Enhancing Self Trust and Confidence Through Personal Growth and Self Improvement

Simple Success Facts

Successful people from all over that world have always been those who have the confidence and trust in themselves and not all of us have this character within ourselves but it all can be improved and enhanced in different ways. We’ve come to know that this can only be done through leadership trainings, seminars and usually, those that we have to pay money only to realize that we all have what it takes to become successful and happy in life. These characters that sometimes require awakening and realization and knowing thyself is an important step that we all have to take in order to succeed in all aspects of life.

Role of Internet to Self Improvement

Today, with the availability of the internet, everything has changed for people who have become successful in their ordeals and investments and have become happier with what life has to offer for them in return. While others have to pay for self improvement exercises to be undertaken and guides through books and reading materials, there are a lot of resources that are just actually waiting for you to take a bite in. Numerous and countless information that actually exist but we do not realize we already know. This article is a guide and a resource for people who are looking for answers and guides for their path. A free resource on personal growth and development.

Personal Growth

there are free self improvement tutorials that could actually lead to career development and confidence, eventually we must all realize that this is the same path to a bountiful life physically, mentally and spiritually. There really is no exception, just your will and power to understand things that are already there but were sometimes just being taken for granted because we lack this simple guide to understand it all.

Business and Career Development

Business, career, life, love, physicality, mentality and spirituality, they all come into one place which is to begin with yourself and realize that the one and only essential major factor for all of your life’s contentment actually starts within you. If you develop yourself to overflow and eventually give back all the blessings that you are getting from your success, then that is the time that you will see that everything in life is not free (not in terms of monetary form). You have to focus and pay yourself the attention and develop that you within you in terms of business and career development to understand that you cannot give what is lacking in you. You have to overflow in order to give and be happy along the way all throughout in all aspects including your heart willingly and without prejudice or resentment.

All these can only start for you to see if you develop self trust and confidence within you through self improvement and personal growth resources. This is the key and this is the path not necessarily the perfect road to take but will be a good start. We want you to make that head start that everybody else is looking for all their life and ordeals. We are offering them all for free and for you to use and share to others if you feel we have what it takes. Visit us at U-Teach.Info for more free resources on self improvement, personal growth and career development.

 

Subscribe to My Newsletter
The benefits your subscribers are going to receive from your newsletter
Name:
Email:
Powered by Optin Form Adder

Personal Growth and Development Systems: What Will You Get from Them?

Lotteries are not only the number games that you have to play with your luck. In fact, your life is likewise a very crucial type of lottery. There are times when you feel like you are all alone battling with the trials that life has heaped on you. At times you feel so depressed and you perceive that the world is crumbling right before your very eyes.

When your outlook in life is badly wounded, you will eventually be left miserable all throughout the days. This must not push you to the limits. As the cliche often tells you, there is always a window opened whenever a door is closed. As long as you take a positive view of life, you know for certain that you will be able to overcome all of life’s difficulties.

Personal growth and development systems must then be your asylum. If you feed your mind and your heart with nothing but the positive values, you are certain to win the lottery in life. But if you do the other way around, then you can expect yourself to drown into misery. More so, personal growth and development systems will allow you to experience any or all of the following:

An enhanced relationship with others. If you feed your mind with proper education and you improve the level of your knowledge, you therefore learn the proper way of keeping a good system of communication between the people who are within your environment. If you have good communication strategies with others, the more enhanced your relationship with them would become.

An improved health. A stable health is not only counted as one physical attribute. It must extend to your own state of mind. Even the doctors of today know for certain that keeping a relaxed state of mind will eventually lead to a healthy physique. That is why there is what is known as the series of mind exercises. They may relax the mind and provide a healing power for one’s overall personality.

Be able to earn more money. If you take into serious consideration the stability of your own future, you will soon realize that in a year’s time, your earnings will be more profitable and steady. Personal growth and development systems are unlikely to take effect on you if you will not subject yourself into it. It helps to always maintain a positive attitude, so to speak.

Manage your time. If you are always on a rush, you will end up distressed. Having things kept in an orderly manner will really pay off.

