First Lesson On Personal Growth

First Lesson On Personal Growth

Personal Growth is such a complex subject that the most we can hope for in this session is to lead you to believe that personal growth is possible, and to introduce you to some guide-lines that will help you grow. 

Growth in this presentation means growth in the area of human relations.  Almost any venture that we undertake involves human relations.  Marriage, parenting, business ventures, career growth, social contacts – all require that we have the ability to influence other people, without unnecessarily alienating them.

Quite often, we need to enlist their support in a venture.  How do we do that?  How do we become persuasive people?  The answer lies in what we start from – ourselves.  How do we feel about ourselves?  Do we feel worthy of being the leader in this venture? 

You will never grow if you do not face the truth about yourself.  As long as denial is your response – as long as you believe, 'I am OK the way I am.' you will stay that way.

If we do not feel good about ourselves, about who we are, about our personal stature, our primary goal becomes one of building self-esteem.

You probably think that such a goal is not realistic – that an in-depth analysis would be required, because this is a deep psychological problem.

I have been trying to discover ways to personal growth since I was a young man, but nothing worked for me until I joined OA.  OA convinced me that I was a compulsive eater, drinker, smoker, advice giver, controller.  Prior to OA, compulsions ruled my life – yet denial was my response to any suggestion that I had faults that needed attention.

OA uses the same twelve-step program that AA uses.  Both organizations are concerned with the problem of compulsions.

After we overcome denial, and admit that we have at least one limitation, it becomes easier for us to begin our Step Four inventory.  We begin to look inside, being scrupulously honest with ourselves, for faults we may have.  The Step says 'moral' faults, but OA has expanded the inventory to include emotional and spiritual faults.

Once we learn what we do, and how we feel, we usually want to learn why we do what we do, and why we feel the way we feel or don't feel.

In my opinion, Karen Horney is the only psychiatrist who understands the whys of human behavior.  I have studied Karen Horney extensively, and her grasp of human behavior has contributed greatly to mine.

You didn't consciously pick up your undesirable traits, and you won't consciously lose them, but you will change.  The mind is an incredible manager.  We haven't begun to understand it, but we know enough to use it to help us grow in self-esteem and hence in our relations with others.

One of the ancient Greeks, possibly Plato, said 'Know thyself'.  I am not sure he said it in Elizabethan English, but that is what I heard.  And that is one goal we have as we begin our self-scrutiny.

Introspection does not occupy our every waking moment.  Life goes on as usual, what we do is to take as much time as we can utilize efficiently and effectively to pry into our psyches as deep as we can, and we do it on a daily basis.  In OA, we write for about an hour a day.

I have kept a journal for most of my adult life.  In it, I recorded the injustices I had collected (I had a pretty impressive list).  And I recorded the faults I discovered in other people.  Neither of these pursuits were the least bit helpful for my personal growth.  My focus wasn't in the right direction.  I wasn't looking inside for my own shortcomings.

My psyche didn't want me to find those faults.  It had convinced me that I didn't have any faults – that I was OK – it was the rest of the world that was out of step.

When we keep prying, and keep the focus where it belongs – personal growth will follow.

What traits then should we be looking for?  Almost everyone I know is more or less neurotic; they do not always act for their own best interests.  So I would look for neurotic traits, and the traits we find will depend on the type of neurotic we are.

The three principal types of neurotic are:  The Dominator, The Dominated, and The Loner.

We could write a book about each of these types, but I think for now it is sufficient to ask ourselves, 'What type am I?'

It doesn't hurt to take the other person's inventory once in a while, as long as it is solely for our edification, and not so that we can be critical or judgmental.  We need to know what character traits are found in each of these types.

All of us have an instinct to dominate the other person – we are born with it.  What we look for in ourselves (or in anyone) is the situation where the instinct ‘I would like to’ becomes a compulsion ‘I have to’.  Are we a Domina­tor?

All of us have a counter instinct to back down when we tangle with a person who is bigger and stronger than we are.  We do this because the instinct to survive takes precedence over the instinct to dominate.  Are we the Dominat­ed?

The third type, The Loner, has decided, sub-consciously, that he doesn't want to participate in the dominance struggle.  He would rather just drop out.

There are of course, normal, healthy people out there who enjoy the benefits of social contacts without any feeling of who dominates who.  Personal growth will be furthered if we will look for those normal healthy people and learn what they are doing, that we are not doing.

Not every social situation is a party.  When two people interact in any way, we have a social situation.  And quite often each of these people have different goals, goals that are mutually exclusive.  Now what do we do?  After both have stated their position, they begin to negotiate.  Both can't have it his way so each makes a counter proposition; each begins to maneuver for the best position he can get.  Each brings all the skills he has into the negotiations.

There are situations where both of the negotiators lie and both know the other is lying.  I don't know how to negotiate this way, and I don't want to know.  I believe in being honest.  Each person will have to decide what rules he will abide by and learn how to work within those rules.

What are the alternatives to negotiating?  We can accept the other person’s terms without even trying to explain our position.  We can let ourselves be dominated by the other person.  When we do this we are often filled with self-pity (Ain't it awful the way I get treated?), we can go off somewhere and cry or pout.

Or, if we are a Dominator, we can bull-doze the other person's points aside and refuse to listen to his position.  If we do this, we may win the battle but lose the war.  The Dominator is not comfortable with himself, he doesn't really want to be that way, that is just a character trait that he acquired early on and never questioned it. 

Or, we can refuse to enter into the negotiating process at all.  In effect, we withdraw from the human race.  This isn't healthy either.  We need a social life in order to be a whole person.

What we must learn to do is to believe in ourselves.  We must begin to act like and feel like we are as good as the next person – perhaps not as gifted – perhaps not as good-looking – perhaps not as well-off financially – but still entitled, as a fellow human being, to be treated with consideration and respect.

Nine times out of ten, we will be so treated, but when we encounter that tenth person, negotiation as such does not work.  Even in this case, all is not lost; we can still tell him clearly and courteously what we believe – what we think he should know.  He may not care what we think or what we feel, but at least we have stated our position.  And that position may very well be, 'If you don't care how I feel about this matter, then our association must end soon.'

We do not have to, and we should not associate with people who want to use or abuse us.  We deserve to be treated with respect.

To summarize:  Personal growth requires that we believe in ourselves.  Self-confidence requires that we seek out all those little personality quirks that hold us back.  We seek to understand why we do what do.

Are you a Dominator, a Dominated person, or a Loner?  Try to move from where you are to where the normal healthy person is.

At the same time that we are trying to under­stand our­selves, we are also trying to be more assertive in our negotiat­ions – not more aggressive – but more conscious that this is where the growth comes in.  Treat the other person with courtesy, but make sure that he understands what you want.

If the other person does not want to treat you with respect, sever your relationship ASAP.

Comment – Having been a teacher, and having learned that the best way to learn is to explain it to someone else, I feel that this treatise has been useful for me, and I believe it might be useful for you.  I never used this lesson – it was a part of a hippie dream I had – but I still benefited from it.

One almost has to have a fairly good understanding of the subject in order to explain it.  But, lets not fool ourselves!   Lets make sure that we really and truly do understand what we are saying.