen table because we have been forced to work remotely from our homes.

But hopefully, in part by utilizing the coping tools we have learned, and by  community efforts and working together, we will emerge from this stronger and have more of an attitude of gratitude and appreciation for what is good in our lives.

(1) Faith Popcorn, The Popcorn Report, Doubleday Currency, New York, 1991

 

Dennis Mellersh

 

Personal growth: Is everyone reading self-help books these days? April 13, 2018

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in personal development ideas.
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I was recently reading a newspaper interview of a novelist, and one of the questions was, “What is the latest self-help book you have read?”, which struck me as significant because it implies or assumes that everyone is reading self-help books as part of their regular routine.

And maybe it’s true: I just got a personal development book, The Happiness Equation, out of the library a few days before I read the article.

The question we might ask, however, is that with all the self-improvement material we have already read, how much more advice do we really need to manage our lives effectively?

I suspect that most of us actually don’t need more information in order to know what we need to do; it’s more a matter of inserting an action component into our existing knowledge, and then taking concrete “do” steps towards our goals.

I tend to think that many of us read books about self-actualization, listen to podcasts on the topic, and watch videos with similar content, because we enjoy reading about the topic as a form of lifestyle philosophy, much as we might like reading mystery novels, or adventure stories.

Maybe we don’t actually need as much life-guidance as the abundance of personal development books might seem to indicate.

Maybe we’re all OK just as we are.

Dennis Mellersh