Personal Growth

Below are the articles in the Personal Growth category. Each article title is followed by a short introduction of the content. You may click "Read excerpt" for a more comprehensive introduction or click the "Purchase" link to buy the article.

Accepting the “Gift” of Criticism
Most of us can accept compliments. Some of us can accept suggestions. But most of us draw the line at criticism. Yet, criticism can be one of the most constructive and profound tools to change ourselves and improve our relationships with others.
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The “Active” Leader: Harnessing Willpower to Move from Ideas to Action
We know what we should be doing, now how can we get it done?
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Are You a Good Listener?
Good communication is a two-way street: speaking and listening. Becoming a good listener is a skill we learn, and like other skills, it takes practice to get better. This quiz will help determine where a person’s strengths are and where he or she can improve as a listener.
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Are You Sabotaging Yourself?
Habitual lateness. Extreme disorganization. Not following up sales leads. This quiz helps to identify how we might be sabotaging our own efforts.
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Attraction
The law of attraction. It’s not just some woo-woo theory, it’s scientific: like matter attracts like. This article explores five key ingredients for attracting what one really wants.
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Avoidant Behaviors
Avoidant behaviors such as always being late and not returning phone calls are examples of the subtle and not-so-subtle means people adopt to side-step issues and situations. But those behaviors really serve a deeper purpose.
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The Beauty of Being Vulnerable
Often we believe that keeping a stiff upper lip will keep us strong, but more likely it separates us from others. Fortunately, there is another way.
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Befriending Anger
Anger is the unannounced visitor that keeps dropping by, again and again. Some people hide, hoping this troublesome guest will go away. Others let it take over, turning their homes into a nightly rage-fest. Thankfully, there is an alternative.
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Bounce Back: Developing Emotional Resilience
Resilience is key for successfully navigating the major upsets in our lives. Fortunately we all can enhance this universal capacity.
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Brilliant Ideas
Everyone has ideas, but how does one generate brilliant ideas?
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Building Endurance for Maximum Performance
On paper, Teri’s life is everything she’s ever wanted, but lately, she just doesn’t feel the enthusiasm for her work that she used to. She’s often tired and impatient and also feels distant from her husband and kids. What’s wrong?
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Creating Systems for Success
Most of us run our lives with a handful of systems, but don’t take advantage of how systematization could improve productivity, gain customers, and more.
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Doing the Right Thing: Issues in Integrity
Integrity is at the very base of self-esteem. When a person’s behavior contradicts his or her deeply held beliefs, it eats away at self-esteem.
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Don’t Miss a Step: Take Time to Celebrate!
The important fifth step in achieving a goal is too often left out.
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Do You Have the People-Pleasing Syndrome?
When does being nice become toxic to oneself? Take this quiz to find out.
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Enough Not Being Enough!
Not smart enough, not pretty enough, not strong enough, not talented enough, not loving enough, not disciplined enough, not brave enough…. Ugh! Enough already.
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Ethics Are Good for Business
With Enron and other corporate scandals garnering headlines, “ethics” and “integrity” are often discussed. But what, exactly, do they mean? And how can they be profitable?
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Everyday Leadership: It’s An Inside Job
What are the inner qualities that remain constant among all types of effective leaders? Leadership is a way of life, an expression of our fullest and best nature and it starts on the inside.
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Facing the Green-Eyed Monster: Learning from Envy
Many people would rather deny than face their envy of others, but like all shadow creatures, the monster ultimately reveals what is missing from one’s own life.
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Finding the Gifts of the Shadow
No one likes to admit to a dark side, but that shadow self is a treasure box just waiting to be owned.
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From Hopelessness to Happiness—a Learnable Life Skill
Some people are optimists and others are pessimists. However, optimism isn’t an accident—it’s a skill that can be learned, one that can help us feel better, resist depression and greatly improve our lives.
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Giving an A: Possibility Not Measurement
Give them an A and encourage the best in one’s employees, co-workers, and family.
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Healing With Poetry
For years the prospect of poetry filled millions with dread. Either it meant crushingly long epics that put students to sleep, or it was so filled with hidden meaning that only professors and graduate students could understand it. The times—and poetry—have changed.
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High-Gear Motivation: How to Hit Your Peak Day After Day
Hitting our peak every day is a challenge, but by heeding these suggestions, we can stay on a strong course.
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Quiz: How Healthy Is Your Relationship with Money?
Are unspoken attitudes and ideas about money getting in the way of well-being and security? This quiz can help one see if that’s so.
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How Much Joy Can You Stand?
Everyone has a dream. It may whisper to us in a still, small voice or it may have the volume and intensity of Martin Luthur King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. This quiz will help determine if a person is living his or her dream—and how to begin.
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How to Succeed with Failure When All Else Fails
Had it not been for failure, humankind might never have known the magnificent Audubon bird paintings that gave rise to the Audubon Society or the inspiring music of Handel’s Messiah. .
