Personal growth: Many small actions result in big success March 16, 2017
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Personal Development Potential.Tags: achieving goals, life, personal growth, philosophy, self-improvement, Success, thoughts
add a comment
By Dennis Mellersh
Achieving success with personal improvement and development programs is like completing any worthwhile, complex, long-term, large-scale project.
The best results are usually achieved incrementally by working on bite-size portions as often as possible.
Instead we often dismiss that approach and instead opt for doing something more substantial and significant when we “have more time.”
And predictably, “having more time,” happens infrequently, sometimes not at all.
If we wait for great swathes of free time, our book will never get written.
But if we write a hundred words a day, it will materialize reasonably quickly.
If we wait until we develop a grand plan for helping others it may never happen.
But if we put some clothing in a collection box today, we have already started on an outward- looking path of service to others.
And we have all learned from experience that if we want to learn something like a new language, “cramming` is the least effective way to do it.
Our goals of achieving our full potential in personal development will respond best to frequent, and ideally daily, action-oriented reinforcement.
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
Personal Development Ideas 