Foreword
Most of my audience for this book I expect could say they are living contented lives. They have reasonable income and enjoy their days. Yet, we often feel just a little emptiness. I think 80% of our lives are fine, but there is an extra percentage of fulfillment available that could make our lives stunning.
It is not a giant step to go from a life in which we take care of our obligations and enjoy the rewards of working or managing our affairs to a life of fulfillment in which each day seems purposeful, rewarding, and blessed. There is an extra measure of excitement waiting that can make all the difference.
The difference is made by tapping into the happiness brain chemicals Nature provides for certain human behaviors. Runners, entrepreneurs, explorers, artists, and care givers might get their share every day. The fact is, you could combine all their activities through blocks of time in your own day and be overwhelmed with happiness feelings.
Your 80% contentedness could go right through the roof as you experience a new growing, learning, achieving, contributing, and sharing you…
Table of Contents
Chapter
Foreword
1 Why Focus on Personal Growth
2 Growing Throughout Our Lives
3 Creating Focus on Daily Habits
4 Work on Ourselves Contributes to Others
5 Let’s Not Worry About the Big Stuff
6 Create Time Blocks
7 Let’s Slow Down
8 Creating Our Plans
9 Intersecting Ideas
10 Are You Better in the Morning?
11 Creativity Expresses Our Uniqueness
12 How Health Shapes What We Are
13 Let’s Not Be Prisoners
14 Change the Act of Doing to the Act of Feeling
15 Learn to Deal With Your Emotions
16 Reduce Your Anger and Judgments
17 Deep Connections
18 Making Days More Rewarding
19 Learning to Focus
20 Eliminate Procrastination
21 Becoming a Better You
22 Separate the Experiencing and Narrative Self
23 Why Living in Bliss is Nature’s Plan for You
24 What is Extreme Living
Chapter One
Why Focus on Personal Growth?
“The most straight forward path to happiness and satisfaction in life comes from pursuing a significant long-term goal or objective: a ‘quest’. We’re far more likely to be happy while working to achieve something great than after we’ve accomplished it.”- Chris Guillebeau, The Happiness of Pursuit
At the opposite end of the spectrum, William Damon in The Path to Purpose says “people end up feeling empty and resentful because they have failed to satisfy one of our species truest and deepest desires: the universal yearning for a life with meaning. What’s more, self-absorption is emotionally destabilizing.”
Personal growth is a long-term plan that doesn’t have to be interrupted with daily upheavals or headlines. It is a long-term approach to maximize your joy of living. When the object of your growth includes sharing your progress or insights, it takes on a higher level of meaningfulness.
You can have much greater influence on the world and your life by focusing on the long-term growth you could achieve by creating more focused daily habits. I’m not talking about the daily routines and “to do lists”. I’m talking about skills, passions, health, contribution, caring and sharing.
Chapter Four
Working On Ourselves is a Contribution
“If you create a dream or a goal that you are more committed to than your reality, which includes your worries and doubts, and if you do something to move your dream forward every day or even weekly, you will transform your life”- Marcia Wieder, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University
William Damon urges us to create lives of purpose where self-improvement and work towards goals powers our lives past all distractions and potential depressants. He says: “A purpose can organize an entire life, imparting not only meaning, but also inspiration and motivation for ongoing learning and achievement.”
Chapter Five
Let's Not Worry About the Big Stuff
A purpose is a quest to find the limits of who we are. Chris Guillebeau in The Happiness of Pursuit says: “Choosing to pursue a quest is a life-changing moment and it’s in your best interest to make sure the criteria of the quest is as clear as possible. Set an unambiguous objective that is:
- Challenging
- Has clear criteria that are measurable
- Requires sacrifice, effort, and persistence.”
Damon says “Once a person has taken on a purposeful quest, his or her personality begins to be transformed by the activities and events of the quest”
Some of the personality changes that might occur he adds are:
- Resourcefulness
- Persistence
- Know how
- Tolerance of Risks and Set Backs
Chapter Eleven
Creativity Is Expressing Our Uniqueness
“…every time someone makes a list of the skills needed in the 21st Century, creativity tops it.” Steven Kotler, Rise of Superman
At our age, we are the boss of us.
When we were young, we thought it was our right to crayon outside the lines or on our bedroom walls. We were quickly disavowed of those independent thoughts. Our lives as youngsters was mostly about conformity. Researchers say “No” is heard by youngsters 2,000 times before we are two years old.
The book The Yes Brain by Siegel and Bryson is one we wish our parents had read and one maybe we should have read before raising our children. It suggests to parents how they empower their children to be learning machines, optimistic, and resilient. The book is also a guide on how adults now can learn to empower themselves to face challenges and be optimistic about the results. If surveys show one in four people in the world is fighting depression, there is clearly a need for self-empowerment, receptivity as opposed to reactivity, and learning how to make life blissful.
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