Personal Development

  For every human challenge the solution is not far fetch, the solution is always either inside of you or with someone around you, and the simple fact is that there is no new problem, every problem that appears new is actually an old problem repackaged, if it is new, it is often only new to the individual in question, it is not new to mankind. Challenges at their first appearance come with a confrontational approach, your reaction is usually determined by your preparation, and how prepared you are is a function of your attitude to past problems.

Your approach to life is either offensive, defensive or indifferent. And all of these have consequences.

 People who have an offensive approach to life, keep the principles of personal development abreast, so that they are hardly taken unaware by any challenge. Therefore, the little damages experienced by people in this class happen as a result of their limited knowledge in their respective fields, as no one can possibly know everything about something. And most times people learn better while practicing. So, the consequence here for people in this class is that; they grow fast, have a healthy personality and become the leaders in their areas of specialization.

Those who live a defensive life on the other hand usually love to wait for their ship to come through, and when it eventually comes, they’ve always found it to be hard-ship. The problem with this however, is that they don’t see that as a problem, as they believe that just maybe, someday, a good fortune ship will come through for them. They have the habit of approaching everything with levity.  They are yet to learn that in life, hard things are only temporarily hard, and they become easy shortly after, if they are followed through with discipline. On the other hand, easy things eventually become hard in the long run. The consequence of living this way is what I call ‘personality destruction.’ Everyone is born with great potentials and innate talents, but defensive people destroy there’s by the choices they make. One of these choices is their subjective resolution to always wait to amend a situation after the damage has been done.  Living a defensive life and expecting to succeed is another definition of insanity.

The one who is Indifferent lives life believing that nothing really matters. His philosophy is simple, personal and mundane; he says to himself, ‘whatever will be will be’ it is totally anti the philosophy of the offensive man, which is; ‘if it’s going to be, I have to make it be.’ The indifferent is he who would not go hunting, would not help prepare what someone else got hunting, but wants to eat once the food is ready.  The life of the indifferent is characterized by irresponsibility and stupidity. Indifferent is what one becomes after being defensive for a long time. The consequence however, is that one builds a brick wall around himself that keeps one perpetually in a world totally outside this world and make him totally inaccessible to change. 

Personal development is the individual responsibility on all humans living. It is to man what breast milk is to a new born baby, and what oxygen is to the body. Personal development is the necessary changes that you must instrument both in your discipline, and life in general.

 Now, since a whole is usually more than the sum of its parts, for total wholeness and a healthy personal development process, one must not focus on a few areas at the expense of others. For the sake of balance, one must take cognisance of the little things that makes all the difference, and give the necessary degree of attention to all the trivial parts that makes up the whole.

The How of Effective Personal Development

1. Know thyself: Fruitlessness is not an accident; it’s the outcome of anything done in ignorance. In other words, if you guessed your way into what you are doing right now, you can almost certainly predict the end. When you don’t know yourself well enough, you can hardly know how to do anything well. One way to know people who are in conflict with themselves about who they are, is by how often they change what they do. Productivity is usually the end product of passion that comes from purpose. The equation is simple; ‘no purpose no passion.’

How do you know yourself easily? The answer is always paraphrased but still the same; find out what you love to do without anyone always having to motivate you to do it. Once you have decided to settle with that, invest the larger percentage of your time developing capacity in that area. There’s a whole lot to do, like branding yourself, putting money value on what you do, and marketing yourself. But making that first discovery is the first step to take.

The greatest evil I’ve seen under the sun which people do to themselves is that they brand, package, market and sell other people’s products, leaving their own unique products to die in them. It’s really not a bad Idea to do it for others for a time and then move on to do it for self. What’s worse is to do that for a life time while having something in you crying all the way to come out.

2. Subject yourself to mentorship: you grow healthy when you have someone you report to whom also always checks out on you. Life’s journey is just too long to travel through all by yourself. There are junctions you’ll get to that you could stay at forever just because you don’t have answers to the questions it asks. The truth is someone has passed that same place before who was helped by someone who was taught by someone who depended on someone who knew someone who knew what he needed to do to pass that stage of his life, and the man who taught him learnt it from another man who had passed that same place because he learnt how from another man too... just in case, you might want to ask, so, who taught the first man? I would have loved to say I don’t know, but because of the freedom to make a guess, I’d say, maybe God or some spirit. The point I’m making here is, ‘you need a guide.’ Some would call him mentor. Some, teacher. Others, father. Whatever you call them, just get one, it can save your life. 

