My top four personal development practices

There are a million different ways to "work on yourself", and improve your life. I've tried a lot of them.

Here are my current top three, top-level -- meaning high-concept and/or broad scope of impact -- personal development practices:

1. Prayer.

Lately I've been practicing regularly, and taken in by the power of, the type of prayer which goes something like this:

"O Great Creator, O Father God, O Spirit of the Universe, please guide me to do that which serves the higher interests of the whole world. How can I help bring about a world of peace, abundance, love, joy and justice? How can I, a miniscule cell among billions, best be of service to the body of humanity? Guide me, O God!"

And then listen.

And then act, with resolve and faith (trust).

The prayers and mystic writings of the Baha'i figures (Baha'u'llah, 'Abdu'l-Baha, the Bab) are powerful elixir, and I imbibe regularly.

The Tablet of Ahmad, designated by Baha'u'llah as being of particular potency, is one I say whenever I can do so with full heart and intention (when I have the thirst, time and attention), and I have a developing awe of it, and reverence for its influence on me. In the times in past years when I have used it regularly (practiced it), my life has been enriched and I have felt guided and nurtured.

I feel I must emphasize this: prayer is a testable and practical tool. It can be proven to one's self, by one's actions and experiences, in the secret lab of your inner world. And its power seen in the outer world too.

2. Reading Steve Pavlina. (And reflecting.)

I just finished reading two Steve Pavlina articles, and for each I went and made a couple notes, brief summaries which rapidly expanded into fruitful reflections on important areas of my own personal development.

Pavlina mentions that his 7 year anniversary of blogging is approaching. I've been reading him since 2005 (so 6 years now), and no year has passed when my heart, mind, body and spirit have not benefitted from the inspiration, encouragement, techniques and example offered in his writing.

(Nota bene: Earlier this year I was inspired to begin praying as above, by this Pavlina article [it's a long one; for the bit that really got me, see the heading "Receiving Guidance", about 2/3rds of the way down]. In hindsight this was a turning point in my spiritual life, which since then has been steadily, gradually and significantly rejuvenated. Thanks, Steve!)

3. Practicing Steve Kushner's 'Emotional Mastery' exercises.

Steve Kushner is a middle-aged paper salesman and business owner, an eccentric, a joker, a kind and generous man -- and a wizard of personal development. I'm lucky to consider him a friend and mentor.

His Emotional Mastery (aka Emotional Circuitry) program is the fruit of his vast body of experience in the "men's work" and recovery fields over the past couple decades; that is to say, of his own personal journey and concurrent reading, writing and facilitating. ("Praxis" at its finest.)

The basic outline is that our emotional experience can be understood under seven general categories (Joy, Grief, Anger, Depression, Fear, Guilt and Shame), each of functions as a signal to teach us something about ourselves. E.g.: Anger teaches us "to take responsibility so that we can set limits and goals"; Fear teaches us "about risks and opportunities so that we can make informed decisions".

At face value alone the concepts are interesting, but the power of this material is that it includes a question and answer process for each emotional category, which explores the function of the emotion from different angles, and implies or outright asks what actions we will change, stop, or take for the first time. And in my experience, the actions have proven the concepts and my insights correct, without fail.

This is eminently practical stuff. A toolkit for emotional literacy, and, in time, with practice, emotional mastery. Meaning being sensitive to, deeply understanding, and acting upon our inborn emotional wisdom fluently and automatically; bringing consciousness and skilfulness to the raw guidance of our emotional world.

Steve's work assumes that our collective norms of understanding emotion in 21st century North America are superficial, erroneous and disempowering, and defines, or rather guides us to and illuminates, a deeper, truer and more functional comprehension of our emotional life.

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I've been working with these simple concepts and techniques this summer and fall, during times of intense emotion and confusion, and the small time and energy invested has paid huge dividends of self-knowledge and insight into the conditions of my life, allowing me to make new and more effective choices.

I've used them during four particularly tough spots (Anger, Anger, Shame and Anger |-p), and in each case the change in perspective they engendered was so extreme as to be disorienting. Suddenly, what felt like an emotional shit-storm was transformed into an opportunity to learn a valuable lesson, save myself wasted energy, and make new choices that were immediately empowering (literally, in the sense that I became able to do more of what works for me).

That's why, even though I am in the early stages of working with these tools, I am putting them in my top four.

4. Silent meditation.

Sitting cross-legged, eyes closed, allowing thoughts to come and go while resting the attention on the body.

This practice calms my mind (partially by giving it time to run through the backlog of ideas, memories and questions that can pile up), strengthens my spine and core muscles, and connects me to my body and senses in a wonderfully refreshing way.

Sometimes, after weeks of consistent practice, it has allowed me to experience remarkable moments of empty-mindedness, presence and/or a sort of transcendent joy....

I have tried a number of types of meditation, and they each have their benefits, but even at a physiological level, this style seems by far the most beneficial for my constitution and/or habitual condition.