Transhumanism is a movement that seeks to find the solutions to mankind problems in robotics, genetic modification and general human involvement in what would be perceived to be natural processes. This movement is often perceived as the enemy of religion because the views contrast so strongly, but that need not be the case.

To learn more about transhumanism, robotics and related concerns, visit Human Paragon, a leading resource for anyone in the Transhumanism community and anyone seeking more information. For info on how this connects to Christianity, read on.

Were All After the Same Thing

Christians and transhumanists both want to better mankind, to reduce poverty, suffering and illness the world over. These two goals are the same, and any groups that so strongly share the same ideals should not be the enemy of one another.

Transhumanists seek to better understand the genetic makeup of mankind in order to find ways of tweaking this. It is artificial evolutionand if as Christians we can accept evolution and the way that this ties into our beliefs, then surely we can so the same with the science of transhumanism. After all, it is our duty on this earth to love and to careto be altruistic. And there is nothing more loving and caring the using our natural talents and intelligence to mold the world around us in order to remove the problems we face every day.

Is It What God Would Want?

God created mankind in his image, God created a world that he deemed to be perfect, so why should we change that, right? Well you only need to look around you to see that humanity is anything but perfect and that we have near-destroyed the world He created.

If finding solutions to these problems is wrong, then how can causing these problems be right? How can it be okay to build nuclear weapons, to cause climate change, to destroy thousands of acres of natural forestry and to care the extinction of thousands of Gods creatures? None of this is right and if we continue as we are, the well only make that situation worse.

Drastic times call for drastic measures and when the world is in ruin and there seems to be little hope, the idea of transhumanism could be the answer. And if we really are created in his image then that means that everything we are came from him; everything we know and everything we have at our disposal is his. So, transhumanism could therefore not be seen as something against God, but a way of performing Gods will, a way of righting the wrongs.

Im not saying thats the case, Im just saying that there are many ways to look at this and that the ideas of groups like the transhumanists should not be so readily dismissed on religious grounds.

Learn More

As mentioned above, Human Paragon is a great place to learn more about this, and its important that you do. These techniques and ideals might actually help to bring parts of the Christian story to life. Its the only way any of us can live as long as Methuselah, the only way we can truly scale the heights that our lord set for us.

So, lets not fight it and lets at least try to understand it.

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tech-life-game-news - Christian Post (blog)

Luis Manuel Tapia Bolivar/DreamstimeA fight over whether or not transhumanism can be libertarian broke out over at The American Conservative. The contretemps began with an article by Zoltan Istvan, author of The Transhumanist Wager. Istvan is also seeking to become the Libertarian Party candidate for governor of California.

In "The Growing World of Libertarian Transhumanism," Istvan optimistically asserts that "freedom from the government will allow radical science to go on undisturbed."

Zoltan defines transhumanism as "the international movement of using science and technology to radically change the human being and human experience. Its primary goal is to deliver and embrace a utopian techno-optimistic world." Due to rapid technological progress "the world is shifting under our feetand libertarian transhumanism is a sure way to navigate the chaos to make sure we arrive at the best future possible."

Kai Weiss, a researcher at the Austrian Economics Center and Hayek Institute in Vienna, Austria, swiftly denounced the piece. "Transhumanism should be rejected by libertarians as an abomination of human evolution," he wrote.

Clearly there is some disagreement.

Weiss is correct that Istvan doesn't expend much intellectual effort linking transhumanism with libertarian thinking. Istvan largely assumes that people seeking to flourish should have the freedom to enhance their bodies and minds and those of their children without much government interference. So what abominable transhumanist technologies does Weiss denounce?

Weiss includes defeating death, robotic hearts, virtual reality sex, telepathy via mind-reading headsets, brain implants, ectogenesis, artificial intelligence, exoskeleton suits, designer babies, and gene editing tech. "At no point [does Istvan] wonder if we should even strive for these technologies," Weiss thunders.

While Istvan may not wonder, Weiss fails to make a single argument against these technological developments: It is apparently self-evident to him that they are evil.

As with all new technologies, unintended consequences are inevitable and people can and will surely misuse them. Libertarians know all too well that vigilance against government abuse of modern technologies is vital. These worries do not, however, constitute preemptive arguments for preventing people from voluntarily seeking to use the fruits of innovation to work out how to live the best lives that they can.

