What Is Self Improvement?
• You want to know what personal development is?
• Perhaps you want
the answer to 'what is self improvement?', too?
• Well, you can get that
here:
• High-level info on the nature of personal development
A Short Answer
Since you're here you're probably asking yourself, "What is personal development?" or "What is self improvement?"
The short answer to that is that:
Personal development and self improvement is change ... for the better.
This implies one very interesting thing - that the present state of affairs isn't good enough. We'll get back to that in a moment.
A Lot of Different Answers
The somewhat longer answer to the question you're probably asking yourself is that personal development or self improvement seems to be something a little bit different for everyone.Each of us has our own way of looking at ourselves (self concept and self esteem) and life (life philosophy and life esteem).
One person may struggle in areas of prosperity and abundance. Another may have long standing relationship issues, or searching for love.
You may deal with low self esteem, or want to be a better leader - or employee, or both - or something else entirely. You may even be searching for what some consider 'the philosopher's stone' of personal development: spiritual enlightenment.
If any of this is true for you, you're not alone. A lot of people are on a quest to better themselves and there is no shortage of self improvement courses and personal development tools available to help.
What Is Personal development and what is self improvement?
A
Lot of Personal Development Help Is Readily Available
-
But Does It Work?
You can read insightful books, listen to audios, or watch DVD courses. You can attend seminars and retreats.
For a lot of people meditation is also a helpful personal development tool as it allows you to quiet your mind so you can discover who you really are and what you want out of life.
You can also do inner journeys of different kinds (something which I, personally love).
Courses and coaching / guidance are beneficial, too, because sometimes you need a little push, just a bit of help on the road to personal development. If you are dealing with anger management issues, for example, or feelings of low self worth, you may not have any idea how to deal with the negative thoughts and feelings.
Or, if you simply are looking for inner peace a coach, guide, mentor or teacher, even if it is just the right book at the right time, can be a big help.
Some good folks fall into the trap of collecting personal development books, self help audio, self improvement DVDs, etc. It's so easy to get stuck in the endless loop of searching for the ultimate personal development tool. This is fun, of course, and as good a hobby as any. I, myself, have done it for years and years.
In the end though, it's not likely to bring you and your life that much further along. In fact, mostly it's just making the process a bit longer and more difficult than it needs to be. Which is okay, of course, seeing as how that might be exactly what you (subconsciously) want. After all, your ego hates change. Nothing wrong with that.
But let me just point you in a different direction, here, with a bit of talk about what the point of the whole 'personal development and self improvement exercise' is.
Where to Focus?
A person asking 'what is personal development?' (that would be you) is likely to be on a quest. A quest to become a better person, or a quest to have a better life.Point number one is, those two things (a better person, a better life) are essentially the same thing.
Personal development, then, is basically:
Making a conscious effort to improve your life EXPERIENCE.
This is what you and hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of other people are doing. And that begs questions like ...
What Is Wrong With Everybody?
Why do we feel need to improve ourselves and our lives? Is there REALLY something wrong? Are you really not good enough? Is there actually something wrong with life?Well, if you ask me and I give you an answer based on my own many years of 'wild' personal development (you can read a bit about those on the page About the Personal Development Guy) plus my current state of being then I would have to answer you (and this is point number two):
There is nothing wrong with you and there is nothing wrong with life. Everything is as it should be.
Your Experience
You, however, may not be experiencing this (that all is as it should be). Chances are, you'll be telling me that you and your life are NOT as should be and that you most certainly need personal development and self improvement (and perhaps spiritual development, too) to make everything better.And you'd be telling the truth.
But, then again, so am I.
So, where does that leave us in regard to the question 'what is personal development?'
Well, ultimately, it all comes down to two things:
- being happy
... which is an ...
- experience
And there you have it.
What is personal development? It's the quest for the experience of happiness.
Happy or Dissatisfied?
A few people seem to be more or less born happy. They just love and enjoy themselves and life to the fullest, roll with life's punches and make lemonade whenever life deals them lemons.Other people seem intrinsically dissatisfied no matter what and either spend a lifetime grumbling, complaining and being negative, or spend their life chasing happiness without ever being able to catch up with it.
Most folks are somewhere in between and while their lives are acceptable, they have a feeling their lives could be so much better if they could just change certain circumstances or aspects of it - or themselves.
The Truth About Happiness
But what is the truth about happiness? Well, you can read more about it on the page Happiness, but to make a long story short happiness is the experience of life as it really is and that includes experiencing you as you really are.Another way of putting that is that happiness is experiencing absolute reality. (As opposed to experiencing yourself and life through the lens of your ego, which might be called experiencing relative, personal reality).
So, what is personal development? It is the movement from the experience of personal reality into the experience of absolute reality.
Does this take a lot of soul searching and hard work? No. It can, of course, but it doesn't have to.
Ultimately it's a choice. Most people make this choice subconsciously with their ego, and so they make it a life long quest (because the ego doesn't want change, not really).
A Dismantling of Your Limitations
The great thing about absolute reality (and thus happiness) is: it is always there. It never, ever goes away and you can access it at any time. All you have to do is remove whatever is standing in the way of your experience of the happiness that is always there: Your limitations.So, in the end, the simplest and most powerful kind of personal development is the kind where you dismantle anything that's limiting you - and perhaps, in the end, simply let go of it ... including your ego.
Whenever you're tempted to keep adding new and better things (e.g. new self improvement stuff) on top of a base that's not really working for you, just remember, that this isn't a very stable an arrangement.
The basic things that are holding you back need to go first.
The 'Final' Answer
When you view the question 'what is personal development?' in this light a big part of it is letting go of silly thoughts, silly feelings, silly habits, silly needs - and most of all: silly beliefs.That sounds so easy, but it can be quite challenging, of course, because in that process you will face down your fears. (Those are actually some of your biggest limitations).
You want to live the fullest life possible, right? That's why you're asking 'what is personal development?' or 'What is self improvement?'
Well, then your answer might be this:
Personal development is the conscious decision and effort to make your experience of yourself and your life a more happy one by letting go of whatever is limiting you and thus moving from a relative, personal reality into absolute reality.
By the way, if you do that, you will, by extension, improve your world, too. That happens all by itself. Try it and you'll see.
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