Personal growth: The self-destruction of approval-seeking March 24, 2017
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal growth.Tags: life, personal development, personal improvement, philosophy, self-destruction, self-improvement, self-sabotage
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By Dennis Mellersh
Our efforts to better ourselves through self-assessment and subsequent self-improvement actions can be self-sabotaged by various forms of seemingly minor, harmless forms of approval-seeking.
The psychological damage or self-sabotage to occurs because some forms of approval-seeking can take us away from acting or speaking in our own authentic voice, especially in creative work.
When we mold ourselves and our work, even in small ways, to fit the parameters of what we think others will want and accept, we lose.
And, on top of eroding our own personal convictions and values, approval-seeking generally does not work.
Those we seek to attract can sense when what we are presenting is insincere and inauthentic.
Better, when we are starting out, for example, to have a dedicated fan base of 100 for work we really believe in than to initially attract thousands only to lose them when they realize our work is not much different from that of everyone else.
And even if we were able to build and sustain a large following based on personal inauthenticity, doing so would not be satisfying.
Our most rewarding successes come when we are true to ourselves.
Realistic personal growth programs mirror life’s challenges March 10, 2017
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal growth.Tags: life, motivation, personal development, personal improvement, philosophy, self-improvement, thoughts
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By Dennis Mellersh
As noted in the song April Showers, “Life is not a highway strewn with flowers.”
Nor is following a serious program of personal development an unbroken series of wins against challenges – there will be losses in addition to the victories.
As a concept, undertaking a reality-based personal improvement program is like starting out on an odyssey.
Lama Surya Das, author of Awakening the Buddha Within* puts it this way: “A spiritual journey inevitably includes low valleys as well as high mountains, dense forests as well as barren deserts, plateaus and plains. This is the landscape and territory of your own being. It is all-revealing and it needs exploration. Everything you experience along the way can be a way of helping you awaken the Buddha within.”
* Lama Surya Das, Awakening the Buddha Within, Broadway Books, New York, N.Y. 1997
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