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When to start planning your personal growth program May 8, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development, Goal Setting and Realization.
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When we first begin to get involved in the concept of self-improvement, the temptation is to immediately start developing formal plan.

This can be a mistake; or at least, premature.

The quest for a plan assumes that, of all the plans or templates available, one is as good as another.

Or the assumption is that a particular standardized approach to self-improvement will work for each of us equally well.

However, we need to remember that we each have different personalities, different lifestyles, and different life situations.

That being the case, a “cookie-cutter” program plan or template (one size fits all) is not likely to maximize our potential in our search for betterment in our lives.

Before we can adopt a plan that will truly meet our needs as distinct individuals, we need to study and absorb a lot of information from a variety of sources and experts on personal growth.

We need to increase our self-knowledge and self-awareness as to which aspects of the discipline of personal growth we need to pay the most attention to.

Once we have an idea of what our real needs are, once we have prioritized what aspects we should focus on, then we can better develop a personalized plan that will have a realistic chance of meeting our goals and objectives for improvement.

As with any effort towards tackling a complex problem, we need to first do the research and only then set down a step-by-step approach for achieving solutions.

Personal growth, self-awareness, work that matters May 7, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development, Personal Development Potential.
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In our personal development work we will encounter a lot of information about our immense potential for improvement and the need to have a plan for realizing all that we are capable of.

The hidden danger in this is that, if we are not careful, we may subconsciously make the mistaken assumption that much what we are currently doing with our lives is somehow inadequate.

Our increased self-awareness may actually lead us to believe that we are not doing work or activities that matter.

Well, what we are already doing does in fact matter, even if that work or activity is not fully reflected in the appreciation of and approval of others.

It’s great to be seeking ways to make our work more meaningful, but everything we do does not have to change the world in order to have value.

Our contributions in a variety of roles such as mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, employees, employers, bosses, students – each of these roles has meaning and worth. But too often we interpret a lack of positive feedback from those in our circle of influence as a negative indicator of our contributions.

It’s important for our self-esteem to remember that our work would be missed by those in our circle, if we stopped doing it – regardless of whether we are receiving a constant stream of positive reinforcement.

Speaking of “work that matters”, here is an extreme example of  a vital and responsibility-intense life mission; that of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, as related to C.G. Jung in 1924, by one of the Pueblo leaders, Ochwiay Biano:

“We are the people who live on the roof of the world: we are the sons of Father Sun, and with our religion we daily help our Father to go across the sky. We do this not only for ourselves, but for the whole world. If we were to cease practising our religion, in ten years the sun would no longer rise. Then it would be night forever.” (1)

(1) As quoted in Gerhard Wehr’s book, An Illustrated Biography of C.G. Jung, p. 61