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Managing the ego to focus on achieving tangible goals March 13, 2012

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Ego Management.
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A great deal of personal development information focusses on the need for generating positive feelings and attitudes and the overall desirability of positive thinking.

However, it is often difficult to achieve this, primarily because in attempting to always think positively, we are, more often than not, faced with what we regard as negative realities.  These realities might be the need for a job or a better paying job, meeting the mortgage payment, looking after a sick child, overdue bills, worrying about an elderly parent; the list goes on.

The events and circumstances of everyday life are not always positive and it is difficult to be totally positive in our outlook when faced with a lot of difficulties that are not being resolved.

I am not saying that we can’t control our ego, or our mind, to think positively, but sometimes it is more practical to achieve a positive attitude by accomplishing a small goal, or a portion or sub-set of a larger goal, and thereby achieving a positive outlook through taking action.

I remember a sign I once saw when I was in my doctor’s office for a check-up, which said something like: “You can’t think yourself into a new way of acting; you have to act yourself into a new way of thinking.”

The idea being that we are more likely to be able to achieve a positive frame of mind or mindset, by taking action right now, in the present moment, by working on a solution to our problems one-by-one,  and feeling positive in that we are doing something real and tangible about negative situations, or challenges.

The concept of personal development is much wider than concentrating a lot of time and effort in an attempt to think positively. Much of personal development, and thereby much of controlling our ego, or mental outlook lies in tackling difficulties and making progress with life’s challenges.

Adding up the successes achieved in small action steps can equal a positive feeling of accomplishment.  And, the operative word in all of this is doing some work on a challenge now, not focussing all of our present mental energy on trying to create a future mindset of positivity. A useful personal development maxim that might help is: “We are all called upon to create our own future.” This quotation was also from a sign in my doctor’s office.

Small successes are important in a personal development program March 12, 2012

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Goal Setting and Realization.
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Many of us, in trying to accomplish as much as possible in our personal development efforts, can make the mistake of designing or implementing a self-improvement plan that eventually seems to us to be too complex, too detailed, or overly ambitious, and perhaps even unrealistic.

This can happen if instead of working on one area of personal growth at a time, if we are not careful, we end up trying to do everything at once and become overwhelmed. We end up doing a maintenance job on all of our personal growth goals instead of doing a better job on a lesser number of goals.

Like a diet that is too restrictive or severe, an overly ambitious plan for personal improvement with an unrealistic time frame can result in making our goals seem unattainable, and that can produce discouragement. Then our entire improvement plan can become like a broken New Year’s resolution. Such a scenario can end up damaging our self-esteem.

A detailed plan outlining all of our personal development goals makes sense, but the individual goals within the plan need to be accomplished gradually, with components within the goals being tackled one step at a time, over an extended period.

Achieving small victories in our goal realization process also helps to keep us motivated as we can see that we are making progress as we work on our plan each day. Having success in reaching or completing smaller sub- goals within a larger, major goal gives us a sense of satisfaction and encouragement.

Small successes are important. As noted by author J.K. Rowling, “Achievable goals are the first step to self-improvement.”*

*Source: http://www.quotationspage.com