The Top 5 Reasons to Start Personal Development
The words personal development, self development and self improvement, all one and the same, have been bandied about for decades. Best sellers have been written and bought and have given some people the boost that they needed to change their life. Yet many such products have languished on the bookshelf, never read or acted upon. In this time of world wide economic downturn, the personal development industry is booming as people seek meaning and direction in their lives. But what is personal development, what can it do for you?
First, almost every person has beliefs that they have a very strong relationship with having cultivated that belief for a long time. Some of these are given to us when we are very young as gifts from our parents, grandparents or other people like teachers who we may have grown to love and trust. These beliefs must be right so we hold on to them very tightly as guide posts for the way we live our lives. Often though, these beliefs hold us back from achieving all that we possibly could. As an example you may believe that everyone grows up and gets a job, they work hard at that job, they earn an income and look forward to the day that they can retire. Perhaps you then wish, at some point in your life, to buy a business but you find that you can not quite do it. You really want to, you have done heaps of research, you have even found the perfect business. But you still can not take that leap of faith that is required.
Could it be that the belief that you grow up and get a job is so strong that it overrules your desire to be your own boss? Limiting beliefs such as these can and do hold many people back from their dreams and a life of freedom. The best personal development programs will help you to clear limiting beliefs form your life, leaving you in the driving seat and not some misguided but well meant messages that you received in the past.
Second, perhaps like many people, you have spent years wondering what your real purpose is in life. Well what if I told you that it is to be happy, enjoy life and have fun. Would your life right now qualify for any of these titles?
You will contribute far more to your work and the community, not to mention your family and friends if you are happy and enjoying yourself. There has been ample research done around this very subject and there are now happiness gurus and even laughter experts who will help you to find this very essence of life; happiness, enjoyment, pleasure and fun. Just imagine how you would feel to hear your children say “my dad/mum is great fun, we have crazy times together”. Through personal development you will have every opportunity to create a lifetime of happiness, fun and laughter. That is your main work and personal development will help you to do it.
Third, do you have a burning desire to achieve prosperity at every level; financially, in relationships, physically, emotionally, with your lifestyle and have plenty of time. Sometimes I hear people talk about prosperity as if it is only about money while others talk about prosperity from a much broader perspective. One of my clients recently told me that to her, prosperity was about the feeling of success and that she felt successful when she had time to herself without having to be working her business and she had the freedom to make her own decisions in relation to travel, where she lived and what she spent her money. She went on to say that having this feeling of success in all areas of her life was being prosperous. Successful and prosperous people are usually devotees of personal development.
Fourth, personal development will help you to become the person who you want to be. Often people have carried with them from childhood, a dream to be a certain person. This might be a person who helps others or a person who changes the way we treat the environment, or a person who changes the policies of government so that there is a fairer go for more people. Whatever, personal development helps you to realise those dreams; to reconnect with them in the first instance and to work out how to take personal action to achieve them. You can be the person who you truly want to be and you could even be better!
Fifth, through using personal development strategies and actions you can act to make the world a better place; you can spread generosity and appreciation wherever you go. Learn how to shift your focus from those things that you do not like to see to those things that you do like to see and then how to make room in your life by being generous and compassionate with others. Now that has got to be a good thing.
Let me know what you think about personal development programs that you have done.
How to Become an Entrepreneur
On the topic of becoming and entrepreneur, I am inspired by a number of resources. First is the work of Napoleon Hill, the grandfather of personal development who produced the first handbook for entrepreneurs in 1928. Read almost any personal development works of recent times and you will see the direct link to Think and Grow Rich, the first work of Napoleon Hill. Hill outlines a number of traits that he regards as essential if you wish to succeed. You must have or get desire, faith, knowledge, imagination, organisation, be decisive and persistence. He links these with a number of developmental activities such as taking control of your thoughts, masterminding with other like minded people, tapping into the subconscious mind, learning to use your intuition and getting rid of fear. Anyone looking to become an entrepreneur would do well to access this book and read it over and over.
The second resource that is available is the Internet and a search of entrepreneur or entrepreneurs will yield a host of information and from my reading, much of it excellent. Entrepreneurship is becoming a key platform for educators of all kinds which is hardly surprising given the number of people who are no longer prepared to spend their entire life in a job; know by some as Just Over Broke. Questacon have a lovely page called What is an Entrepreneur to which you could go as a starting point. Entrepreneur has some fantastic resources and even has this page to help you with ideas – it is a great site, just persevere with the advertising. And on Becoming an Entrepreneur you will find lots of practical advice. Give this a try and it might help you to start your entrepreneurial journey.
My favourite ever resource however, is Polaris Media Group, which covers the personal development aspect of being an entrepreneur like magic. These programs are simply the best that you will find and have helped countless people get started on the journey of a lifetime.
