Jenny and Erin

Self-development is just that - the process by which one goes about developing or growing oneself. It doesn’t matter where you are when you start the process, whether your life is in such ruins that you struggle to get out of bed or if you only have one little area in your life you want to improve. What matters is you have decided that you want to be, think and experience more from life. Once you have made this decision you have planted a powerful seed.

Luckily you live in a time when information about self improvement is abundant. Venture to a bookstore, get lost on the internet or sit yourself in front of the TV and you will find yourself bombarded with resources. And amazingly, they all seem to offer an easy answer, straight-forward solution or a simple step-by-step plan. Wow, you think, I can do this! It’s easy to get lost in the hype and begin believing that if you would have only known how accessible and simple personal growth could be you would have changed eons ago. So, off you go!

In the midst of absorbing and attempting to apply the hallowed steps to whatever it is you desire, you may discover what I have; many popular guides and gurus alike overlook the struggle involved in personal growth. Instead they offer simple, prescriptive, and “easy” advice - guaranteed success. Although this advice is not inaccurate, neither it is as straight-forward as it appears.

Musing over this apparent contradiction, memories of a childhood science experiment came to mind. One year in grade school every student in my class was given a seed and we all set out to grow them. Similar to many common self-development instructions, growing our seed into a plant was presented in a few simple steps:

1. Obtain a seed.
2. Put the seed into soil and cover it up.
3. Water the soil.
4. Give the seed adequate sunlight.
5. Re-water as necessary and wait.

Ta-da! In no time we were supposed to have a healthy and beautiful plant to take home and surprise our parents. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Well, maybe just a little too easy. I deduced more of a good thing could only make my plant better. Thinking myself quite the problem solver I figured out a way to sneak into my classroom early from recess and give my plant an extra dose of water each day assuming more water equals faster growth. Not so.

When the plants started to sprout, mine did not. Imagine my despair. I thought I had done everything right, in fact, better than right. I was crushed and I wasn’t alone. Several of my classmates had done the opposite of me, and forgotten to water their plant several days, and so my teacher let us try again. This time - remembering my teachers warnings - I was cautious with the water, determined to have a plant to show my parents, rather than a container of dirt. After a couple weeks a plant I had. Oh, you have never seen someone happier.

It seems self development would be best approached in the same way. No matter how clear the instructions are or what anyone says, growth is not always easy and rarely follows the outlined steps smoothly. If an approach is not working for you, despite claims it has helped “millions”, it is okay. Based on the seed directions, how was I supposed to know the correct amount of water? Rather than thinking of advice as set in stone, regard it as guidelines to work from. Yes, the directions for growing a plant were accurate, but differ greatly depending upon what type of plant you are trying to grow.

Only through being open to adjustments, asking questions, observation and a bit of experimentation can you determine the exact needs of your plant. I imagine in order to grow through your struggles you might want to look at your growth the same way. Consider how either “over-watering” a relationship or forgetting to water it at all would likely kill it or at the very least stunt its growth. If that is hard for you to remember you might want to imagine my poor little flooded seed.

It’s okay if things get a little messy. Seeds are planted in the dirt after all. Be forgiving of yourself. How was I to know that over-watering would kill my plant? How could you know that it’s hard to build your self-esteem in the midst of a divorce? To find love while secretly believing that you are unlovable? That taking out all those loans would result in debt far into the future?

If you are anything like me, you grow by doing. When nothing seems to work try it again and again until it does. I don’t imagine it much matters if you are initially successful as long as you use what you learn along the way to improve your perspective for the next attempt by adjusting the generic steps to fit your life and your particular circumstances. Keep at it and something beautiful will eventually sprout and when you finally see it full-grown it will be amazing.

Related Posts:
The Science Behind Change
Challenging Our Mental Maps
The Importance of Awareness and Acceptance, by Mark Lapierre
Keeping Perspective When You’ve Bitten Off More Than You Can Chew

Lorraine Cohen at Powerful Living asked: What’s the bravest thing you ever did that you’re most proud of? What gave you courage to be brave then, that continues to give you courage today?

This past March I chose a path that frightened me to the core, yet allowed me to confront my fears and become braver day by day. It was starting this blog. In my day-to-day life I am rather shy, not shy in a sense that I am scared to say hello or engage in casual conversation, but shy in that I tend to share very little of substance with others. As far back as I can remember I’ve always seen things just slightly differently or perhaps more accurately just cared about different things. When I would push through my reserve to express my thoughts or ideas they often appeared so random or perhaps so at odds to what others knew of me that the usual response would be either confused laughter or utter bewilderment.

