Guest Post At Mindful Construct: “3 Things The Personal Development Critics Got Wrong”
I've published a guest post at Melissa Karnaze's blog Mindful Construct called "3 Things The Personal Development Critics Got Wrong." It mainly deals with critics' arguments against personal development's ethic of taking responsibility for your circumstances, including the claims that this ethic encourages selfishness and self-blame.
I think this article will be a useful summary for people who have recently discovered my work at this blog. I think you'll also appreciate Melissa's articles, which take an approach to personal development that's rooted in cognitive science and psychology. Enjoy!
What Is Personal Development?, Part 3: Progressive and Lasting Change
Last time, we talked about the first part of my working definition of personal development -- namely, that, to amount to personal growth, an idea or technique must be consciously intended to work with our "inner experience," meaning our thoughts, emotions and sensations.
I'll now talk about the second criterion an approach must meet, under my definition, to be personal development: it must be intended to produce progressive and lasting change. (Yes, I added the "progressive" part upon further reflection after my last post. 
)
By "progressive" change, I mean that, each time the user does the activity, they make progress -- however gradual -- toward their ultimate goal, whether that goal is happiness, a better job, a Buddhist-style attitude of non-attachment to their experience, or something else.
By "lasting" change, I mean the benefits of the activity must persist even when the user isn't doing the activity. In other words, the user must take those benefits with them into the "real world."
Why Therapy Isn't Like Candy
If I see a psychotherapist, for instance, I will probably do so expecting progressive and lasting benefits to my mental and emotional health. I'll desire progressive change in the sense that, each week that I visit my therapist, I want to feel more at peace with myself than I did during the last.
What's more, I'll probably want those benefits to last in between therapy sessions. I won't want the self-acceptance I feel to suddenly disappear the moment I walk out of the therapist's office. In all likelihood, I'll also want that peace to persist even when I'm no longer in therapy -- I won't want it to fade away after the therapeutic relationship ends. Thus, generally speaking, psychotherapy is a personal growth activity under my definition.
By contrast, suppose I eat a piece of candy because I want to create a particular inner experience -- in this case, a taste sensation. I probably won't do this expecting lasting changes in my experience. In all likelihood, I'll get a brief moment of pleasure, and after a little while the feeling will pass.
A few minutes later, I'll be "back to square one," emotionally speaking -- as far as my inner experience is concerned, it'll be as if I never ate the candy at all. Thus, eating candy will not produce progressive change in my experience either. (Duff raised the similar example of taking drugs in response to an earlier post in this series.)
It's About Expectations, Not Results
Finally, note that I said the activity must be intended to produce progressive and lasting change. The activity need not actually create that type of change to amount to self-development under my definition.
For example, if a person goes to an energy healer expecting to grow more relaxed and focused over time, but in fact each session only creates a fleeting "high" like the candy I mentioned earlier, the energy healing would nonetheless be "personal growth" as I use the term.
I offer this caveat to avoid defining personal growth to include only techniques and perspectives that "work," because that would exclude the possibility of meaningful debate about the merits of specific approaches.
As a result, even if you believe that no form of personal development is effective and it's all a fraud, you can still accept my definition. Like I said in response to previous comments, my definition is purely descriptive -- it's simply meant to capture the conventional view of what self-development is, and not to judge whether certain techniques are helpful or moral.
What Is Personal Development?, Part 2: Growth Vs. Advice
In my last post, I offered a working definition of personal development that goes like this: "Personal development" perspectives and techniques are (1) consciously intended to work with our "inner experience," meaning our thoughts, emotions and sensations, and (2) meant to produce a lasting result.
As Duff pointed out in response to my last post, I've yet to discuss how one particular area of self-development fits into this framework. I'm talking about approaches that try to harness our thoughts, emotions and sensations to create a specific result in the outside world.
Popular examples include visualizing something you want in order to bring it into your life -- whether it's business success, an intimate relationship, or something else; and energy healing intended to improve the client's health.
Such a technique is a form of personal growth, under my definition, if it seeks to achieve the outer result by transforming the user's inner experience, or the way the user relates to that experience.
To illustrate, as I said earlier, a book that teaches us ways to become more loving toward ourselves, on the theory that this will help us attract a partner, would amount to personal growth because it seeks to create an outer result by working with our thoughts and emotions.
While it uses the transformation of our inner experience as a tool to change our outer circumstances, this book nonetheless qualifies as personal growth because it involves consciously focusing on our inner experience.
Tire-Changing Isn't Self-Development
On the other hand, a book that teaches us how to dress to attract a mate is not a form of personal development under my definition, because it doesn't focus on transforming or relating to our inner experience.