Sun Bird and the Rhythm of Life
Yesterday our sun bird pair (we know that they are ours because we are theirs – at least that is how they treat us) fledged the first of their two chicks and today the second. We get a great deal of joy from watching this natural cycle take place in our living room. You see, we live in Cairns in tropical north Queensland and our pair have nested in the shelter of our veranda building their second nest there. We live on our veranda for most of the year so we consider that they are in our living room! We do many things especially for our sun birds, for example we only sweep the veranda, never use the blower while they are there, we give them perfect twine to nest on and ensure that traffic is kept to a minimum in their area. We also hold the water hose at just the right flow so that they can bathe. In return they trust us with their presence, show off their babies to us and talk to us on a regular basis.
Every day, we learn something more from our sun bird pair and their families, particularly about trust. They have shown us that even such a tiny bird will trust us if we show that we are trustworthy. How could we possibly ever have thought that trust is about anything else! They have also shown us that we can have faith in the rhythm of life, to get out of the way and let life get on with it. Of course they are on purpose – when it is nesting time, they are furiously building, when it is sitting time, mother bird is diligent and when it is growing time they work feverishly to provide for their young. It is full on action. However they are in flow with the natural rhythm of life and I am grateful to have learned that lesson from them. The total joy of sun birds.
It would be great to hear your bird stories.
Simple Tips for Success
Business success hinges on several simple but complicated key areas and not on good luck, being in the right place at the right time, knowing what you are doing or being born to it. Although all of that helps, when you look around you and talk with other successful people, you will find the following five factors are present. Take a look at this list and if you do not qualify as having these five key factors present then get yourself onto a good personal development program and grow them quickly if you wish to achieve business success.
Think positively. Find me one successful person, in business or any area of life who does not take a positive attitude to anything that they do. This is important for more than one reason; it is important because successful people attend to three main areas in life – their business, their health and their life balance. Being positive is well recognised as contributing to good health and positive people easily see many of the opportunities that come their way in business and in life balance. Positive people have energy and enthusiasm and get things done. Action is required if you wish to be successful.
Avoid negativity in any form. Negativity draws energy away from you, it positions you to miss opportunities that are sitting right in front of you and it allows you to see only the bad things around you rather than the good. It drives you down. Negativity also attracts negativity, call it karma or the Law of Attraction, but negativity attracts negativity and negative people have to work so much harder to find success. So work easier, identify your own negativity, act on it, stay away from negative people and find yourself a group of positive and successful people to associate with. Find me a successful person who has a negative attitude!
Be disciplined and take action. Things do not just happen for you, even if you do have the power of the Law of Attraction working for you. You have to determine what you want, what you will have to do to get it, be disciplined and get to it. Be disciplined in every area of your life; be good to yourself and make time for your needs, set up your day, week, month and year to take all of the things that you will do to succeed into account. Schedule them into your life and finish them. Celebrate each and every one of your actions and achievements and get to it again.
Take care of your own motivation. It is not up to anyone else to provide you with motivation. This is an internal thing and if you are low on motivation then get your self onto a good personal development program. You will never be sorry because then you will look for inspiration and not motivation. And then feed your inspiration weekly. Never be afraid to spend money on keeping your self in the forefront, because when it comes to business success, only you will make the difference and you are what you think and believe. Thankfully you can take control of both. I can not emphasise enough – become a devotee of self development. Get onto the best program and if you can not find one then contact me from this site – I will be glad to assist because there is nothing that I love more than to see people succeed.
Persevere. Big shots are just little shots who keep shooting. Go into your venture with the attitude that you will give it everything you have, not just give it a go. Remember this, it has taken you years to get to where you are now, it might take you some more years to hit the top and you do not want to give up when success may be just around the corner. Keep at it, have faith in yourself and cultivate confidence – there’s that self development program again.
Aloha and Mahalo Hawaii
With one full and glorious day to enjoy Waikiki, I am, at this very moment enjoying a warm Hawaiian evening after a day of playing the tourist. And I do mean playing – just a lovely day of fun, happiness and enjoyment. Some of that around food as we continue to taste and be tempted by the amazing array of food that is available in this wonderful place. I am feeling a little contemplative which is hardly surprising since today we also visited Pearl Harbour and learned just a little more about the history of that world changing time. And I have to say that what stands out for me around that nightmare event is the way in which people here have moved on and it would seem, embraced a very forgiving and accepting attitude towards the other parties involved.
This 10 days in Hawaii has been a gift for me. Another opportunity to extend my personal learning as well as to meet and enjoy another culture. On the Big Island we had all of the pleasure of our personal development conference and the magic of the presenters and associating with highly successful and positive people. We also toured the volcanos and looked into the active crater of Kilauea Caldera, walked on Black Sands Beach and marvelled at the huge expanses of old lava. We luxuriated in all that the Hilton Waikoloa Resort had to offer (got a great massage), made new friends, watched hanu (turtles) frolic in the clear waters and watched amazing sunsets. All in all a good time was had by both of us.
Now, as we prepare to make the very most of every moment left here in Hawaii, in the contemplative mood of the moment, I have discovered the very sacred meaning of the two most popular words here; Aloha and Mahalo. In general terms Aloha is used as a greeting and Mahalo as a thank you. However they represent paramount Hawaiian values and should only be used when you a feeling genuine and they are said from that place inside you. So full of good grace and faith at this very moment, I feel fully qualified to say Aloha and Mahalo to this gorgeous place and to wish those greetings for all of you.