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How Well Are You Listening to Your Children (or Others)?
Advice, lecturing, even praise don’t take the place of real listening. Here, through a quiz format, are thirteen ways to begin.
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How Well Constructed Are Your Boundaries?
The poet said, “Good fences make good neighbors.” He was right. Good boundaries make life easier, reduce conflict and improve relationships. This quiz will help a person determine where his or her boundaries are healthy and where they might need shoring up.
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How Well Do You Handle Failure?
Failure may be inevitable. But how a person handles failure can mean the difference between accepting shame or gaining wisdom from lessons learned.
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How Well Do You Handle Fear?
At its best, fear is an instinctive ability that aids human survival. At its worst, it’s that nagging internal voice that heralds doom and disaster for no good reason.
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How Well Do You Practice Empathy?
Empathy—that quality of recognizing and understanding another person’s desires, beliefs and emotions—is one of the most important skills we can ever acquire. It fosters meaningful relationships, encourages honest communication and can help avert violence.
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The Importance of Follow-Through
How important is follow-through? Learn the components of follow-through and suggestions for increasing one’s success.
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Increasing Personal Productivity
In-depth exploration of strategies for getting more done in less time—and enjoying the process.
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The Inner Virtue of Selfishness
Modern culture prizes selflessness and abhors selfishness, in effect setting the two against each other. But do we really aspire to be without concern for ourselves?
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A Journal Can Be Your Best Friend and More
As long as there has been something to write on, humans have been keeping journals. You could even say that the earliest cave drawings were journals. What are the benefits of keeping a journal? And how does one begin?
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Keeping Your Cool When Negotiations Get Hot
Whether negotiating a raise, contract, car purchase or business deal, bargaining ability is a key skill worth learning and honing.
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Learning to Trust After Betrayal
How can a person learn to trust again after a betrayal? This roadmap can help.
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Letting Go: Great Idea. How Do I Do It?
A woman’s husband had an affair 15 years ago and even though they’ve been divorced for seven, her stomach still knots up when she thinks about it. She knows she should let it go, but she just can’t. How might she begin?
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Life Lessons from the Garden
Reviled by many as a bothersome weed, the dandelion nevertheless continues to display its pert, yellow self in lawns everywhere, thriving in the face of adversity. What are the lessons there?
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Life's Choices Aren't All Easy, But They Are All Yours
Life is about making choices, and making choices—even wrong ones—is key to self-esteem.
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To Make Time, Take Time
If time were an animal, it would be on the endangered species list. At least that’s how it seems: Too much to do, too many places to be, too little time to do it all. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
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Make Your Worrying Work for You: It Ain’t What You Do, It’s the Way That You Do It
Worrying may have a bad rep, but worrying, if it’s done right can actually be helpful.
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Making “Impossible” Thinking Possible
Thinking impossible thoughts is not just the realm of fairy godmothers or eccentric inventors. Break out of mindsets and make the impossible possible.
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Money Talks, But What’s It Really Saying?
Money—the lack of it, the fear of losing it, and the dread of not having enough—tops the list of concerns of the majority of people these days. Everybody, it seems, has money issues.
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New Year’s Resolutions: How to Make Them So You Can Keep Them
This will be the fourth year in a row Betty has made a New Year’s Resolution to exercise more. She’s also vowed to lose weight (an annual resolution since 1996), and to finally start that novel (this one goes all the way back to the 80s.) What goes wrong?
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“Normal” Is a Very Big Playing Field
Susan talks to her grandmother’s ghost. Jamie has 60 potted plants around her house—all in purple pots. Are they normal?
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Oh, the Tales We Tell: Getting Beyond Our Stories at Work
Outlines a path of investigation into the horror stories people tell themselves. It shows how to get beneath those stories to the beliefs and assumptions that really live there, and then offers a strategy for using that self-awareness to free oneself.
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Organize Yourself for Success
Demonstrates the connection between organization and success and also offers a detailed strategy for implementing—and maintaining—an effective organizational system, including the laser-focused approach that successful executives employ to dispense with clutter.
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Overcoming the Obstacles to Midlife Career Change
Making a career change in midlife can bring new energy and joy, so what’s stopping us?
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Perfectionist Quiz
There's a difference between excellence and perfection. Striving to be really good is excellence; trying to be flawless is perfectionism. This quiz will help a person determine if he or she is striving for the unattainable.
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Playing the Inner Game to Win
Explores the common internal roadblocks that hold people back. Suggests ways to confront those obstacles, and makes suggestions for achieving seemingly impossible goals.
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Play to Your Strengths
In order to succeed we have to conquer our weaknesses, right? Wrong. Our strengths will set us free.
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Practice Gratitude and Create Well-Being
Long considered a virtue, gratitude is now also a tool for a happier life.