I don’t remember a time in my life until I was at university that I shared my deepest thoughts and it didn’t result in either head-shaking laughter and a quick change of subject or a blank stare and a quip on how confusing I was. In addition, school was rather challenging for me. Although I deeply love learning I get bored easily and find it quite difficult to accept arbitrary instructions. If an instructor couldn’t tell me why I often just didn’t listen. Similar to other facets of my life I pushed the boundaries often to my own detriment, this time in terms of deadlines, core requirements, subject matter and assignments. So I creatively bumbled through my education having an amazing time yet leaving huge gaps in my learning that continue to bother me. Gaps such as graduating from university without ever managing to pass even pre-algebra and substituting “special projects“ for all but two of my required science classes. My foundations are very eclectic.

Although I love ideas I have never really known if my thinking is solid and I rarely challenged myself to take an idea to completion. This left tons of fragments of “great” ideas swimming in my head, but also the frustrations of watching “my” ideas become popular sometimes years after I first began thinking about them. Lacking any sort of external or internal discipline the few times I would try to fully develop an idea I failed miserably - likely due to my belief that smart people didn’t need to do things like write outlines or complete multiple drafts. These failures led to even more self-doubt. Over the years this self-doubt morphed into a belief that would hit at my lowest moments that I was completely stupid and cause me to just freeze.

What gave me the courage to be brave? Nothing big and dramatic just a slow accumulation of a lot of things including:

• A long-term love who believed in me and encouraged me to try my hand at writing and who told me regularly how much he loved my mind even when he didn’t understand what I was saying.
• A boss who put ego aside when I tentatively explained why the path she (the company) was on was heading down a road to sure disaster and she found my outsider view convincing. Slowly that view became valued by others as well and I saw that my thoughts (at least in this arena) made a difference.
• Starting a company with Erin and watching it grow and become a success on our own terms.
• A new friend who seemed genuinely startled to hear me call myself stupid (and was intelligent enough to know) and whose encouragement of, and patience with, my endless questioning is rivaled only by Erin’s.

And mostly I’ve become brave through the process of blogging itself - the thinking, creating, reading, writing and posting and most of all through dialogues with people I greatly respect. In addition to slowly writing about ideas that have been in my head literally since my teens I’ve encountered people who have challenged my thinking at every level and realized that even though I might not be able to articulate exactly what I mean what I say is understandable if others want to hear. I’ve (with some bumps and helping hands) managed to continue writing even when those moments of absolute self-doubt overtake me and those moments have occurred less and less as the months have worn on. Now even when I think I’m stupid I know I’m not and my reserve is slowly being chipped away.

Erin and I were interested in hearing about the bravest thing you’ve ever done Todd, Pippa, John and Pamir.

Related Posts:
Dreaming into Awakening, by Pippa at her blog Pippa’s Porch
The Bravest Thing I’ve Done, by John Allison at Technology for Living
Understanding Courage
Soul Bravery, by Pamir at Reiki Help Blog
Sometimes There’s a Fine Line Between Bravery and Foolishness, by Mark Lapierre at The Winding Path

Is something missing in your life? Do you just know you were meant for better things, yet find yourself feeling unhappy and unmotivated? If so, consider yourself blessed. Unhappiness and dissatisfaction with our current circumstances is one of the few reliable ways to recognize when we are out of alignment with our true desires and capabilities. A thorough examination of this dissatisfaction can bring the inspiration to be, think or do better.

Dissatisfaction is a general longing for something better and being unsatisfied with your current reality, no matter how good it looks from the outside. Although uncomfortable, noting the source of this dissatisfaction is an easy way in which to identify the gaps between what is and what you want in your life to bring change. This is never clearer than when one feels persistent and piercing dissatisfaction, despite living the “perfect life”. Indeed, dissatisfaction is a powerful tool that helps you to be honest with yourself.

The uncomfortable sensations that accompany dissatisfaction feel terrible. It is common to misinterpret the pain as a statement of your worth or abilities as a person, rather than see its role as messenger. The degree of pain is typically in direct proportion to the size of the problem you are hiding from. In fact, maybe you can find solace in the fact that you are actually in a much better position when your level of dissatisfaction is strong as it calls for more prompt action. It is difficult to find the drive to work to become better when you are mostly satisfied with yourself and your world except in bed late at night.

Thankfully, the pain of longing for better can become strong enough to provide you with a clear and honest source of inspiration. Inspiration does not only come from positive experiences in your life, it can sprout from highly dissatisfying things as well. Inspiration, most simply defined, is anything that that stimulates the mind or emotions to a high level of activity or feeling. To create inspiration from dissatisfaction you must be able to accept the unhappiness is just a symptom, not the problem.

