“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson 

This is just a list of a few odd things I have learned from my own personal growth journey. No professional advice intended, because none will likely be taken. If so though, is at your own risk.

1. Most of the standards for personal growth are set by gurus as their way of solving life’s problems and being successful; but their way might not be one that fits your path. This doesn’t mean you can’t borrow other people’s ideas and put your own spin on them. That is completely permissible.

2. Becoming who you pretend to be—your best self—may be more difficult than just deciding to do it; it might take several years undoing bad habits that perpetuated the pretending.

3. You should listen to your bad self carefully, to learn valuable clues on becoming a better person.

4. If quality judgments are artificial and irrelevant, then what does it mean to grow and improve into something “better?”  Better than what? But the insatiable quest continues.

5. We often flip-flop priorities in the wrong order. We always want to hurry up and fix things we think are broken, before fitting in first and gradually improving things that actually need improvement, from the inside out instead of vice versa.

6. The concept of time that you have, determines how much of it you have and how much you can accomplish with it; if every now moment is forever, you have much more than if there is a past, present and future, that travels at the speed of light.

7. Marriage counseling should be renamed to divorce counseling. Usually, by the time you go to a marriage counselor you already know the marriage is unsavable or at least one person does.

8. It is futile to try and change another person, when managing yourself is a lifelong challenge, at which many don’t do too well.

9. Personal growth and development may be more of a natural process than we are aware of because of the useless interventions we are most convinced are useful.

10. Intentions are over-rated and greatly over-assumed and free will is not so free as we want to image. When all is said or done, it is the impact of what you say or do that is most consequential.

11. Words from our mouths shape realities more than the efforts from our hands. For instance, how you define things like love, success and happiness determine how much or how little of them you actually have.

12.The few people in life who find their true love soulmate early on are very lucky. Most of us have to suffer through two other types of uncomfortable relationships—a short term relationship with a person who makes us too painfully aware of our shortcomings and then longer-term relationships with a person who we have to learn uncomfortably tough compromises the hard way. For a person who doesn’t go through any of this, there may be a sad emptiness.

13. It takes a while to see the obscure, but even longer the obvious. These are the things too close to us, like all the important things we fail to notice all along, like the connections between what we think, do expect and want and what we get from doing those things.

14. We have created a world of opposites with our words and judgments, but somehow, we have to figure out how use different words and judgments to undo all the this vs. that categories that are delaying our progress, to really know what is good and helpful vs. bad and unhelpful, to approach and avoid accordingly.

15. It doesn’t seem that we ever really learn what we need to learn until we are secure and open enough to begin to question the validity and utility of what we think we already know for sure. That usually creates some needed brain and thinking space.

16. Genuine moral development only begins when we realize we are affording more airtime for our psychological consciences to out speak our moral consciences. Inside whispers often get drowned by outside roars, but oddly have much more to say that needs to be heard.

17. The main obstacles to person growth are conflicts, or rather not having the courage to confront and resolve them assertively, which is always very painful but where most of the growth occurs.

18. Personal growth goal setting often limits the altitude which your attitude and aptitude can climb.

19. It is an open question to say which is better to focus on—strengthening your weaknesses or strengthening your strengths.  Focusing on both may take more time and effort, but get better results or not. That is why it is an open question.

20.  At the end of the day, I think the only choice is what side to be on. That was the best church sermon I have ever heard, and it was very short. 

21. You usually do get what you want, just not exactly when and how you want it. I remember wanting a toy riffle when I was six. Many ears later I found my self with more guns than I could ever want, from small caliber handguns to large caliber M-60 machine guns, in Vietnam.

“Absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own.”  ~Bruce Lee.