Personal development potential: Tikkun middot March 15, 2017
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Personal Development Potential.Tags: achieving goals, life, personal growth, philosophy, self-actualization, self-improvement, thoughts, tikkun middot
add a comment
By Dennis Mellersh
Although following a personal growth program can be complex, it need not be a major challenge to assess our progress, at least at a fundamental level.
Sometimes a simple self-given test can be a helpful guideline as to whether we are on the right track with our personal development program(s).
This can be particularly applicable with self-improvement regimens emphasizing internal work.
Edgar M. Bronfman, for example, in writing about the Jewish practice of tikkun middot, which Bronfman likens to repair of our inner world, comments that he uses the “mirror test” to gauge his own progress in internal self-improvement:
“At least once a week I gaze at my reflection and decide whether or not I’m happy with the man looking back. If not, why not? Have I hurt someone or made a mistake? Where have I failed myself or others? What positive attributes do I need to strengthen? What negative traits do I need to address? Where am I out of balance?” *
Bronfman notes that he is not trying to oversimplify the process of internal improvement and cautions that “…real change requires more than looking in a mirror and asking oneself questions. But this kind of self-examination is a start.”
* Edgar M. Bronfman, Why Be Jewish, published by Signal, an imprint of McClelland & Stewart, 2016
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
add a comment
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
Personal Development Ideas 