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Personal growth: The first step to self-awareness May 29, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal growth, Personal Development Potential.
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If one of the goals in your plan for your personal growth and development program is that of increasing your self-awareness or self-knowledge, you have already taken an important foundational step towards accomplishing that goal.

How so?

Because you have already demonstrated that you possess self-awareness in realizing that some aspects of your intellectual and emotional personal makeup require improvement.

Generally people with a low level self-awareness do not realize this, nor do they make a decision to take the necessary actions necessary for improving their lives.

Additionally, by deciding to engage in a regimen of self-improvement, you are also showing that your decision to achieve greater self-actualization is more than just wishful thinking on your part; it is an action-oriented decision.

So I won’t insult your intelligence by offering you something like “7 little-known ways to increase your self-awareness.”

Increasing your perception of your identity is not something that you can accomplish in quick and easy steps. There is no formula; e.g. : a + b + x + y = self-awareness.

Rather, your perception of your true interior self will occur gradually and naturally on its own accord, almost as a by-product of your overall personal growth program.

Personal growth and the attraction of opposites May 27, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Goal Setting and Realization, Solving Problems.
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There can be times in our personal growth and development journey when confusion sets in, when the choice of which path to take becomes difficult.

We hear different and often conflicting pieces of advice, suggestions, or ideas – from others, and from our own internal voice.

This does not mean there is something wrong with the methods we are using, or the overall approach we are taking to our self-improvement efforts.

Feeling this way is normal and is a result of the attraction of perhaps equally attractive alternatives.

Having these “dilemmas” is actually what can make the self-development journey interesting, exciting and rewarding.

Mindless, inflexible adherence to one, and one-only, approach to self-actualization can be limiting, unproductive, and yes, boring.
The philosopher Eric Hoffer makes this comment:

“It is the stretched soul that makes music, and souls are stretched by the pull of opposites – opposite bents, tastes, yearnings, loyalties. Where there is no polarity – where energies flow smoothly in one direction, — there will be much doing, but no music.” (1)

(1) Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition