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.  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 | 20 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 »

Yesterday in Part 1 of this review, I outlined briefly my experience with reading the Bible as well as the many heroes written in it to learn from.  This second part explores a few more areas I particularly valued.

Great Teaching Through Stories

I love storytelling and I know its a powerful way to teach and convey a message. This is definitely one of the reasons the Bible has as much impact on so many as it does, its full of hundreds of incredible short stories all weaved together in the greatest Love story of all time. That is of God sending his only Son to suffer and die on the Cross to pay for sins of all people through all of time. So of course that over arching story has deep meaning for me as a Christian, but most people will likely connect more with individual stories from the bible and what is taught in them.

When it comes to story telling, Jesus used stories and parables more than any other teacher and He did so with such a deep understanding, sometimes the message He sends with each story cannot be fully comprehended simply hearing it once. Some of Jesus’ stories and the messages He shared can really take years of study to fully understand. In fact, there are scholars and teachers still dissecting the meaning of each story today, 2000 years after the stories were originally told. Now I don’t know about you, but if I’m able to ever tell a story profound enough that even one person retells it I’ll be ecstatic, let alone millions of people teaching it 2 millenium later.

There is no man that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither hath he power in the day of death; there is no discharge in that war.
Ecclesiastes, 8. 8

What Matters in Life

Another significant thing the Bible does like no other book is trigger many, many reflective questions about the things that matter most in life. Contemplating some of the stories and instructions from God does much to activate these questions in a hope to understand more of what mattes in our own lives in comparison to some of the heroes, villains and variety of people from the Bible. The example of how Jesus lived his live with servant hood and perfect obedience to God forces one to ponder if any of those same things matter in your own life. Are material possessions and temporary things on Earth getting in the way of you knowing and living the life you truly desire? What about the effort put into your relationships and serving others? Do you have a purpose and what is getting in the way of living it?

Personally, those questions really matter to me and so does the context of them. Of course its still a daily struggle to escape the undesirable and temptations I face, yet I find myself continually spiraling closer and closer to what always seems like a more defined purpose. Yet with each loop of this spiral it seems to morph into more of a funnel and I find the questions taking me deeper and deeper into the funnel. I’ve deepened my beliefs and faith in serving greatly by reflecting on all the stories and examples and by learning so much more through study. There are so many great references, teachings, messages and stories to ponder you can’t help but look at where applying that in your own life is valuable. Also, the moral foundation is so easy to apply to great relationships, true honesty, continual integrity and love for others.

Connections To Personal Development

All these beautiful ways to learn present a huge opportunity to improve oneself and that is where it connects deeply to most areas of personal development in today’s writings, teachings and courses. Many of the books, quotes and role models in personal development today have moral foundations, beliefs and a servant attitude that stems from the Bible. Whether its an intentional connection or not, much of what we study in personal development is a result of both old testament teachings and Jesus’ life here on Earth.

Whether your looking for examples of moral leadership, trust, integrity or friendships, its all here. From the beginning to the end (pun intended), its the Word of God. You’ll find nearly every area of personal development and a challenge to explore your own character to a level beyond what most would ever dare to start. Beautiful examples of the golden rule, servant hood, obedience, purpose and true faith are here in the one book nearly everyone has but seldom reads. It’s by far the best book I’ve ever read and is so profound I could put all other books away and just continue to learn by rereading this; the greatest book of all time.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
Mark 12: 31-32

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 20 Comments »

I read a lot of books and I write a lot of book reviews here at LearnThis.ca.  Nearly all of them are focused on areas I have interests and about things I want to learn more about.  As well, many of you know about my Christian faith and foundation and while I had continually been explorer deeper into many areas of personal development through books, I’ve only just started to explore more books about Christianity and faith.  So, I decided to challenge myself and so I embarked on reading the greatest book of all time.  The number one best seller every year with nearly 6 billion sold overall through time.  That’s right, I decided to read the bible start to finish within 6 months.

Reading The Entire Bible

So I started by picking a few books (of which there are 66 by the way) from the old Testament.  I’ve read all the gospels and the first few books of the bible many times before but never consistently read through many of the inner books except story by story or bit by bit.  I decided to start part way through and wrap back to the old testament to finish it so I started with Ecclesiastes.  It’s a wonderful book and actually one of my favorites now.  So many words of wisdom and things to think about I could likely read it 100 times and not understand half of what is said in it.  This is the thing that amazed me the further and further I read.  I understood far more than I ever have in reading individual stories and chapters or bible books before, but at the same time, I realized there is so much more depth and wisdom that I just barely scratched the surface of what can be learned.  There are countless passages of wisdom and things to learn from that other books really just don’t compare any more for me.  One man’s book on a subject couldn’t possibly come close to the sheer volume of things to learn in the Bible.  This is not to say I’m going to stop reading other books or value them less as they have their place as well, it just really demonstrated to me that most of the content I really love learning about in personal development roots back to the Bible and especially to Jesus by example in so many ways.  I’ve always known that but never read it first hand over and over like I did reading through in the past 8 months.  I started reading in March and finished 8 months later in October which I’m quite happy about.  I read a number of other books in between as well, especially through the summer with more vacation time and time spent out at the lake.

So I want to explore as with any book I read, some of the things to learned.  In this case, I can only begin to mention the things I learned and really its more about the general methods that I learned from, not specific elements since there is just so much content to take in.  I know I will be reading this incredible book many times over after such a great experience this time.

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:1–2

Learning from Heroes

Everyone loves heroes and there are no shortage of them in the Bible.  There are a significant number of them in fact and they have so much to teach through their actions.  Everything from great acts of faith, fantastic leadership, servant hood to acts of desperation from suffering, despair and heartache.  These heroes aren’t like your everyday Pixar movie heroes though, they’re real with real scenarios, struggles and in most cases quite an amazing journey.

