Investing In Your Personal Development: Much In Little

Personal development: Some say it’s one of the least understood living sciences. Having been a practitioner, researcher and facilitator of it for three decades, I conquer. One of the key questions that concern this vital subject is: What does a person’s personal development lend itself to?

Take as an example a cunning war-lord; one who leads his troops to victory against all odds, time and again, against formidable adversaries. His whole life and personal development is aligned and attuned to waging wars. Now ask him to become a peacemaker. Most won’t know where to begin, as their personal development cannot support a process that requires as much skill, experience and capability, but of a very different kind.

Famous people are known for the unique kind of their personal development. Ghandi had a special kind of development that enabled him to turn the mood of a nation, from reacting with violence to responding with forgiveness. Churchill was able to call up in people the quality of ‘we will never surrender’. Others terrorise whole nations with their cruel divide and conquer skills. Anything that a person applies oneself to engenders some kind of personal development. The big question being: Is it the kind of development that belongs in a constructive, progressive world?

Knowing what you want designs the personal development process that will help you to get there. For some it means developing a great sense of humour; for others, developing exceptional mental toughness. What is the one quality or capability that you need to attend to today, to turbo-charge your journey as a leader of self and others?

The other name for ‘personal development’ is: ‘Change’. Any kind of real development begins with change: Changing how we think; behavioural and attitudinal changes; changing a habit; changing the reasons why we do what we do, changing what we keep repeating... Because change always involves having to deal with abits, prints and patterns that are already present in and around us for many years, even the seemingly smallest developmental task can present a formidable challenge.

The way we form in the first twelve years of our life has a profound influence on the rest of our life. Mock a child during this period and you have an adult that will, for the rest of their life, be subject in some way – consciously or semi-consciously – to fear of mockery with behaviour patterns to match that will turn up in every situation. Yes, EVERY situation. Unless, of course, they are fortunate enough to have the willpower and knowhow to change or come across someone who can help them do so. Fundamentally, it is a small, simple change in self-view. But because by now it concerns a psychology that metastases into every aspect of their thinking, that has grown its own omnipresent inner web, it is a small change that implies a change in their whole mental framework.

Think of a small change that you may wish to make in how you think, your self-view, habit or behaviour. As already mentioned, even if it concerns the smallest adjustment, it is never small. Which is why one of the great wisdoms in the process of personal development is knowing what small change to pick up on and then, investing a continuum of tiny super-efforts in making a tiny little change that, time and again, echoes throughout your being.

Engaging in this development work instigates an inner chain reaction that makes hundreds of little changes in yourself in little ‘things’ that are connected in hidden ways to what you are working on, resulting in overall improvement and refinement.

Every living person, no matter how well she or he may be doing, has a ‘thing’ that they could do with changing and refining. Some of those ‘things’ – please feel free to pick on an example that is relevant to you – can, at times, make your and other’s people’s lives unnecessarily difficult. So which is yours?

If you want to do something about it, the formula is ever so simple:
What is the one change that if you start working on today will make the greatest positive, constructive difference for you and for those around you?
What do you want to put instead?
Make up your mind, decide and start the PR – practice and repetition – of personal development.
Live the change you want to be by making many little super efforts in making that tiny change.
Give it time. You may need to repeat this practice for a good couple of years or more, but it’s absolutely worth the investment.
Find ways to make sure you remember – we tend to forget what we promised ourselves in the heat of our daily battles..!

It is never easy at the point of action, but it can be done. Make that change to then discover why the world we live in is stuck in a deepening status-quo.

Real personal development is a practice with huge multiples of return on investment – much of it turning up in the most positively unlikely ways. Do one thing for many reasons to get many different results.

And lastly here – arguably the greatest development in these times of rapid change, great opportunities as well as lures, uncertainty and unpredictability is what we will not yield to: Great people are known as much and more for what they say ‘no’ to as they are for what they do. Think about it.

Investing In Your Personal Development: Much In Little

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