What is personal development?

Personal development can be viewed from many differing points of view, for some, it is just the natural advancement of life and for others, it may emerge as a result of hitting rock bottom and the realisation that “I just don’t want these bad feelings anymore!”

Regardless of why you might be reading this I thought I would write a few words about personal development focusing more on the why, rather than the how.

The path I took followed looked a little like this:

• Choosing Love or Fear
• Understanding emotions
• Recognising where my attention was at any time
• Changing my point of view
• Becoming an observer
• Identifying old out-of-date self beliefs
• Aligning with new beliefs
• Committing to practice these new ways
• Loving myself
• Loving everyone

Choosing between fear or love

This is big, and this is at the very core of deciding to change your life; because if you decide to live life from a fear based point of view, then you will always be on your back foot, expecting the worse, looking for the danger. In each experience you will be looking for evidence that supports your fears and confirms that the world is indeed a scary place, you will notice anger, jealousy, sadness, injustice and you will need to control everything around you to avoid loss (pain) and attain security (comfort). It takes a lot of emotional energy to live like this, with many judgements about what others should have done, what you should have done and a racing mind analysing many ‘just in-case’ strategies, just in-case…

However, there is another way; where you choose love or invest in the faith that things will unfold well, where you can have more acceptance of yourself, acceptance that the world is the way the world is, people are just the way that they are, some are good and some are less good, where you focus on their strengths rather than their weaknesses. A world where you can accept your own flaws and let your guard down, because if you accept your own faults nobody gains from pointing them out anymore – “You are rubbish writing reports” – “Yes, that’s true.” There becomes no need for any defensive stances and emotional stand offs, everything is just OK the way it is. Good things will happen, bad things will happen and you take it in your stride not trying to control everything or everybody.

When you choose to let go of fear what you are really saying is – I choose to be non-judgemental, I choose to be loving, I choose to be calm, I want to have choice over my emotions in any moment, I know that whatever happens I’ll bounce back, I’ll be more resilient, I’ll roll with punches, I have choice. It takes time to get to this place, however, the journey is worth taking.

Understanding emotions

This post is not about how to change emotions, it is about why changing them is so important once you have decided to live with less fear in your life. Many people  who have not experienced self-awareness growth don’t realise that we can control emotions relatively easily after a period of practice, and once you can choose the emotions you want at any particular time or let go of any emotion might not serve you well, you’ll see that we are no longer a victim to unwanted feelings and no longer fearful of our emotions.

We control them, they don’t control us, we no longer have to control another person so they don’t make us feel bad or help someone otherwise we’ll feel guilty – because we can choose to feel guilty or not. Perhaps we might want to feel compassion or humility or just calmness, we decide. We are not fearful of our emotions anymore. It took me about a year to really understand this and put it into action, these days I can pretty much choose how I want to feel in any situations and that gives me more choice and calmness in my life.

Recognising where your attention is

As you begin the personal development journey it becomes quickly evident how many self beliefs we actually may have about who we think we are and who we think we are not, about what we can do and what we think we can’t do. If ever we try to consciously do things differently the voice in out mind, our internal dialogue begins and it races around and around saying “You can’t do that” or “what if they don’t like it” lots of questions, yet very few answers. At one level the mind will never find the answers because old out dated self beliefs or self limiting strategies are often stored deep down in the unconscious mind where the ruminating mind seems to have no access (so no point ruminating really!)

So many of our old beliefs are stored unconsciously and just fire off when a trigger appears, when that dominant person is around you just feel like a child again or another person may be unable to say NO without feeling guilt shame – these are the very beliefs that we need to track down, become aware of and gently update.

Which point of view are you operating from?

We seem to have two main characters (there are many more) who live in our minds, firstly, the Judge who judges everything and everybody including ourselves, if we pay more attention and listen to our thoughts you’ll hear the judge saying things like “They shouldn’t be doing that – I don’t like that person – what is she wearing? – They don’t know what they are talking about – I won’t be able to manage that.” etc. etc.

And the second character is the victim who feels like everyone is against them, you can recognise this little chap by phrases such as “Why does it always happen to me? – I just knew that was going to happen – It’s just not worth it, it won’t work – See I told you it was useless.”

