There is confusion at times over the term Personal Development, a term that has different meanings depending on who you listen to and which particular ‘Guru’ is in vogue.
Of course from the moment we are born the majority of people try to improve themselves, getting higher grades at school and college, getting a degree, getting a good job, getting promotion,looking for some sort of power traing etc, but is this true personal development that helps you achieve your goals?
You may ask just what is personal development training and is it complicated?
It is very much a mental thing, trying to be the best person you can be is one of the power driving forces to help you achieve goals. You look at other people, some of them as role models, and try to integrate some of their personality into your own. But this is just not practical and is the reason many people feel a sense of failure when they try personal development traing courses and goal setting tools. They can read personal development books attend personal development seminars but they will never be like their role models.
The reality of your life today is a reflection of the sum of your thoughts until this day.
So if your current situation is the result of all the thoughts that you have, and you have on average 50,000 personal thoughts a day, some people have one thought 50,000 times! Can we escape from the treadmill of our lives and create a better tomorrow and enjot personal development growth?
Can we enhance our quality of life; realize our personal dreams, aspirations and smart goals if all of our thoughts to date have been based on the lack of results we have experienced in our lives? Since childhood most of us have been held in check by parents, relatives, teachers and peer groups, their best intentions to save us from disappointment have been geared toward telling us not to expect too much we will only be disappointed.
No wonder self styled professional ‘Gurus’ earn vast fortunesestablishing seminars, telling us what we should be doing to improve our lot, without really coaching us how to do it, well that is in the next power lesson which costs an extra $x,000 and helps keep them rich and us poor. Thirsting for the next secret advertised will not get you that personal power found in self improvement .
Whilst it is true to say that whatever level of personal development you are at you do need a framework in order to know if improvement has actually occurred, what you do not need is the latest ‘Whizz bang super-dooper piece of software that will power you to smart goal achievement’.
They tell you that they know something you do not and that is why you feel frustrated at your lack of personal development you will feel compelled to pull out more and more of your hard earned money to discover the secret, when there is no secret anyway.
Just as a building need a strong framework so do you to keep on track? Well you need some sort of smart goal or benchmark to aim for because you need to define the end-point, you need plans and strategies to measure and assess your progress toward the end, and you need milestones set out so that you can reward yourself for making progress on the way. In every journey you need some sort of feedback to know just where you are and are you on track.
Would you set off on a long unfamiliar journey without first looking at a map for guidance.Even then you would set milestones on the route to measure how far you had covered and how far you had to go. There I have saved you thousands in seminar fees.
Well there is one secret to successful personal development, smart goal setting, motivation call it what you will let me tell you what it is….?