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Utilizing ego management to achieve balance and harmony in personal growth and development March 20, 2012

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Ego Management.
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We are all trying, through controlling or managing ego, to achieve a sense of equilibrium in our focussed efforts towards personal development and growth, while at the same time dealing with the ups and downs of daily life, or what is sometimes referred to as “the human condition.”

Whatever term you use, be it ego management, controlling ego,  managing ego, or positive thinking, our efforts are directed towards some sort of management system for our mind, so that the sometimes unrealistically positive coloring of the ego, or the ego’s equally unrealistic negative coloring, does not interfere with our conscious efforts towards attainable self-improvement goals.

As a life-long follower of personal growth and development information and theories I have found that ego management, or maintaining mental balance, is essential  in my own personal development because, more often than not, the emotions summoned by the ego can lead to poor choices in actions based the emotions of negativity, fear, or conversely, unwarranted and unrealistic optimism.

This WordPress blog on personal development potential is, in part, a means for me to examine my own emotions and ideas critically and think effectively about the challenges inherent in any program of personal growth and development.  Because of certain circumstances in my life, I had let my blog remain dormant for several years, but recently revived it and also restarted a more structured approach to personal growth and development in my life.

As part of this process of rediscovery, which naturally involves managing the ego and the ego’s efforts to focus on past negativity and fears of the future, I have been reading other blogs on the topic of personal growth and seeing how people are dealing with their life circumstances.  Because of free platforms such as WordPress.com and Blogger.com, many people with good ideas on personal development are writing about their journeys of discovery.

A considerable number of people writing these blogs are managing their lives under very difficult circumstances, including serious illness, depression, and also the grieving process. In a way, at least in my interpretation, they are, in effect, using their blogging as a means of managing their egos and their mindset in a positive way and giving the rest of us the benefit of their experiences, their emotional and intellectual journey, and their hopes for a positive future for themselves and for the readers of their blogs. These blog authors are showing great courage and generosity of spirit in sharing their emotions with us. They are also giving us a lot of good ideas for positive personal growth and development.

On a number of these blogs that I have come across, the authors relate their often very difficult circumstances and state openly that they are using their blogs, at least in part,  to help them deal with their life situations and to hopefully help others who are also facing trying times in their lives.  These authors are on a courageous and public journey of personal development.

Their motives and actions are to be commended.

Examining the role of life purpose in personal development March 18, 2012

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Purpose.
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As each of us works on our personal growth or personal development efforts and programs, we will frequently come across the concept of life purpose in our search for information. This is a subject which on examination can raise more questions answers.

The following is an introductory article exploring some of the questions and issues involved in the concept of life purpose with additional posts planned for the future to review specific ideas and strategies in more detail.

Authorities in the field of self-development will often urge us to discover our life purpose or emphasize the need for creating a statement or guideline concerning our life purpose as a logical and necessary part of our personal development efforts.

But what is “life purpose”? Is it something we construct and design, or is it something we are destined to fulfill in some predetermined scenario? Following are a couple of definitions* of “purpose”:

(1) The reasons for which something exists, or is done, made, used

(2) An intended or desired result, end, aim, goal

Using the first definition we could say that the purpose of a pen is to write or draw; and using the second definition we could say that the purpose of writing an article on a particular subject is to convey information on the subject and help people understand it better. An example might be an article written by a psychologist or a famous philosopher providing guidance on how to find true meaning, a mission, or purpose in our life.

But the concept of life purpose and trying to define it is not so straightforward. Is life purpose  a mission that we formulate in our mind to accomplish specific objectives and to follow a certain code of conduct throughout our lives, or is life purpose something we look back on and determine in retrospect? Or is it something that we simply discover as we move through life?

If we look at the life of British politician Winston S. Churchill, for example, we will see that he was a writer of significant talent and substantial literary output during his life; and he was also Prime Minister of Great Britain during a critical time in the country’s history, the period of the Second World War. Which of these areas of endeavour was his life purpose, or was it both? Perhaps it was neither and the purpose of his life was to serve as an inspirational example. But here, we are, in our minds, imposing on Churchill’s life a purpose based on what he excelled at. Yet, what would Churchill have considered his life purpose if we had been able to ask him that question?

Towards the end of the Forrest Gump movie, Gump says, “I don’t know if we each have a destiny, or if we’re all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I think maybe it’s both. Maybe both is happening at the same time.”  And, to add to the dilemma of determining what we should focus on in our lives, Gump’s mother says, “Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get.”

And, which component or components of our life as a whole could be considered our life purpose? Is it something which we decide on early in our lives, like a life mission, or is it the sum of our accomplishments in one or more areas as we near the end of our lives? Do we create our life purpose or do we discover it?

There are numerous methods within self-development literature in books and the Internet about discovering and/or creating our life purpose. Many of these focus on identifying concepts or activities that we feel very passionate about and cannot do without in our lives.

In addition to these considerations there are a number of ways we can look at our life purpose, such as from a spiritual perspective, from the standpoint of practical achievements, or, perhaps, how we conduct ourselves from an ethical code of personal conduct.

If we are not careful, however, we can get into deep philosophical waters on this topic and starting looking at the question “What is the purpose of life” instead of the question “What is (our) life purpose?” There is a big difference between these two questions.

This article, in raising a number of questions, is one of what I hope will be a series of posts, exploring various ideas in involved in the subject of “life purpose” and hopefully providing some answers from various resources.

How would you define life purpose?

*Definitions Source: Dictionary.com