I am happy to introduce a new guest author today who has been in the field of personal development for many years.  I was asked for several writers to describe what impact personal development has had on their lives and Anita provides us with her account of it in her life below.  Please we’d love to see any comments and discussion on the topic and feel free to connect with her using her contact info at the end of the article.

I have engaged with personal development for over 20 years now.  On the one hand it saved my life. At the other end of that spectrum it has been the making of me, in terms of living with purpose and joy. The two areas of major impact were:

• enabling me to survive tragedy
• then to rediscover  that place beyond survival called living

This process was certainly not an overnight one, but I often think we find the true power of personal development when our back is against the wall, and we open our hearts.

Beginning in Personal Development

Personal development saved my life because at the time of first embracing it in my life, I was actually lucky to be alive, but having survived major family tragedy, I was not thankful to be alive initially.

It is something of a paradox that one can be alive yet dead on the inside, or die being alive on the inside.  Had I physically died at the time I would have died being dead on the inside. However my challenge in surviving tragedy was to move beyond and resurrect the life within me from that lifeless state.  Up till that point I had trained in psychiatry, yet my knowledge of psychiatry alone was insufficient for the journey I needed to complete.  Psychiatry was very much about helping people become functional and compus mentus, able to cope and manage situations.  That type of survival mode was not enough for me.  I write more about this in my book ‘Breaking Free From The Prison Of Survival – how I went from survival to living following major personal tragedy’

The difference that personal development made initially was to help me become more aware of my true nature, and that seed had been sown during my years as a psychiatric nurse. As I awoke to that I became more aware of my potential to change my life, something I had previously felt powerless or constrained to do.  The more I read about this aspect and listened to those who had  done likewise the more I started to feel inspired that these same processes could help me.  The next thing I started to grasp was about how my past conditioning had led me to feel so dis empowered and robbed of joy.

The Domino Effect

So my learning then involved reconditioning myself in the areas that felt greatly affected.  What I noticed then was that the questions I started to ask myself led to self awareness, as I observed my responses without judgement, and new solutions started to present themselves.  The increased self awareness led to a domino type effect. Insights led to seeing new possibilities. New possibilities bred new choices. New choices led to a feeling of empowerment with a new hope and confidence to change things.  This enabled me to identify the areas I wished to experience growth and change in, and then to draw up a plan of personal development that addressed each of those areas.

It was very much a case of practicing till new habits formed in my mind, emotions, body and spirit. This process of self awareness, new choices and skills acquisition was what enabled me to go from not being happy to have survived  major trauma, to surviving well.  However the journey felt far from complete at that point as being one of life’s survivors no longer felt such a noble destination point.

The key growth area for me now was learning to develop a deeply loving relationship with myself.

So many people have their identity invested solely in external things which can make for an inconsistent sense of joy and self-esteem. I replaced that with loving myself without condition and experiencing the joy that comes from genuine gratitude for all that I uniquely am and have. I added coaching and mentor-ship into the mix, as I had learnt about the power of these processes, and needed to form new habits.

Things  started to crystallize the more I grew as a person.  In truth whilst I had survived near death, it took me a while to move from managing my life to embracing my creative power.  The realization that I could start to design my life from here on in, rather than create by default, was one that filled me with a new lease of life, yet took constant exposure to start to grasp

Brain Tools

Two particular tools that helped me were applied kinesiology and brain wave entrainment. Kinesiology has several applications.  In principle Kinesiology works with the human energy field beyond the mere conscious level through muscle testing, to check alignment across a number of issues.

Through this process I was able to gain more accurate insights where my conscious and subconscious were giving conflicting information.  I was able to progress more rapidly with this tool in my hand and I had one of the country’s best practitioners, which was equally important.  I incorporate this in my coaching business now.  I thoroughly recommend kinesiology to assist you along your path too.

Brain wave entrainment provided a more passive form of meditation where my concentration was deficient, and enabled me to access deeper levels of relaxation and capacity to process change.

Finally intuition has played an enormous part in the doors that have opened up to express the value I bring to the world. I used to be very left brain dominant, yet as I developed intuition, the insights gained caused opportunities to present quickly.

Conclusions

Now as I look to publish my book which has already received top industry endorsement, I am left in awe and amazement at the processes described above that took me from mere survival to living, with a sense of purpose and vision I know I can realize.

