Personal Development Part 1 — The key to a more meaningful life and a better world
I do believe we all perform Personal Development (PD) every day but that the difference is that the majority of the people do it subconsciously and a minority does it consciously and actively.
With this article, I want to share my view on PD, the different parts of it, and how it will make the world a better place.
To make it simple I believe we can work on 2 different areas of PD, Hard Factors, and Soft Factors. I will try to describe the difference between the two.
“If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” — Tony Robbins
Hard Factors:
Is when you focus on physical parts of yourself. E.g training at the gym to become stronger, practicing painting to become a better artist, or participating in a singing course to become a better singer. For approx. 10 years I performed motocross on a professional level and continuously worked with PA to become better at my sport. I was extremely determined and worked with detailed fitness plans, goal creation, and used coaches to train my skills on the bike.
This kind of PD for me is developing your hard personal skills.
Soft Factors:
Is when you dig deeper into yourself, working on your values, emotions, and mindset. This is when you focus on getting to know yourself on a deep level and understanding why you are who you are. According to me this kind of PD requires more dedication, motivation, and patience but is the most important one and with the biggest impact on your life in the long run.
Why it demands more out of you to work with the Softer Factors
The reason why it takes more dedication and patience to work with Soft Factors is that we have a part in the brain called Cognitive Biases that makes us make decisions that are easier and that we are familiar with. Hard Factors like building muscles and becoming better at painting are easier for us because we can quickly see and feel the development and results. The Softer Factors are much harder to motivate the brain to work on since we can’t really see the results and especially since it takes a longer time.
PD is for the cool kids!
Too many people see PD as something very geeky and corny because of understandable reasons. In the past PD has been communicated and performed by very extreme individuals that have exercised PD in extreme forms. Working on psychological and emotional areas of yourself has also been scary and taboo for a long time. Well, I’m here to tell you it’s not! Not only because it’s more important than ever since we live in a society with more experienced stress and depression than ever but more because it would be stupid not to invest in yourself and the most important investment of your life.
I believe that in the near future we will see players entering this area of business opportunity and re-branding PD to something not only obvious but cool and trendy.
Creating a better world starts with you!
Life is not easy and it’s not supposed to be either. But still, it’s important and meaningful. The same goes for PD, it’s not easy but it’s important and meaningful.
One could illustrate life as a long bus ride, a journey all but straight. The journey will be full of obstacles, obstacles such as turns, big and small once and hills, longer and shorter once. No one knows how long the journey is, but we know that the better the bus is built and prepared the chances are greater that the journey will be longer and more enjoyable.
The same goes for us as humans and our lives, no one knows how long it will be and what obstacles we will face but we know that the better we are prepared the chances are greater that it will be longer and more enjoyable. The most important preparation one can do in life is, yes you guessed right! PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT. We will during our life journey face endless amounts of tough but important decisions that can affect us for the rest of our lives. Then it’s important that we truly know our selves, what’s important to us and why. Only then can we with certainty make the right, sustainable, and lasting big decisions. These kinds of decisions could be situations such as:
- Finding and choosing the right life partner, not an easy choice right!?
- Finding and choosing the right job.
- Knowing what kind of people you want to surround yourself with, true friends.
- Buying clothes that are produced in a sustainable and climate-friendly way.
When you have worked with PD for a while you start to get perspective of what you value and what’s important in life. You switch from a short-term perspective to a more long-term perspective. This switch of perspective and values are not only important for you as an individual but for the whole planet. Because when people realize that it’s the short term decisions and perspective that’s fatal for them and the planet, that’s when we will see a positive shift towards a more sustainable planet with better standards of living. A world with less poverty, less mental illness, less war, less global warmth, etc.
Impossible is not a fact it’s an opinion. — Muhammad Ali
My inner belief is that to be able to create a better world we all need to start with our selves.