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Procrastination—Everyone Talks About It, but Nobody Does Anything
Imagine the space this article fills is blank. Imagine the time and energy it might take someone who procrastinates to: 1) think about doing the article 2) put it on a list of “to dos” 3) talk about doing it 4) promise himself he will start it tomorrow 5) promise himself he will definitely start it tomorrow….
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Putting Grace Into Action
A mother receives a gift of much-needed food and immediately shares it with another hungry family. Is she a saint whose act normal people couldn’t hope to match? Nope, she’s just an ordinary person doing an act of extraordinary importance.
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Recognizing Victimhood
Samantha doesn’t realize it, but there’s a victim lurking inside her.
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R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Find Out What It Means to You
Respect isn’t getting much respect these days. A person may demand respect from his or her family, social circle, and co-workers, then “dis” others with abandon. Why does that matter?
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The Power of Intention
Victoria wants to stay sober. She ’s quit before, only to relapse. But this time, she has two things in her favor, a young child counting on her to “get better,” and rather than just wistfully wishing for things to be different, she’s declared an intention.
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Resentments and What to Do with Them
Some people spend hours dwelling on the wrongs done to them, the injustices, the slights, the snubs, insults, indifferences, slurs, and just plain bad treatment. But holding onto resentment eats away at self-esteem and peace of mind. What can a person do to free him- or herself?
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Scare Yourself Into the Life You Want
Do the thing you fear—and get the life you’ve always wanted.
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Self-Acceptance
Mary thinks she’d be happy if she could just change her weight, her looks and her job. Sean believes that he’s an okay person except for his anxiety, impatience and quick temper. But would “self-improvement” really make them happier?
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Self-Acceptance is an Action
Self-acceptance means being for oneself, not against. It’s about accepting shortcomings as well as strengths. And it’s vital for growth and change.
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Self-Responsibility Starts With An I
A lack of self-responsibility leaves a person dependent, impotent and victimized. He or she may blame others for problems while waiting for someone to come along to make things right. But no one is coming, and that is good news.
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Taking Control: It’s a One-Person Job
Wanda wants to be promoted to senior management but has been told she doesn’t have what it takes to make the leap. Her thought: “I can’t control what others think of me.” So what can she control?
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Taking Stock
As we step through the doorway from one year to the next, it’s natural to look back as well as ahead. But what if instead, a person used the first part of the year to take stock of his or her life?
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Top 10 Fears That Keep Us From What We Want
Fear is an important survival technique that kept humans from getting eaten by bigger animals and that prevents people from jumping off cliffs. But what about those fears that purport to keep people safe, but actually keep them stuck?
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Ten Things to Be Grateful For
A person may feel grateful for her health, safety, and loved ones. But what about the less obvious things that are all around?
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Ten Ways to Cope with Change
They say nothing is certain but change. Whether that thought fills a person with excitement or dread, these suggestions offer opportunities to thrive.
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Test Your Temper
How does one determine if anger is a problem? And if it is, what can one do about it? The quiz will help.
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Time: It’s Not How Much You Have, It’s How You Chunk It!
You can’t add more hours to the day, but you can make better use of the hours you do have.
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Time for a Productivity Tune-Up!
Scheduled maintenance. It’s not just for cars.
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Top 10 "Top 10" Lists
Top 10 lists are everywhere, fulfilling the desire for bite-sized, digestible morsels of learning or humor. Here, then, is an opportunity to create ten of one’s own.
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Top 10 Signs of Strength
Master these ten signs of strength and improve your relationships with others—and yourself.
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Top 10 Things We Can Control
A wise person once said, “Focus on the ninety percent of life that is under our control and don’t fret about the rest.”
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Top 10 Tips for Great Idea Generation
Generating great ideas can be a challenge. Here are ten ways to get the juices flowing.
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Top 10 Tips for Moving Through Depression
Connection, physicality, even singing; here are ten ways to lighten the dark.
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Top 10 Ways to Be Accountable
Keeping commitments that we make only to ourselves can be challenging. Here are ten ways to begin.
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Top 10 Ways to Handle Adversity
People can’t prevent hard times from happening, but they can control their response. Here are ten suggestions for coping well with difficult circumstances.
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Top 10 Ways to Raise Your Self-Esteem
Self-esteem is an inside job anyone can do. Here are ten ways to begin.
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What’s (Self) Love Got to Do With It?
The legend of Narcissus has it wrong. It’s the lack of self-love that brings harm.
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What’s That You Said? The Fears That Prevent Us from Speaking Up
Do you value being seen and heard? Do you want to have truly successful relationships? Do you want to make an impact on others? Then speak up! Of course, that’s easier said than done.
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Why Therapy? Exploring the Strengths of Seeking Help
Suffering in silence, out of society’s gaze, no longer is the rule. Now, going to a therapist is seen as a positive step in people’s lives.
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Working on Your Relationship—Alone
As the saying goes, it takes two to tango. It takes two to make a relationship and, it follows, two to work on that relationship. But what if one person doesn’t want to do the work—especially if that work involves going to couples counseling?
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