I leave you with some tips to turn your life round or take it to a new level:

1.  Ask evaluative questions of your life and answer them honestly
2. Use kinesiology to check out your alignment
3. Learn to ask empowering questions of your life.  They will give shape to your life
4. Develop a deeply loving relationship with yourself as you would a best friend.  This will result in great joy and provide a powerful platform from which to create with intent.
5. Identify the areas of growth needed and identify those who have sufficiently mastered those areas that you can learn from
6. Cultivate your intuition.  It will be priceless
7. Constantly expose yourself to these processes till the areas you wish to see growth become second nature

Anita Narayan is a highly endorsed author, speaker and coach with specialities in reducing cardiovascular aging , accelerated learning and sports performance.  She is soon to release her book ‘Breaking Free From the Prison Of Survival – how I went from survival to living following major personal tragedy’ which has received top industry acclaim. You can find out more at www.mypersonalbestcoaching.com

Posted by Mike King under Success | 6 Comments »

How to Make Your Next 30 Days The Best Ever

Author : Tom Connellan

I have always enjoyed business books written with strong things to teach, but done in a fable or story context, such as Lencioni’s book, The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team.  Connellan has done the same with The 1% Solution since it is written as a story, yet with very clear elements taught to the reader.  This particular story is of a guy, named Ken who had reached a point where things seemed to be a struggle in his life and he was noticing vast differences in people around him, some doing well, some struggling.  The coach of all people on his son’s soccer team met Ken and steered him towards a new path with the help of a group of others in a 1% solutions team.

The concept from the group was clear, that doing everything in your life just one percent better and constantly striving (deliberately) to improve just one percent can have dramatic positive consequences.  The difference between many first place medals in Olympics and no metal is often as small as 1% so that 1% can make a big difference. Whether you are after an Olympic goal or not, everyone has the ability to be better than they are, and the 1% solution provides a model and outlook towards life to do just that, be better.

As Ken meets and spends time with each of the 6 people in the 1% group, he learns important concepts about learning, improving and focusing his life around becoming a better person in many areas.  The group of 6 is realistic in having Ken think about how to get better than what HE already is, instead of thinking about where he’d like to be the best which compares to others and often holds people back from improving step by step.  The messages are very practical and cover a lot of personal development aspects I’m sure many people have seen or heard.  The author puts them into context of a person’s life and tells them in a way that is compelling and believable.  Here are just a few of the examples and messages from the text:

• You can’t be 100% better than everyone else, but you can be 1% better at hundreds of things
• Not everyone can be great, but everyone can be better than they are right now
• The more you get done, the more motivated you are to do things.  So you do more things, and you get even more motivated.  It’s a self-feeding cycle!
• The way to start is by taking action – even if it’s a small action.
• Too many people who have been around for 30 years don’t really have 30 years’ experience.  They have one year’s experience 30 times.
• What sets apart the top 1% is that they cycle throughout the day between periods of concentrated effort and planned recovery.

So, there are many other messages and I think you will certainly enjoy this book.  The author covers and uses motivation and engagement topics, teaches elements of the Pareto or 80/20 principle, emphasizes Gladwell’s 10000 hours to become an expert message, covers deliberate practice to get better faster, dives into a 30 day formula to form or break habits, includes the important aspect of properly resting and recovering from 1% progress and finally includes how all this can then be passed on to others and shared again.    If you’ve read a ton of other content in personal development, you will likely not come across anything really new in this but at the very least; it will reinforce many common aspects of becoming a better person.  If you’re searched and read some content on personal development and want a book that is easy to read yet packed with useful content and tips, then this book is definitely for you. It is an easy read, fairly short and the story is well written with a good mix of dialogue where Ken learns from the 1% group and narrative writing of his thoughts and actions.  There are additional resources at the author’s website if you want more information.  I’d love to hear your comments or questions about the book if you have read it or not, as the topics are all worthy of discussion!

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 8 Comments »

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 »

This article is a short story of the struggle that life can present and how it aligns with personal development.

