There is much more to learning than just gaining knowledge. Unfortunately, a lot of people stop at that point when they finish their schooling and don’t value what learning is really all about, which is where personal development often comes in later in life.   The real value from it comes from application of knowledge and what is done with it and how it impacts a person or others.  This is why learning itself is only a portion of what makes up personal development and exactly why I’ve developed such a passion for the subject, since it can have such an impact on contribution to a better life for oneself and to others!

Personal development and realizing how impacting its cycle can be has become a huge proponent in my life to take on whatever challenges I face and apply my knowledge  in order to let it shape me and things in my life.  You can do the same and allow yourself to change through a learning or personal development cycle.  It takes a long time to understand the cycle through trial and error and its much more effective to have models for things that can be utilized to gain the most from it.  The same is true with the personal development cycle if you understand the whole cycle to be able to recognize it, and all then enable it to occur, you can take on new challenges and shifts in your life much more easily.  I have always loved change and learning new things, so this has become much more of a passion for me, but the cycle can build that passion for anyone who recognizes the value in changing themselves for the better.   Without it, you can easily fall to becoming very conditioned by people around you who are afraid of change and don’t think they can learn things well and you can easily become complacent and stuck within a very small comfort zone.

Make a Choice to Learn Something New

The first step is to make the decision and choose to learn something new.  This is a mental step and is to overcome the internal barrier that often holds us back.  This is more than it sound like as it is so easy to drop into a complacent life without venturing into new activities, learning new things or allowing change to be faced.  Often the security people have in the consistent lifestyle keeps them locked into that and they are afraid to change it as it seems to threaten that security.  The best way out of this is to know that change can bring about even more good things and a more enjoyable life, not less.  Especially in the realm of personal development as most things in it are about improving life, yourself or others and so the change that will occur will almost always result in bringing about more lasting happiness in life.  Who can argue against that just for a little short term work or risk to achieve it?  If you want to develop yourself, you must decide that you are ready and willing and commit yourself to making it happen!

Take Action to Learn

A choice on it’s own still has to backed up by action.  Goal setting, positive thinking, the law of attraction; whatever methods you use or are familiar with to motivate you, you still must put those thoughts and ideas into action for them to ever become reality.  One of the hardest things in learning something new is just how to start or to take that initial step or action.  The biggest reason for this is that people often make it more difficult than they need to.  Break the problem or goal down into simple steps.  Do some brainstorming to write down all the little steps and pieces that would have to occur to help get started.  For example, instead of looking at learning a new language, you might list a bunch of simple steps that could get you started, such as:

• Research which languages you might want to learn
• Find some online resources for languages
• Talk to some friends to find out who you know that speaks that language already
• Research some books, courses.
• Change your computer’s interface or a favorite program (that you already know well) into that language
• Create a month by month break down of your goals (set subgoals)
• Identify some small but important milestone to reach (learn 50 verbs or the sound of the alphabet in a new language)

Master it to Make it a Habit

Mastery takes time, and plenty of practice. All those small actions that you take will move you closer and closer to mastery and will begin to shift into a need to repeat and practice more of the same to really understand and be competent and confident in your new learned skills/tasks/etc. One aspect of mastery is the concept by Gladwell in “Outliers” about the 10,000 hrs it takes to become an expert in any skill or area.  An expert in a field or on a large topic may very well take this amount of time to truly master, however, it doesn’t mean everything takes that long to master and often something can be mastered in only a few hours of practice.  Whatever the size is of your new personal development, practice what you are learning over and over to make it easy and to gain that confidence to repeat it without difficulty.  The more you repeat something the easier it will become and you will slowly learn to make it a habit.

Let it Reshape Your Beliefs to Create Lasting Change

One of the best methods to create lasting beliefs and change around a new habit is to teach it to someone else. Write about it, show someone or guide a group to learn something that you have already done.  This will truly have you thinking and explaining why something is important, how to learn it most effectively, what are the things that helped or hindered you along the way and last but not least, it really proves that you know your stuff. True mastery of any subject matter or skill can easily be demonstrated when it is taught to someone else and to do it well reinforces your beliefs on the subject. Knowing all the pitfalls and struggles that you had in learning something gives you a significant advantage to help someone else avoid those and learn the skill more easily through your guidance.

Mastery of something will not only change what you know, but also what you believe you know, which is much more powerful.  Beliefs steer much of your decisions and lifestyle and as you change your beliefs on elements you learn, this slow start to also develop the belief that you can learn anything.  To me, this is the real secret of the personal development cycle and once this belief is formed begins to develop that you can in fact learn anything, it can make your choices and learning process much easier and faster.  So, let the cycle of personal development shape your beliefs and utilize that to repeat the cycle in other areas of your life.

You may also check out some information on learning management system from Halogen to quickly and easily see a return on your training investments.

Posted by Mike King under Learning | 6 Comments »

The following is a guest post by Ripley Daniels.  I’m sure any of you who travel or even if you are very active and mobile in your own community will find these tips useful!

