Maintaining your Personal Development High

[n_vizion]

Posted on my blog today. Enjoy!

We have all been there. After reading a fantastic personal development book, or attending a motivational seminar, you are ready to take over the world. New goals are written and more promises are made to yourself. Your life becomes anew.
A few months later you barely remember what you learned, your life reverts to what it was before your drastic changes, and you are off seeking that new message which will, once again, turn your life around.

For me, this is the most frustrating part of self development. We can never get enough of it, yet we sometimes barely see lasting results. How do we change this?
I believe the answer comes from how we view the personal development process. When we first begin to make changes in our lives we get excited about the results, not the process. Because of our misdirected focus, we cease to remain consistent in our daily actions and, of course our results quickly fade.

Think of your personal change as a process as necessary as bathing. This morning as you get ready for the day, you take a shower. The results of the shower, a clean fresh smelling body, stays with you most of the day. Throughout the day you go on about your daily tasks and, by the end of the day, the freshness fades and you find yourself in need of another shower.

Showering is a daily activity for all of us. We understand and accept that concept. We do not get frustrated because the results of yesterday's shower is no longer obvious. We do not become depressed and blame ourselves because we, once again, need another shower. On the contrary we simply jump in the shower, day after day, so that we can enjoy the results of our daily efforts.

The results of our personal development occurs because of our daily actions. We are fooling ourselves if we expect lasting changes from sporadic or non-existent efforts. So as we learn a new PD technique, skill, or concept, we should implement it into our lives today, tomorrow and every day without fail. We should truly grasp the idea that it is our daily efforts which produces the "lasting" change in our lives. Once we understand and accept this concept, we can then maintain that "shower fresh" feeling of personal growth every day.

[lifequest]

I think there as 2 things to consider:

1) Why you want to grow (with personnal development): if you cannot give yourself a reason for growing that you sincerily believe and endorse fully, you just won't do it, even if want you planned to do looks like a great project or goal. You can come up with a hundred reason as why you you do something, but if not even one of those reasons convinces you to do it, you won't. That is the first key to ditch an old habit and get a new one. It seems more logical to me that this can generate long term motivation.

2) You have to go by small victories. You can't, in less that a week, start to eat right, exercise, sleep enough, have more confidence in yourself, have an abundant social, start helping a local charity, etc. if you're not doing any of those things right now. You have to choose a goal or two, the most important to you, and work on them consistently until you integrated them in your life.

Also, I don't believe in being a selp-help junkie. For the moment, I have 2 books on personnal development I have bought, and I have been reading and re-reading them for over 6 months, and I'm still learning from them (and finding out I have forgotten what I have read!). There is so much information in a book, that I prefer to work on absorbing the infos of a book completely before moving on to the next one, rather than buying a lot of books and getting a "rush" from the personnal development infos you read. You then have to much informations and you don't know where to start, so you end up depressed and you doing nothing. Anyway, that's from my personnal experience, everybody is different so maybe other people have other ideas on how to approach personnal development.

See ya!

[SerbianSausage]

Hello n_vizion,

Good post.

Would you mind sharing with us some of the results you have created in your own life, by consciously and consistently applying some personal development techniques that you have learned? Results that you can directly attribute to said PD techniques?

regards,

SS

[n_vizion]

Originally Posted by SerbianSausage

Hello n_vizion,

Good post.

Would you mind sharing with us some of the results you have created in your own life, by consciously and consistently applying some personal development techniques that you have learned? Results that you can directly attribute to said PD techniques?

regards,

SS

I think the best benefit I have received from PD is the discipline to modify all areas of my life. I have more discipline to eat healthier foods. I also exercise regularly.
I have been able to increase my savings and earnings. Not using any get rich quick scheme, but by implementing daily techniques in my financial circumstances.

Best of all, I act more than I talk! Before PD I would talk about what I wanted to do. I'd go on and on about the changes that I needed to make. Then nothing would happen. I also have less fear about taking risk and trying new experiences.

Really I think personal development is about making personal changes in your life. The changes I made so far are great, but I'm really excited about the development that I will yet experience going forward.

[SerbianSausage]

Hi n_vizion,

Thanks for sharing that. The reason I ask is that I have read countless reviews on Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more about various PD literature. Reviewers either wax lyrical on how great a book is (the majority) and on how much of an enjoyable read it was or, some reviewers will give the books and/or the authors an absolute savaging.

What is almost universally absent however, are comments from readers about actual results they have achieved/manifested in their own lives as a result of acting on the books' recommendations.

I believe that the true measure of a book's potency and the teachings therein, is how effective their actual application is at producing results - and NOT how enjoyable the book is to read. If you want an enjoyable read there are plenty of wonderful novels written in the nglish language. This absence of tangible results makes me quite skeptical of PD - I know a lot of PD "fans" and some of their lives are nothing to write home about. Others are successful but haven't directly attributed their success to PD.

Just a few thoughts. I am convinced however, that there are methods that work, but it is incumbent on individuals to put in the effort. A book will only motivate people temporarily at best to do that.

SS