Personal growth and the dangers of life’s routines March 20, 2014
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development, Personal Growth Books.Tags: Carlos Castaneda, Don Juan Matus, personal development, personal growth, routines and habits, self-improvement
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One of the more pronounced areas of focus in personal development literature is habits: the need to reduce, minimize or eliminate bad or non-helpful habits; and the desirability of developing good habits.
We are told that if we want to help ourselves achieve progress in our human journey, attention must be paid to habits.
An interesting question is whether a good or seemingly harmless habit or routine could be undesirable or harmful.
There is an interesting take on this speculation in Carlos Castaneda’s book, Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan* in which Castaneda relates a conversation with don Juan Matus, a Yaqui sorcerer.
In a chapter entitled Disrupting the Routines of Life, don Juan discussed the importance of not having predictable routines, because such predictability can weaken us.
Don Juan uses the analogy of a deer being hunted, and says that there are certain types of deer that are very rarely caught or even seen by hunters or animal predators.
“What do you think makes them so difficult to find?” don Juan asked.
Answer: “They have no routines. That’s what makes them magical.”
The implication is that if a deer came the to the same water hole every day, or habitually slept in the same place, its routines would make it an easy target for predators, who would rely on the deer’s habits or routines in in order to kill it.
Perhaps less dramatic analogies could be made with our own personal habits or routines.
Something to think about.
* Note:
Castaneda wrote three major books which involve extensive “conversations” with don Juan Matus:
The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge
Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan
A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with Don Juan.
There is some question among anthropological students and scholars as to whether don Juan Matus was an actual person or a composite personality Castaneda created, based on his anthropological research and knowledge of Mexican first peoples.
A Wikipedia article about Carlos Castaneda explores this in some detail
Personal growth paradox: Doing last things first March 20, 2014
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Get Organized, Personal Growth Books.Tags: achieving goals, focussing, getting organized, personal development, personal growth, self-improvement, Stephen Covey, time management
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The more we study personal development and growth, in our efforts to improve ourselves, the more often we will encounter the advice to “put first things first.”
Stephen R. Covey, in fact, as the lead author, wrote a 370-page book on this topic, First Things First*. Co-authors are A. Roger Merrill, and Rebecca R. Merrill.
The implication is that most of us are often tempted to do last things first.
“Last things” being those activities that are not important. In his time management matrix Covey presents a quadrant which is now familiar to many: (1) Important and urgent (crises, pressing problems, deadline-driven projects)
(2) Urgent, but not important (some phone calls, some reports, some meetings)
(3) Important but not urgent (planning, relationship-building, empowerment)
(4) Not important, not urgent ((trivia, busywork ‘escape’ activities, irrelevant mail, excessive TV)
In a chapter entitled, The Urgency Addiction, Covey goes into considerable detail about how to overcome the mistake of attributing the quality of urgency to things that are actually not important; how to distinguish between the demands of the four quadrants; and how to manage our time between the four elements of the quadrant.
The book contains this insight: “Urgency addiction is a self-destructive behaviour that temporarily fills the void of unmet needs. And, instead of meeting these needs, the tools and approaches of time management often feed the addiction. They keep us focused on daily prioritization of the urgent.”
With time pressures being so pronounced for everyone these days, we could all benefit from revisiting the ideas and solutions proposed in this book.
* First Things First, A Fireside Book, published by Simon & Schuster
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