Working while traveling is telecommuting, but taken to a whole new level. You’ll have to develop work arounds to help you deal with fluctuating email and Internet access, and if you travel internationally, you’ll want to bring a nice set of international outlet converters along (yes, you’ll need different converters in different countries). You’ll have to keep track of colleagues working in different time zones while coping with jet lag yourself. And you’ll want to do all of this while traveling light. Here are a few tips to keep you on track and help you to avoid making yourself crazy:

Travel Light

All travelers are happier if they have less to carry. It just works that way. Moreover, airlines will charge you overage fees if your luggage is too heavy – i.e., if you’ve stuffed it full of books and papers. The solution is to pack whatever you can in lightweight electronic format. Scan the papers you need to bring along into pdf format (and back them up in some kind of Cloud format that you can access if you experience some kind of emergency that involves breaking your laptop or losing your backup drive). Bear in mind that you can use an iPod or MP3 player as a back-up computer hard drive, if you have one with plenty of extra space. Even if you don’t, it might be worth the investment to buy a used 16 GB iPod simply for storage purposes – iPods are about the slimmest, most lightweight, and hence most easily portable hard drives on the market. You’ll have no problem making room for one in your carry-on or laptop case.

Plan to Work On and Offline

The Cloud is the traveler’s friend, giving you emergency access to your files if you end up having to reach them from someone else’s computer, but don’t rely too heavily on the documents you’ve stored in Google Documents or Dropbox or in a Huddle workspace. While you’re traveling, those documents are there as emergency backup. Your working documents are the ones you have with you, the ones you can access and continue to work on offline, during times of spotty Internet access. Plan to work offline most of the time, and have a plan to make the most of the few minutes of Internet access that you may have here and there. Your plan should include:

1. Remote Access and Data
   • A resident email program on your laptop that will download your email for you to read and respond to offline.
   • A travel email plan to keep you from getting bogged down reading junk email. You may want to set up a new email account purely for use while you are traveling. Then, configure your current account to forward only those emails that you know you will want to see. Or, arrange for an assistant or virtual assistant to check and respond to your email for you, forwarding to you only those emails that urgently require your immediate attention.
   • A remote access plan to give you access to your home or office desktop computer while you are away. If you forget to bring a file that you have on your desktop, it may save you enormous time and hassle to be able to access your home computer. With a program such as LogMeIn or TeamViewer, you can not only pull up the files on your desktop from a distance, but you can also attach a file from your desktop to an email message – which can be very handy when you get a panicked call from a colleague asking if you have another copy of a document that you finished and sent off two months ago. Some types of remote access software will let you network your various devices – your desktop, your laptop, your mobile phone, or even a flashdrive, so that you can easily access files on any device from any other device. However, if your needs are more limited, and if you are running Windows, you may find that the built in Remote Desktop Connection in Windows is enough for you – check in the Accessories folder of your Start menu.
   • A program like Mozilla Firefox’s Read It Later add-on, which will allow you to save interesting sites on the Internet to a list that you can refer to when you return home and have time to putz around on the Internet again.
   • A program such as FeedDemon that will download updates to websites that you regularly read, such as newspaper websites, for you to review offline.
2. Plan Your Collaborations

If your profession involves working closely with several colleagues, you will want to come up with a plan for collaborating with them from afar. Fortunately, this is not difficult, as many people collaborate from a distance full-time these days, even when not traveling. The basics of your collaboration plan might include:

• A shared online workspace, such as Huddle. A workspace such as this can be a centralized way to do many of the ideas that I’ve suggested individually – many such programs offer whiteboards, file sharing, telephone conferencing, and can integrate with calendar programs.
• A place to store shared notes and documents. This could be the shared online workspace mentioned above, or it could be something simpler, such as an Evernote or Stixy account that you set up for a particular project. An Evernote account will allow you to store notes, webpages, copies of pdf documents…anything. Or you could set up an online Wiki file for your project, allowing all the members (or just particular members) of your team to make changes to your project guidelines, for example, as needed. Evernote is set up for individuals, but Stixy is meant for teams of people collaborating together.
• Try using online collaborative brainstorming or writing software, such as Wridea , Writeboard, ReviewBasics, or EditGrid – there are many such applications out there, and quite a few of them are free. Some of these applications, such as Writeboard, can also be used by an individual to save multiple versions of a document, making it easy for you to roll back to an earlier version if necessary.
• You might want to set up an email newsgroup, such as Google or Yahoo Groups, to allow you to send information and updates about your schedule to many different colleagues simultaneously. Or have your friends, colleagues, and family members follow you on Twitter, and tweet to your network when you need everyone to know something that will fit into a short tweet. But be careful about publically available tweets when you are broadcasting potentially private information, such as dates when you will be away from home.

Finally, for colleagues, friends and family members who need to know your travel schedule and itinerary, it just makes sense to post your travel details on an online calendar, such as Google Calendar, that you can grant access to as needed. That way, if you are out of touch (on a plane or away from an Internet access point), your colleagues can still check to find out when you are due at a particular location. If you are using a shared online workspace such as Huddle, you might want to post your travel itinerary there, instead.