A young man that had grown up with taking on new things developed a real love for adventure and uniqueness.  He was always comfortable doing things that others dare not do.  Some of these things were in regular activities like hobbies, sports and school.  School was easy since the teachers told him everything he needed and quickly realized that if he actually paid attention the content was easy to digest and understand.  This was especially true, as he was a audible learner so quickly picked up on the classroom teachings.  Sure, he had some learning talent and inspiration to start well in school but this become a much larger cascade effect.  In his case, school became easier and easier and it only continued to build his confidence and learning skills.  Doing well in school and learning quickly was his first obvious experience with going against the grain.  Others struggled to learn and had a hard time in school and that seemed to be the general theme for the masses.  This independent style he had in learning added more to his confidence and he continued to develop a sense of self that didn’t fit into the mass mentality.

In going against the grain and knowing he could learn quickly, he also challenged himself to develop that skill in new uncommon sports, hobbies and skills.  Each of these presented a challenge to overcome and he developed an internal motivation to tackle any challenge head on and with full force to quickly overcome it and move past it.  Years went by mastering this skill and going against the grain of society’s seemingly normal outlook that life is bleak and tough.  He would have no part of that however, every challenge was welcomed and he continually overcame adversity with hard work, dedication and that massive motivation that was built up inside him to grow and conquer whatever he faced.  All this made him feel even more confident and satisfied by experiencing many successes in life through achievement.  He chased more and more achievements and as years started to pass, realized that the achievements were leaving him less and less content and that success had to be more than this.  He started to know that success was more than this but never realized what he was missing or what he was needing in order to have that.  For a some time, the confidence he had built up inside surfaced as arrogance and egotism which quickly impacted his influence on others and success was not something he could grasp when it came to his influence with others or even with himself.  Influence with himself is really one’s ability to change them self and grow.

Finally with the support of close friends, a deep spiritual journey and a number of significant events and training courses, he was fortunately enough to face the bitter truth which would reveal to him that his confidence had been shielding him from seeing what was really important in his life.  In fact, he had so much to discover about himself that he literally felt like a different person.  He changed drastically and stepped away from directly chasing success and started applying his learning skills to learning more about his influence on others and how to interact, work with and to connect with others at a deeper level.  It wasn’t until he was able to get past the confidence shield that self-discovery was even available to him.

So, with having a new appreciation for no limits learning, it became a much more valuable area in life and the realization that the best things to learn and experience are only available when he gets past his own limits, whether they are known or not.  Often the limiting beliefs are unknown without stepping out of the common safety box we live in and seek out adversity, challenges and all the other skinny branches of life.  He put this into action and started taking on new things not previously explored and putting his opinions on the back burner in order to have a more open mind for new activities and connections with people.  It was in these new adventures, new challenges and areas previously unexplored in life that really helped him to enjoy more, learn more and experience the best things in life.

With all these changes, the change itself actually becomes the journey of his life, since the value of change becomes more and more apparent he’s realized that it is the one factor that limits people more than anything else.  His own shift has changed him, created new beliefs around the fact that change is required to create opportunities, experiences and improvements in life and should not be avoided.  If improvements come about from change, then to improve is to change.  Both for himself as a person and in how he can impact the world, these beliefs have changed and the fear and limiting beliefs around it have faded away and completely out of mind and consideration.  His now strong beliefs in the ability to change is what makes improvement and personal development easier for him.  And he knows this is necessary to impact the world.  It’s this ability to go against the grain, learn from it and eliminate the fears of facing new challenges and instead learning from them.  This same belief bleeds out to the process of changing the world and improving it as well.

Morals of the story:

1. Success should never be measured by self achievement or at a single point in time
2. Confidence is the biggest shield against self discovery
3. The “skinny branches” in life are where the fruit is
4. The belief of change enables changing the world

Posted by Mike King under Success | 20 Comments »

Stress has a stronghold on many aspects of people’s lives in today’s society.  Stress can impact us negatively and causes health problems, work tension, physical pain and it highly impacts our ability to think rationally and make decisions.  Stress often puts our minds into a state that seem inescapable and negative stress tends to create a focus on that element which then causes other cascaded effects that spiral into more negative actions such as self doubt, frustration, anger, loss of confidence and unhappiness.  Negative stress along with these results often cascades even deeper where it is very hard to break clear from and so the best way to handle stress is to know about it and know what to do to handle it and eliminate the negative stress in your life.

I’ve learned a lot about stress in my own life and in helping others handle significant stress.  I’ve learned to use stress in the best way possible and I can access stress as a critical learning tool for personal development.  I no longer let stress impact my hope, attitude or faith.  I use those together to manage stress and have learned a number of ways to handle, manage and change stress to be useful for self-improvement.