You may not have a full control of the circumstances that may arrive in your life but you are in full control of yourself. If you know how to integrate a personal growth and development system in your overall well-being, you can obviously help yourself deal with almost anything that comes your way. Do not ever play with the thought that your destiny has already been tailored. You are in charged of your own destiny, mind you. If you do some things out of your stupidity then you are likely to be the one who is going to suffer from your actions. However, if you have nothing else in mind but the focus on your self-improvement, then it will soon materialize.

Insights on personal growth and development system are always available through the self-help books that are written mostly by psychiatrists and medical practitioners. Subjecting yourself to any of these self-help books will do you good.

Your Analytical Training Can Become Barriers to Personal Growth and Development

Contrary to what most of us know, an analytical mind can become barriers to personal growth and development.

Peter Drucker, one of the great thinkers of modern management, observed that young executive stalled in their career because they lack the essential skills to walk into a situation and grasp the whole picture at once – the gestalt.

It is amazing how much details we failed to notice, when our perception sensibility is clouded by our pre-occupation with analysis.

In typical business occasions, our thoughts are usually quick to perform analysis that often gets distorted by our values, judgments, and experience. As our mind is busy processing the information, we are distracted from hearing, sensing and seeing the obvious that is just in front of us. Without a trained mind, we fail to notice the change in voice tone, tightening of jaw muscle, tension in the shoulder, or subtle change in the eye. We often hear the spoken words without getting the real messages. Excessive analysis does hamper perceptual sensibility, and can potentially become barriers to personal growth and development.

However, it is incorrect to say that analytical skill is not important. The converse is true. Analytical thinking is one of key essential skills needed to dissect and solve complex problems. However, we need to use our analytical skill as a tool effectively, and not become its slave. If we don’t restraint its use, our analytical skill can really become barriers to personal growth and development. We need to let this capacity of our mind take a back seat, when it comes a time where other more powerful essential skills are required.

What are the other more powerful essential skills?

Whether you are an executive or entrepreneur, your career success hinges on the ability to quickly grasp the key issues among fuzzy noises in critical situations. Your performance in all aspects of life can be improved if you master three essential skills to enhance your perceptual sensibility – Instinct, Creativity and Imagination.

Instinct

Our instinct is powerful tools that can help us gain a lot more information than our usual senses. It can tell us things in our environment that directly affects our well-being.

Sometime, certain information or thoughts just come to our mind, prompting us to take certain actions that greatly impact the course of our life. Instinct is the higher kind of knowledge that comes from direct experience. When instinct is at work, we just know it without any need to figure anything out or to analysis the situation. Our heightened sense of awareness receives all the information we need without us trying too hard.

Creativity

Creativity runs opposite to analysis. It is only possible when the mind thinks in a non-linear way. Creativity can help us solve problems at a higher level that is impossible with analysis. Besides increasing our effectiveness in work, it also adds color and beauty to our life.

Many people never thought that they are creative. We failed to realize that everyone has a mind that is a huge creative force. Creativity is a natural and constant process of our mind. However, creativity is often inhibited by rules and restrictions that are imposed on it externally. This is in stark contrary with analysis, where rules and restriction are the basis of its function.

Creativity can be nurtured with a spirit of adventure, as well as the willingness to experiment and change the rules. A simple way to kick-start the development of creativity is to make changes to things that we do day in and day out as a matter of rules or habits. In our daily life, there are plenty of opportunities to find new ways to do the same old things. By consciously looking out for ways for improvement, we activate the creative genius within us to start exercising its creative muscle.

Imagination

Imagination is the language of the subconscious mind, which defies analysis. It helps direct our creative force, and lead our thoughts into a multi-dimensional paradigm. There are two ways to use our imagination: Reflective or Active.

Using imagination in a reflective way tune your attention inward to develop intuition. On the other hand, using imagination in an active way helps build your vision and creates the outcome you want.

Concluding Remarks:

It is clear that instinct, creativity and imagination runs on a totally contrasting mental paradigm from analytical thinking. In fact, the development of the above three essential skills will be obstructed when we put our analytical skill on over-drive. These powerful resources are within everyone one of us. With constant practice, you can develop these skills to enhance your perception sensibility, which plays a critical role in your personal growth and development.

