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Personal Development By: Will Edwards
What exactly is personal development? When I began my career as a personal development consultant some nine or so years ago, people would always ask me that question when I told them what I did for a living. These days most people have some concept of what the term means.
In some respects the proposition sounds quite religious; and though personal development is not a religion per se, many religious people, or those aware of their spirituality, often do find resonance with the basic premise of the field i.e. that we all need to develop in some way.
Perhaps the first use of the phrase in the modern context is in the field of psychology by Alfred Adler, who was one of Freud’s breakaway followers. Adler really did begin to expand the field to encompass lifestyle issues including how individuals talked personal problems in a characteristic way. Another of Sigmund Freud’s disciples – perhaps the most famous of them all – Carl Jung, also made a significant contribution to the development of the field with his concepts of ‘individuation’ and ‘life stages’.
Certainly, when teaching the subject, it is very difficult to now refer to personality and psychological matters because that is the nature of the subject. We all are a little off-centre; we all perceive reality in subtly difference ways; we tend to use language loosely; our behaviour is extensively driven by our feelings and so on. This is just the way we are – part of what it is to be human.
Personal development can be thought-of as the process of moving from that position (off-centre) toward the centre to a position where there is no bias in our views and our behaviour toward others. This is in essence what the, rather beautiful teaching of the Enneagram proposes. Hence there is a journey for us all to make; and it is a very personal journey; and we develop, as human beings, as we make that journey.
For help with your own personal journey, you can get an excellent rage of top-quality, free personal development books from White Dove Books.
In some respects the proposition sounds quite religious; and though personal development is not a religion per se, many religious people, or those aware of their spirituality, often do find resonance with the basic premise of the field i.e. that we all need to develop in some way.
Perhaps the first use of the phrase in the modern context is in the field of psychology by Alfred Adler, who was one of Freud’s breakaway followers. Adler really did begin to expand the field to encompass lifestyle issues including how individuals talked personal problems in a characteristic way. Another of Sigmund Freud’s disciples – perhaps the most famous of them all – Carl Jung, also made a significant contribution to the development of the field with his concepts of ‘individuation’ and ‘life stages’.
Certainly, when teaching the subject, it is very difficult to now refer to personality and psychological matters because that is the nature of the subject. We all are a little off-centre; we all perceive reality in subtly difference ways; we tend to use language loosely; our behaviour is extensively driven by our feelings and so on. This is just the way we are – part of what it is to be human.
Personal development can be thought-of as the process of moving from that position (off-centre) toward the centre to a position where there is no bias in our views and our behaviour toward others. This is in essence what the, rather beautiful teaching of the Enneagram proposes. Hence there is a journey for us all to make; and it is a very personal journey; and we develop, as human beings, as we make that journey.
For help with your own personal journey, you can get an excellent rage of top-quality, free personal development books from White Dove Books.
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