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1. Awareness Of and Recognizing Stress

This is the first and most important point of handling stress, you must first be able to recognize it.  Being aware that stresses exist and watching for it is best way to be able to handle it and use other tips to then handle it effectively.  If you don’t recognize stress until it already has its grips on you and its impact already affecting your decisions, its much harder to manage it then.  Look for the various ways you can be more aware of stress even if you don’t know the cause of the stress itself.  This can be down by watching for stresses and for having others recognize it in you as well.

Perhaps you experience some of these behavior stress symptoms:

• irritable behavior and frustration
• reduced exercise or active living
• increased food (especially junk food) consumption
• hard to focus or make decisions
• trouble sleeping or restlessness
• moody or emotional outbursts
• negative or depressed attitude

Other Physical Signs of stress that are common are:

• Muscle tension or pain
• Stomach / abdominal pain
• rashes or skin irritation
• shortness of breath or irregular breathing
• sweating or cold spells

2. Identify Stress When It is Negative

All the signs of stress above can help you to identify stress when you may not know the source of it without further analysis.  This is where this step comes in and its important to identify what stresses are positive and which ones are negative. The body reacts to different stresses and these chemicals tend to either a fear response or relaxing and enjoyable response.  Negative stresses are your body’s way to instinctively handle danger and so the release of adrenaline is typical to increase your senses and provide a heightened awareness and anxiousness to get out of the situation.

Positive stresses typically release serotonin, endorphins or dopamine and these can relax you and help you feel enjoyment from the experience. This enjoyment usually helps us to complete that activity, feel good about it and often engage in it again.  This happens in personal development, in a job well done or in physical activity since the body releases positive stress chemicals that ‘makes’ us like it.

Excessive stress of either type can be dangerous but at the same time, some of both are needed to have any kind of drive or motivation to change, grow or contribute. None of those can happen without some stress stress to inspire / encourage us to do them. So, the stress that is negative is a result of something that you are fearful of and often completely out of your control. You can opt for an Online Pharmacy if needed. Uncontrollable stress that eats away at a person is dangerous as it can be very hard to eliminate as often the beliefs that create the stress are the same beliefs that are emphasized by the same stress itself so it often strengthens even further.  Stress that is caused by past events is nearly always negative stress as it is a case where a person dwells on or second guesses a past decision and can’t move past it.  The scenarios that didn’t occur are played out over and over in their mind as being better than the decision that was made and is too late to change so this brings on more and more stress.  These are just a couple of examples of negative stresses.

Its these habits and beliefs that create negative results from negative stresses that need to be changed.  Identifying and changing your reaction to be more positive and hopeful can prevent negative stress from taking a further grip.  The whole point of stress (from an instinctive point of view) is to alert you to danger so that you can react accordingly and get away from it.  If that danger is in your habitual negative response, the body will simply continue to alert you to that with more and more stress.  You must learn to choose your response and how you react.

3. Change Stress Into Positive Hope

The differences between positive and negative stress in the body are subtle.  The chemicals released vary somewhat but that quickly changes in how we respond to the event as well.  It is possible to change the stress by controlling the response we have from a negative stress to a more positive one.  If we are hopeful with any stresses towards making the situation better and we do not dwell on the past, the stress can be something that drives you to change the situation and improve it. Most stresses have two sides to them as well (the old famous is the glass half full or empty) and depending on what you see from the stress, this often drives you forward to improve it or to dwell on it and spiral down as a result. Having hope that whatever causes the stress will reside is the best way to ensure you keep looking at the positive outcomes and opportunities from stress.  What are the current stress in your life?  What good can come of it and how can you use and learn from that to improve yourself, your life or that of others?

4. Learn From Failures, Don’t Dwell on Them

Just as I stated with the outlook of hope, you can keep a mindset to learn from failures that may have triggered or resulted in the stressful circumstances. You must look at what you benefit there is.  This is hard to recognize when our emotions are still stressed but it’s still a great method to not let stress take control of us.  Since you will never eliminate stress and you will certainly never get rid of stress that has already occurred, you might as well make the most of it and learn from it.  If what you learn can be shared with others to help them avoid a similar stress, then you can move past it even easier and make it a positive event in your life.

