What is Personal growth?
Is it same as mental development?
Is spiritual growth something different from personal growth?
Meditation leads to spiritual growth or personal growth?
Such questions will be the focus of this site. The stress will be on down-to-earth real life understanding and solution and not on philosophical debates.
Personal growth is all about increasing your potential, understanding (of life and yourself) and maximizing happiness. Development of mind is inherent in personal growth. In fact whatever you do for personal growth is nothing but mental development.
However, spirituality is a word that has various meanings for different people. For some it is nothings but realizing God or soul, for others it is the path of mental purification. This site will use this word in the later sense – personal purification and will touch upon helpful techniques. Meditation is, no doubt, the ideal vehicle for mental development and purification of mind
To grow into a bigger self, you do not need to become a follower of any guru or buy expensive self-help books or DVDs, although they can be used for specific purposes. For instance, your life has suddenly become highly stressful (for whatever reason) and it is badly affecting your performance and sleep. It may be a good idea to buy some brainwave entrainment audios and get relaxed and sleep properly.
After you regain control on your self and life, you may resume your journey of long-term personal growth. I strongly believe that for any average person a common sense approach is good enough to serve any long-term purpose.
3 Step Common Sense Approach
- What is a general common sense approach that anyone can use and which is flexible enough to serve any personality type? Well, it is a simple three-step approach that has universal applicability.
- List down all your plus points or strengths, and work towards increasing them. For example, if you have a good analytical mind, find ways to make it still better. Or if you are inherently a caring person, think of ways to make yourself more effective in interpersonal relations – at work, home, and with friends.
- List down all your negative points and weaknesses, and work towards reducing or eliminating them. Let us say you know that you have a short tempter. Analyze and look for ways to control it and finally get rid of it. Or say, you are lazy and procrastinate too much. Make it a project to solve this problem forever. You may like to read about most popular bad habits and the 6 step formula to eliminate bad habits.
Make sure to also read Self-Awareness – the Key to Breaking Bad Habits.
List down the qualities you would like to develop, and work towards acquiring them. You must be admiring some people for their unique qualities, just observe them and learn by imitation. Come to think of it you learned everything in the childhood through imitation.
Let us say you admire Jerry for his habit of always appreciating people and admiring them for their good qualities. Look for ways (or excuses!) to stick around him and see how he finds opportunities to say good things to people.
More Resources
What is Personal Growth
The Power of Hitting Rock Bottom
Self Improvement and Self Growth |
