Poetry as a personal development tool.

Last year I commented on the practice of using Quotes as personal development tools.

Poetry can also be a terrific personal growth facilitator. Not just because of the wisdom it can contain, but also due to the emotion, rhyme, syntax and so on – together with the associated mood.

Poems can be memorised and repeated at will, often while completing another task such as walking or waiting for someone.

One example of a useful poem is Rudyard Kipling’s IF:

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

I remember first reading IF decades ago.

There was just one problem – I did not pay much attention to it and failed to see which parts of it applied to me.

As a result I paid the price.

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• Your Blueprint for a Fulfilling Life and a Successful Business
• Marketing Of Madness – Video. And how you can help yourself.
• Simple Suggestions To Achieve Superior Time Management
• Why is a mind virus like a computer virus?
• What is your inner world like?
• Get off your fat arse and start walking.
• Dealing with difficult people who bring us down.
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Tags: Personal Development, Personal Growth, Poetry, Self Improvement

Category: Personal Development