Personal development can sometimes get a bad rap in some intellectual circles, labeled generally as hoaxy, New Agey, feel-good cheerleading in vain.
That is how it turns out, sometimes. Like every product, there’s going to be some with better quality and some not so much. The consistent success of personal development teachers speaks for the difference.
Just taking personal development for what it is, though, how could that ever be a bad thing? If you’re not busy growing…you’re busy dying, yes?
However, as usual with life there’s still a big complication. It’s called impatience.
My students are often not newbies to the personal development space, having taken one or more courses before, whether with me or with other teachers.
This begs the question for people: “How many courses do I have to take?”
Answer: as many courses as it takes for you to do what you say you’re going to do.
It’s a progression. Where you are on the ladder will determine how many programs, how much learning, how many books, how long it’s going to take to get there.
Learning and personal development are musts. And having impatience is not an option.
In a lot of cases nothing happens after the first course. You know the info is good if you’ve chosen a proven teacher, but it’s really just the appetizer. Most people aren’t ready to take on the whole enchilada at that point.
After the second course people start getting a little hit. After the third course, you start to really get some good understanding about your life and what’s going on but still nothing major.
However, then come the doubt-devils: “I should give this up. What a waste of time all this personal development crap is. I don’t even feel good. In fact, I feel worse than I did before when I was a factory worker in the dark. What a drag. Business is hard. Life is getting harder. Relationships are harder.”
“How will I know when I’m ready?”
When you jump and the water is blissful, you’ve done it.
Now is it always going to be blissful? No.
Have you noticed even if you go into a pool and it’s pretty nice, if you stay in the pool for an hour, you get cold and you’re all wrinkled? Even that pool has to be changed a little bit.
You have to love growth. And you have to keep on growing.
If you do then one day you’re going to wake up and things are going to click for you. Your money, relationships and house are going to be there. Your life is going to be beautiful…unless you get impatient.
Don’t be looking. You’ll see it when you see it.
All of sudden you’re going to see…
Money, success, relationships and happiness are all coming my way.
My life is finally together.
How did that happen?
The best way I can describe it is through a story, maybe some of you have heard, about this boy who plants two seeds. The next spring one of the seeds becomes a corn stark, but the other doesn’t appear to sprout anything.
This happens five years in a row; the corn stalk becomes this amazing cornfield but the other seed … nothing. However, within three months of the last time the boy checks the crops, all of sudden there are 20-foot bamboo shoots that tower all over the cornfield.
Five years with nothing and all of a sudden, explosion. Why was that bamboo able to grow so fast and so strong?
Because for those five years, it was growing its roots, its foundation. It was setting the structure for huge, sustainable growth in its life.
Some people are corn seeds. You give them a little bit and they sprout. But when people grow really quickly and have big success really fast, they usually don’t have the structure underneath to sustain it. The first wind that comes, it’s over.
Realize that like the bamboo, you are growing, developing, and learning for that day and in time you too will tower over the field, you will tower over your own doubt in yourself.
Everyone has a story of sudden growth or realization that changed life for the better after a period of stagnation. Be patient my friends.