One of my favorite heroes is Jeremiah.  The depth of his character, his integrity and emotion portrayed is simply wonderful.  Jeremiah faced delivering a message of despair to the people of Judah due to their lack of faith in God and distance the commands of the Lord.  Of course he was rejected by the people of the land and expressed deep emotion to the pain and hardship that was brought upon him, yet all the while, he obeyed every command from God.  He was imprisoned, beaten, tossed aside, hated and wanted dead by many who knew him.  His faith kept him alive despite the harsh emotions and laments he expressed in his time of solitude. Jeremiah’s strength showed by him being completely real and expressive about his emotions and relationships.  He expressed his disappointments, his questions, his burdens.  He was authentic.  Genuine.  We don’t live an honest life like Jeremiah did, we fake our feelings, we tell little white lies to hide our true feelings and expressions.  Why can’t we be genuine like Jeremiah while still holding onto a faith in God, a hope that cannot die regardless of the suffering and despair we come across on this short earth life?  We ought to learn from Jeremiah to remember God’s compassion, seek him and wait for his grace and love.  Anyone who can exult the Lord and follow God in spite of these great grievances heart ache is a hero if you ask me.

Click here if you want to listen to a 32 min sermon and story about Jeremiah.

I’ll finish up with Part 2 tomorrow looking specifically at how The Bible teaches through storytelling, makes you look at what really matters in life and then how this relates to personal development.

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 17 Comments »

I’ve been doing a great deal of thinking about the kind of content and the value of the content I provide here on LearnThis.ca and actually, the rest of my life as well.  I strive to provide a wide range of topics with a personal touch based on my own learning and experiences so that I can accelerate the personal growth of others in a similar way to how I’ve had that opportunity because of others’ work.  This has always motivated me in my own efforts and I must say it continues to do so.  At the same time, I’m finding times of reflection where I look to explore the best value I can provide and its a great challenge to realize what is most worthwhile both to me and to others in my quest for life improvement.

There are three main areas that feed our patterns and behaviors and I’m taking a look at how these areas fit into thinking about personal development.  Obviously, I’ve experienced many of these stages and hope to share some perspective on what this journey of personal development can become!

Expansion Versus Focus

I have found there to be a cycle of growth where personal development can expand into so many topics and inspire someone to learn an immense amount of topics and devour huge masses of material.  This does exceptional things to a person by expanding their knowledge and building a confidence in learning that enables them to tackle new subject matter and absorb more and more into practice in their lives.  The power of this is hard to describe if you haven’t experienced it yourself because it seems like it creates an exponential period of growth.

While that period of growth can feel great it is actually enabled by a period of addiction, not in a negative sense but one that keeps driving you further and further. It provides an opportunity to meet several basic needs; significance, variety and certainty in ourselves and our abilities.  Addictions are reinforced by meeting these needs (in this case positive) and for some people, this period of addiction may even last years.  Eventually though, this period of expansion typically brings one to a period of assessment as the personal development stops driving those needs at the same level.  Perhaps the significance of it fades or the variety is gone from the content or even that the certainty turns into some feelings of doubt or wonderment.  This breaks that additive cycle and leaves room for change typically leading to new focus which brings back some significance and certainly in what is learned and experienced, not to mention variety by doing things differently.  This time of focus drives us deeper into a subject and we look to specialize in it even more.  This cycle of course is useful since we can learn from it and apply it in a way that is lasting and fulfilling to us and others.

Dialog and Language

This is one of the my most impactful areas I’m learned and changed during my journey of personal development and provides a huge opportunity for all who explore it.  The way that I think, my beliefs, my knowledge and everything I’ve learned has shaped the way I interact with people and the language I use in conversation and with myself and my thoughts.  I’ve learned to make the most of things, be open and even welcoming of change, positive and encouraging with my dialog and hopeful wherever possible.  The impact this has is immense and its life changing, to be honest.  These is also another side of that coin however, in that this vibrant positive core is easily disconnected in our society that advertises pain and problems.  While such dialog of encouraging words and stories can be inspiring to many, it also separates us from being connected to those dwelling on problems and presents a bigger challenge when it comes to relating to others and finding first impression commonalities.  This puts strain on relationships and unknowingly steers people away.

I truly belief the risk of disconnection is worth it however, as the opportunity is always there to inspire people and hopefully make some lasting change in others’ lives.  Dialog and language fortunately are one of the best ways to convey ourselves and our beliefs and so our influence with others come largely from this area. If we are honest and authentic when connecting with others, our dialog and language should not damage our relationships, but uplift them and strengthen them.

Emotions and Physiology

The third area I know is impacted by studying personal development is our emotions and physiology. Emotions are a result of our choices and are easily the single biggest factor in the quality of our life that is under our direct control.  Unfortunately, emotions are more often than not, uncontrolled and we let them take the better of us by responding in a negative manner to events in our lives.  Studying personal development brings emotional control to the forefront and one can learn through practice and decision to change what emotions control them and what emotions they control as individuals.

Our physiology is a broad area of course but ultimately its about understanding how our body’s and lives actually work.  The mind, our health and the way our body adapts to its environment and inputs is not only an astonishing thing to study, but also an important one to understand if we want to make ourselves the best we can be.  Our physiology is deeply connected with our emotions as our chemical processes in our minds are triggered by all areas of the body and so these areas must be looked at together in order to make sense of them and to steer them positively in our lives.

So while I continue to grow in my own personal development, I challenge you to stop and think about the long term effects of what studying personal development can or has already done for you?  What impact has it had on you directly?  What about on the people around you in your life?

Posted by Mike King under Learning | 14 Comments »