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Personal growth: Can we avoid wandering in the wilderness? March 21, 2017

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Personal Development Potential.
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By Dennis Mellersh

There will not be much use in our pursuing programs of personal development and self-improvement unless it is actually possible to change our deeply ingrained attitudes and beliefs, and our behaviours stemming from those attitudes and beliefs.

The way we perceive ourselves clearly has a profound influence on how we deal with challenges and potential opportunities.

For example, are we generally looking forward with confidence and optimism, or are we fearful and full of doubt that the future will be positive?

A philosopher I read some time ago suggested that the real reason the Israelites and Moses had to wander in the desert for 40 years before entering the Promised Land is that there had to be a waiting period for the slave generation to die off.

The slave generation, in this view, was supposedly so ingrained to taking orders and doing the bidding of others that its members would be incapable of having the initiative to take charge of their own destiny and to develop and flourish in the Promised Land.

If that view of human nature is only even partially correct, and if we look at our own self-actualization programs and goals as a “promised land”, then most of us have considerable internal work to do to overcome the potential inertia of the limiting basic beliefs we have about ourselves.

Personal development: Multi-tasking downsides (Part 2) March 18, 2017

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Goal Setting and Realization.
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By Dennis Mellersh

In a previous post on multi-tasking, I talked about a possible outcome of multi-tasking — having a big to-do list and then madly dashing from one task to another doing a little bit here and there on each and not making much progress on any of them.

Even more problematic is when we do, or attempt to do, things at the same time which actually should only be done separately, such as:

* Checking our e-mail or (worse) writing it while talking with someone on the phone
* Thinking about our upcoming vacation while “listening” to a friend tell us about a problem they are trying to solve
* Using a mobile device, such as for texting, while driving (dangerous)

More sensible simultaneous multi-tasking examples could include:

*Ironing the laundry while cooking dinner
*Highlighting sections of a report we are writing with the purpose of using the highlighted items in an upcoming e-mail synopsis of the report
* Making some notes while our friend is telling us about their problem in order to help them more effectively

Multi-tasking can work as long as don’t take it to the extreme.