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Personal growth: the “hard work = talent” paradigm May 27, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development, Self-Discipline.
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Planning, goal-setting, establishing deadlines, and ultimately executing the components of our personal growth programs requires ingenuity, work, and yes, talent.

* Talent to recognize the areas of our lives requiring improvement
* Talent to research the ocean of information available on personal growth and choose the best options to pursue
* Talent to focus on executing first things first
* Talent to “keep going” through difficulties
* Talent to bounce back from setbacks
* Talent to “do the work”

Eric Hoffer talks about this:

“They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration, or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience, something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor.” (1)

To be disappointed because our particular concept of personal development is not working fast enough (for us) doesn’t mean we don’t have the talent to make it happen.

Rather, it probably means we are not putting enough work into it.

(1) Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

Personal growth: Bringing the future into the present May 21, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Goal Setting and Realization, Planning.
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In the personal growth and development movement, experts tell us that planning is critically important if we are to make meaningful progress in our self-improvement efforts.

Goals are an important part of this strategy, as is doing some thinking about where we want to go or what our destination is in our journey of growth.

The goals we set for ourselves can be varied, and might include:

* Improving self-awareness
* Learning new skills
* Building self esteem
* Cultivating and building existing talents and strengths
* Improving our quality of life
* Developing greater integrity
* Managing our ego and emotions

Whatever our objectives, planning will be important to realize these goals.

How then does planning help us?

We can’t re-create the past, nor can we actually do anything in the future, because we are not there yet.

I came across an excellent definition of planning while reviewing some of my older notes:

“Planning is bringing the future into the present so you can do something about it now.” (1)

So, by planning, we are actually taking action about the future in the present, the only time segment in which we can really accomplish anything in our growth program.

(1) Unfortunately, I did not make a note of who made this comment, so I am not able to provide a source for further reading