Oddly, as a riposte against libertarian transhumanism, Weiss cites Christian conservative Rod Dreher's assertion that "choice matters more than what is chosen. The Technological Man is not concerned with what he should desire; rather, he is preoccupied with how he can acquire or accomplish what he desires." This is a non-sequitur. Of course, libertarians (and one hopes most other folks) are concerned about what it is that we should desire. The central question is who, if anyone, has the right to stop us from pursuing our private and non-aggressive desires once we've applied our intellects and moral imaginations to figuring out what it is that we want?

Progressives and conservatives believe government has extensive authority to tell citizens how to live their lives. Libertarians do not. On that count, Weiss is entirely correct to call out Istvan for succumbing to authoritarianism when he advocates for licensing reproduction as a way to prevent overpopulation.

As someone who evidently thinks he is committed to enlarging human liberty, Weiss would do well to ponder this observation from economics Nobelist Friedrich Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty:

Nowhere is freedom more important than where our ignorance is greatestat the boundaries of knowledge, in other words, where nobody can predict what lies a step ahead.the ultimate aim of freedom is the enlargement of those capacities in which man surpasses his ancestors and to which each generation must endeavor to add its shareits share in the growth of knowledge and the gradual advance of moral and aesthetic beliefs, where no superior must be allowed to enforce one set of views of what is right or good and where only further experience can decide what should prevail. It is wherever man reaches beyond his present self, where the new emerges and assessment lies in the future, that liberty ultimately shows its value.

Hayek's point is that human beings are terrible at foresight. Engaging in a robust process of trial, error, and correction is how nearly all moral and technological progress has ever been made.

As I have earlier argued:

The highest expression of human nature and dignity is to strive to overcome the limitations imposed on us by our genes, our evolution and our environment. Future generations will look back at the beginning of the 21st century and be astonished that some well-meaning and intelligent people actually wanted to stop bio-nano-infotech research and deployment just to protect their cramped and limited vision of human nature. If transhumanism is allowed to progress, I predict that our descendants will look back and thank us for making their world of longer, healthier and abler lives possible.

While Weiss asserts "it is time for libertarians to argue against the notion of extreme transhumanism," he ultimately concedes "the state shouldn't prohibit it." So long as he leaves government power out it, Weiss is, of course, free to argue as much as he likes that transhumanism is an abomination contrary to libertarian thinking. But I suspect that few people, especially folks committed to liberty and the development of technologies that enable them and their progeny to have better chances to lead flourishing lives, will heed his Luddite counsel.

For those interested in libertarian arguments in favor of transhumanism, you may be interested in my essay, "The Case for Enhancing People" and my book, Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution.

Disclosure: I was on a panel with Istvan at FreedomFest in Las Vegas a month ago discussing the much dreaded prospect of designer babies. I am generally in favor of allowing parents to use modern biotechnologies with the goal of improving the prospects that their children will enjoy flourishing lives.

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Transhumanism and Libertarianism Are Entirely Compatible - Reason (blog)

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A Tamworth personal development coach has been given high praise helping pop sensation and TV personality Kerry Katona 'whole again'.

Emma Cross, has publicly credited by the former Atomic Kitten singer after getting her back on track following her split with husband George Kay, in 2015.

Speaking to OK! magazine, Kerry opened up about the counselling sessions she received from Emma after the relationship broke down and how they have inspired her to pursue a career in life coaching.

Kerry said: "Emma is absolutely brilliant.

"I've actually signed up to do a life-coaching course in October. I'm really looking forward to that."

Emma (35) has been training and gaining experience as a life coach for more than 14 years, but has only recently taken the plunge by turning her passion into a full-time career.

She was amazed when she got the call from Kerry, who is now one of her regular clients.

"Kerry was one of the first people to contact me through my website," Emma said.

"I couldn't believe it. We started speaking and hit it off straight away.

"I went to her house and have been helping her to stay on track since then. People have noticed the difference in her and Kerry has referred me to other people too."

Emma is a certified NLP (neuro linguistic programming) practitioner and uses proven NLP and personal development psychotherapy techniques to help people lead happier and more successful lives.

This could be for overcoming a trauma, achieving long-term goals, coping with the stresses of everyday life, or just generally making positive and lasting changes for the better.

Although Emma has all the qualifications to back up her abilities, she first turned to life coaching because she found she had a natural talent for helping people get the most out of life.