Now, are you convinced that your analytical skills can become barriers to personal growth and development?

The Ten Delusions of Personal Growth

1. That you can get somewhere positive by defeating something negative.

2. That people who take the “path of least resistance” in life are weak.

3. That fighting ourselves shows strength and builds character.

4. That denying and disrespecting our parents is a good idea.

5. That you as an intelligent adult would never, ever mess your life up in order to prevent something really bad from happening to someone else 100 years ago (just to cite a round number).

6. That the past is a failed version of a better future.

7. That now is the only time there is.

8. That your brain is supposed to care about how you feel.

9. That positive change will inevitably lead to more positive change.

10. That our private thoughts and feelings do not affect the experience of other people.

1. That you can get somewhere positive by defeating something negative.

When we act to improve our lives by defeating some aspect of ourselves (for example, “an old, unwanted behavior pattern,” or a recurring issue of “self-sabotage”) who is it, exactly, who wins?

One of the most enduring and unfortunate delusions to come out of the personal growth movement (especially the “monster power growth” version of it) is the idea that we all contain a “strong self” that can be trained to compel the subjugation of our “weak self.” It is completely understandable that almost all of us develop this impression. Human beings have been trying to make meaning out of their internal conflicts, their affinity with the light or dark sides of things, with their distresses related to virtue and guilt, for tens of thousands of years-long before the invention of the personal growth weekend seminar, as far as we know.

The easiest way to allow personal change and growth is to include-not to exclude or defeat-whatever it is that is not working in our lives. We can recognize that unwanted patterns of behavior are simply old solutions that have unwittingly outlasted their usefulness. Actually, when we go beyond this-when we seek to actively respect whatever it is that seems to be causing us the most pain and frustration-the experience of including and changing even long-standing patterns becomes safe, fun, and rewarding. Our old patterns are much more available for easy, comfortable change when we do not fight against them. In fact, when they are respected properly, we find that old, unwanted behaviors usually seek to change themselves. It’s as if they want to catch up with the rest of us, and that makes for a wonderful, and defeat-free, reunion.

2. That people who take the “path of least resistance” in life are weak.

Everything in the Universe is coordinated to move and change along paths of least resistance. Everything-electrons, inter-galactic clouds of hydrogen gas, white mice, and melting ice. There are no exceptions. So, it is curious and weird that, for humans, the words “taking the path of least resistance” are usually tossed out as in insult. Now, we are all getting gradually better about this. One is rarely congratulated about the pointlessness and intensity of one’s struggle any more. Still, who do we think we are, anyway?

3. That fighting ourselves shows strength and builds character.

Some of the saddest words are, “At least I respect myself enough to despise myself.” Proper self-regard is always the most courteous way to be in life and the universe. It invites the best for and from others. Too little self-respect provokes other humans to want to withdraw their care and support. They can’t help but feel this at some level. It is an ancient instinct in our hunter-gatherer DNA, a not-quite-knowing designed to protect the well-being of the whole troupe. The instinct can be overridden, and it often is, but to do this requires some energy and work. Proper self-respect is never costly or inconvenient for anyone. And, it is hardly ever fatal.

4. That denying and disrespecting our parents is a good idea.

Almost all of western psychotherapy seeks, in one way or another, to separate clients from their parents. This movement is in exactly the wrong direction. If we want to know what would come out of the mix if we put our parents into a giant blender and then hit the frappè button, the answer is-we would exist. We are exactly, precisely that combination.

Our broadband connection to the flow of life-the cable sockets themselves, so to speak-happens to be them. Not personally, necessarily, but certainly energetically, the sockets are where they are. We can deny this, but then we have to live on dial-up. When we deny parents, we deny ourselves and cut ourselves off from the sources of strength in life. This never has a good effect. If our parents are dangerous, crazy, or lethally boring, it is probably a good idea to stay away from them physically, but this is not the same as disrespecting them.

5. That you as an intelligent adult would never, ever mess your life up in order to prevent something really bad from happening to someone else 100 years ago (just to cite a round number).