A large aspect of personal growth comes from identifying these separate voices (and there can be many) and realise that they are not you, yes, they are in you, but they are not you, you are the observer of them – and you don’t have to believe them!

Changing your point of view is key to growing, moving out of the details and into the big picture (from content to context) seeing problems from different peoples points of view so you have a more complete picture and more options for change available.

Here are a few examples of new points of view:

Becoming an observer

There needs to be a period of time where you don’t try to change, where you just observe. You monitor your thoughts, you recognise when you are trying to control people, you notice your feelings at any particular time, you recognise the judge and the victim in your mind, you become aware of negative thoughts and positive thoughts. It is like taking a step back from the World and saying ‘I am just going to observe, no judgements, no emotional reactions, no right or wrong – let’s just see what is happening inside me.’

For me, I enjoyed this phase of my own journey and I didn’t rush it. I sat with it for about 6 months whilst I was reading about new concepts and I tried everything I could to see things from as many differing points of views as I could without any judgements, and importantly, without being unkind to myself as I began to see things I didn’t like about myself. At one level I am still observing, I don’t think there is an end to it, just let it unfold, be malleable.

At this point it is important to point out that the journey is about yourself, no one else! It is about accepting others as they are, the world as it is and slowly becoming the observer of your own old out of date beliefs.

Recognising out of date self beliefs

It can get a little uncomfortable as you begin to notice your old habits and ways of reacting to people and lifes events, however, don’t beat yourself up, because at least now that you can see it, you can do something about it (later). Pay special attention to your emotions and feelings,  how do people make you feel?

Notice that peoples personal emotional stress is often manifested in their communications with you and realise that you don’t have to take anything personally, not if you don’t want to. Begin to notice when your ego is in action.

Scrutinise yourself, make a personal inventory of your values, your fears, your beliefs and your dreams too.

Aligning with new beliefs

In his book The Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz, I think he gives some of the best advice I have read anywhere on how to have less emotional turmoil and stress in your life:

Agreement 1 – Be impeccable with your word – Speak with integrity, say only what you mean, avoid using words badly against yourself or others.

Agreement 2 – Don’t take anything personally – Nothing others do is because of you, what others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless emotional worry or suffering.

Agreement 3 – Don’t make assumptions – Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

Agreement 4 – Always do your best – Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

On my own journey these four guidance’s have hugely influenced my way of being and have resulted in a calmness and inner strength that has amazed me on all levels.

So as you begin to dissolve those old beliefs that held you in fear, anger, frustration, guilt, regret….  You need to ask yourself what do you want from the future? Who do you want to be? How do you want to feel? What is currently stopping you, what gets in the way? Capture all your thoughts and write them down.

At this point you often need some external help to guide you through breaking down the old beliefs as they can get so unconsciously ingrained in our thoughts and our actions. I found documenting my values to be a powerful process.

Committing to practise

If you have made it this far through this post, then well done. You are the type of person that this information is aimed at. People talk about personal growth all the time, yet so few do the ground work needed and then commit to making it happen.

Committing to making changes and finding motivation to overcome your fears is quite literally liberating, to eliminate emotional drama is such a relief and to choose to be happy ‘just because you want to’  is wonderful.

As you practice building up emotions and then letting them go, you realise that emotions don’t control us, we control them. We can choose any emotion at anytime, and because we control them, they are no longer frightening, they can no longer hijack us or make us afraid to say no (or yes).

Loving yourself

The final revelation on any personal growth journey is always ‘to be loving’  especially to yourself and that is huge! To accept yourself, to talk to yourself with love and respect.

For me, the following phrase from Dr David R Hawkins sums it up so well…. “So, if you want to grow spiritually, it’s so simple, that it’s overlooked all the time. It’s a decision to be loving and kind towards all of life, including your own, at all times no matter what. To be forgiving, to be gentle, to be that which is supportive of life – so it becomes not what you do, but who you are. You become that which supports life, supports all endeavours, it encourages those who need encouragement and it becomes the energy of life itself.”

I can help speed up your journey.

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