How To Approach Personal Development

I was talking with one of my friends this week who I suspected has areas of his life that he would like to improve, even though he has things pretty much “together”, but I always wondered why he spent so much time on his job working and zero time on himself.

We got into that discussion last evening (over a few beverages 🙂 , and it turns out his “view” around personal development is that it only works if you admit you are a failure in one or more aspects of your life.

I suspect this holds many people back, believing that before you can think about or commit to personal development you must first come to terms with a “painful” part of your life and admit failure…which we are taught not to do.

Personal Development Is Not About Fixing Failure, It IS About Improving And Using Your Amazing Self

I never looked at personal development in that way.

In other words, I came from a direction of “here are my strengths” – honesty, quick thinker, empathetic, see the big picture, very good instincts, etc…

Then I had a list of things that I have “some” ability with, but that I knew if I could just improve my ability with these areas things could be even more incredible in my life.

For example, how to be more persuasive.

Or, how can I be more comfortable around those that today I view are “above” me?

Never did the thought enter my mind that I was overcoming failures or even fixing things that were broken in my life.

Instead, it was a matter of developing my own skills, knowledge and practice in areas where I knew it would have a tremendous impact on my life (either personally, professionally, health, relationship or financial)

Just as you would exercise to learn to ride a bike, walk or become proficient in your job, I saw it as natural that you would want to put a few hours a day into improving those skills, techniques and strategies that would make an 80% bigger impact on my life with 20% of the effort.

How about you?

How do you view personal development?

Do you see it as a set of practices that require you admitting failure in one or more areas of your life or do you see it more as an ongoing journey to improve on an incredible base of values, beliefs and experiences?

Please, leave us your thoughts on this…I’m really curious to see if what I uncovered in my discussion last evening is true of a wider audience such as yourself.