Personal growth mistake: Wanting the future to repeat the past October 24, 2017
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development.Tags: life, living in the future, living in the now, personal development, personal development potential, philosophy, psychology, self-actualization, writing
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It’s natural to want any situational enjoyment with a high positive emotional component to last a long time, ideally forever. As a result, we may develop the habit of projecting our enjoyment of the present moment into anticipated pleasure of the same moment occurring in the future.
This makes full appreciation of the present difficult because our minds are straddling two separate time frames – current real-time reality and imagined future potential.
We can only be in the future mentally, a fact which obviously takes away some of our perception of the present moment.
We are attaching to our future, which can never be more than a thought pattern, the particular emotions of longing and anticipated nostalgia associated with the moment we are currently enjoying.
Any pleasurable experience in the present moment will be more intense and rewarding if we don’t impose on it the mental condition and constriction of future repeatability.
— Dennis Mellersh
Personal growth potential: The importance of timing October 9, 2017
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Goal Setting and Realization.Tags: David Hinton, life, personal development planning, personal development potential, personal growth, philosophy, psychology, self-actualization, writing
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In our efforts to achieve our self-actualization goals, success in some instances might owe as much to external factors, for example, timing, as to the internal work we do, such as our acquisition of knowledge and technique.
Consider the following from the works of the ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius (371-289 BCE) in which he cites a saying of the Ch’i people:
Though you may have deep wisdom
seizing an opportunity works better.
Though you may have a fine hoe,
awaiting the season works better. (1)
Four brief lines of personal development wisdom that could not be improved upon with explanatory words.
(1) Translated by David Hinton and quoted in his book The Four Chinese Classics. This passage is from Hinton’s translation of the works of Mencius
—Dennis Mellersh
Personal Development Ideas 