5. Talk Your Way Through Stress

Some people do deal with stress better than others but we all deal with it better when we have support and love from others when in stressful situations.  Talk about your stress and situations that cause it whenever you can with friends, loved ones or even colleagues.   Find someone you can trust not to be judgmental or add more pressure.  Expressing some of feelings may not change the immediate situation but it always relieves some of the tension to share it with someone else.

6. Take Action to Relax and Relieve the Stress

Most stress results in us feeling like we cannot control the situation and this is most often due to overload and excess pressure.  To relieve stress you have to take charge of more influences on you and get away from some of those influences and make time for things that you need to calm your body and mind. Making time for yourself, your hobbies, family, spirituality, solitude, exercise and other enjoyable activities will all help to relieve tension and make the stress much more manageable. You can take action on others tips in this article as well to handle the stress and of course any other methods you have to handle stress, the things that matters, is that you need to take action to manage the stress instead of just letting it build while you keep doing the same thing. If you learn to take immediate action at the first signs of stress you can prevent it from ever building beyond your control and keep your frame of mind to make the most of the stress and use it to your advantage.

7. Ask For Help

Perhaps you just don’t know how to manage stress or these tips don’t work for you once you are under under tension.  This is fairly typical since you lose your ability to rationalize and make decisions when under stress and so if that is the case, you need to ask others for help who are not impacted in the same way as you.  If they are not stressed by the situation, they can easily guide you and help you with any of these tips that you just may not have the strength to battle on your own.

8. Change Your Activities That Cause Negative Stress

The activities we engage in are largely in our control and so we can change our activities to eliminate stress or handle it better.  We need to know what situations to avoid or when to engage or disengage from something that will pressure us in a negative way we cannot handle.  The best time to do this is when you are NOT under stress as you will be able to make better decisions and see the big picture of what is worthwhile and if any stress can be used to your advantage or not. Analyze your activities and if you are looking to avoid stress that reoccurs in your life, you have to make some changes to your activities if you expect the results of them to change.

9. Change your Beliefs About Stress

And finally, this tip is the the one area I feel has the biggest impact on stress. Your beliefs.  Beliefs about stress drastically change how you react and what emotions are triggered by stress.  If you believe that stress cannot be managed and that it is always negative, then you will typically react that way the emotions you will allow to surface will reinforce this and typically give you that exact result, a very negative experience.  On the other hand however, if you belief that stress is something to use as tool to learn from, improve yourself and to use a guide to make your activities the most effective and enjoyable, you can much more easily recognize stress and use it to your advantage by looking for stress that can help you in that journey and to quickly react to improve your situation.  Doing this, turns stress into positive experiences and you can live much more in the moment and with hope instead of dwelling on problems and being stuck in the past.

Beliefs can be changed by changing your knowledge of a subject but they typically require some reinforcement as well.  Take these tips and think about how you can apply them to easily manage stress in your life.  Read about people and autobiographies where individuals have overcome tremendous stress in life and made the most of it, to surpass great hurdles, terrible circumstances and massive challenges simply by changing their beliefs and have the inspiration and drive to most past them.  You can do the same with stress and turn it into a tool that only makes you stronger and guided in a way that improves your life more and more. I hope these tips encourage you to improve the way you manage your stress and that you can eliminate negative stress and make it all positive in some way.  While you can never completely eliminate all negative stress, you can learn to quickly change it and make the most of it!

Posted by Mike King under Learning | 22 Comments »

Change is obviously a huge part of personal development as you can’t truly develop without change.  You can learn, you can gain knowledge, but you don’t really develop without putting those things into practice where you develop your character, your relationships, or work or some part of your life.  I always strive to put more than just the learning aspect in my articles and the biggest differentiators that I have learned in realizing personal development is that of taking action.  And action creates change.

Start Small

Change is tough.  It scares people and when we are satisfied with life, it threatens to break whatever certainty we have in keeping that satisfaction.  Personal development challenges that by looking at driving change to improve oneself and to better our lives and the experiences we create in life.  Whether you are a master change agent or an individual of daily habit afraid to try anything new, the only way to create any method of change for personal development is to start small and work up to bigger and bigger changes.  For those just starting to explore change and personal development for the first time, simple ideas or change are the best way to start.  Focus on thinking of the positives from change and what you can accomplish once you have made it.  Think about what you will have, how you’ll feel when you accomplish that first change and how it motivate you.  Perhaps it will give you specific feelings of pleasure or happiness you don’t have without it.

