I guess there’s a big clue in the title – PERSONAL development. Personal development is all about you. It’s about improving the quality of your life by developing your own life plan. Unless you take the time to set out your own plan, the chances are that you’re working to someone elses plan. It could be ‘the company’ plan or your bosses plan or it may be that you are just kind of wandering through life without any specific destination.
That’s fine if you are totally satisfied with mediocrity but if you really want to make the most out of the short time you have on this earth then you need to get to work on your plan and, as they say, there’s no time like the present!
My first job is to convince you that you can improve your life and your lifestyle by learning some of the fundamental personal development techniques – so let’s get to work straight away!
Let’s say that you are going on a vacation to Europe. First up, you’re going to need to book your flights and your accommodation. Once that’s done you will need to find out what the climate is like – it would be no fun to turn up in your favourite comfy shorts if it’s going to be zero degrees and snowing! You’ll also need to know where all the best tourist attractions are and you might need to learn some of the local language depending on whether the locals speak English or not. It would also be handy to know what sorts of things you are allowed to bring into and out of your destination – it wouldn’t be pleasant to be fined for carrying prohibited goods in your luggage. With all of that covered, you can look forward to a well planned, pleasant and restful vacation.
I bet you know where I’m going with this! Now consider that same vacation, but without any destination or planning. You could probably do it, but I bet it would be much more stressful than relaxing. You would have to speak with the various airlines at the airport, find out where they fly to and hope that you could get a flight out to somewhere that you really want to visit (and hopefully soon!). When you arrived at your destination you would spend some time finding accommodation – and what if there’s a big event in town and all the local accommodation is booked? You would have to pack warm weather and cold weather clothes as you don’t know what the climate is going to be like. Now you definitely know where I’m going with this!
The fact is that we generally spend more time planning vacations than we do planning our lives. Looking at the vacation example I don’t think it’s difficult to see the difference that some careful planning can make. It works the same for your life and your lifestyle. If you have a destination and a plan then you have something specific to work towards. It might be a new house, a new car, to be doing a job you really enjoy. It could be a major goal like financial independence. With a solid plan to achieve these sort of goals you have an exponentially better chance of seeing that through and having everything you want from life.
As the first exercise in changing your life, I want you to make a list of fifty things you would really like to have. It can be anything. A better relationship with friends or family. Learn to play a musical instrument. Get that new car you’ve needed for the past ten years. Be able to travel when and where you want to – whenever you want to. It should only take you around 15-30 minutes to get your list of fifty.
Get to know your list and in my next installment we’ll sort through those things so you can start developing a plan.
