Achieving goals: “Talk does not cook rice.” December 4, 2012
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Goal Setting and Realization.Tags: achieving goals, goal setting, personal development, personal growth, positive thinking, self-improvement, setting goals, taking action
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When working on our personal growth programs, there is a trap we can fall into of creating an imbalance of too much information input and not enough output in the form of action.
This can be true with both our major life goals and our shorter term goals, or the tasks we want and need to accomplish on our path to our larger goals.
The reason we engage ourselves in personal development, or self-improvement, is so we can make efforts towards moving forward with our lives in a positive direction.
The danger lies in becoming addicted to absorbing a constant stream of advice from personal development leaders, but not taking real and specific actions on the areas we want to improve in our overall life situation.
I am guilty of this myself, as it can be quite soothing, particularly when we are faced with fears and doubts, to take comfort in the positive messaging of recognized personal growth experts.
That is why I like the self-explanatory Chinese proverb at the beginning of this post:
“Talk does not cook rice.”
Ego management: Did the Universe make a mistake with the ego? November 9, 2012
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Ego Management, Leaders in Personal Development.Tags: controlling ego, Eckhart Tolle, ego management, managing the ego, personal growth, self-improvement, spirituality
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With all the attention we give to ego management as being a necessary component of eliminating negative thinking in our personal growth efforts, you have to start to wonder as to what useful purpose the ego might serve.
During a discussion period at an Eckhart Tolle seminar, in fact, a member of the audience asked Tolle the question, “Did the Universe make a mistake with the ego?”
Tolle replied that although the ego “may look insane” to us now, it is actually, from a higher perspective, undergoing an evolution as we progress as human beings.
He said that at one time we did not have an ego. That was the period in which we were at “oneness with nature.” This period Tolle explained, embodied the myth of the golden age, or as the Old Testament described it, “Paradise”.
The development of language Tolle says marked the beginning of our ability to think thus leading to the “voice in our heads” that we associate with the ego. Tolle says that at first, people thought this voice in their heads was the manifestation of the gods speaking to them.
At some point however, the voice in our head became all pervasive and thus took away people’s sense of their real identity, an identity which was non-ego-based, and rooted in their basic being. Thus, our identity was no longer in the roots of our being and our identity became associated with the voice in our head.
Tolle says that as we work at going beyond this form of the ego we are going back to the core of our being.
The take-away from Tolle’s discussion would appear to be that certain aspects of the ego were, and still are, necessary for thinking and progress, but for inner peace we need to go beyond the ego as the chattering voice in our head, and do the inner work to discover the peace of knowing our true being.
Personal Development Ideas 