For this book's purposes, the way we feel about ourselves is irrelevant. Its goal is to get others -- namely, potential partners -- to approve of our appearance. I may follow all of the book's advice and still feel miserable about myself, but the book has nonetheless fulfilled its purpose if potential mates like my style.
This caveat is important because it keeps the definition of personal growth from encompassing every possible type of advice, and every product and seminar out there that seeks to teach us how to do something.
I imagine most of us wouldn't think of books on changing a tire, investing in municipal bonds, or mastering Portuguese cooking as being about personal growth, and this observation explains why -- the techniques in those books don't focus on transforming your inner experience. Those books, we could say, are about advice, but not growth.
The Consequences For Critics
One result is that, under my view, some ideas targeted by personal development's critics actually have nothing to do with personal development. In SHAM, for example, Steve Salerno treats magazines like Cosmopolitan, which teach women "how to paint themselves, primp themselves, and acquire enough sexual know-how to keep a man satisfied and at home," as examples of "self-help and actualization" (a.k.a. "SHAM") literature.
However, from my perspective, advice about putting on makeup that doesn't focus on transforming your inner experience is not "personal growth" advice. To say otherwise, I think, would likely expand the concept of personal growth so far as to render it meaningless. After all, if makeup tips amount to personal development, why not tire-changing tips as well?
Next time, we'll talk about the second element in my definition: the intent to produce lasting change.
What Is Personal Development?, Part 1: It’s All In The Intention
It just occurred to me that, in the "About" page of this blog, I promised you a working definition of personal development. It feels a bit odd for me to keep talking about personal development without giving you that definition.
So, here goes: "Personal development" perspectives and techniques are (1) consciously intended to work with our "inner experience," meaning our thoughts, emotions and sensations; and (2) meant to produce a lasting result.
We're In It For The Feelings
Arguably, human beings do basically everything they do with the goal of having some kind of inner experience. Whether we're meditating, giving to charity, getting an education, drinking alcohol, or something else, we're doing it because of the way we think that activity will have us feel.
To use a common example, we don't make money just for the sake of having a bunch of colored pieces of paper. We do it because of the feelings we think having and spending money will bring us. Perhaps we want the feeling of security that comes with knowing we'll have enough to eat, a sense of accomplishment, the thrill of knowing we can buy a flashy motorcycle, or something else. But in any case, what we're after is some inner experience.
Some might object that they make money to take care of others (their children or elderly parents, for example), not because it helps them feel a certain way. However, you wouldn't have any interest in taking care of others if doing so didn't give you a certain inner experience -- maybe a feeling of happiness, righteousness, or something else. In other words, if you were emotionally indifferent to whether someone else lived or died, stagnated or thrived, you probably wouldn't be helping them.
Where The "Conscious" Part Comes In
While it's true that we do most of what we do with the goal of having an inner experience, we aren't always consciously seeking an experience. In everyday existence, I think, most of us don't consciously contemplate how the things we do will have us feel.
We don't ask ourselves, for example, whether we'll feel better if we go to work or stay home, or whether listening to the car radio will make the commute smoother. Usually, we're just going through our daily motions.
By contrast, personal growth activities, to my mind, are things we do with the specific goal of transforming our inner experience. We do them consciously intending to create a specific mental or emotional state. As a simple example, I may say the affirmation "I am lovable" to develop more self-appreciation. Or, perhaps I'll do some yoga to get a sense of openness in my body.
By my definition, the specifics of an activity don't determine whether it amounts to personal growth. For instance, suppose (somewhat implausibly) that I'm in the habit of meditating every day simply because my parents told me to. I'm not doing it because I think it will bring me inner peace, happiness, or some other feeling.
In this example, meditation is not a "personal growth" activity for me, regardless of how others might use it, because I don't do it with the conscious goal of feeling a certain way. The intent is what's important, not the specifics.
In the next post, we'll talk about how approaches that work on our inner experience with the goal of producing a particular outer result -- for instance, visualization techniques that have us imagine business success to help us create it in the world -- fit into this discussion.
The Responsibility Ethic, Part 2: Responsibility Vs. Blame
This post continues my discussion of what I've called the "responsibility ethic" in personal development -- the idea that it's best for us to see ourselves as responsible for our situation in life. I've been looking at the common argument that buying into the responsibility ethic causes people to beat themselves up over the setbacks they face. You can read the last post in this series here.
