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Two key beliefs for personal growth success May 4, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development.
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People who are making progress with their personal growth and development programs generally hold two main beliefs, or articles of faith:

(1) They believe that there are potential solutions to their problems – to the challenges in various areas of their lives that they would like to improve

(2) They believe or have faith that they have, or will gradually acquire, the ability to find, discover, and implement those solutions.

Finding methods (solutions) to make our lives better is the foundational quest in any program that aims at self-actualization.

Let’s look at two other factors:

(a) The concept of self-improvement is all about recognizing the world of possibilities.

(b) Having a strong belief in possibilities and being solutions-oriented is a big part of the self-improvement process.

These are some of the reasons that inspirational-oriented personal growth books and other media are both popular and useful.

Inspirational materials generally involve messages and stories of hope and resulting success in the face of adversity. This helps us to have faith in the idea that solutions are possible, and that the average person can find and put into practice those solutions.

Taking ownership of your personal growth program May 3, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development, Concept of personal growth.
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In our self-improvement work it’s important for us to set standards for measuring our progress.

And, as we learn more about ourselves through our self-directed program, our increased self-awareness and self-knowledge will help us to set realistic measurement posts for gauging our success.

But, even more important, it’s vital to establish these standards as our own individual and personal “measurement-markers” or guidelines for evaluating our achievements.

We should not allow our satisfaction with our progress to depend on the standards and/or approval mechanisms of others.

To allow the validation of our internal work to be dependent on external approval sources significantly reduces our ownership of what should be a highly personal undertaking.

And, worse, caring too much about external approval or seeking validation through external sources can become a dependency – a dependency which can erode our self-esteem.

We all want to be noticed; we all want to be respected; we all want to be appreciated; but in the case of approval or validation, the most important thing is that we approve of ourselves.

Genuine self-esteem is, above all, an internally-grounded attribute.