The psychological benefits of breaking bad habits April 7, 2014
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development, Self-Discipline.Tags: achieving goals, breaking habits, goal setting, personal development, personal growth, personal growth program, self-improvement
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Whatever the bad habit you want to reduce or eliminate, there will be psychological benefits within your personal growth program in addition to the positive outcomes of removing the habit itself.
By managing or eliminating a bad habit you will often gain:
Self-confidence
Self esteem
Self-empowerment
Self-awareness
The greater the hold the habit has on you and the greater the harm you perceive the habit does to you, the greater will be the psychological rewards in gaining mastery over it.
This is particularly true with the truly difficult-to-break addictive habits, such as those related to drugs (including alcohol tobacco), over-eating (fat and sugar) and other addictive forms of self-abuse.
Three suggestions:
(1) Tackle only one habit at a time; trying to beat too many at once can lead to discouragement and failure
(2) When possible or appropriate, substitute a new “good” habit for the “bad” discarded habit
(3) Take a step-by-step approach (in most cases) and tackle the habit by a process of reduction, with elimination as the final destination.
Thought for today
Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.
– Eric Hoffer
Self-awareness and choosing personal growth goals April 6, 2014
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development, Goal Setting and Realization.Tags: achieving goals, goal setting, personal development, personal growth, personal improvement, philosophy, self-actualization, self-awareness, self-improvement, setting goals
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The process of choosing our goals needs to be an integral part of our overall personal process of self-actualization if we are to reach our potential in our personal improvement efforts.
In conscientiously and regularly working at a program of self-improvement or personal development, two results will usually occur: we will increase our self-awareness, and we will improve our self-knowledge.
This acceleration in our understanding of ourselves in turn will help us in identifying our strengths and talents and in clarifying our areas of lesser strengths – aspects of our personality in which we may want to increase our effectiveness.
It’s important that our goals be ones that we choose or decide upon after this process of introspection.
As you have probably already discovered, the need for having personal goals is one of the most common recommendations in the literature of the self-empowerment movement.
But the goals must be “ours”, not ones which we think, from our reading, “should” be our goals.
If the goals are not ones we feel passionate about achieving, if they are “should do” goals instead of “want to” or “personally need to do” goals, then failure is a strong probability.
Thought for today
“People are not lazy. They simply have impotent goals – that is, goals that do not inspire them.”
– Tony Robbins
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