[NB: This is part 2 of a 4 part series on personal development and is intended as an article to share with friends and family who might be interested in exploring this world. I'd recommend printing it out and reading with a cup of tea. You can find Part 1: 'Why personal development is important' here.]
This week we’re going to bust some myths about personal development. Let’s begin with the most prevalent:
1. Personal development is not for everyone
I use the term ‘personal development’ as short hand for ‘knowing yourself’.
The more acquainted you become with yourself, the wiser you become. In this way, you might also think of the phrase ‘personal development’ as code for ‘the getting of wisdom’.
In my view, saying ‘personal development is not for everyone’ is like saying ‘eating is not for everyone.’ Yes you can hold that line, but eventually you will become very uncomfortable, you’ll weaken in your capacity as a human being, and you are likely to become ill.
Just as you were born with a digestive system for a reason, similarly there’s a reason you were born with the capacity for deepening in awareness and understanding.
Like food, the variety of choice in the world of personal development is vast.
Like food, each personal development modality has a different flavour and benefit.
Like food, each modality contributes to the same outcome; to fill you up, to make you strong and whole.
So, if you’re in anyway interested in understanding:
- why your life is as it is;
- why certain people seem to get everything they want in life while others constantly struggle;
- why you can’t help but get angry every time you think about a colleague or family member;
- how to have a relationship or career that is more fulfilling;
- how to overcome the loss of a loved one or a divorce;
- why some people recover from ‘incurable’ diseases and others don’t;
- how to overcome depression or a chronic illness;
- how to create a happy and harmonious home environment;
- how to stop over-eating, over-drinking, or over-working;
then the world of personal development has something to offer you.
2. Personal development is just for those with ‘problems’
This is the second common misconception I regularly come across.
In truth, all of the people I know who are immersing themselves in the world of spirituality and/or personal development are doing so after they have already achieved a good deal of success in their lives.
They don’t have it all, but they do have a lot.
They have good relationships and/or great jobs. They have travelled and they have had the opportunity to learn from other cultures. To the extent that any family is normal, they have relatively normal families.
Still, they are looking for more. They are looking to know themselves more deeply.
The people I know who immerse themselves in this world don’t have any more or any fewer problems than anyone else. They are human beings. They have human problems, as we all do.
They immerse themselves in this world because they are aware of their position of relative privilege. They know what a privilege it is to have the time and space to focus on something other than basic survival and they choose to spend that time in the getting of wisdom.
3. If I start doing personal development work, someone will make me reveal my deepest, darkest secrets
This might be true and it might not. Personal development is a broad church. Some modalities teach you to get in touch with your emotions. Others encourage you to work through any difficulties in your life by talking about them. Others work at an energetic level so that often you’re not consciously aware of what is happening, you just know you feel better afterwards.
Personally I was never interested in sitting down and talking to someone about ‘problems’. I just wanted to cut right through all the rubbish in my life and find long term, sustainable happiness.
Naturally I was drawn to techniques and teachings which weren’t interested in hearing the story of my life. In fact, I was drawn to modalities which actively dissuaded me from telling my stories over and over again.
The beauty of personal development is this; if you are interested in diving into the past and spending years analysing that, you’ll find people to assist you. If you are interested in quick and easy techniques which have the same intention – to bring more happiness and awareness to you – you will find that.
You are in the driving seat when it comes to the type of personal development work which will be best for you.
4. I tried it and it didn’t work for me
I hear this from time to time from people who come to see me after trying other modalities.
In my experience, no step in the direction of your own healing or deepening in awareness is ever wasted.
In my twenties I visited both a counsellor and a psychotherapist to seek help with my crumbling marriage. At the time, I didn’t consider either experience to be particularly useful and so I stopped going, thinking that they weren’t of much value.
I didn’t think they were valuable because they didn’t instantly solve my problem. At the time, I was looking for someone else to waive a wand and magically ‘fix’ everything.
What I didn’t realise until much later was that those experiences were absolutely critical to my learning and to taking me to the edge of the world of personal development, to a place of readiness.
In hindsight, the gifts those experiences gave me were:
- a hint of the possibility of there being something more to life/a different way to understand and experience the world; and
- the realisation that I really did need help and that traditional modes of counseling weren’t the best fit for me.
For the first time in my life I felt completely out of my depth. I had no idea where to turn but I was sufficiently humbled to know that I couldn’t solve it all myself.
I had no idea about alternative and complementary therapies at the time. I just knew I needed something. So I got down on my knees and asked for help.
Soon after two teachers came into my life; Katie Manitsas and Brandon Bays, both of whom utterly transformed my world with their teachings and their wisdom.
Every experience we have in the world of personal development provides us with valuable information. It may not be the exact piece of information you were looking for, but it is likely the piece of information that you need most in that moment.
