All growth and personal development begins with self-awareness: the self being aware of itself, becoming aware of dissatisfaction with its self, and projecting, therefore, changes that will enable it to ‘improve’. In other words, to engage in a creative process with itself. There are three primary and creative tools of personal development that follow from this self-awareness.
Author Archives: mappingmotivation
Motivation and Psychopathology
For some people, whatever their personality traits or their motivational profile, there is a bigger agenda that must be followed. Perhaps a good word for this would be obsession – an obsession that destroys reason, logic and all internal coherence.
The Difference Between Quiet and Loud Motivation
We need motivation to get us out of our comfort zone – that area of un-achievement familiar to most people at some period of their life. In that sense, I think motivation is good. But when I talk about quiet motivation I am rebelling against that Animal Farm bleat of ‘comfort zone baaaad, risk-taking gooood’.
The Language of Motivation
In 2008, Shankar Vedantam wrote a fascinating article for the Washington Post, in which he made the profound observation that rewards and punishments have replaced people’s intrinsic motivations. Correspondingly, the effect has been counterproductive: namely, people become less motivated as a result of these rewards and punishments.
My Ten Year Anniversary of Blogging: What We Learn By Going Back to Basics
Whilst the modern world moves at the speed of light, abandoning trends and technology no sooner than they are created, reading back through this first blog, published in 2008 (what feels like a world away), has caused me to reflect on something very important. However expert you become, however dominant in your chosen field, and however much technology advances or changes the working environment, we can all benefit from being reminded of the basics.
Poetry and the Muses Part 3
It has long been observed that whilst the ego is useful in making daily and ordinary decisions in our life, it is less effective when it comes to more important issues; it is by nature competitive, and it tends to subordinate the greater good for more immediate gains and self-gratification. We know as well thatContinue reading “Poetry and the Muses Part 3”
Poetry and the Muses Part 2
The Muses we understand from Part 1 of this article are the daughters of the future and the past, and more specifically of memory, light, truth and beauty; they are essential for the ‘good life’, and we understand as well that because they are goddesses, they cannot be summoned by human will, but they canContinue reading “Poetry and the Muses Part 2”
Wolfe and Other Poems by Donald Mace Williams
Wolfe and Other Poems is an extraordinarily good collection of poems, clearly written by a veteran writer. The underlying credo of the collection is very aptly summed up in the opening poem called, appropriately, 'Credo': Step out under the stars on a dark night Or open Rilke, Frost, or Dickinson. Like that, all poems (mineContinue reading “Wolfe and Other Poems by Donald Mace Williams”
Poetry and the Muses Part 1
We live in a post-modernist world and its values are everywhere around us; and everywhere these values are almost largely unexamined, and because we have little to contrast our present state with we fail to see how lamentable and poor we are. There is a deep materialism running through society which deprives people of theContinue reading “Poetry and the Muses Part 1”
The Healing Moment: Towards Wholeness
Just over five years ago, aged 58, I suddenly, after a lifetime of being in pretty good health, mysteriously and suddenly collapsed; I was rushed to hospital where after a week's tests I discovered there was a small, dark 'shadow' in my small intestines. They didn't know what it was, but they did know itContinue reading “The Healing Moment: Towards Wholeness”