The mum-of-two believes her own difficult childhood and struggles in life have given her a unique understanding and appreciation of how coaching can make a real difference.

Emma said: "I didn't have a great childhood. I had no role models and left school at 15 with no qualifications. I was a single mother by the age of 19 and was headed down a road I didn't like.

"However, the birth of my first child motivated me to build a better life for us.

"I started to read self-help books because I didn't want to continue down the path I was on.

"My driving force was to give my son a better life and be the role model that I didn't have growing up. That motivated me to work hard and achieve my goals."

Earlier this year, she decided to take the plunge by giving up her job as a sales consultant and devoting all her time to her career as a life coach.

"I'm passionate about helping other people achieve their goals, just as I have achieved mine and I believe my own experiences enable me to help bring out the best in others."

For more information about Emma visit http://www.emmacrosscoaching.co.uk.

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Kerry Katona made 'whole again' by Tamworth personal development coach - Tamworth Herald

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was born in Dublin, the son of a civil servant. His education was irregular, due to his dislike of any organized training. After working in an estate agent's office for a while he moved to London as a young man (1876), where he established himself as a leading music and theatre critic in the eighties and nineties and became a prominent member of the Fabian Society, for which he composed many pamphlets. He began his literary career as a novelist; as a fervent advocate of the new theatre of Ibsen (The Quintessence of Ibsenism, 1891) he decided to write plays in order to illustrate his criticism of the English stage. His earliest dramas were called appropriately Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant (1898). Among these, Widower's Houses and Mrs. Warren's Profession savagely attack social hypocrisy, while in plays such as Arms and the Man and The Man of Destiny the criticism is less fierce. Shaw's radical rationalism, his utter disregard of conventions, his keen dialectic interest and verbal wit often turn the stage into a forum of ideas, and nowhere more openly than in the famous discourses on the Life Force, Don Juan in Hell, the third act of the dramatization of woman's love chase of man, Man and Superman (1903).

In the plays of his later period discussion sometimes drowns the drama, in Back to Methuselah (1921), although in the same period he worked on his masterpiece Saint Joan (1923), in which he rewrites the well-known story of the French maiden and extends it from the Middle Ages to the present.

Other important plays by Shaw are Caesar and Cleopatra (1901), a historical play filled with allusions to modern times, and Androcles and the Lion (1912), in which he exercised a kind of retrospective history and from modern movements drew deductions for the Christian era. In Major Barbara (1905), one of Shaw's most successful discussion plays, the audience's attention is held by the power of the witty argumentation that man can achieve aesthetic salvation only through political activity, not as an individual. The Doctor's Dilemma (1906), facetiously classified as a tragedy by Shaw, is really a comedy the humour of which is directed at the medical profession. Candida (1898), with social attitudes toward sex relations as objects of his satire, and Pygmalion (1912), a witty study of phonetics as well as a clever treatment of middle-class morality and class distinction, proved some of Shaw's greatest successes on the stage. It is a combination of the dramatic, the comic, and the social corrective that gives Shaw's comedies their special flavour.

Shaw's complete works appeared in thirty-six volumes between 1930 and 1950, the year of his death.

From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.

George Bernard Shaw died on November 2, 1950.

To cite this pageMLA style: "George Bernard Shaw - Biographical". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 6 Sep 2017. <http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1925/shaw-bio.html>

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George Bernard Shaw - Biographical - G.B.Shaw Nobel Prize

Mr. Carroll, 51, represents a curious blend of familiar and radical: He is best known stateside for the original practice Globe productions of Twelfth Night and Richard III that he brought to Broadway in 2013, which hewed as closely as possible to the staging choices made at the turn of the 17th century.

But he is also a founding member of the British guerrilla theater known as the Factory, which once staged a Hamlet in which any actor could end up performing any of the roles on any given night.

The Shaw Festival actors presumably knew their parts for the Secret Theater performances, about which all parties have been tight-lipped. Mr. Carroll finally allowed that one such event asked the audience to walk around Niagara on the Lake with a map, as scenes popped up around them.

Basically, our new mission is to celebrate the work and spirit of George Bernard Shaw any way we want, said Mr. Carroll, who is known throughout the company as T.C. If that includes recent works by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins or Will Eno (a fine-boned rendition of his 2010 Middletown) in its 11-play season, so be it.

Mr. Carroll has stepped into the role on the heels of two consecutive years of operating deficits. Ticket sales have followed a gradual decline over the last decade here, and plans are currently on hold to build a new theater on a tract of land that the festival purchased for $3.63 million in 2014.

One casualty of his arrival is the festivals much-discussed mandate. The first three years of its existence were devoted solely to Shaw, and for decades the repertory was confined to works written during his lifetime. (He lived to the age of 94, giving the festival quite a bit of latitude.)

Over time, the definition expanded to include contemporary works set during Shaws lifetime as well as plays on Shavian themes. It had become a bit of a running joke, about the ever-expanding mandate, Mr. Carroll said. (In fact, next years season includes a work by a playwright who missed Shaws lifetime by some 240 years: William Shakespeare.)

The repertory acting system, however, remains a hallmark of the festival. On this particular day, Jonathan Tan was assaying a smug Lord Chancellor in Shaws Saint Joan less than two hours after hopping around the stage as a frog in a charming family adaptation of Oscar Wildes tales for children. Three of Mr. Tans Wilde Tales co-stars got a longer break before making up the cast of that evenings surprise performance, 1979, a comedy about Joe Clarks absurdly short tenure as prime minister of Canada.

Still, it is Mr. Carrolls innovations that have become the talk of this towns many coffee shops and wine bars and ice cream parlors. It is not unusual to find audience members who have been attending the Shaw Festival for decades. And unsurprisingly, opinions among these stalwarts vary widely.

Change is hard, especially for people who are older, said Betty Schaeffer of Rochester, who has been coming with her husband for 31 years and had seen two previous festival stagings of Saint Joan before this years streamlined production, directed by Mr. Carroll. It all feels very, very different all of a sudden. I like it.

But Leslie Varnick and Michael St. Clair, who have been visiting from Cleveland for nearly as long, warned that the unique nature of the festival is in jeopardy.

Anyone wants to come in and put their stamp on things, of course, Ms. Varnick said. But I want the work to be honored, and a lot has been lost. It can feel a bit like a circus now.

Mr. Carroll will be the first to admit that the new approach is a work in progress. Some people in the company would rather not try something until weve worked out exactly how to do it, he said. And I say to them, Lets just get it wrong this year. And then next year, it will be much easier to get it right.

The festivities begin before each play starts. Rather than use the typical recorded preshow announcement, Mr. Carroll enlists a member of the festivals cast, crew or staff to speak live.

Gray Powell, who performed for 10 seasons under the previous artistic director, Jackie Maxwell, recently gave his first of these impromptu addresses. Its an experiment, but then, all theater is an experiment, said Mr. Powell, who has roles in Middletown and Saint Joan this season. The important thing is that T. C. has gotten people off the backs of their seats and closer to the front.

And while Mr. Powell has relished the Secret Theater forays, he occasionally balks at interactive works like Mr. Carrolls Androcles, in which the actors will elicit stories from audience members at intermission and then include them in the text.

There are certainly times when I feel like, I dont want to talk to you. I just want to look at you, he said.

When audience members ask Mr. Carroll how Shaw might have reacted to these changes, he has an answer at the ready a letter Shaw wrote in about 1930 to Barry Jackson, who wanted to name his own summer theater festival in England after the dramatist.

Shaw said, Dont do that, because you shouldnt be held back by what I am doing or have written, Mr. Carroll said. People like me and Ibsen shouldnt be sat in the road, blocking the way of the new young generation.

And if longtime festivalgoers feel that Mr. Carroll is in the way, he has thoughtfully provided plenty of juggling balls, perfect for chucking.

Go here to read the rest:
Stodgy No More? The Shaw Festival is Full of Surprises - New York Times

By:David Gordon | September 06, 2017

"Mine is better than ours."Benjamin Franklin

Tom Bethell, here as often before, uses sturdy common sense to challenge experts in their own field. In a controversial article many years ago, he dared to suggest that evolutionary biologists have exaggerated the evidence for Darwinism. Though roundly criticized by supporters of orthodoxy, Mr. Bethell manifested an uncanny ability to ask disconcerting questions.

That ability is continually on display in The Noblest Triumph. Here, he indicts economists because they have failed to set forth in detail an answer to what should be a basic question of their discipline: Under what institutions will a society prosper? Since the days of Adam Smith, economists have neglected to analyze property rights, which are, in Mr. Bethell's view, the key to economic success. Classical economists such as David Ricardo continued Smith's policy of taking property rights for granted, and with John Stuart Mill, the last of the classics, things got worse. Mill often criticized private property and seemed to look forward to the onset of socialism, although Mill's ambiguous prose mirrored his dithering on the issue. Of course, Karl Marx said a great deal about property; but his fervent denunciations contributed little to understanding. The Austrian school, including Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, stands out as an exception to Mr. Bethell's catalogue of neglect of property, while in recent years, public choice economists have written with illumination on the topic. But in large part the record of the economics profession in discussing property is blank.

This is surprising, since, Mr. Bethell holds, the case for private property is easily made. To grasp the role of private property, an essential truth must be kept in mind. Human beings have a fixed nature, which governments thwart at their peril.

Very well, then: human nature is not so malleable as Bernard Shaw and the Webbs held. Few today would deny this, but how does the fact of a fixed human nature suffice to make the case for property? In Mr. Bethell's view, the argument is simple. People tend to place their own well-being, and that of their families, above a murky "common good" defined by the state. Thus, if property is made collective, disaster will quickly follow. Under a system without private property, an individual has little incentive to conserve resources. Instead, he will seize as much as he can for his immediate benefit; if he does not, others will quickly step into the gap. Moreover, only a regime that mandates individual property rights can avoid what Garrett Hardin has memorably called the "tragedy of the commons." With secure property rights, an owner will not scuttle his long-term gains through indiscriminate exploitation of land. Instead, he will endeavor to maintain his property since it is as an economic asset.

But is not this argument simply an instance of the ancient fallacy, that human beings are narrowly selfish, unmotivated by the good of others? In the guise of a defense of human nature, has not Mr. Bethell attempted to foist on us that discredited construct, homo economicus?

Mr. Bethell readily turns this objection aside. Let us suppose that someone did limit his own use of commonly held land, hoping thereby to aid conservation. He would fail utterly in his purpose. He would merely provide those more self-interested than himself with more land to exploit. The main point is incontestable, and Mr. Bethell ably illustrates his case with many historical examples. These include Plymouth Plantation, where Governor Bradford quickly learned that a community without private property in land was "afflicted by an unwillingness to work," and the New Harmony Utopian socialist colony founded by Robert Owen. Mr. Bethell duly notes that the fortune of that sainted philanthropist rested in part on child labor.

But on one point I must issue a caution. We know, as Mr. Bethell has ably argued, that common property is inefficient. No general argument shows how inefficient it must be when compared with a system of individual property rights: This we must discern from examination of the individual case. Thus, when Mr. Bethell, with a brilliant suggestion, ascribes Irish poverty in the 19th century to the uncertain tenure of land, it does not at once follow from the "tragedy of the commons" argument that he is right. A system of firmly embedded property rights would have led to more efficient land use than the radically uncertain settlement in place there, but how much good such a system would have caused remains a subject for further research. If Mr. Bethell has not fully proved his case on Irish poverty, though, he has immensely aided the discussion through his hypothesis.

A further problem confronts any society that attempts to do away with private productive property altogetherthe famous economic calculation argument advanced by Mises and Hayek. Absent a capitalist market, a centralized economy has no means of deciding how to allocate resources. Engineering calculations alone will not tell the planner whether it is a good idea to construct a bridge with platinum. How can he make the decisions needed to assign economic goods to their best uses? Readers should note that this differs from the "tragedy of the commons." The latter argument involves incentives; the calculation argument does not. Even people totally devoted to the common good would, in a centrally directed economy, confront the calculation problem.

Mr. Bethell locates another difficulty for any regime foolish enough to strike against private property comprehensively.

Mr. Bethell, apparently, cannot for long stay away from incentives, and with good reasonthe issue is crucial. As he notes, this argument received its classic statement in Hayek's Road to Serfdom, but he also suggests that Hayek took over and developed his case from Walter Lippmann's The Good Society. How remarkable that the Great Pundit managed for once in his long career to get something right!

The case for private property goes beyond incentives and efficiency. More broadly, Bethell claims that justice itself demands individual property. He rejects the view of justice as egalitarian fairness, famously advanced by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice (1971), and resolutely adheres to the classical view of Aristotle and Aquinas, who thought that justice gives each person what is his due. Each person in an economy based on private property receives the results of his own abilities and character.

Mr. Bethell dismisses with appropriate scorn Rawls' contention that abilities, since they arise from the "genetic lottery," are collective assets best placed under control of the welfare state. In one respect, though, he pushes his argument too far. He suggests that, contrary to its critics, a market svstem minimizes selfish behavior. "A selfish person is one who takes an unfairly large share of some common good, thereby leaving unfairly small shares for everyone else." Situations that lack well-defined property rights render selfish behavior possible.

The argument is ingenious, and it suffices to explain many cases of selfishnessbut by no means all. Would not a person who assiduously seeks gifts and favors from others, but never acts generously save under compulsion, be considered selfish? And yet no problem of collective goods need be involved in this case.

The argument for private property has many implications for contemporary policy. Mr. Bethell suggests that our high-minded Masters of Wisdom in Washington have made a fetish of democracy. A Western-style political system can function only in a reasonably prosperous society, and this requires private property. A regime that moves toward a free market may have much to recommend it, even if it ranks abysmally on the index of the Americans for Democratic Action. Mr. Bethell's point needs to be taken to heart by self-styled conservatives anxious to embroil the United States in a conflict with China that could only serve further to collectivize both countries.

A few details in the book can be challenged. Wesley Hohfeld's definition of rights has nothing to do with Hegel's philosophy: Mr. Bethell has not grasped the quite simple logic of that influential system of legal categories. To call Frederic Maitland one of those who wrote "at a time when centralism was admired across the board" oversimplifies matters. Maitland (a great legal historian) was greatly influenced by the concept of pluralism, a decidedly anti-centralist trend of thought. To support his incontestably true point that socialism leads to dictatorship over workers, Mr. Bethell frequently refers to a spurious passage from Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed. Some years ago, I quoted the same passage and was properly taken to task by Mr. Williamson Evers of the Hoover Institution.

But these are only minor points. Mr. Bethell has written a clear, cogent book that both sums up and advances our knowledge of property. In learning and suggestiveness. The Noblest Triumph is a triumph indeed.

[The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Through the Ages, by Tom Bethell (New York: St. Martin's Press) 578 pp., $29.95]

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A Theory of Fairness - A Magazine of American Culture

Your romantic partner can be a source of encouragement or discouragement and whether they uplift you or deflate you can determine what you achieve in life. New research also suggests that if you have a partner that is supportive, you are more likely to take advantage of opportunities for personal growth that come your way (Feeney et al. 2017). On the other hand, if your partner is not so supportive of you in your relationship, you are more likely to forgo opportunities for personal growth.

In this study, 163 married couples who had been married on average 9.68 years and romantically involved for an average of 12 years, were divided into two roles where one was given a decision making role and the other, unbeknown to either of them, was observed for their role in supporting their spouse during the decision-making process. The 'decision-maker' was given the choice to accept the potentially challenging opportunity of giving a speech and compete for a prize worth up to $200 or decline it in favour of the non-challenging opportunity of solving a very simple puzzle for no external reward.

The researchers found that those with a supportive spouse - as determined via questionnaires and secret cameras - were more likely to take advantage of the potentially challenging opportunity. The researchers also found that those who had supportive partners and had opted for the challenging task during the first phase of the study, also reported more personal growth, mental well-being and better relationship experiences six months later than those who had opted for the simple puzzle task.

Clearly, your choice of partner can influence your personal growth via the way in which he or she supports or hinders your decision making when it comes to important choices that will help you to develop yourself as a person, increase your skills, achieve goals and develop your self-image. As demonstrated by the research, and as one would expect, how you personally develop over time is integral to how happy you will feel and this will inevitably impact the quality of your marriage or partnership.

Applying This To Your Romantic Relationship

Is your partner a source of emotional support, do they help you to believe in yourself and encourage you to take on challenges that help you to develop as a human being or are they unsupportive, undermine your self-belief and directly or indirectly prevent your personal growth? You'll know the answer to this by reflecting on past words and behaviours they have used and watching out for their future communication and action.

If they consistently voice words of encouragement and help you in practical ways to pursue your goals, for example, through helping you to overcome any challenges themselves or taking on other responsibilities you have so that you have more time to pursue your new goals, they're a supporter. If they inconsistently voice words of encouragement or mostly use discouraging sentiments and do not often help you in practical ways, to pursue your goals (or only do so begrudgingly), they are not a supporter. If the latter is the case, you need to (a) find out what is motivating their unsupportive behaviour, (b) decide if there is anything you can do to change this to make them genuinely supportive and take action on this and then (c) decide whether you want the repercussions on your life, happiness and well-being of being with someone who is unwilling or incapable of supporting you.

What's The Motivation Behind The Behaviour?

Now if you want to understand yours or your partner's motives for encouraging/supporting or not encouraging/supporting one another in making decisions that lead to the other's personal development, here are some statements to consider (taken from the study) and see which list your/their motivations mostly fall under, the first or the second.

The first list states relatively selfish motives and the second list states relatively altruistic motives. The selfish motives may stem from low self-esteem or insecurity within the relationship or mere self-centredness. Either way, those issues need attention if you are to go on and have a healthy, happy, lasting relationship.

Remember, a supportive partner encourages personal growth which in turn leads to psychological well-being and a happier, healthier relationship. For your relationship to flourish, you both need to flourish.

Reference:Feeney, B. C., Van Vleet, M., Jakubiak, B. K., & Tomlinson, J. M. (2017). Predicting the Pursuit and Support of Challenging Life Opportunities. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43 (8), 1-17. DOI: 10.1177/0146167217708575

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Partner Power: Supportive Relationships Linked To Personal Development - HuffPost UK

A Devon nursery is celebrating after Ofsted praise, saying the centre was good in three categories and outstanding in another.

Park Hill Nursery at Wilcombe Primary School was visited by Ofsted on June 28 with the findings released last month. The report says the personal development, behaviour and welfare are outstanding.

Children are extremely independent, the report said.

Staff provide highly effective support so children of all ages try to achieve new skills for themselves. For example, under supervision and skilful guidance, young children pour drinks for themselves and others. They learn exemplary hygiene practices, such as washing their hands after having their nappy changed. This prepares them extremely well for their next stages of self-care.

Staff involve older children very well to help set up activities and make choices about what they want to do and how. Staff work exceptionally well with parents to support children's personal development and well-being, such as potty training. Children relish being outdoors, enjoy exercise and gain an excellent awareness of their own safety. Staff use praise and encouragement highly effectively so children want to persevere and achieve.

The report also listed the nursery as good in effectiveness of leadership, quality of teaching, learning and assessment, and outcomes for children.

The report adds that the nursery offers good support and monitoring enable the strong management team to focus professional development for staff effectively. They help staff well to develop their teaching techniques, support individual children and provide them with good outcomes.

It says: For example, speech and language training has assisted staff in knowing how best to enhance their support so children make quicker progress.

Staff provide excellent support for children's physical and emotional well-being. Children have highly secure attachments in the nurturing environment. This underpins their very good confidence to explore the excellent resources and lead their play.

Staff consistently observe children's development and share accurate information with parents. They know the children well and plan a wide range of activities and experiences that motivates children to learn. All children make good progress from their starting points.

Managers are proactive in forging strong partnerships with parents, other providers and outside agencies. This ensures a consistent approach to children's learning and development.

Children learn to manage their behaviour and feelings extremely well. Staff are outstanding role models. For example, they help older children very well to listen to others and learn we all can have different opinions and to work together harmoniously.

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Ofsted praise Tiverton Nursery saying development, behaviour and welfare are outstanding - Devon Live

Setting goals, managing your time, being motivated and being able to focus are all self-management skills that great IT managers cultivate.

Despite this, skills classes for managers tend to focus around time management and organization. Here are some other self-management skills, and ways you, as a manager, can work on developing them:

Maintaining a focus on projects, the mainstay of IT, seems obvious for IT managers but it isn't easy.

How many times do you get pulled away from projects to sit in on all-day administrative steering committees, or to participate in other non-IT functions?

This is a difficult quandary to manage through, because it is critical for you to represent your organizations in company meetings, but you also have to keep your fingers on the pulse of projects.

The solution:

When you anticipate having full days of outside meetings, come in early and take an extra hour to touch base with your project leads.You don't want make a practice of having too many overcommitted days like this, but taking that extra hour in the morning has saved many IT managers the headache of having to straighten out major issues that arose in their absence, and that they could have prevented if they'd stayed in touch.

SEE: Time management tips for tech professionals (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

It's easy to become so preoccupied with budgeting and staffing that you maroon yourself in your office and don't show yourself to be an interactive team player to your staff.

IT managers can ill afford to do this when projects depend upon strong collaboration and teamworkand then they themselves fail to demonstrate those qualities.