Starting small can happen simply by looking first at those ideas.  The way you think about change is really a crucial step and unfortunately it’s often overlooked.  Just imagine yourself where the change has already occurred and think about the future with that change in place.  This visualization you create is the first small yet crucial step in making change happen through action.  Changing the way to think about change and looking forward to what you will have from making change, even before doing it, is an action in your mind that will enable so much more.

Practice those thoughts of change, visualizing the great things you will have and the next small thing to do to implement change is to simple decide that yes, you do in fact want that change.  Reinforce your desire for it and keep reminder yourself of the pleasure you will have by getting it.  Perhaps you will also avoid some pain you experience now by NOT making that change.  If so, the promise of avoiding that pain by making the change can further enhance the desire you have to make the change.  All of this and you really haven’t DONE anything yet.  Start small.

Building Confidence

From the desirable change you’ve now imagined in your mind you’ve got to convert that desire into something stronger.  You need to make a decision to get the change.  Depending on how committed you make yourself to your decisions, this might be a powerful factor or a weak one.  It still makes an impact once you commit and decide to make it happen.  The strongest way to do this is to write it down and share it with a friend or loved one.  Share it to make your commitment stronger.  With that commitment on paper and in the minds of others, its time you set out and take action.  Make the first step that leads toward the change.  Just as before, start small and build upwards.  There are many ways to progress your steps from simple to small. These won’t apply to all change but they do provide a list of ideas from simple to more complex.

• Tell someone about the change you visualized
• Use pictures to visually represent the change you want by creating a poster or picture
• Use daily affirmations about the change in place
• Create a list of steps or goals that lead you to the change
• Tackle one change each day to work towards the change
• Remind yourself and reward yourself for progress made

The best thing about progress in change is that it builds confidence.  Gaining confidence create momentum which allows you to take on larger and larger actions, leading to bigger results.

As you see this progress, your confidence continues to grow and it’s a cascade effect.  This process might be over a period of days or years, it depends on the individual.  However, recognizing the progress and the change will always build confidence.

Realizing Continual Change

As you experience changes through personal development, you begin to go through periods a significant change and often one change will lead to another.  This is a great aspect of personal development, because change itself will sometimes revealing new opportunity or inspire another area in your life.  When these start to happen, you’ll end up with changes want to make that overlap each other in time.  As you see more progress, and continue to ramp up the changes you desire and enjoy the pleasure of achievement, you’ll begin to close the gap and see that you are really going through continual change.  Continual change is more than many repeated cycles of change that you intentionally perform, it begins to go much deeper inside one self without having to intentionally do so.

At this point, your subconscious becomes more and more activated by the continual change your experiencing and you’ll start to realize the changes are no longer happening only from your conscious ideas but there also starting to happen with your awareness, with your understanding, and even your fundamental beliefs.  Personally, I found that this new subconscious activity forms conscious thought, questions and a desire to explore it further.  So this realization comes full circle if you once again decide to make a change and carry it through.

Mastering Change

Mastery is a wonderful word.  It implies taking a skill to the furthest level and being able to do it easily, repeatedly and every time with excellence.  Mastering anything takes years of practice and dedication. Mastering a skill typically has a finite amount to learn and practice in order to gain that level of repeated excellence.  Once you reach that level, you can maintain it without struggling and it really becomes automatic.

Change however, is more complex than an ordinary skill.  Change is never finite because every single change you make will always be unique and have its own set of obstacles to overcome.  Improving your ability to change though makes you more flexible and adaptable.  Mastering change would mean that you can take on any change in life easily and do it well every time. Mastery means that change becomes so easy you simple need to make that choice and decide to change something and because of the mastering in change, it will happen one way or another with no further contemplation necessary.  Countless practicing, years of training, conditioning the body and mind to follow are all what leads to and creates mastery.  Eventually, just the decision itself becomes all that is needed as a catalyst to make the change happen.  That is complete mastery in my mind.  This is of course subjective but what a fantastic goal to have.  To be able to adapt to any circumstances, to change oneself for the better whenever the opportunity arises simply by making that decision and then to have continual changes bringing challenge, joy and satisfaction to each and every day in life!

Personal development has that very thing to offer and even though it may be an audacious goal, these steps for change allow us to come ever closer to mastering change, all we have to do is start small, take action and everything else builds on that.

Posted by Mike King under Personal | 12 Comments »