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Personal Growth: How often do we practise what we learn? April 3, 2017

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal growth.
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By Dennis Mellersh

If we aren’t vigilant we can spend a lot of time being perpetual students of personal development media as opposed to actually putting concepts and principles into practice.

This can happen all too easily in those aspects of self-improvement involving our human nature and emotional instincts.

It’s generally easier to implement personal improvement programs involving a practical skill set such as learning a new language, taking a course in creative writing, or a night school class in oil painting.

It’s hard to imagine a young artist taking courses in how to improve his painting skills, and then not putting the skills learned into practice in the next painting he undertakes.

Yet the same artist studying self-improvement could find it difficult not to envy and resent the success of a fellow artist who has been working at her craft for much less time than he has.

Intellectually, for example. we realize the need for developing patience.

We’ve read the books, such as Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.

But, we might still be fidgeting and internally complaining when a slow line at a retail store moves even slower as an elderly lady carefully counts out most of the change in her purse to pay for her purchase.

We’re learning about developing patience, but some of us still have more internal work to do in putting the concept into practice.

And, if we don’t put in the effort and spend time investigating how to implement the more difficult emotion-focused personal growth concepts we study, our “learning” will be rather empty.

Personal growth: Self-empowerment through restrictions March 29, 2017

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development.
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By Dennis Mellersh

We usually think of restrictions as being negative, a process of undesirable denial.

But restrictions, or more precisely, self-imposed restrictions, can be beneficial – they have an upside.

Restrictions can help us achieve our personal development potential.

I was doing some research on religious practices when I came across an article in which the writer was making the point that his adhering to the restrictions of eating kosher helped to teach him self-discipline.

Scaled-out:

* By restricting our caloric intake, we can have a more desirable weight

* By restricting/moderating alcohol we can lower our blood pressure – the same with smoking

* By restricting distractions we can be more productive and achieve more in our personal growth goals.

* By restricting how much we complain, we can develop a more positive outlook.

This all seems like pretty obvious stuff, but perhaps it might show that if we look hard enough, there may be some self-improvement benefits in a variety of factors and situations that we normally regard as being highly negative because of their restrictive nature.