Happy travels!

Ripley Daniels is an editor at Without the Stress, a passport, travel visa, and immigration advisory firm located in Los Angeles.

Posted by Mike King under Business | 6 Comments »

I have a few great links to share from March that I think everyone will enjoy.  Most of the titles here speak for themselves and they are all great articles!

• Marshall over at BondChristian has an awesome series of articles here on Learning to Be More Childlike.  (Forget Worrying and Live Now, How to Play, Are We?)
• The Ultimate Guide to Blog Post Promotion by Kikolani is now available.  Kikolani is an awesome resource for blog building and so this book is sure to provide the guide you need to promote your posts!
• Should You Become An Expert? by Stephen at Ratracetrap
• Jonathan has another excellent article on empowering beliefs, one of my favorite subject
• I really like this article by Sid called, How to Organize Your Life
• Nine Things Successful People Do Differently
• Here’s A Secret for Personal Success
• How to Capture The Ideas Worth Pursuing

Posted by Mike King under Life | 3 Comments »

How the Need to Control Hurts Us And How to Let It Go

Author: Daniel A. Miller

COMMENT TO WIN THIS BOOK!

First of all, I was very happy to receive a copy of this book from the publisher and by my own mistake, I ended up receiving two from them.  So, I would like to offer the second copy I have for free to one of my readers.  To be eligible, I am going to draw from the first 10 commenters who leave an example of how letting go of control either helps them or how holding onto it has hindered them.  I’ll send the free copy of the book to you after drawing the winner!

The book itself covers the topic of control thoroughly and specific the problems of trying to control the people and events around you.  Its evident now almost everyone faces these challenges at varying levels and quite likely, you will have a lot to learn from the life experience of the author, Daniel Miller.  The two most powerful messages from this are:

• Accepting What Is
• Addressing Our Fear

Accepting What Is

There are many problems with how much and how often people feel they need to control situations.  Acceptance replaces that compulsion and puts the focus on ourselves instead of desire to change others and uncontrollable circumstances.  This acceptance in life drives a peace within yourself and state of mind that lets you connect more easily with others without the burdens and stresses we create by feeling we can control it.  Miller provides many ideas and suggestions on how a person can start to accept things openly.  Questioning the situations and impact of decision, examining what we get from seeking the control (which is usually nothing but stress), and by looking for what we can have in its place are all great methods to start the journey of easily accepting life as it comes.  No mistake is made pretending it is easy, and I easily agree that it is not, it requires a mindset shift, beliefs and new habits to truly let acceptance become your norm but in the end it is well worth it and the serenity found in doing so makes life much easier to enjoy!

Addressing Our Fears

Strong emotions are quick to control overwhelm us and emotions such as anxiety, anger and fear pressure us to manipulate people and events to get what we think we need, control!  Often this is done in situations where people are quick to decide they know what is best over other people and they close off consideration of what others may need or want for their own emotional driven desires.  Many people let these fears infiltrate many aspects of their lives and the fears can dominate what they think and then consequently, how they behave.  Fear quickly clouds judgment and can hard to detect and even harder to break free from.  It does however, start by realizing the grip fear can have and then by finding ways to address it.  Miller provides guidance here on confronting fears and how to learn to shift away from their controlling nature.

There are more controlling factors, not just fear and Miller covers these topics as well, although not as thoroughly:

• Anger / Resentment
• Avoidance
• Parenting Control
• Love Control
• Sports Control
• Work Control
• Creative Control

Final Thoughts

Overall, this is a great book.  It’s really aimed at people who struggle with control in the first place and that is the only reason I didn’t enjoy it as much as many other reads.  I don’t struggle with control at all, fears or not accepting life as it comes.  Those things are easy for me now and while the advice in the book may not have applied, I can certainly see how I could have used it years ago when I did face more of those challenges.  My experience in changing those aspects in my life and now easily having that serenity and peace, does however make it easy to recognize the value of this book and Miller’s techniques.  The only difference that I have learned is really a new definition of control.  With emotions out of the way affecting one’s life, I define control very differently now and it seems to me that true control of your life and ability to enjoy it and connect with others comes when you get to that state of serenity and don’t let negative emotions take over your life.  In my mind, when negative emotions steer your behaviors, you have NO control whatsoever.  The desire to control others as this book covers so well is true, but eventually the control comes back to yourself, your emotions and your reactions in life.  Once you have that, in a way, it is not loosing control at all, but actually gaining control of what matters more in your life, your feelings, your connections and your reactions to circumstances.  All that gives you more peace and serenity, and the control is in a completely different place, that’s all.

So, I think you will enjoy the book as well and it would be especially useful if you relate to another of those fears and negative emotions and feel out of control.

COMMENT TO WIN THIS BOOK!

Again, to win a free copy of this book, you need to comment below and leave an example of how letting go of control either helps you or how holding onto it has hindered you.  I’ll send the free copy of the book to you after drawing the winner!

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 7 Comments »