I still remember when I first put my hands on a self-improvement book. It was 1999 and the book was Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. I was 16 at the time and, although I no longer think highly of that book now, it fascinated me then and reading it started me on a lifelong journey of personal development.
Since then, on this journey, I have read many more books, articles and studies, I have attended various training programs, I applied much of what I learned, I got some good results and some bad ones, and I eventually ended up making a career out of helping others on their personal development journeys as well.
Over time, working as a coach, I came to notice that some approaches to personal development work much better than others. Since my mind likes to organize things into groups and compartments, I came to see that there are roughly 5 major approaches to personal development: 4 of which, though popular, don’t work that well, and one that truly shines. However, you need to understand the 4 ineffective ones in order to fully grasp the 5th one. So, let’s take a look at all of these approaches, one by one.
1. The Ignore & Deny Approach
This approach is at the bottom of the personal development ladder. People with this approach are often not even aware that if they want certain things in life and have a hard time getting them, they can consciously work on improving themselves in order to change that.
If they are aware of the concept of self-improvement, they generally see it as a silly concept. They likely believe that you can’t change who you are, or that it takes too much work, that all self-help authors are scammers, or that getting into personal development is very risky business because it implies admitting and exposing your flaws.
Thus, people with this approach come to ignore the entire idea of self-improvement and to deny its usefulness. And as sooner or later, like any human being out there, they come to have various problems in various areas of their lives, they deal with these problems by drinking, becoming violent, not thinking about them or pretending things will take care of themselves. It’s rarely an effective solution, and it’s often the perfect way to put your life on a downward spiral.
2. The Inspirational Slogans Approach
This is the attitude of people who believe in the idea of personal development, but they approach it in a superficial manner: by reading and sharing nice-sound inspirational or motivational slogans. I’m talking about slogans like “Dare to be different”, “Change your actions and you’ll change your life”, as well as the occasional quote from Tony Robbins, Oprah, Gandhi, or Deepak Chopra.
The problem here if two-fold. First of all, although some of these slogans sound profound, on a more careful examination they prove themselves to be either false, trivial or meaningless. Take for example something self-help guru Deepak Chopra tweeted: “Attention & intention are the mechanics of manifestation”. Well, that sounds deep; but what the hell does it even mean? Without further clarification (which the author does not provide), it’s a pretty vague and meaningless statement. Chopra is in fact so famous for making such empty claims that a website has been created which uses random words, stringed together in a syntactically correct manner, to generate statements that sound just like his sayings.
The other side of the problem is that, even if a slogan is clear and tells you to do something in a comprehensible manner, it doesn’t tell you how to do it. It provides a basic destination, not a process to get there. This is the case for slogans such as “Just be yourself”, “Just do it” or “Just be confident”. Yeah; how exactly? It’s not like one day you can snap out of a frenzy of anxiety and insecurity that’s been affecting you for years and feel confident all of a sudden. That’s why one thing I focus on when coaching people is helping them with the HOW (the process) not just the WHAT (the desired change), which enables them to make real and significant changes.
Unfortunately, with the rise of social media, empty but nice-sounding slogans have become so widespread that many people read them, share them, and confuse this with real self-improvement.
3. The Avid-Reading Approach
The person with this approach reads a lot of personal development material, but actually puts into practice very little of it. They’re a reader, not a doer. This person puts in the effort to go more in depth with their knowledge than the slogan lover. They read personal development books and articles, they sometimes go to trainings and seminars, they learn actual systems and methods for self-growth.
They make one costly mistake though: they stop at reading. After they’ve finished reading a good book on, let’s say, overcoming shyness, they just pick up another book and read that one too. Then another, and another. Maybe they go out once or twice in between to try and apply what they’ve learned, and that’s about it.
But the thing is that developing a life skill or personal trait usually requires a significant dose of regular practice. If you’re shy for instance, becoming outgoing and social typically requires dozens of hours of practice in real social situations. So, the ratio between time spent reading and time spent doing should be tilted significantly towards doing. Well, for the avid reader, it’s tilted significantly the other way. They overload their brain with information, but practice very little of it, and consequently see little improvement.
Many people take this approach because reading is a lot easier than doing. To put something into practice regularly over a length of time entails exerting yourself, challenging yourself, and potentially making mistakes. Comparatively, reading stuff while sitting on a couch is considerably less demanding. Nevertheless, the avid reader needs to become more selective with the theory they consume, and put more time and effort into applying it. It will do wonders for them.
4. The Everything-That-Flies Approach
As the saying goes, not everything that flies is a bird. Similarly, in personal development we could say that: not everything that claims to help you improve will actually help you improve. In fact, the personal development industry is full of self-help snake-oil. Unfortunately, many people are not aware of this, and they approach self-improvement with the innocence of an adult-sized child: nearly any method they find that promises impressive results in losing weight, becoming charismatic, attracting women, gaining confidence, making money or whatever, they will eagerly buy and try.
Such a person will spend thousands of dollars and numerous hours to access, learn and apply a wide range of tools for self-improvement. If they’re lucky, they’ll eventually find tools that actually work well and they will achieve meaningful changes. If they’re unlucky, after much trial & error and no results to show for it, they will become disillusioned with the whole personal development movement and abandon self-improvement altogether. But the best path for this person is to be more skeptical and learn to research personal development methods effectively. Then they can make real progress without wasting time and without relying on luck.
5. The Enlightened Approach
Remove all the mistakes made in the other approaches and you get what I immodestly call the enlightened approach: the most effective way to do personal development. So, by this point in the article, you already know a lot about it.
The enlightened approach entails believing that you can better yourself and that, while it will not happen overnight, it is a worthwhile pursuit. It also entails understanding that cheesy slogans and inspirational one-liners don’t do much, and seeking comprehensive guides and systematic information for self-improvement.
The enlightened approach also implies realizing the importance of practice, and investing a lot more time in doing personal development than in reading personal development. Last but not least, it implies approaching all the personal development methods and advice out there with open-mindedness but also lots of critical thinking. They may fool you once, but they won’t fool you twice.
This approach leads to incredible results in self-improvement. With this approach, when you set your mind to develop a certain life skill or personal trait, not only that you succeed, but you achieve the best, most enduring results, in the most efficient manner possible. With this in mind, I can only invite you with all my heart to take an enlightened approach to personal development: value self-growth, seek quality guidance without overloading your brain, and put it into practice consistently. You will reach a quality of lifestyle and a level of fulfillment that few people ever experience.
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