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.