Personal growth paradox: A new program may not be better April 11, 2018
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in personal development ideas.Tags: achieving goals, inspiration, life, personal development ideas, personal growth program, philosophy, psychology, self-actualization, self-awareness, writing
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In our personal development journey, we will discover an unending parade of new self-improvement books published every year, and it raises the question of whether we are too often seeking the newest idea, switching to the latest shiny object in the self-actualization world instead of focusing on solidifying and developing our current personal programs which we probably have not yet fully explored.
I was struck by this possibility on reading the following promotional blurb on the cover of the book The Happiness Equation: “Dale Carnegie was last century. Steven Covey was last decade. Neil Pasricha is what’s now.”
It’s possible that we often seem to be eager for what’s new in self-actualization because we are looking for quick solutions and subconsciously want to avoid the difficult internal work of sticking with a program.
Seth Godin has written:
“Too often we get trapped believing we need:
Certainty
Quick answers
A guarantee”
Something to think about before we turn to yet another personal growth program and waste our time by starting all over again.
Dennis Mellersh
Personal growth: Imitating Thoreau’s self-sufficiency ideas April 8, 2018
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in personal development ideas.Tags: Henry David Thoreau, inspiration, life, personal development ideas, personal development potential, philosophy, pysychology, self-actualization, self-improvement, Walden, writing
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It could be an interesting intellectual and emotional experiment in the realm of self-actualization ideas to see if we could imitate, in our mentally-oriented personal growth programs, the physically focussed two-year experiment of Henry David Thoreau who in 1845, built his own home in the woods near Walden Pond, living alone, close to nature, a mile from his nearest neighbour.
His goal was to live with the greatest self-sufficiency and simplicity as possible, depending as much as was practicable on no-one but himself.
What it would be like to duplicate this process in our minds by giving up all contact with the self-actualization information world for a period of, say, two months?
No mental uploading of any personal development media whatsoever…
… a vacation from the constantly increasing flow of self-help information and opinions competing for our attention.
A chance to live by our own mental, spiritual, and emotional resources.
But, feeling the need to always keep up to date with the self-help universe can sometimes seem like an addiction, the pull is so strong.
Perhaps we’d need to try this by starting with one week’s abstinence…or one day.
Dennis Mellersh
Personal Development Ideas 