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Personal growth: The first step to self-awareness May 29, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal growth, Personal Development Potential.
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If one of the goals in your plan for your personal growth and development program is that of increasing your self-awareness or self-knowledge, you have already taken an important foundational step towards accomplishing that goal.

How so?

Because you have already demonstrated that you possess self-awareness in realizing that some aspects of your intellectual and emotional personal makeup require improvement.

Generally people with a low level self-awareness do not realize this, nor do they make a decision to take the necessary actions necessary for improving their lives.

Additionally, by deciding to engage in a regimen of self-improvement, you are also showing that your decision to achieve greater self-actualization is more than just wishful thinking on your part; it is an action-oriented decision.

So I won’t insult your intelligence by offering you something like “7 little-known ways to increase your self-awareness.”

Increasing your perception of your identity is not something that you can accomplish in quick and easy steps. There is no formula; e.g. : a + b + x + y = self-awareness.

Rather, your perception of your true interior self will occur gradually and naturally on its own accord, almost as a by-product of your overall personal growth program.

Personal growth: Would you like to be a perfect person? May 27, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development.
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There is an old maxim that we might want to apply to our personal growth and development efforts.

Namely, “Be careful of what you wish for.”

Theoretically, the concept of personal growth or self-improvement implies that we are working towards a goal of ultimately achieving a perfect ideal human conduct for ourselves.

But what would becoming a perfect human being involve?

Would we really want our self-actualization work to result in perfection?

Or, in becoming perfect, would we lose something precious in the process?

Eric Hoffer has some interesting observations on this question:

“Nature attains perfection, but man never does. There is a perfect ant, a perfect bee, but man is perpetually unfinished…It is this incurable unfinishedness which sets man apart from other living things. For in the attempt to finish himself, man becomes a creator…The incurable unfinishedness keeps man perpetually immature, perpetually capable of learning and growing.”

“There is something unhuman about perfection…It is a paradox that, although the striving to mastery a skill is supremely human, the total mastery of a skill approaches the nonhuman. They who would make man perfect end up by dehumanizing him.” (1)

(1) Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition