If you’ve read any of my past writings you are probably aware that one of the blogs I regularly subscribe to is Steve Pavlina’s personal development blog. Although we don’t always agree on certain issues, other readers have pointed out several times similarities in our writing styles. Steve writes about a variety of personal development topics and was a major influence in my own passion for growth.
Today I stumbled across an interesting article about purchasing information products [1] from Steve. Although the article itself was interesting, one paragraph stuck out:
For example, I normally don’t read much fiction (I’m at least 90% nonfiction), but Erin is an avid fiction reader. She frequently recommends fiction books to me, sometimes practically begging me to read them, but I almost always turn her down because I feel non-fiction is a better use of my time. But when I finally do succumb to one of her suggestions, I often enjoy a lateral growth experience I’d have otherwise missed. At the very least, I enjoy sharing the experience with Erin.
Seeing as I coined the term lateral growth in my own descriptions of personal development and have written about it in several articles, such as this one [2], entitled “Lateral Growth”, I was very surprised to hear this. I’ve never seen anyone else use the terms without directly referring to some commentary I’d made so now I’m very inquisitive about what this means. Either Steve has read this website, this is a coincidence or I subconsciously picked up a term other people have been using for some time.