Personal growth: So many projects so little time October 5, 2017
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Goal Setting and Realization.Tags: "psychological time", life, personal development potential, personal growth, phiosophy, psychology, self-actualization, writing
add a comment
In envisaging our progress in self-actualization, we can spend too much of our life energy in what Eckhart Tolle describes as the “psychological time” of the future or of the past.
Time spent in the imaginary world of the future is particularly problematic for our self-improvement productivity.
Daydreaming about our future projects is not the same as actually making concrete plans now for accomplishing them, nor is it the same as starting a project right now, no matter how small the steps we might take.
Intellectually we know that the only time in which we can actually accomplish anything is now, or the present moment, but it’s tough to put into practice.
To liberally paraphrase Mark Twain, many of us could probably say, “My life has been full of many, many admirable projects and goals, the majority of which, as of right now, have yet to be accomplished.”
Most of us would need ten lifetimes to accomplish everything that we want to, especially if we have numerous eclectic interests.
But if we limit ourselves to “doing” in the now instead of “imagining doing” in the future we, of course, are significantly restricting the amount we can actually accomplish.
There will never be enough “now” time to do everything we want.
Which means that we need to make some hard choices and set priorities.
Now.
—Dennis Mellersh
Personal growth: The counter-energy of carrying the past October 4, 2017
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Living in the Now.Tags: A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle, ego management, life, living in the past, philosophy, psychology, self-actualization, writing
add a comment
One of the ways we can obscure our true selves and thereby block our advance to more complete self-actualization is through our tendency to burden our thought processes with the weight of the past.
If we are not careful, over time, we can add so many individual internalized concerns to “the voice in our heads” that it seems as if we are making our self-improvement journey while wearing 25-pound shoes on our feet.
This tendency of not living in the Now, in the present, can negate our efforts to reach our personal development potential.
In his book, A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle tells an illustrative story:
Two Zen monks were walking in the country and came across a young girl who could not cross a road covered in deep mud, for fear of ruining her silk kimono.
One monk picked the girl up and carried her to the other side, and the monks walked on in silence.
Finally, after five hours, the other monk could not restrain himself: “Why did you carry that girl across the road? We monks are not supposed to do things like that.” The other monk replied, “I put the girl down hours ago. Are you still carrying her?”
Tolle suggests we should try to imagine what life would be like for someone like that irritated monk, who cannot seem to “let go internally of situations, accumulating more and more ‘stuff’ inside…”
“Stuff” such as grievances, regrets, hostility, and guilt.
The lingering “stuff” inside eventually becomes our dominant intellectual and emotional “story,” a story that can take over our perception of ourselves, and become a negatively limiting identity, Tolle believes.
In A New Earth Tolle seeks to advise us how to extricate ourselves from this trap.
— Dennis Mellersh
Personal Development Ideas 