As it turns out, this seems to be exactly what all of us humans value doing more than anything else. We are-all of us-driven to make sure that we experience some version of the tragedies and unresolved losses of the family members who came before us. As long as we experience their pain, or something closely like it, we have hope to provide our families with a better past, which, it follows very [il]logically, will allow us to experience a better present and future for ourselves. This is complicated business, and highly seductive. When our pain now signals us that we are on track toward past and future happiness, we go into a deep, deep trance of secure and loving family salvation. As crazy as this sounds, this is what we do, and are pretty much screwed until we start to catch on. Messing up our own life is never a good way to show respect for anyone.

6. That the past is a failed version of a better future.

The future is not a perfected or improved past. Our experiences as human beings, whatever this involves in the moment, always represent the very best life solutions that our systems have been able to achieve. We all deal with utterly mysterious and painful inherited patterns, which we then combine with the bafflingly elusive meanings and beliefs we invent for ourselves. However huge the resulting mess might seem to be, it is truly the most creative, positive, and loving solution we could find for ourselves (and for everyone else who was involved) at the time that the unwanted patterning became hyper-stabilized and hard to change. Truly, we are all doing the best we can with what we have, and with what we had.

7. That now is the only time there is.

Being present in the present is wonderful and useful. It’s an indispensable art, an essential part of changing our relationship with ourselves and with life itself. However, for humans who live in time/space, the future and past are real too. Properly created, a good future activates our choosing of it, so that it comes into manifestation against a supportive backdrop called the past. There is no substitute for having a good relationship with our future and our past. After all now, we are now our future’s past, are we not?

8. That your brain is supposed to care about how you feel.

Our brain’s main function is to filter out everything that doesn’t fit its own ideas about what fits with its ideas. Consequently, it is always very busy not noticing things. However, the good result of this is that it provides us with a stable, more-or-less predictable world in which to live.

To make the experience of being human even more fun, the older, most reliable parts of our brains-our creature brains, which don’t even know that they are parts of human beings-have only one important success indicator, one way to tell if they are doing a good job. This part of the brain doesn’t think, analyze, create, synthesize or talk. It is simply there to establish and maintain associations between this and that. It doesn’t care what this and that are, as long as the associations are intact. Thus, it does not care about the content of our human experience; it only cares that that content (the associations between this and that) do not change. Consequently, its most important success indicator is the answer to the question, “Are we dead yet?” If the answer is no, it knows to keep on with whatever it has been doing. If this happens to involve our being miserable in life, at the human level, that is not its problem, nor even its concern.

Our brain is not supposed to care how we feel. We are supposed to care how we feel.

9. That positive change will inevitably lead to more positive change.

Most really wonderful, positive change can eventually lead to feeling bad again. There are some beautiful ways of working with this unfortunate aspect of being human, so that it is not actually always true good change leads to feeling bad. However, for most of us, learning to allow wonderful change to stay positive takes a little practice. This is what we call “the ecology of personal growth.” It is quite an art form, and an extremely valuable thing to learn.

10. That our private thoughts and feelings do not affect the experience of other people.

Everything we think and feel affects all the space, all the time. We really do have this kind of huge effect. Having power like this is never a bad thing. Learning to recognize and use this power is a many lifetimes’ respectfully creative journey. Overall, this is pretty good news.

Personal Growth | How to Make Money

Personal Growth | How to make money.

Do you think personal growth has anything to do with learning how to make money? I think personal growth can be used for any subject including learning how to make money, as money isn’t created with the click of your finger; it’s created by plans and techniques that you maybe able to learn using personal growth.

Most people want to learn how to make money in this New Year, and the best way to begin is learning personal growth skills. If you’re learning any new personal growth skills, then the best way is to follow anything shown to you step by step. Try not to skip anything as you can’t progress unless you start from the beginning. Don’t do the middle steps just because they sound more like the things you want to learn about.

To learn how to make money firstly you have to learn about who you are, what you believe in, what you know about yourself now, and everything that has happened to you in the past.

Choices that have happened in your life so far, good or bad has been created from your mind. You have to believe this is true to start your personal growth path.  No-one else is to blame except for yourself. Has anyone forced you to make the decisions in your life so far? If you answer yes to this, then it was your choice to let them make your decisions, so in fact it was your choice.

