Personal Development

By TAD BARTIMUS

Folks all around me are challenging their status quo by diving into new pursuits. Perhaps it's the uncertainty of our times or a rebellion against the lockstep life of the freeway or a revolt against sensory overload -- maybe a combination of all three -- but nearly every week I hear of more friends stepping outside of their comfort zone.

An Alaska coal miner quit his job of 20 years to work on a coffee farm; a theater director is learning massage therapy; a farmer has hung up her hoe to make glass necklaces. Even my husband, a teacher, is taking hula lessons.

Some of these new passions signal a career change; others are merely intellectual growth spurts. Whatever they are, they're healthy. Better yet, they're fun.

"Help!" pleaded an e-mail from a magazine editor. "I'm going on personal development leave and I need your recommendations of books to read."

"What's personal development leave?" I messaged back.

He phoned to explain that his (enlightened) boss believes creative people make the best employees (no argument there). However, you can't force people to be creative because, as my friend noted in a subsequent article in his magazine, "creativity comes from personal growth, from letting people explore their own interests."

So his employer offered five days' paid "growth leave" to any employee who wrote up a proposal, got it approved, and agreed to post a report about the experience on a personal Web page.

During his brain break, the editor sampled 12 books and finished six, avoiding tomes about subjects related to his job. His goal was to wake up his synapses and rekindle his love affair with the English language. He read in public places and laughed out loud. He rediscovered favorite libraries. He got lost in other people's stories. He devoured a literary smorgasbord and went back to work full of enthusiasm.

"The best thing about personal development," the editor told his readers, "is exactly that -- it's personal."

We have the option of personal development every day, but seldom give ourselves permission to pursue it. Instead, we pile on obligations and commitments and tread back and forth in the same footprints, wearing blinders. We begrudge time away from our careers, families, chores. If we do something out of the ordinary we are wracked with guilt and tell everyone, "I'm so behind, I have to catch up." To what?

Usually, it takes a seismic jolt to throw us out of our comfort zones and into new possibilities. Wars have this effect on us. So does the death of a loved one. Losing a job, the departure of a suddenly independent child, the disappearance of a spouse -- all can be catalysts for changing direction. But only in rare cases do we wake up one morning and say to ourselves, as Peggy Lee sang, "Is that all there is?"

Those are the days when we need to pay attention to our suppressed passions. We are trained to honor our needs, but what about our wants? It's those stifled dreams that turn into lingering regrets.

Over the course of a lifetime, taking a decade to achieve a long-deferred college degree isn't such a big deal. Neither is acquiring woodworking skills after retirement or learning yoga in your 70s, or training to row a scull when your contemporaries are on the golf course. Being a grown-up means exercising freedom of choice. Everything is in our power; if we are the sum of our parts, of which parts do we want to be composed?

The excuses that separate us from our dreams -- "My job is too important for me to take time away from it," "I am a single parent with no money for myself," "I have too many civic obligations to worry about self-fulfillment" -- can all be shot down by a cursory tour of the Yellow Pages. Non-profit and government support organizations provide baby-sitting, transportation, enrichment classes and help with education if we seek them out.

You don't need an employer's permission for personal development. Once you admit that the biggest impediment to your psychic growth is your own reticence, you can let yourself off of your self-imposed leash.

I have to stop writing now; I'm late for my ceramics class.

© 2003 The Women Syndicate

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