jump to navigation

Why does personal growth advice often sound the same March 10, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development.
Tags: , , , , , , ,
add a comment

In our search for ways to realize our personal development potential, we may find, after reading a lot of books, articles, blogs, and specialty websites, that the basic principles or fundamentals seem to be similar from source to source.

There are a number of reasons for this, but the main one is that the basic or primary principles of personal growth are, in fact, well established and recognized.

From religious texts thousands of years old to the new materials of today, the fundamentals of ideal human behaviour have not changed significantly.

And, if we are honest with ourselves, we often already know (even intuitively) what the main foundation blocks are for reaching our personal growth potential.

So, knowledge of the basics is the easy part.

The tough work is the implementation.

We know what we should be doing (the basics), but we have trouble figuring out how to do it.

We know our personal-change challenges – what we are looking for is solutions or ways to succeed with meeting our challenges.

That’s why there can be real value in reading a varity of writers on personal development.

When we continue reading information from a variety of experts we can find  new ideas, tips, plans, or templates for implementing the basic principles.

For example, even though I already know I need to change some of my attitudes (such as not being judgemental) it’s important for me to find some practical suggestions and advice as to how to accomplish my goal.

And I may need to read a lot of material from different experts to be successful.

 

Personal growth and the potential of attitudinal change March 3, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development.
Tags: , , , , , , ,
add a comment

Why are we so interested in creating an individualized or self-directed program of personal development, and why do many of us spend significant time doing a lot of internal work on this pursuit?

A significant part of the attraction of a personal growth program is the importance we attach to the possibility or potential of changing our internal attitudes and by extension the actions we may take in life as a result of these attitudes.

The famous psychiatrist and philosopher, Carl Jung, succinctly describes attitude as “The readiness of the psyche to act or react in a certain way.”

From our own experience and observation we realize that an “attitude” or set of attitudes and their resulting behaviours can often be the outcome of a two basic of factors:

(1) Our essential personality type such as: introverted vs outgoing, easy-going vs being anxious, accepting vs suspicious

(2) Conditioning from life experiences producing intellectual and emotional propensities

Additionally, of course, attitudes or emotional and intellectual propensities can be the result of a combination of both of the above factors – we may be basically accepting, but become suspicious of people’s motives if our trust has been significantly betrayed in the past, for example. Or enough significantly bad things have happened to us or to those we love to result in our acquiring a state of anxiety typified by wondering “what next?”

Either way, inborn or acquired, attitudes often become entrenched.   And if we want to change our negative or limiting attitudes, we soon discover that it’s not easy. No formulas or quick fixes – making attitudinal changes within our personality takes patience, dedication, and a lot of effort.

And by extension – and to answer my opening question – a great deal of time.

Overall, be glad that you are identifying your negative and harmful attitudes (including attitudes about yourself) and are willing to do the difficult work of changing those attitudes and thereby helping you to realize your personal potential.

Many people go through life with deeply negative and harmful attitudes and don’t even realize it.