It is you that makes your decisions; it is you that has made your life what it is so far. Don’t blame anyone else. Therefore it is you who can change they way your life is, to grow yourself, and learn how to make money by changing the way your thoughts and feelings are about learning how to make money.

There are a lot of questions you can ask yourself to see what type of beliefs you have about making money, such as:

Do you feel you truly deserve to be rich? What types of thoughts do you have about people with money? Do you label these people? (Filthy rich etc.)

Also think what you would do if you had a million dollars. Would you quit your job tomorrow? If you answered yes to this, then maybe you should be looking at a different career to make money. (read my next article on goal setting for this)

Are you starting to see a pattern develop about what type of beliefs you have on the money making process?

Do you think you can start learning how to make money? Do you really want to learn how to make money?

Using personal growth is your first step in learning how to make money.

Personal Success Through Self-Development And Growth

There are many occasions in a person’s life in which they must make an important decision, or tackle a project. Many times, taking action when it becomes necessary is actually quite difficult. There are many people who are very frightened of setting decisions and tasks into motion. However, in order to achieve personal success through self-development and growth, this must occur.

When it comes to making a move in the right direction, it is important to realize that we all have the ability to do so. It is the prejudice that we have against ourselves that causes us to lag in response. In order to achieve personal success through self-development and growth, we must understand that the word “can’t” really is not appropriate. We all “can”, we just have an issue with accepting our abilities and making the choice to move forward when the time comes.

Just as a child encounters a natural fear to let go of that table and take their first step, we all have the natural tendency to fear the unknown. We often fear that we will fail in one way or another. In turn, this can lead to a general lack of effort. Many babies, when taking their first step, realize just how comfortable they are by taking that first step. Soon after, it is not uncommon for parents to notice how they seem to take off. It is the same when it comes to us… if we simply let go of the fear that holds us back and we push forward, pretty soon we will be unable to slow down.

If you are attempting to achieve personal success through self-development and growth, it is important that you understand the beginning of the process of moving in the right direction is the hardest. As a matter of fact, it will probably be the only one true step that you put so much effort into thinking about. Once you make it past this particular stage, you are soon to take off – never looking back.

Most individuals procrastinate in one way or another. Many individuals also have a negative view on life. On a daily basis, you probably encounter individuals that have the habit of backing down when it comes to the challenges of life. Many of these people also focus on the negative aspects of each and everything that they experience in life. For these individuals, the only way to achieve personal success through self-development and growth is to let go of these habits. These individuals must let go of the habit of procrastinating and being pessimistic about the things that they experience in life.

There are seminars available that can help you to achieve personal success through self-development and growth. These seminars were created by Tony Robbins. One of the activities that he sponsors to help individuals achieve personal success through self-development and growth is a walk which, appropriately, is named a fire walk. These individuals must start on one side of a bed hot coals and make it to the opposite side. Each and every person that has participated claims that the first step was the most challenging, the rest were easy.

The same concept holds true for people. In order to grow and succeed, one must simply take that very first step towards their goals and focus on the end result. There must be a destination that is fresh in the mind in order to achieve an ending point that is successful. When you are faced with an obstacle, it is important to understand that it is just another stepping block to success. Without challenges and obstacles, none of us would ever achieve personal success through self-development and growth.

It is absolutely normal to have some extent of fear and nervousness when it comes to tackling new experiences and situations. However, it is quite possible to move forward with fear and hesitancy. The strongest individuals are the ones that are absolutely terrified of something, yet they are the first to step forward and take on the tasks at hand. These are the individuals that achieve personal success through self-development and growth.

It takes room to grow, and room to develop. You cannot simply stand in one spot and expect to go anywhere in life. If you are having a hard time taking chances and doing things that you need to do, then you should consider a personal coach. They can help you create an outline of goals that can help you to succeed in life. Many individuals have achieved in the area of self-development and growth by gaining the help of a coach.

If you are looking to advance in life, whether it is personal advancement, or professional advancement, it is important to move forward. You can look back on occasion, but only if you will learn from what is contained in the past. Otherwise, keep your head up, facing forward.