2. Responsibility Vs. Blame
The critics of personal growth aren't the only ones aware of what I'm calling the "self-blame argument." Many personal development teachers understand it as well. What they often say is that it's possible to see ourselves as responsible for our circumstances without blaming ourselves for them. In other words, if we suffer a setback, we can admit how our actions contributed to it without suffering over it. If I'm in debt, for instance, I can acknowledge what I did to create the debt without calling myself lazy or stupid.
As we saw earlier, psychological research suggests that people can, and do, make this "responsibility versus blame" distinction. People who tend toward an external locus of control -- the belief that they lack control over their lot in life -- often punish themselves for the difficult events in their lives, even though they see themselves as helpless.* People who tend toward an internal locus of control, although they see themselves as in control of events, actually do less self-flagellation when they get bad results.
Some critics acknowledge this distinction but reject it, arguing that it effectively destroys any notion of morality. For example, in Self-Help Inc., sociologist Micki McGee derides Deepak Chopra's discussion of responsibility in The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, in which Chopra advocates "not blaming anyone or anything for your situation, including yourself." "This notion of responsibility," writes McGee, "suspends the literal meaning, ensuring that no one is actually accountable for anything," and creating "a mystical world without need of morality or ethics."
The Philosophy Behind Self-Blame
Is this true? Let's take this question to a deeper level. As I think you'll see, this discussion is a good example of how the debate over personal growth ideas raises some important, and timeworn, philosophical questions.
What is self-blame? I'd put it this way: When we blame ourselves for an event in our lives, we are 1) judging ourselves as worthy of punishment or suffering because it happened, and 2) administering punishment -- by, perhaps, tensing our bodies painfully when we think about the event. For example, I'll bet you can think of a time when you got really angry at someone, in a way you now see as inappropriate -- and that you cringe (punish yourself) when you remember it.
When you think about it, the idea that I should suffer because of something I did is based on some interesting metaphysical assumptions. The idea seems to be that, when I do something wrong (whatever that may mean to me), I basically knock the universe out of balance. I can only restore the cosmic equilibrium by experiencing suffering proportional to the suffering of my victim. The fancy philosophical term for this idea is "retributive justice."
We see this mindset in how people tend to talk about the criminal justice system. For instance, people often say of a criminal that he must "pay for his crime." This means that the criminal has drawn on a sort of "cosmic bank account" by creating suffering for another person, and he must repay the "debt" through his own suffering -- most likely, by going to prison for some number of years.
Justice Without Retribution
In essence, many personal growth teachers, while asking us to take responsibility for our situation, also invite us to let go of the philosophy of retributive justice. I can acknowledge my role in creating my circumstances, they say, without punishing myself if those circumstances aren't up to my standards. What's more, when I stop wasting time and energy punishing myself for the past, I become able to look to the future and take constructive action -- make a plan to reduce my debt, perhaps, or look for a new relationship.
If we do what these teachers suggest and let go of the retributive justice idea, do we also eliminate morality? I think not. It's certainly possible to believe in moral rules -- that is, rules of right and wrong conduct -- without accepting the concept of retributive justice.
I could believe, for instance, that stealing is wrong, without also believing in retribution against people who steal. Instead, I might believe that people who steal should be required to pay their victims the money they stole, or the value of the property they took, to put the victim in the position he was in before the theft. In other words, I may accept what's called compensatory justice, but not retributive justice.
What's more, I would be far from the first to take this stance -- many philosophers have argued against the concept of retributive justice, and the notion that people should suffer for their misdeeds to restore some abstract cosmic balance. The idea of dispensing with retribution against ourselves and others is not some kooky New Age innovation.
But Isn't Guilt Good For Society?
Now, I think some personal growth critics would acknowledge that we can retain some notion of right and wrong, even if we stop blaming or punishing ourselves when our results are less than perfect. But that, the critics might argue, is not the real issue -- the point is that, if we don't blame ourselves when we act wrongly, morality loses any practical significance.
The very reason we act morally, they say, is because we're afraid that, if we don't, we'll beat ourselves up over it. If people lost the capacity to self-blame, society would descend into violent anarchy. "There's a name for people who lack guilt and shame: sociopaths," writes Wendy Kaminer in I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional. "We ought to be grateful if guilt makes things like murder and moral corruption 'harder.'"
What will I say about this? It's a nail-biting cliffhanger! Stay tuned, dear readers, for Part 3 of The Responsibility Ethic.
* As psychologist Helen Block Lewis puts it in The Many Faces of Shame, "behavior theorists have described a cognitive paradox in depression: If depressed people are as helpless as they feel, logic dictates that they should not also feel self-reproaches (guilt) for what they are unable to do." And yet, oddly enough, they do feel guilt.
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