Category Archives: Personal Development

Personal Development, Philosophy

A Place Still For Satire

I muse about what witty comedians of yesteryear would make of our “new world order”. I’m thinking that they’d be stupefied by the abundance of new material right at their fingertips. Without question, there’s an introversion going on with the internet playing a role which is restricting folks from escaping their rational mind. Twitter is the platform right now which most readily exemplifies the overblown pragmatism facing mankind. My new coined phrase is “intangible tolerance” when comparing today to pre-internet. There used to be something healthy about not knowing and not having google at our fingertips. We could just let it all be and since we didn’t know…we could count on our friends and family not knowing either. Therefore we need not have judged or be judged – so much. Of course this is an oversimplification but I digress further.

Mind space pre-internet had more plasticity because neural receptors weren’t so fatigued with stimuli. Cognitive freshness was easier to access and within such a state would be acute to satirists stirring the social landscape for fun. You’ve all seen your good jokes fly overhead more because of the receiver distracted by reactionary thoughts compounded through a bombardment of stimuli. Receivers have simply not been in the ready position and you witness it every day. 

A whole industry has evolved around assisting those stuck in the reactive mind. Ekhart Tolle comes to mind as an author who eloquently portrayed the phenomenon is his book “The Power of Now”. There are others more attuned at helping those transfixed by thought obsession. However; I might suggest diagnostic tests you can perform on yourself. Do you feel “heavy” or “light” in reacting to stimuli? Another test is whether you believe your level of concentration meets a standard set by yourself. Thirdly, you want to know how readily you can enter a place of creativity in absorbing and expressing.          

Philosophy, Personal Development

Comments on The Industry of “Personal Growth”

Before I start….let me premise with the statement, I believe in “personal growth”

 Here is where I differ from folks who circulate in the industry of “personal growth”. We do most of our learning as humans between the age of 0 and 15 years of age and for developing success habits our parents indeed played a large role in our growth….like it or not.  Somewhere along the line in our formative years we were learning about consequences to our behavior. We were learning about rewards emanating from work and behaviors which would lead to successful relationships. We were learning right from wrong, etiquette (maybe), how to overcome, and skills necessary to complete tasks. We were learning adaptations and workarounds. We were up to challenges or we weren’t. If we were not, then we ran the risk of isolation. We learned when not to say what we were thinking. We learned to speak with strength in the right context. We learned how to assess environments with our intuitive senses and feedback mechanisms. All this was going on prior to the age of fifteen. A tremendous amount of stimuli came our way.    

So, this personal growth industry wants you to believe that you need to be remade or remove much of what you had already learned or discard baggage or eliminate dysfunctional relationships. Some other person is going to do a quick assessment on your weaknesses having not lived through your years of development assumedly by injecting a bag of tricks from the self help domain in order to make you new and improved.

I suggest that if you believe you need to find a better version of “you” that you assess your situation and work it backward for yourself for starters. Then entertain bringing in somebody else to assist with your own assessment.  You do have the capacity to be honest with yourself but you must do so in the context of some reading or watching / listening to course materials in the area in order to stimulate regions within you that yearn to be fortified. Engagement with a practitioner will be much more fruitful having researched yourself first and identified sources of trouble.

It’s difficult to witness the disingenuousness of unqualified people prescribing without the authority to do so. It’s even worse to watch the low esteemed subject themselves to others when they’d be better served in solace with abundant materials available. The kinds of people one wants to see more of in the personal development space are those who have achieved what they’re espousing.

Personal Development

Ever Present Master Class

It’s becoming more common….the “Master Class”. It’s so vain. Don’t get me wrong. I have no difficulty with people posing as experts but these “master classes” are growing “long in the tooth”.

What’s most interesting is that predicates associated with trainings can be out of date in short order due to changing social and economic landscapes.