Personal Growth – Understanding yourself Better

When it comes to personal growth, there are no specific formulas that you can follow in order to achieve success. As every person differs, so does their personal goals and priorities. There are also varying strengths and weaknesses that are consequent to an individual’s personality. However, there are basic steps that can lead to a more successful and fulfilling personal growth.

Start From Within Yourself

The key to personal growth is evaluating yourself first. Getting acquainted with yourself is the first step towards achieving personal success. When people hear of others’ success story, they instantly apply it on themselves only to realize that it failed to deliver.

In your efforts for personal change, focus on improving that self-awareness. Determine at what point of your life you are right now and how far (or near) it is from where you want to be. Then, you can devise ways to further your efforts toward personal growth and success.

Work On Your Attitude

One way of improving your attitude, whether in your personal life or working relationships, is determining your strengths and weaknesses. This will enable you to become more effective in dealing with society and all the others who inhabit it. When you are able to work harmoniously with people around you, it also increases your level of esteem. Consequently, you are not only effective in your working relationship but also assisted in your efforts for personal growth.

Regardless of your current state, your attitude will provide the means to achieve whatever goals you have set for yourself. Whether you improve your attitude through professional counseling or through support from your family, friends, or co-workers, it will certainly boost your emotional health and create positive mental habits.

A positive attitude is not just fundamental in your business’ success but also creates a more holistic individual.

Tools for Personal Growth

As much as humans never ceasing growing physically, one should continually strive for personal growth at every opportunity as well. Change is not enough to say that you achieve personal growth. It is a mindset that enables you to surpass the everyday struggles and remain on the positive side. Here are ways to get out of a crisis and continue aiming for continued growth:

1.Do not dwell on the negative. Instead, focus on what you can do to improve your current situation.

2.Live a healthy lifestyle. Improving the state of your health caters for a more healthier outlook in life. Your physical and mental being should always couple each other. Therefore, you have to make a conscious effort to watch what you eat or drink and lead a healthy lifestyle.

3.Determine your purpose in life. Once you have done this, you are able to focus your energy on more essential activities that will bring fulfillment to your life.

4.Have fun. No matter what you are doing or what choices you make in life, just learn how to enjoy yourself. Aside from the fact that it takes the burden off your shoulder, you can use this as a motivation when faced with obstacles you need to overcome.

5.Set personal goals. In business, it is often said that you need to create personal goals aside from your business goals. It enables you to stay motivated despite of the hardships that you need to face. Meanwhile, it also provides a higher level of fulfillment once you have achieved those goals. Lastly, goals enable you to determine on which direction to aim, or what steps to take to be able to further your efforts toward personal growth and success.

Journaling For Personal Growth

One of the best ways to gain clarity about your life is by journaling your thoughts and feelings. Especially if you’re feeling conflicted or confused about certain situations, writing your thoughts out can be incredibly enlightening!

You don’t have to be a “writer” to journal effectively. In fact, your writing skills don’t have to be good at all. Just the act of putting your thoughts into logical order and translating them to written form can help you to understand what you’re feeling, and why.

Here are some tips to help you use journaling for personal growth:

1) Keep it simple. You don’t need to spend a lot of money on a fancy journal. In fact, unless you’re an experienced journaler, I recommend using an inexpensive, lined notebook. Then you won’t feel so much pressure to be “perfect” in what you write. You won’t be afraid to scribble and scrawl whatever happens to flow onto the paper.

2) Don’t hold back. When you journal for the purposes of personal growth, don’t try to edit yourself, or make your writing understandable to anyone else. The most freeing technique is to put your pen to paper and just write whatever comes to mind. No one else will see it unless you want them to, so let ‘er rip!

3) Focus on the feelings. If you find yourself stumped about what to write in your journal, begin with the phrase, “I feel…”. This will usually get your thoughts and feelings flowing, and you will be better able to express them in writing.

4) Guided journaling. Another helpful technique is guided journaling, which means providing a prompt for yourself. Especially if you’re struggling with something specific, you can more easily get the words flowing with a nudge in the right direction. Some example prompts would be, “Describe your perfect career and the reasons it would fulfill you.” Or, “Think about the most painful experience in your past and write about the ways it has affected who you are today.”