When you stumble across a personal development tool, it’s enough to know this: the effectiveness of the methods, tools and teachings you come across is not determined by some external measure of effectiveness.
It’s measured by you.
By your willingness to surrender to what is showing up, rather than fight against it.
You would be wise to assume that if it shows up in your life, it’s here to benefit you (even if it’s not in the way you expect).
You would be wise to assume that if it’s of interest to you, it’s the right teacher or teaching for now.
5. I don’t have time for that stuff
I meet a lot of people who are much like I was in my early twenties. They are very busy in their lives and if they’re going to spend any time on themselves in the realm of personal development, they’d better see results, fast.
I get it. I want fast results too.
It’s why I use techniques such as Non-Personal Awareness (NPA) and The Journey in my 1:1 practice. Using The Journey, you can clear problems you’ve been carrying around for decades, in the space of a couple of hours. Using NPA you can overcome years of obsessive behaviour in just a few minutes. Truly. I’ve seen it time and time and time again.
So, yes there are lots of modalities which will clear your old baggage quicker than you can say ‘Jiminy Cricket’.
And…..
In addition to finding quick, effective techniques (if that is your desire), there’s something else that in my experience is absolutely essential to really benefiting from personal development – commitment.
Just as you’d commit an evening a week or an afternoon each weekend to mastering a new sport or learning a new skill, so the getting of wisdom requires some actual commitment of time. Thinking that you’ll visit a therapist once and suddenly the enlightenment of the Buddha will descend upon you, is unrealistic. Possible, but not probable.
We spend years mastering our understanding of external information. Personal development is about mastering our understanding of internal information. It also takes years.
The question however, isn’t one of time. It’s one of priority, to which the real question is this; what priority will you make of truly knowing yourself?
6. People who have done lots of personal development work still seem to have the same problems as everyone else
It is true that people who are spiritually or emotionally aware are still human beings. Sometimes they get sick. Sometimes they’re faced with incredible challenges – loved ones die, relationships break down. They are not immune to the daily challenges of life.
They are however experiencing these challenges in a very different way than they otherwise would, had they not the benefit of their years of personal development work.
This may not be apparent to you. Each of us can only see as far as our current level of awareness allows. Essentially this means that we walk around in a sort of bubble, assuming everyone is experiencing the world in a similar way to the way we are.
The truth is, everyone is experiencing the world from their own unique state of awareness.
Before I embarked on personal development work, I thought energy healing was bullshit. I had absolutely no capacity to understand or experience it from the place I was living at that time.
Before I embarked on personal development work, I thought that the only route to healing was via a drug dispensed by my doctor. I had no real knowledge of how my body worked or its relationship to my mind or my emotions.
Now when I get sick, I instantly wonder what the real cause of the illness is. I see it as an opportunity to investigate, to clear up some old emotional or energetic block. I am grateful that my body is offering me an opportunity for personal growth.
As a result, each time I heal from an illness, I heal as a different person. A person who has shifted slightly, who sees the world with a new awareness. Perhaps I’m a little more patient or kind. Perhaps I’m more confident or more compassionate.
Whatever it is, the new awareness is a direct result of engaging with illness (or any of life’s challenges) in a holistic manner.
7. There’s one path to healing, freedom, enlightenment, success and/or happiness
If you come across people who tell you they have the one way to enlightenment, awareness, personal fulfilment, my advice is to understand that this is true for them and what they are really saying is that they found a way to awakened living which was successful for them.
This does not make it the one and only way.
There are 6 billion people on the planet and as a result, there are 6 billion ways – and more – to know yourself.
All those who are teaching, coaching and writing in the world of personal development are also on their own journey of inner discovery. Thinking that you have found the one and only way to healing, awareness, enlightenment is a phase that all pass through in this never ending journey.
Unfortunately some teachers get stuck at this place. Some religions have been stuck in this place for centuries.
This does not mean that such teachers don’t have something important to offer the world. They do.
They may have stumbled upon a self inquiry technique which is incredibly useful and effective. They may have developed a meditation or mode of healing which offers extraordinary powers of healing.
You can learn and benefit from this and when you are ready to see beyond those teachings, a new teacher and/or a new modality will show up.
Then, if you are very fortunate, you will discover that whilst there is not one path, ultimately, there is only one truth.
When you discover this, you’ll realise that each teacher and each modality – irrespective of what it looked like from the outside – were pointing you to exactly the same thing.
A way home to yourself.
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Photo credit: D. Sharon Pruitt, Hartwig HKD, Cornelia Kopp
Hi lovelyl Sam
Another great and inspirational ‘ah ha’ learning! So elegantly put together … you can’t help but see yourself and others dancing in the story … past, present …. and not future (hopefully)! This is the way I have been working in this way myself … simplicity is key
Hope you and your lovely hubby and bubb are all doing well.
Big love
Fi and P xxxx
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