You may have noticed that I haven’t blogged for a long time now.
Well, I have a confession to make…
Before I became a personal growth writer, I was a reader (and still am!). I seek solutions in the personal growth literature available so I can tackle the problems I face in my life. And while I’ve spent a lot of time, energy and money seeking results, I haven’t always gotten the results I want.
What’s worse is that some problems were amplified after getting into personal growth!
I am sure you went through a similar experience: You are overwhelmed by the challenges life throws at you, so you turn to personal growth for solutions, only to feel overwhelmed by the amount of solutions available!
You don’t know where to begin, what to use, how to use it, what to trust, etc.
Your problems multiply and grow in complexity.
That’s not the result personal growth literature was designed to bring into our lives. But in many causes – and to varying degrees – it does.
The worst hit by these problems are those who are in need of personal growth the most!
If you are able to cope effectively with life’s challenges and are simply looking for better ways to lead your life, you are slightly immune from the problems that can germinate in the field of personal growth. But the more help you need, the more help you will need after being exposed to personal growth!
By now you must’ve figured out my dark secret: I’m not the biggest fan of personal growth.
To be clear: I’m not the biggest fan of the material available, and how it seems to ignore the problems being caused by it.
As a personal growth writer I would like to help others deal effectively with their problems without burdening them with more problems. And I can’t honestly say that up to this point I haven’t contributed to the problem. I have. Quite possibly with every blog post or comment I’ve written.
This is why I went on a break, trying to figure out how to offer solutions without any negative side effects.
If you have been eagerly waiting to learn more about the Personal Growth Map, I sincerely apologize for my silence. I promise that I will offer you more information. In fact, I came up with the PGM in order to tackle the growing problems in personal growth!
For us to work together to tackle the problems being posed by personal growth – which are impacting us all – I would like you to leave a comment on this post with what problems you’ve personally faced after being exposed to personal growth literature. Whether it’s overwhelm, procrastination, confusion, anxiety, etc. I’d love to hear from you so we can begin our journey by admitting there are problems in personal growth that need to be addressed and that we won’t be going for solutions that build on these problems instead of destroying them.
The most important spot on your Personal Growth Map is the “You Are Here” spot. Find out where that is so you can begin experiencing real results!
I look forward to your comments 🙂
9 replies on “I Have A Confession…”
I collect stuff. I always have good intentions so I print out all kinds of “self help” literature and then I don’t read it. It piles up. It piles up next to everything else that piles up. Everywhere! So now I am overwhelmed. I have a hard time starting things because I’m afraid I’ll make a mistake and will have “wasted” all that time. Therefore, I do everything in my head, from start to finish, because THEN it comes out perfect. Does that make sense? I really need to be self-motivated and productive without getting distracted by every little thing. I desperately want to be organized with everything in its place but it is physically excruciating for me. So I give up. I hate giving up!
When I get too deep it can trigger depression, feelings of failure, dissatisfaction with myself, etc. In fact I am very wary of introspection as I cope much better with doing and not too much thinking.
My solution has been only to “introspect” when I am already down. Use my “down” periods as opportunities for growth and the rest of the time leave well enough alone.
@Leslie: Thank you for your contribution. I think you covered quite a few bases there! 😀
I think I’ve experienced everything you mentioned. But it’s important to distinguish between problems with the practice and problems with the practitioner. By this I mean: you can’t blame yourself for not being self-motivated when the problem lies in the impossibility of fitting all the literature into your schedule.
The problem I have with personal growth literature is that it feeds this idea of: you’re not motivated enough, you really don’t want to succeed, you’re not putting in enough effort, etc. You end up blaming yourself for feeling overwhelmed when the literature is really demanding the impossible from you (or, at least, isn’t offering a sensible solution to cope with this overwhelm).
Also (side issue): I didn’t manage to find song demos on your site. Did you take them off, or did I not look in the right place?
@Beverley: You raise some very interesting points, and I’d love to know what your approach to introspection is. I think we need to be very comfortable thinking, because thinking helps us achieve clarity about doing. Sometimes we get stuck without realizing that the root cause are the thoughts we have about ourselves.
I’ll be giving more detailed responses to comments on this post in future posts.. Thanks a lot for your feedback! 😀
Personal growth isn’t always easy…sometimes I don’t like it very much either, but it really does work wonders if you invest time in it!
Positively Present’s last blog post..living my happily ever after now
Dear Dani (Positively Present),
Thanks for stopping by.
I can’t possibly imagine life without a commitment to personal growth. However, we must also be aware of the problems that can arise from this commitment and how best to combat them. Without this awareness we can unknowingly compromise our own efforts.
Haider,
I appreciate the honesty and especially appreciate the commitment to achieving the original goals of personal growth. I am on a similar mission trying to create and then refine and simplify a series of skills and even visual guides to hopefully prevent my kids (and others) from wasting all the time that I have wasted in my life. To actually help them…instead of distract them and take their money.
I am very interested in what you have in store for us and wish you the best of luck.
In answer to your question the areas I think that I struggle with the most are discipline (I am often driven to distraction), energy and maintaining a positive attitude when surrounded by negativity.
Thanks,
Gavin
Gavin’s last blog post..THE 10 STEPS TO CREATING THE SIMPLICITY YOU NEED TO MOVE FORWARD
Dear Gavin,
Thanks for stopping by, your words of encouragement and the list of issues you’re struggling with.
I hope you will find what I have in store for you truly enriching, rather than a distraction! ;D
I enjoyed your post which I have only just found and I feel compelled to leave a comment which I rarely do. The main issue I have faced is that most personal growth writing makes change and growth sound easy which it is not. Change takes dedication and effort and this is not made clear, once I understood that effort was involved things became easier to do because I was prepared to put in the effort required. When I thought it was easy I felt like failure because change did not come easily to me.
Dear Ian,
Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment.
I believe there are aspect to personal growth that require a lot of work and dedication, and other aspects that need very little effort to accomplish. I sometimes feel too sluggish to lift a finger, but the last time I joined the gym it was out of impulse after reading an article, and I managed to go to the gym almost daily for a month.
Personal growth should be simplified, but not made too simplistic.
I would suggest that you never cast judgments on yourself and your abilities because of the ways you behaved in the past. That is not a reflection of what you are truly capable of. We spend too much time and energy kicking ourselves and stepping on our own heads, when that energy could’ve been better spent moving on being more creative in how we can move our lives forward.
You might find the following article of benefit:
http://personalgrowthmap.com/blog/2009/06/02/asking-the-wrong-question/
Wish you all the best, and hope to see you around. 🙂