All the personal development ideas below come from my Twitter (pardon, X) explorations from earlier this year. As my interest in X has dwindled, I needed a place to dump the ideas for future reference, just in case. So, here they are.
You respect yourself more.
Once you’ve climbed out of that dark pit of despair.
All by yourself.
Showing your inner strength.
But what you don’t know about personal change might be keeping you away from the results you want.
What am I talking about?
- Paying The Price
- The Marketing Hype
- Personal Epiphanies
- Avoiding Pitfalls
- Building Discipline
- Finding Truth
- Your North Star
Paying The Price
Change is hard.
If you’re not willing to pay the price for your desires.
Fulfilling our desires requires us to change.
To stop being the same old person we’ve gotten used to being.
To reinvent ourselves, to freshen up as a person.
The new life you’re dreaming of?
It will cost you the current one.
Avoid The Marketing
The personal development marketing promises overnight success.
Avoid falling for this trap.
There are a lot of promises in the self-improvement space:
- You only need this one secret technique to become an overnight success
- This is the only 10-step plans for overnight success
- Read only this one book to solve your everything
The reality is that:
- Personal change is a long-term game
- Patience is required
- Persistence is required
- Understanding yourself is required
- You must change first, not the external circumstances
Nobody wants to hear they must be the ones to change.
But it’s the harsh truth.
Personal Epiphanies
You can’t rush it (personal development).
It’s a long term game. Think of it as an infinite game.
Be prepared to keep playing.
Patience is required to figure out what’s working and what’s not.
You also have to figure out all the pieces of the puzzle that must change before you can change.
It’s best to celebrate the small victories instead of beating yourself up for not getting the big win.
Many times, personal development means seeing things from a different perspective and also acting upon the new perspective.
Inner change must usually happen before any lasting external change.
External circumstances reinforce your habits.
And your habits reinforce how you relate to your external circumstances.
You might crash and burn. There is recovery after crashing and burning.
You might not always be ready for big changes.
And it’s nobody’s fault.
Seek to understand yourself first.
And go deep.
Asking for help and support is not a sign of weakness.
It’s a sign of humanity, maturity and vulnerability.
Understand what’s been programmed into your mind.
Own it. Observe it. Recognize it.
Take your power back by saying no.
Declining to repeat the same actions over and over again.
Integrate who you are and your life experience.
Personal Development Pitfalls
There are many personal development pitfalls to watch out for.
Here are some of them:
- Trying to copy your mentors
- Trying to duplicate your mentors’ results
- Being too rigid with the self-help theory
- Falling in love with the methods, not results
- Insisting on a specific result, instead of being open to other possibilities
The best approach is to stay curious.
Building Discipline
Don’t wait for tough times to build self-discipline.
Train your discipline before those times come.
They will come, have no doubt about it.
But you must be ready before they do.
Finding Truth
Finding Truth is an ongoing journey.
Truth is never static.
It always evolves, shifts and changes.
You can use language to describe it.
But language is never The Truth.
Language points in the direction of truth, but is never it.
You understand Truth with your heart, not with your mind.
There’s never a final destination, only the Ongoing Journey.
The North Star
There is no 10-step plan in matters of the heart.
When you follow your heart, all plans are out the window.
Your inner compass, your inner voice is all that mattters.
It’s pointing you in the right direction.
Your north star.
Follow or not, it’s your choice.
But it will always be calling you.
If you get lost along the way.
Make sure you are able to hear it, though.
