Sporadically, I’ve encountered some negativity in the comments of the personal development blog-o-sphere. It’s as if self-help allegedly has a dark side to it - egotism, fluff, exploitation, superiority, deception and even lunacy. Another prevalent issue is when a genuinely useful piece of work has a miniscule orthographical or political incorrectness. The discussion gets dominated by minds wanting to prove and show their critical and assuming view towards the author’s supposedly intellectual impediment. In my view, this goes to show that there are plenty of healing to be done when it comes to mind-sets, and some clarification to be presented when it comes to the somewhat elusive term personal growth/development.

A negative comment, no matter what the target, goes to show the commentator’s level of negativity. A thought or comment about a presentation over a matter can still constructively contain points of improvement, but having a negative force behind its motive, instantly diminishes the impact and often leaves the comment unnoticed or disregarded as a whole. In fact, a commentator oneself of this calibre keeps perpetuating the level of consciousness that spawned the unproductive thought in the first place. The great thing about blogs is that an unproductive opinion of a blog entry or the blog itself, backfires on the commentator as it ironically or not, increases the traffic to the site.

There’s nothing wrong with these people as they are the result of their environment and upbringing. My major concern is that they will never experience what it’s like to live without shame, guilt, apathy, grief, fear, desire, anger or false pride (desire as in addiction or compulsive and impulsive desire), because they feel trapped, while powerless or unwilling to make a change to the better. It is their own limiting mind-sets they sow, that reap the negatively geared comments toward self-help. Naturally, this goes for any and every other source that has the power to influence the mind-set. Just think of any item conveyed through advertising.

I wrote in my previous article that no man can serve others better than they have the capability to serve themselves. There’s a virtue in selfishness, but with a certain prerequisite - that the aim is to improve the collective well-being to the similar degree as you’re able to help yourself. And let’s face it, just about all information that leads to the improvement of a human’s internal condition is the result of wisdom received from others. This is why reciprocity is of importance. Some people find difficulty in accepting the process of selling already existing, productive information and wisdom through “a new package”. If this were forbidden, then two consequences would follow.

Firstly, the original piece of wisdom would only be refined as far as the original innovator has the capability to, which means that further improvement would stagnate. Secondly, it would mean that sharing the information further would be considered wrong, because the personal revelations are morally supposed to stay within the individual or to that specific individual’s capacity to share it with others. Now we’re starting to see how ludicrous it is not to share knowledge and wisdom to others, no matter how closely it may seem linked to what others have said before. Revolting against the phenomenon has weaker effect than ignoring it.

To me, personal development also includes impersonal development. I like to internally call it collective development until a similar expression reaches mainstream recognition. Recognition, as in familiarity and understanding of its tenor. There’s always someone who has not stumbled upon a certain pearl of wisdom that 100 visitors previously think of as self-evident. And further immersion into the subject of personal, impersonal or collective development, whatever you want to call it, slowly turns that proportion into 100 visitors discovering something valuable that only one person is already living by.

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