If you do not use your dissatisfaction as motivation to do better you will probably use it to instead make things even worse; you may employ an attitude that says it really does not matter what you do because things are already so miserable and screwed up. Unfortunately this attitude will only create a spiral for more negative things to enter your life. If you find yourself unsatisfied on a regular basis with your life you have a good clue you are doing something wrong. By no means do you have to remain unhappy; you can use dissatisfaction to make your life better. Transform your dissatisfaction into inspiration and watch its power.

Congratulations to Lodewijk at How to Be an Original on winning our contest and a $25 Amazon gift certificate!

His article A Strategy to Change Your Habits for the Better is a thoughtful look at habits and what it takes to change them. We found his breakdown of 4 categories of habit adoption quite interesting. They are; conditioning, copying, experience and choice.

Give this article a read, it is well worth it!

If you are itching to immerse yourself in thinking about habits you can find the contest entries at:
Habits Contest Entries - Round 1
Habits Contest Entries - Round 2
Habits Contest Entries - Round 3

Our contest on habits is winding down. Here is the third and final batch of entries (unless someone squeezes one in under the wire). It has amazed me that with so many entries there still is many insightful things to be said about habits. This past month of reading and thinking about habits has been thoroughly enjoyable. I want to especially say a big thank you to everyone who participated. Stay tuned, the winner of the $25 Amazon gift certificate will be announced tomorrow!

Benjamin Ellis at WOWNDADI wrote Habitual Habits

Gregory Allen Butler at Holistic Personal Development wrote Habits - Acts of Unconsciousness

Jim Stroup at Managing Leadership wrote Die Hard

Hazel at Really Good Ideas wrote Habits

Hayat wrote My Ex-Boyfriend

To see other entries and the winner of our contest check out:
Habits Contest Entries - Round 1
Habits Contest Entries - Round 2
Winner of the Habits Contest

Have you ever watched sadly as a friend, relative or even a celebrity wasted their life? Do you ever find yourself late at night pondering whether you are wasting yours? There have been times I have. However, lately I wonder whether it is even possible to waste a life. There are ways of living that appear to decrease the quality of an individual’s life as well as their happiness, but neither of these clearly measure whether a life has been wasted or not. So, if it is possible to waste your life, how and just who determines it was wasted?

In learning more about science I have found a great deal of emphasis placed on evolutionary theory and the “goals” of all organisms, including humans. The strongest measure of a individual’s success appears to be whether or not they successfully reproduce. After reading Erin’s posts on physical attraction through the lens of biological mate selection and looking at studies demonstrating links between certain physical traits and perceived attractiveness in both men and women, it seems clear we are all here for one basic goal - to reproduce. So, I begin to wonder if the only way to waste a life is to not reproduce.

This new thought intrigues me. I decided to look towards religion for another perspective, and surprisingly found a lot to back up this formulating definition of a wasted life. A great deal of religion is concerned with the solidification and enforcement of social norms, key among them being the regulation of reproduction (even though there is variation amongst religious beliefs the charge to reproduce is more times than not seen as imperative). For example, using birth control if you are a practicing Catholic is considered a mortal sin - right up there with killing another human being. So if we examine the religious explanations of what makes us useful one of the key indicators is to successfully reproduce. So again I wonder is a wasted life defined primarily by not reproducing?

In order to determine whether a life is being wasted it seems common sense to consider the opposite - what components constitute having a useful or full life? Then, wouldn’t the exact opposites lead to the definition of a wasted life? I have always assumed so, but I am beginning to doubt. To better define a useful or full life I found myself smack-dab in the center of the fields of morality and personal development, or perhaps more appropriately personal betterment. Surely, I thought this would help. Ah, no.

So, I first turned to morality to help me define a useful or full life. It seemed like the obvious place to begin, as it argues the basis for human ethics and is the foundation for such lofty disciplines as religion and philosophy. Unfortunately a bit of reading demonstrated to me just how dependent morality was upon “the proper functioning of emotional circuits in the prefrontal cortex” and that “automatic and unconscious process can and probably do cause the majority of our behaviors, even the morally loaded actions (like rudeness or altruism) that we thought we were controlling consciously”. Translation: we are all biological beings likely not in control of our own motives.

Okay, so morality could not give me the answers I was looking for. I figured I would certainly find what I was looking for in the realm of personal betterment. I learned quite a bit in my search, it just was not what I expected. There is a lot of very useful information on how to be a better person - more organized, how to have a better memory, less fearful and last but not least how to find and keep true love. Hello, reproduction. Nothing here to add to my definition…

Is it possible that reproduction is ultimately the sole indicator as to whether one has wasted their life? Whether you view life as a gift that can be endlessly cultivated, or merely a biological reality, maybe all of the variations of living should be acceptable? Who are we to determine waste? Even if it is within ourselves?

Related Posts:
Dealing with the Hand You Were Dealt
What is Attractive
Understanding Religion and Spirituality