The solution:

Get out from behind your desk for at least one hour per working day to mingle with staff and assess project work. If there is a project problem that requires collaboration and you can help, play a key collaborative role in the meeting. Also take the time to circulate among offices and cubicles to interact with staff and get to know them. The more you establish open communications and personal comfort levels with your staff, the more they will feel at ease and work together as a team.

SEE: Knowledge transfer: An underutilized approach to developing IT skills (Tech Pro Research)

Great managers are in demand for many other types of company functions. This is why it's important to make the supreme effort to keep your personal and professional lives in balance as much as possible.

It can be tough to do.

"I was literally going down the tubes," Phyllis Stewart Pires, who was heading up the global gender, diversity, and work-life office of a major tech company, told New York Magazine, in an article on work-life balance. "I was missing family events. My friends were calling me out on being AWOL. My husband was calling me out on not doing my share. It was almost like I was obsessed with this idea that people were counting on me to really make a difference in their workplace. I couldn't let them down."

SEE: How to create work-life balance in tech: 7 tips from the C-suite (TechRepublic)

The solution:

Set aside time for your family and friends in the same way that work will make its own demands on your timeand evaluate whether your work and personal life are staying in balance on a regular monthly basis.

Regular evaluation is important because it can be easy to lose this balance if you don't continuously work at keeping it.

Some years ago, I was in a management job that required me to spend 80% of my work time travelingl. I found that work was overshadowing my family time. I made a conscious decision to change jobs so that a better work-life balance could be achieved.

As a manager, you likely spend a lot of time assessing skills shortfalls in projects and in staffbut you should also keep an eye on your own skill development. .

One key project administrative skill that is developmental for many managers is capturing the time and cost of projects. In other cases, it can be beneficial to gain a better understanding of the end business so you can better align IT projects and results with business needs. If you come from a more technical disciplines, you may want to work on improving your communication skills. Whatever development areas you need to shore up, identify them and then make a plan to acquire the skills that you need.

At the end of the day, managers are hired to manage people and projects but those who excel as managers will tell you that to do either of these well, you first have to successfully manage yourselfand to take your own steps to get there.

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4 self-development tips for tech leaders - TechRepublic

A University of Minnesota researcher is working to fight high dropout rates among Native American high school students by fostering personal development.

Minnesota recently ranked near the bottom nationally in high school graduation rates for Native American students. Around half of Native American high school students in Minnesota receive their diplomas, and even fewer attend post-secondary education.

In an attempt to alter this trend, Jean Echternacht, a University research associate with the College of Education and Human Development, developed Expanding the Circle,a high school curriculum based on her work with Native American students.

The curriculum is concerned with non-academic skills that are needed to make the transition from high school to post-secondary education, Echternacht said. These include decision-making, self-advocacy and goal setting; all skills Native kids may not be as likely to learn at home.

She said the curriculum grew out of a need to familiarize Native American students with education, personal development and professional preparation.

Echternacht gathered data from her work with Native American high school students on the Fond Du Lac Indian Reservation in the late '90s and several years of one-week summer programs.

The first edition was published in 2002. The second edition, which Echternacht co-authored, was released last month.

Both editions of the curriculum are divided into four sections: discovery, framework, choice and reflection each focused on aspects of cultural identity.

These activities make them ask themselves: Who am I as an Indian kid? What is important to me? What do I care about in my culture? Echternacht said.

Part of the curriculum involves students developing and sharing stories about themselves, Echternacht said, which is a common cultural tradition. The storytelling is a way for students to express what they have learned and what they want to do with their lives.

When they get up to speak, theyre terrified, said Echternacht. But their growth is always amazing.

Historical mistreatment of Native Americans is another aspect Echternacht factors into her research.

Theres a long history of trauma that affected [Native Americans], she said. It is still a part of Indian kids lives.

Anna Ross, director of Minneapolis Public Schools Indian Education, said past cultural mistreatment is an underlying cause of high dropout rates.

This is what happens when you have district and community members that are unaware of the history of Indian boarding schools and mistrust of education, Ross said. Historical trauma must be understood to solve these issues.

After learning of Echternachts new curriculum, Ross expressed interest in employing it in her department for high school students.

The new edition of Expanding the Circle will be presented at the National Indian Education Association Convention in early October.

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UMN researcher combats Native dropout rates - Minnesota Daily