 

3. Develop protégées: Receiving is good but giving is better. That’s why those who mentor others become better not less. People who hold what they know close in their own lives the door to things they don’t know that can bring massive benefits to their lives. Too much information without dissemination leads to constipation that could result in the abortion of opportunities. 

 

Personal development is the life blood of the world. Continuous development at the individual, organizational, and co-operate level, is what the world needs to consistently re-invent itself. It is simply what drives sustainability.

HOME Advantage

   A Home is a place where everyone longs to be no matter how far away they are. When you go on a long journey, no matter what you do, no matter how beautiful the place, how welcoming and accommodating the people, you still can’t help but think of when you’ll go home, because, there’s no place like home!

At home, you are usually at liberty to do the things you can’t freely do when you’re away. Like playing hide and seek with your kids, eat the way you like without the limitations of public protocols. At home, you feel more secure and safe without the need for someone to watch your back. You are to an extent careless about your acts without the sense of a CCTV capturing your every actions. Truth is, you’re Ninety-seven percent more likely to be yourself when you’re home alone, and Seventy percent likely to be yourself when everyone’s home; But just fourty percent likely to be yourself outside.

What is home to you? If it’s not anything close to the few facts I have highlighted, then, maybe you don’t have a home yet. You really may have a house, but it becomes a home if it’s a place where you always long to be with a pleasant family who always can’t wait for you to get back.

Having said all these, the point I want to make is that there is a concept of home that the average man struggling to live life to its fullest potential is yet to understand and accept.

The Home of Your Passion: The strongest man I've ever known is not the man who is in the class of the Mark Henry’s, the strongest man on earth is the man who is diligently pursuing his Passion. When you’re following your passion and living it out against all odds, you are at home. People who win in competitions are usually not the best, they beat the rest because they have home Advantage (the home of their Passion.) your passion is the secret to getting your portion in life. Your Passion is your Fire, Drive, Cacoethe, and your only chance. It refines your motives!

The Home of the TEAM: One of the things that gives good mileage in life is being intentional about building the right Team of people for your life and Organisation. The right Team will always bring out the best in you, and consistently bring an Eureka experience. Being on the wrong Team on the other hand, will lead to uneasiness, undermine your true potentials and end up in poor performance.

 INSIDE-OUT                                    

Beliefs are your internally accepted values and principles which manifest in everything you do. Your Belief is the difference between where you are and where you ought to be. Your Belief has the capacity to CONFINE, DEFINE or REFINE YOU; it depends on how principle-based they are. What do you believe about yourself? How has it affected the way you see life?  The possibility of realizing your Goals and fulfilling your Dreams is limited to your Belief system. WHAT you are now is what you believed YESTERDAY, and what you’ll become tomorrow is what you believe TODAY. The question is: Are you happy with what you are TODAY? If yes, congratulations! But you can be better.  If no, the answer is very simple, change your belief system.

Change is the catalyst for growth, but I’m yet to meet people who naturally enjoy the process of Change. The Truth is we endure the process but enjoy the Outcome. The paradox here, however,  is that the majority of people stumble on the need to change almost regularly, but dust it off and just walk away as If they are oblivious of it. That is an example of people who have a believe system that maintain the status-quo. Every learning person who observes Trends and believes in Principles knows that beliefs are products of:

CONDITIONING: This is a process that is similar to writing computer programming language. It is an encoding process that takes place either consciously or unconsciously in people at different stages in life. The stages we can easily relate to are.

CHILDHOOD CONDITIONING: The most vulnerable stage of every human being is between ages zero and five. These are the formative years of a child. At this stage some cultures in the world deliberately cultivate and ingrain their norms and principles into their children, so when they are grown they live out the script.