5) Review your entries periodically. Going back to look at your journal entries can be very illuminating and provide amazing clarity about yourself. With time and practice, you will likely begin to see patterns in your thinking, behaviors, and beliefs. The most important thing is to keep an objective mindset while you look at your entries. Don’t judge or belittle yourself. Keep the focus on personal growth and development. Instead of beating yourself up or cringing over your latest rant, ask yourself, “How can I use this knowledge to improve my circumstances now?”

If you’re not a natural writer, journaling may seem like a lot of effort at first. But it is so worth it! Because I am a writer, journaling is something I’ve always done. As a child, I kept written diaries that focused more on my day to day experiences. “Dear Diary, today a cute boy smiled at me and I melted!” In my twenties, I decided I wanted to understand myself better, so I began keeping written journals with a focus on self-discovery. That practice has paid off in amazing ways over the past decade or so.

You can also keep journals for other reasons besides personal growth. For example, you can begin a gratitude journal to jot down a few things you are thankful for each day, which will help you to feel more positive about your life. You can keep a spiritual growth journal to record prayers and meditations that were effective for you. You can keep a dream journal to learn more about the messages your dreams hold. The possibilities are endless!

If you really don’t like writing with pen and paper, you can also keep an online journal in the form of a blog. There are many providers that offer free membership accounts, with easy-to-use interfaces. Two popular choices are http://Blogger.com and http://LiveJournal.com. However, if you keep an online journal, you might want to make it private so no one else can view it. It’s amazing what search engines can find nowadays, and you don’t want your neighbor or employer coming across your private thoughts. Most blog hosts allow an option to keep your blog non-viewable to the public. Or you can simply stay anonymous with your blog, but allow others to read it. Use a pseudonym and don’t give any identifiable information about yourself.

Finally, don’t feel that you have to follow any set rules with your journaling. Do what works best for you, and enjoy the journey!

The Dance of Personal and Spritual Growth

All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.

- Edward Gibbon

Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind.

- Vita Sackville-West

“Life is flux,” it is said, and change would seem to be one of the unavoidable hallmarks of life. I personally feel that one of the reasons we are here on earth, generally speaking, is to learn and grow, and I am a strong proponent of personal and spiritual growth. For this reason, I strive in my work with clients to provide insight that will facilitate their own process of unfolding, wherever they may be in that process.

I have a tendency to intertwine personal and spiritual growth, rather than segregating them, because I feel that it is difficult, in fact, to truly separate them from each other or, indeed, to have one without the other. We often view personal growth as perhaps psychological in nature rather than spiritual — working on our issues, for example. Because of this view, we may regard personal growth as a lesser priority because we see it as “unspiritual” or as unnecessary when we want to be focusing on what we perceive to be more spiritual pursuits. What I have come to learn, however, is that it is often the personal issues and stuff that may be clouding and impeding our spirituality, so that our personal growth (clearing away some of our “stuff”) may lead to spiritual growth. Hence, I feel that one (personal growth) will often lead to or allow us to open up to the other (spiritual growth). In addition, clearing away some of the dross of our “stuff” and growing personally shifts our energy from a denser vibration to a lighter one, syncing us up more to the higher, finer vibrations of a spiritual level.

I have been asked in the past what spirituality is. A tough question, that – although it is one that has definitely prompted me to think long and hard about it. I tend to view spirituality as a feeling of connection to that which is supposedly outside of us (or outside of the narrow confines of our egos) – a connection to others, to animals, to nature, to earth, to the universe, to other levels and realms, and to the Divine. Thus, spirituality, for me, is the sense of connection to the all (as well as to the All!). And spiritual growth represents the growth of feeling that connection, sometimes irrespective of our conscious acknowledgment of it. Openness may be one of the first prerequisites to that growth. Clearing the blocks to that openness and/or clearing our personal stuff that may be blocking our feeling that connection to what is outside of us can both pave the way for our spiritual growth, as well as allowing us to resonate more with higher spiritual energies. Conversely, rigidity and tight energy may tend to impede it.

