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Doing something positive each day to reach personal goals May 2, 2018

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in personal development ideas.
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In working on our personal growth ideas, programs, plans, and goals, it is only natural to want to reach the end-game, the date, the point at which we get the checkmate, the day we make the breakthrough we’re aiming for, taking the concluding steps on our self-help journey.

And although we can reach a point where we have achieved our major goals, it won’t be done quickly or easily if the goals are substantial.

Seth Godin reminds us that “the moment of maximum leverage” in any significant project results from a steady, ongoing effort.

In his blog, Godin writes:

“We wait for this. For the day when participating will truly pay off, for the mechanical advantage that gives us the most impact for our effort.”

But he cautions: “It’s a myth”

“Maximum leverage is the result of commitment, of daily persistence, of gradual and insane, and apparently useless effort over time.”

You can read the complete post and check out the rest of his blog here:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2018/04/the-moment-of-maximum-leverage.html

Personal improvement is a process, a marathon, but without the finality of reaching an absolute finish line.

Dennis Mellersh

Personal growth: Applying the power of constructive speech February 8, 2018

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal growth.
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One of the popular concepts in current self-actualization thought is that of the effectiveness of saying/writing positive affirmations to improve our well-being, a concept actually promoted much earlier in the early 1900’s but in somewhat different form.

In 1910, New Thought writer Christian D. Larson wrote:

“When you feel that trouble is coming and express that feeling in your speech, you are actually turning in your path, and are beginning to move toward that trouble…Never give expression to what you do not wish to encourage… When you have something good to say, say it. When you have something ill to say, say something else.…”

He also suggested:

“The more you talk about a thing, the more you move it along. Every word that is spoken exercises a power in personal life and that power will work either for or against the person, depending upon the nature of the word.” (1)

By complaining or being straight-out critical we do not improve the situation and can also be harming ourselves psychologically.

An undercurrent in all of this is the idea that if we are saying something, we are usually also thinking the same thing; and saying/thinking enough negative things will turn our overall outlook into a negative one and affect us at the level of our subconscious as well.

For people familiar with the concept of the Law of Attraction, this advice, like much of Larson’s work, has a familiar feel to it.

The idea of enabling positive outcomes by controlling our speech to eliminate all negativity and  focus it in only in a constructive and productive direction is one that seems worthy of doing, but it’s more difficult than we might imagine.

As someone who has a grumpy side, I am trying to do this, but it’s surprising how easily critical, non-constructive comments can roll of the tongue when we are irritated, almost from a default position.

(1) The quotations are from Christian D. Larson’s work, Your Forces and How to Use Them, an eight-page chapter which is included in an anthology of Larson’s writings titled The Optimist Creed, published by Jeremy P. Tarcher / Penguin,  New York, 2012.

— Dennis Mellersh