 This process lays the foundation for the future of a child, and ultimately determines their failure or success. I have meet people who find it very difficult changing their belief system, even though it’s causing them so much pain. Personally, my childhood conditioning was very bad and would have destroyed me if I didn’t avail myself for a re-conditioning process, and becoming a realistic thinker instead of remaining the Idealistic and cynical thinker that I was. To be honest with you, even as I write this article, I still struggle with a few challenges that are a product of my childhood conditioning. In my heart, I have conquered them already; I’m just walking the road to perfection.

This goes to parents; a baby might be the most dependent of all creatures, but eventually becomes the most powerful when they are grown. The best Gift you can give a child in my opinion is the principles you ingrain into them in their formative years. Unfortunately, in my part of the world where I grew up, children are usually on their own, as parents are in the RAT RACE. Now, fortunately for this generation, the revolution has started, as young parents are becoming intentionally involved in the growth process of their children. Lucky you! Young chaps.

TEENAGE CONDITIONING: research in the US has shown that 90% of children at the age of five believe they are creative. Between ages five and seven 80% drops, leaving only 10% who still believe they’re creative. By the time they are adults, only 1% believes in their ability to be creative. This statistics shows that people have a tendency to become less creation and productive if they don’t have a concrete foundation, or if they don’t continuously build on the foundation that was laid in their early years.

The teenage years of a person are a very crucial one as they evolve into independence. They tend to take things with levity and at the same time desire autonomy, feeling like the world revolves around them. This is the time they need a lot of checks and balancing.

The strategy that has been proven to work is to give them unconditional love. Create a win-win relationship with them and be very sensitive to their needs, moods and the tendencies they show.

ADULT CONDITIONING: I know this kind of sound wired, but the truth is, conditioning and re-conditioning can happen at any level for good or bad. When a person with good values suddenly changes into something else, his belief system is affected.

A re-conditioning process occurs for adults when a belief system has caused them so much pain and has brought public shame and embarrassment. This process takes many people a life time to adjust, while some find it absolutely impossible to make the adjustment, so they live with it and accept it as who they are, thereby drastically limiting there lives.    

However, one of the greatest opportunities we have to affect other people is the story of how we were able to change our destructive patterns. What most people need to change is simply to know that someone else has done it before.

No other factor has been known to help people change easily like the right information. Once a person admits that something is wrong, and begins the search on how to make the adjustment, he suddenly becomes open to the information necessary for change. In other words, whatever you don’t get access to in life is what you don’t open yourself to. Being positively vulnerable can give a lot of mileage.

Walking the talk

Walking the talk                                     

Before the beginning of any worthwhile journey, there is a decision on the destination. An attempt to travel without a vivid mental picture of where to go keeps one going in circles, or on an unending straight line. No matter how long one has travelled on the wrong path, it is wisdom to make a u-turn and start all over in the right path. The experience gotten going the wrong path can be leveraged upon and can give mileage if well scrutinised.

He who doesn’t fulfil or accomplish anything valuable, is he who does a lot of TALKING and less of walking the road up the realisation of the things he talks about. If you want to see the things you say, walk up to them, because they rarely walk up to you all by themselves except they are sent. Best advice therefore will be, don’t talk about the things you don’t have passion for; and even when you talk about the ones you have heart for, talk more to yourself and to the things, don’t talk to people about your good intentions and dreams until you have made major moves with reasonable progress. If you have to talk to people, then make sure they are involved with the knowhow. It seems to me that people lose the momentum to move to the attainment of their goals when they talk too much about them.  You dissipate the energy you need to make progress when you are a talker and not a walker.

Walking the talk takes a lot of commitment and discipline.

 The first principle I’ll recommend is this: You should create a personal buzzword that gives you a clear mental picture of your destination, and speak it to yourself consistently. This helps you bring the future into the present, establishes it in your mind and lubricates the process of getting there. Words are the most potent instrument for the creation of anything durable.

The next principle is Learning: What is the language of your profession?  What are the tenets and principles relevant to your field? To walk the talk tenaciously you must chose to stay on the learning path of life. Learning as in leaning on the experiences and expertise of the who’s who in your field, and Walking as in working incessantly to clone your own unique breed that has the breath of your own originality.

                                                                                                                                          16^th Jan, 2012.  12 am