What appeals to me are “values” and “merit” but not so much “tricks” and “gimmicks”. You see you can’t teach me values and merit. It’s engrained through a history of nurturing from parents, fundamental education, inquisitive proactive learning, and life experience.  Philosophical expression consequently manifests intuition and common sense. You don’t need to put a bible in front of me either to differentiate right from wrong.  I sense these master classes pose as substitutes for the tepidness of an individual to execute on what one already knows but is overly fearful of risk.

Certainly the master class promoters are cognizant of the impact of a “leftist” education on the autonomous will of the individual. Why not just step into the void and patronize with pretention presuming that all are meek and imperceptive of aloofness. Well, I call it out.  

Politics, Lifes Lessons, Personal Development

All This Hatred

I woke up this morning to a USA Today headline “The man is pathetic”: Giuliani attacks Cohen. My gut tells me that those spewing such vitriolic comments likely have ethical dilemmas themselves which brew underneath a bravado like facade.  This seems to be the new normal in politics. In an era past when differences of opinion could be debated with intelligence and unwritten rules of conduct, it’s now all out unfiltered attack based on emotionally planted self centred ego driven applause seeking irrationality.

It’s quite obvious to the bystander that Trump’s ex lawyer Cohen succumbed to heat applied by Trump during tenuous transactions arising from Trump’s business and personal conduct. In the remote chance you haven’t been witnessing Trump’s bully like conduct and visceral need to react intensely to any slight against him through his twitter account, never mind his propensity to litigate contractors in business, you can easily formulate through a “paint by numbers” like puzzle that this seems to be a man who takes every occasion to wield financial power regardless of ethical implications. Now, he is facing the music as he deserves. I had actually seen enough simply through his conduct in the election campaign that this was a man unfit for office. In spite of nepotism rules, Trump somehow determined that his daughter and son in law despite their youth and inexperience in governmental affairs would be apt “Advisers to the President”. I actually believe the man has some merit and humanity behind his veil which has unfortunately been voided by aberration.  

I suggest that Mr. Giuliani’s propensity to defend thePresident has more to do with his own need to have his ego stroked than anymisplaced loyalty. There are men who reach their twilight years and still donot discover the means to bypass this ego laden short circuitingmechanism. 

Upon posting, I thought this might go in my blog categorization of “personal development”.  Wink.

Uncategorized, Personal Development

Staying Inspired

How are you staying inspired? Who has the best staying power? It’s those who complement their training with influences of those who have achieved. It takes a continual dose and then an expanded repertoire of sources. You know why? It’s because you’ll get stuck. You’ll hit a plateau. Your mind will wander off. Hence; if you’re committed to continual improvement, you can schedule in your exposure to influence. You can make it a priority. 

I had no clue what I was getting into upon stepping into a musical journey with the purchase of an electric guitar having experienced an introduction to music theory through piano. I sensed that those rock icons were high school dropouts with some finger dexterity learned through rudimentary practice.  Well, I was delightfully short sighted.  It’s true that rock guitarists may spend much of their soloing time in the pentatonic scale with fundamental chords derived from the Circle of Fifths. However; many other accomplished guitarists are in fact versed in music theory with ear training to facilitate improvisation. The instrument itself has the potential to extend into all genres of music.

Then there’s the concept of “what to practice.” There’s a propensity toward practicing what you know instead of building, switching, alternating, completing, stretching, expanding, and redirecting.  I’m thinking that my guitar journey’s pathway to development is no different than any other pursuit in developing competence leading to mastery. What if we document practice sessions for planned later date reinforcement? What if we engage interpersonally with those who can supplement ideas? What if we intertwine the learning experience from our hobbyist pursuit with other facets of existence? Staying inspired inherently means not only the act of interpreting a production which compels but also looking deeper into the person behind the piece.    

First of all, are you spending the time? Secondly, are you spending it the right way? Thirdly, are you manifesting enjoyment of your pursuit through applied education? If you don’t have the time now, will you be sufficiently inspired at ground zero with the onset of retirement?