personal growth paper

What is personal growth?

· Take a moment to ask yourself why you are taking this class (aside from fulfilling degree requirements)

· What intrigues you about the idea of personal growth?

· Feeling a need for improvement?

· Wanting to be your best self?

· Suggestion of others?

· Not feeling content with the way you are?

· Human beings are often seeking to improve their current situation (through improvement of self, circumstances, activities, etc.)

Why?

What are we searching for?

· Direction? Happiness? Fulfillment? and?

· What do these things mean and why are they important?

· Direction

· Where am I going in life?

· Why am I on this path?

· Is your direction purposeful? (chosen by you)

· Is your direction passive? (a path you have been put on by someone else or by certain circumstances)

· Happiness

· What does it mean to be happy?

· How do we achieve happiness?

· Ask yourself, what makes me genuinely happy?

· Do you create happiness or does it happen to you?

· Fulfillment

· What does it take to be fulfilled?

· How do you know when you’ve achieved it?

· A feeling

· A combination of a sense of purpose and resulting happiness

· What else? Why are we here?

What are we searching for?

· Why are people susceptible to cults?

· Why are we willing to go to such extreme lengths to find what we are looking for?

· Sweat lodge example from text

· People will put their own health at risk in order to find purpose and belonging

· We are hard wired for connection

· We seek to belong

· It hurts to be disconnected, to feel alone or left out

· The pain of disconnection often outweighs perceived risks

· We seek out things that we think will give us purpose

· What gives you purpose?

What are we searching for?

· Have you ever read a self-help book?

· Why?

· We often think we need to improve ourselves

· This isn’t always bad, sometimes it helps to try to improve yourself

· We are comforted by knowing that others have struggled in similar ways

· Did it help? Why or why not?

· Research has found that self-help books are often not based in scientific research

· Self-help books are often vague in their prescription for change

· What are the keys to happiness?

· Are you happy with your life?

Difference Between Growth and Development???

· Take some time to think about the following:

· What do you think of when you hear these words?

· What is growth?

· What is development?

Are they the same? How do they differ?

Barriers to personal growth

· Now that we have started to define personal growth and what motivates the journey towards it:

· What gets in the way of personal growth?

· “If the consumption of these literary narcotics (self help books) were even remotely as helpful as their publishers claim, we would be a nation of serene, happy, well-adjusted people. It is clear, however, that serenity is not the dominant national mood.”

· Anxiety and depression are on the rise – but why?

· What gets in the way of your attempts to change?

Why don’t we change?

· Think: When was the last time you tried to make a change and failed?

· Write: What prevented you from making that change?

· Think: When was the last time you tried to make a change and succeeded?

· Write: What helped you make that change?

How do we change?

· There are three critical components to change

· Must be ready

· Is this the right time to make a change?

· Are you prepared to make a change?

· Must be willing

· Do you want to change?

· Are you being forced into change?

· Must be able

· Is this a change you can reasonable expect to be able to make?

· Are there limitations in your life that prevent you from being able to make this change?

What do you need to grow?

· Clear definition of the problem

· Investigations of attempted solutions

· Definition of concrete change to be achieved

· Formulation and implementation of plan

How do you achieve this?

· Exploration of the disadvantages of status quo

· Why will keeping things the same not work?

· Exploration of the advantages of status quo

· What is gained by keeping things the same

· Generating an optimism for change and growth

· Displaying an intention to grow and change