Personal Development might be something that's difficult for you to get into at first. Only if you beat around it though; the trick is to just dive on in with it all.
Why do I think it might be hard?
For some odd reason, to most people, Personal Development may seem silly. For instance, yesterday evening I bought John C. Maxwell's The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth: Live Them and Reach Your Potential. Leaving the bookstore I was literally giddy, and said to my husband, "I feel like such a grown up…hehe". Yes, I believe that's exactly how it came out. He told me just for saying that I did not sound very grown up. <sad face> Oh well.
I think the main reason people have this silly feeling about Personal Development is they are perhaps terrified of it. Why be scared of growing? For most of us, it's out of our comfort zone. It is something you actually have to set out to do. The biggest example of this, is what Maxwell describes as "The Assumption Gap -- I Assume That I Will Automatically Grow". I'll give a little more from this since this particular paragraph was my "a-ha!" moment.
"When we are children, our bodies grow automatically. A year goes by, and we become taller, stronger, more capable of doing new things and facing new challenges. I think many people carry into adulthood a subconscious belief that mental, spiritual, and emotional growth follows a similar pattern. Time goes by, and we simply get better. We're like Charlie Brown in Charles Schulz's Peanuts comic strip, who said once, "I think I've discovered the secret to life -- you just hang around until you get used to it." The problem is that we don't improve by simply living. We have to be intentional about it." (Maxwell)
We get so used to simply living, that before you know it 5 years go by and you realize you've been on auto-pilot for exactly that long, and maybe even longer. This has happened to me already, and it was only by having something bad happen that I realized what was happening with my life (or not happening). I don't want to just "simply live". I want to DO things, and be more AWARE of what I'm doing, as I'm doing them.
So now I am "diving on in with it all" and growing. Well… learning how to grow, anyways. Unless you've read a book, or attended a seminar on Personal Development, you might be saying, "Whatever…" about it, but I really feel like the author is speaking to me personally. It's as if he wrote this book just for me, came to my front door, and handed me an autographed copy and said, "Here, this is for you!". Now you might be thinking, 'Clearly this chick needs this.' <HA HA> but I truly believe this is something we can ALL benefit from!
Laying in bed, reading my new book, I'm wanting to write down practically everything. (I own the book… it's mine… I probably don't need to write it down.) Every other sentence I'm thinking to myself, 'WOW! Why didn't I read this years ago???'. (Probably because it was just published this year…) Every other paragraph, I'm bugging Brandon in the middle of reading his Toyota 4x4 magazine, "You HAVE to listen to this!" (He's probably not...)
If you think reading a few pages from this book has made me sound like a crazy woman, and you would like to feel like a crazy woman... or man, too, then check it out!
$25.99 new at the bookstore... or $28.99 for all my Canadian folk
$17.05 new on Amazon.com
$12.99 on Kindle
"What great accomplishments we'd have in the world if everybody had done what they intended to do." Frank Clark
No comments:
Post a Comment