Many of us have tended to approach our spiritual growth from a mental or intellectual perspective. We may be avid readers of books on spirituality and metaphysics, trying to cram our minds with an understanding of ideas about spirituality, whether learning about the religions of the world or contemporary theories of spirituality or prescribed steps to spiritual understanding or success. We may become quite learned about these ideas of spirituality, and this is a wonderful step toward spiritual growth. We truly grow spiritually, however, when we begin to live our spirituality as well, through experiencing it and exploring it experientially – when we begin to feel it and thus to know it on a different level. Growing and knowing on the level of feeling rounds out our spirituality, allowing it to permeate the different levels of our being so that it is integrated into our being. (Please see my article, “Experiential Spirituality and Contemporary Gnosis,” published in the March 1996 issue of Innerchange and also available on my web site, www.dianebrandon.com, for a deeper discussion of this topic.)

So how do we maximize our growth and how do we pursue it? What I have learned through my work with clients, as well as from my own process, is that everyone’s path is different, that there is no set of rules for everyone to follow. I would like to say that openness is a prerequisite. However, I’ve seen those who were not exactly predisposed to being open go through growth or opening experiences. And our manner of growing may vary as well. Some may go through intense periods of rapid growth, while others may evolve more gradually over time, much like a flower slowly opening its petals to take in the nurturing elements of its environment. And for still others, both types of growth processes may be experienced at different points in their lives. (I also feel that it may not be for everyone to experience a lot of growth; some may be living lives in which they are to experience not growing.)

There may be different triggers for our growth, from a vague feeling of disenchantment or lack of fulfillment or that there must be something more to life; to more traumatic triggers such as the loss of a job or relationship, illness or accident, death of a loved one, a near-death experience, etc. We usually know, if we are aware of the growth paradigm, when we experience triggers such as these that we’re being asked to shift and change in some way. We may go through painful periods of change (which I often liken to being forged or tempered on an anvil), as well as pleasant periods of explorative discovery. Both the triggers to and the ways of growing may be highly variable. When we experience difficult triggers, if we’re not clued in to the growth “imperative” we may resist and chafe under the pain or unpleasantness. As anyone who has moved past this resistance knows, our resistance to the growth process only prolongs our struggle, much as the moth caught in an ensnaring web.

I think it’s important to understand that there are no graven-in-stone rules to follow for growth. It may be more a matter of honoring our own process and looking for the signs and guidance given and available to us constantly. Self-awareness and self-knowledge, combined with openness, can be key. It may also be true that we can’t will ourselves to grow (“I’m going to grow now!”), as much as perhaps allowing ourselves to walk a balance between receptively looking for the signs and guidance around us and actively following through on that guidance – thus, partnering with the universe on our growth and unfolding, as well as being an active participant rather than an unwilling or passive recipient of energies.

For these reasons, self-knowledge can maximize our process. Learning how to access and listen to guidance can be key, as can finding our inner voice and learning to tap into it.

There are many, many modalities that can facilitate. I would like to think that my work with clients helps in this process, whether individual intuitive sessions, dream interpretation, guided meditation, regression, or group workshops I facilitate (on developing intuition, Natural Process healing, personal empowerment, and dream interpretation). Other helpful modalities include meditation, energy healing, rolfing, affirmations, therapy and counseling, touch for health, heart-opening exercises, acupuncture, massage therapy, crystal healing, color therapy, astrology – and the list goes on and on. Certainly books that expand our understanding can be immensely helpful and can even trigger “aha” experiences of realization, as long as we read with a discerning eye (or gut).

Once we begin to grow personally and spiritually, there is often no turning back. We may begin to recognize some of the lessons we’re undergoing, as we realize that we’re being asked to go to new levels of trust, surrender, patience, and flow, among others – those states of being that can maximize our sense of partnering with the universe and with the Divine. We learn that there is indeed more meaning to life than just the superficialities our five senses allow us to experience. Our growth and unfolding — our dance of personal and spiritual growth, if you will — can be addictive as we reap unexpected rewards of heightened fulfillment and peace (once we travel through the tunnel of pain to the light). And we often realize that we wouldn’t want to go back to our former modes of being. Much like the butterfly that sheds its cloaking but limiting garment of the cocoon, we find that our new lighter state allows us both more freedom of being and the ability to feel the light of the sun as we fly more unencumbered to higher levels.

(This article was first published in Innerchange Magazine June-July 2001)