Personal Growth From the Bottom Up – BroderickDurisseau.com
A Blog Dedicated to Personal Growth, Success and Goal Achievement

This was a powerful exercise I learned from Rhonda Byrne in The Secret. While utilizing the Law of Attraction, it’s important that you put yourself in a positive state of being so that you attract what you want. I mentioned this excercise here, but I thought it needed it’s own post.

Make a list of 10 things that make you feel good. Also, be careful not to include things that make you feel good in the moment, but make you feel guilty afterward. For example, eating your favorite food might instantly make you feel good but if it’s unhealthy you might feel guilty after eating it, so instead of being in a positive state, you’re in a state of guilt and that’s not what we want.

Here are 10 things that make me feel good. I have more listed in my journal, but I picked these out because they are timeless and would always put me in a positive state, so here they are:

I thought it was weird how many of the things on my list don’t involve any intense physical labor. Much of it is visualizing, feeling, and listening, which all can be done by just sitting still.

What’s great about having this list is that you only have to make it once. Then you can keep adding to it and tailoring it as you go on your journey of personal growth, and it’s there to go to whenever you feel down. It also forces you to be aware of what you don’t like doing and helps you center your life around what genuinely makes you feel good. The more you actually do what’s on your list, the more momentum you build in the creation of the life you want.

The Bible has some interesting parables relating to personal growth and development.

The Sower and the Seed

And he spake to them many things in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow; and when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up:

Some fell upon the stony places, where they had not much earth and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth:

And when then sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away.

And some fell amoung the thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them

But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold

Who hath ears to hear, let him hear

- Matthew 13:3-9 (KJV)

Here we have a farmer who sows seeds to reap a harvest. Only a portion of the seeds actually bears fruit though.

Sometimes we can do everything right, but only a portion of our work will yield results.

So as far as growth, basically what you get out is proportional to what you put in – not equal to. It still means that the more you sow, the more fruit you will bear. Pretty simple right?

You also have an opportunity to optimize results. You can cultivate the soil so more seeds will produce fruit. You can plant more seeds on the better soil. You can sow the seeds in a way that sun doesn’t scorch them. You may reach a point where you do very little or what seems like no sowing and reap things beyond what you could have imagined. This is where you’d be utilizing the Law of Least Effort.

I had a limited view on sowing and reaping. I would think only of business, money and hard work, but it applies in a much broader sense. What you get out of relationships is proportional to what you have put in. What you get out of your health is proportional to what you have put in. If you want to develop a talent or skill, what you get out of that is proportional to what you have put in. What you reap in anything is proportional to the sowing you’ve done.

Sowing isn’t just physical labor. Sowing is time. Sowing is thought. Sowing is effort. Sowing is action.

Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.

- Galatians 6:7-8

This speaks to the kind of sowing you do. If you sow seeds of hate and deception, don’t be surprised when you get that back. Likewise, if you sow seeds of love and kindness, you should expect that in return. Understand that just as the sower in the parable, some seeds of love and kindness will be unappreciated, forgotten, and have nothing come from them. As Mother Teresa would say, “Do good anyway”.

And let us not be weary in well doing; for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not

- Galatians 6:9

Be persistent in your sowing. It takes faith to be able to conceive that you’ll reap a harvest from tiny seeds. Trust that if you keep sowing, your season will come.

When you have let go of the need to defend your point of view to others, you are in a state of defenselessness. In Deepak Chopra’s The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, defenselessness is the third component of the Law of Least Effort which states that “it is human nature to make our dreams manifest into physical form, easily and effortlessly”.

In the world we live in, so much time is spent trying to defend our point of view. Letting go of that need was pretty hard for me to do at first. I was an arguer. I just had to get the “one up” or last word in an argument, and when I didn’t it caused an incredible amount of anger or it made me want to keep arguing until I did get that last word in. After reading some spiritual growth books I became aware that those heated arguments were purely ego driven and that I didn’t have to argue if I didn’t want to. It takes at least two to argue. After that realization, things began to change. While in the midst of arguments I would catch myself and immediately begin to calm down. Now I’m at a point where those intense arguments don’t come up at all. Though there are still disagreements and there will always be disagreements, heated ego-driven arguments don’t happen because I don’t allow them to. It feels so good to know I don’t have to deal with that anymore. Since letting go of that need, I’ve saved so much stress and anger and used that energy in much more productive ways. Also when you don’t have these ego-driven arguments, it allows you to get to the root of a problem much faster because you’re not spending so much time and energy creating resistance.

Moving Past Defense

Even though you might not have the need to argue or defend your point of view, sometimes you want others to take another point of view purely out of compassion. You might want to help them reach their desired results or adopt a viewpoint that is more empowering. For example, if a person has a scarcity mindset you might want to show them that having an abundance mindset could be much more beneficial for them. If your actions are truly driven by compassion and you want to change another persons viewpoint, is arguing really the most effective way to do that? Is cramming your viewpoint down their throat going to help anything? Arguing creates resistance and leaves both parties angry. If you really want to influence, then there are several ways to do that (I’ve been experimenting with some which I’ll write about in later posts) but you would have to focus on what you want – influence. Not ego gratification through winning an argument.

It could work the other way around as well. If you’re so attached to your particular point of view, you leave no alternative and cut yourself off from the opportunity of experiencing different viewpoints that could be possibly be more empowering to you.

Do you need to defend your point of view? Do you have intense arguments? Do they add stress to your life? Understand that you don’t have these heated arguments or the stress and anger they bring with them. Many times they begin unconsciously, but with enough effort they can consciously not begin.

You know, some people say life is short and that you could get hit by a bus at any moment and that you have to live each day like it’s your last. Bullshit. Life is long. You’re probably not gonna get hit by a bus. And you’re gonna have to live with the choices you make for the next fifty years.
— Chris Rock

This quote comes out of the movie I Think I Love My Wife. When I heard it, it forced me to think about how I would define life. Is life short? Is it long?

The answer could depend on your perspective. If you feel life is coming to an end and you’re looking backwards, you might feel life is short. If you’re young and you keep hearing “you have your whole life ahead of you” then you might view life as being long. Would we want to find the exact answer? Would we want to know exactly how short or long life was? If I knew the exact amount of time I had on this earth, it would be like something hovering over me, and I wouldn’t want that. As far as that subject is concerned, I’ll stay blissfully ignorant.

Though we never truely know how long we have, we have some control right? We can drive safely or look both ways before we cross the street or live a healthy lifestyle or not kill ourselves.

Life is painful one minute then full of happiness and joy the next.

Life is infinite, yet it’s finite. The amount of people you can affect in your lifetime is limitless (infinite). However, when a person dies, we say that person lived X amount of years (finite).

Life is this. Life is that. If there was a calculator that let me type in “Life =” the answer would be “undefined”. There are so many possibilities that it’s impossible to use a single adjective to completely describe something so vast. We can put anything in there and it will be true. Try it. Life is ________. That means we decide what life is, and life can be anything we want it to be. We fill in the blank.