Refresh Your Habits* Garden Report* The Facilitation of Personal Growth*

Picked yesterday from the raised bed on the patio. There are 3-4 other handfuls of lettuce.

 Refresh Your Habits*

from James Clear: 

Life is always progressing to the next stage. As you enter a new season, habits that previously served you well may need to be refreshed or adjusted. Which one of your current habits have you outgrown and is in need of a change?

Garden Report*

blah blah

The Facilitation of Personal Growth*

From Carl Rogers book On Becoming a Person, an essay titled "The facilitation of personal growth."

I can state the overall hypotheses in one sentence, as follows. If I can provide a certain type of relationship, the other person will discover within himself the capacity to use that relationship for growth, and change and personal development will occur. (33)

I have found that the more that I can be genuine in the relationship, the more helpful it will be. This means that I need to be aware of my own feelings, in so far as possible, rather than presenting an outward facade of one attitude, while actually holding another attitude at a deeper or unconscious level.  .  Being genuine also involves the willingness to be and to express, in my words and my behavior, the various feelings and attitudes which exist in me....  I have found this to be true even when the attitudes I feel are not attitudes with which I am pleased, or attitudes  which seem conducive to a good relationship. It seems extremely importan to be real. (33)

The second phrase in my overall hypothesis was that the individual will discover within himself the capacity to use this relationship for growth. [calls i "toward maturity"]. ... It is evident in the capacity of the individual to undertsand those aspects of his life and of himself which are causing him pain and dissatisfactin, an understanding which probes beneath his conscious knowledge of himself into those experiences which he has hidden from himself because of their threatening nature.  It shows itself in the tendencey to reorganize his personality and his relationship to life in ways which are regarded as more mature.  Whether one calls it a growth tendency, a drive toward self-actualization, or a forward-moving directional tendencey, it is the mainspring of life, and is, in the last analysis, the tendency upon which all psycho-therapy depends.  It is the urge which is evidence in all organic and hyman life -- to expand, extend, become autonomous, develop, mature -- to tendency to express and activate al the capacities of the organiism, to the extent that such activiation enhances the organism or the self.  (35)

We know now that individuals who live in such a srelationship even for a relatively limited number of hours show profound and significant change in personality, attitudes, and behavior, changes that do not occur in matched control groups.. In such a relationship the individual becomes more integrated, more effective. He shows fewer of the characteristics which are usually termed neurotic or psychotic, and more of the characteristics of the healthy, well-functioning person.  He changes his perception of himself, becomign more realistic in his views of self. He becomes more like the person he wishes to be. He values himself more highly. He is more self-confident and self-directing. He has a better understanding of himself, becomes more open to his experience, denies or represses less of his experience.  He becomes more accepting in his attitudes toward others, seeing others more similar to himself. (36)

In his behavior he shows similar changes. He is less frustrated by stress, and reovers from stress more quickly. He becomes more mature in his everyday behavior as this is observed by friends. He is less defensive, more adaptive, more able to meet situations creatively. (36)

... it seems reasonable to hypothesize that if the parent creates with his child a psychological climate such as we have described, then the child will become more self-direcitng, socialized, and mature. To the extent that the teacher creates such a relationship with his class, the student will become a self-initiated learner, more original, more self-disciplined, less anxious and other-directed.... (37) 

If I can create a relationship characterized on my part: 

by a genuineness and transparency, in which I am my real feelings; 

by a warm acceptance of and prizing of the other person as a separate individual;

by a sensitive ability to see his world in himself as he sees them; 

Then the other individual in the relationship: 

will experience and understand aspects of himself which previously he has repressed; 

will find himself becoming better integrated, more able to function effectively;

will become more similar to the person he would like to be;

will be more self-directing and self-confident;

will become more of a person, more unique and more self-expressive; 

will be more understanding, more acceptant of others; 

will be able to cope with the problems of life more adequately and more comfortably. (38)