Scott H Young

It is my personal conviction that everyone should pursue personal development. I don’t believe that our own improvement and growth should be treated as a hobby or interest reserved for a select few. Secondly, I don’t believe that personal growth should be a side-activity. I treat my entire experience of life from the perspective of personal development. For me, personal development isn’t just something I do, it is how I live.

Even though I have a strong conviction in this area, few people actively pursue personal development. Sure, some people will read a few inspirational articles, go to some seminars or browse the self-help section of their bookstore, but how many of those people actually take action and do the things that they read about?

First of all, I’d like to address the top three reasons I feel people choose not to pursue personal development. These excuses will ultimately create massive limitations in your life and really cut you off from enjoying the life you deserve.

Excuse Number One: Drowning in Life

How many of you wake up every morning bright and early, filled with passion and enthusiasm. How many of you feel like dancing, running or skipping when you are walking around. Who here walks around with a permanent smile on their faces?

I think the biggest reason people don’t pursue personal development is because they are drowning in their own lives. These people get up each day just wanting to sleep. They drag themselves to work and back to their homes. Every second of the day they aren’t working they feel like flopping in front of the television, eating junk food or drinking. Who has the energy and time to pursue personal development when you don’t even have the time or energy to cope with life?

There is an old quote I’d like to paraphrase for you at this point. A man once said, “Every day I pray for an hour before I go to bed. If the day has been particularly difficult, frustrating and draining, I pray for two hours.” The fact is that the people who say they don’t have time or energy to pursue personal development are the people who need it most. Even if you can only devote 1% of your energy to personal development, that small investment will give you more to use in the future.

I wake up at six in the morning every morning, including weekends. When I do this, I sometimes get odd looks from people. I mean, sleeping in is the best part of their week, so why on earth would you choose to wake up early? The answer is simple. Because my time awake each morning is worth more to me than sleeping extra, unneeded hours. If sleeping in is the best part of your week, then perhaps you need to reevaluate how you live your life.

I recently made a habit change to give up television. While I normally watch very little television, I found that this trial would make it easier to avoid getting sucked into watching an hour of mediocre programming. I can always buy the DVD of a particularly good show or watch a movie instead. If television is the best part of your day, then perhaps you need to start looking at your true values.

Personal Development isn’t all about sacrifice. Ultimately, it is about increasing your quality of life rather than just your level of “success”. If you don’t think you could wake up early every morning, give up junk food or television then perhaps you need to look at the quality of the activities you pursue. Even 1% can make a difference. Don’t tell me you are too busy!

Excuse Number Two: Fear

Fear is a huge barrier in personal growth. Many of our biggest obstacles are created by our own fears. Breaking these fears doesn’t take a magnificent leap of courage. I believe the key to building courage really lies in two attributes, acceptance and persistence.

In order to overcome a fear you need to accept it. Don’t feel bad because you have a fear you think might be irrational or uncommon. To accept a fear you have is better than to live in denial. Denial only strengthens the fear, while acceptance gives you the position to face it. If you want to start public speaking and you are afraid, then accept that, don’t deny it or make it wrong.

The second factor in building courage is persistence. If you can’t handle your fear in its entirety, break down smaller and smaller fears until they are manageable. The main idea is that once you have accepted your fear, be persistent in slowly destroying it. Don’t let fear be your reason for not pursuing personal development.

Excuse Number Three: Misconception

Misconception about what personal growth is can be a big reason for avoiding it. Most people have some incorrect assumptions about personal development. While I think there are many myths associated with it, I think that it is important to state the purpose of personal development:

The purpose of personal development is to increase the quality of your life and the lives of the people around you.

Interpret that message to be anything you want. Personal growth covers a large area, from spirituality, goals, change and consciousness. I like to separate it into vertical and lateral growth, but there are many other ways you can organize it. Interpret that message and find your own way to act on it. If you live for the purpose of personal development, who cares how people define it?

Now that I’ve gone over what I feel are the three biggest excuses for not pursuing personal development, I’m going to go over what I feel are the three biggest benefits to making personal growth the philosophy you live your life.

Benefit Number One: Happiness

Western culture makes a grossly inaccurate connection between happiness and pleasure. We talk about “happiness” coming from being successful or doing enjoyable activities. This is the kind of culture that believes that, yes, money does buy happiness. Or if money doesn’t buy happiness then surely a relationship, a nice house or great friends do.

Happiness doesn’t come from these things. In my experience, some of the most genuinely unhappy people have lots of money, friends or achievements. On the other end, I know people who are cheerful and happy who lack many of these things.

The truth is that happiness comes from growth. We are only really happy when we are increasing the quality of our lives or the lives of others. Happiness doesn’t lie in the achievements, it lies in the achieving. If you are wondering what constitutes growth, look back at my purpose of personal development.

Don’t make your happiness rely on things, or the environment. Happiness isn’t attached to your wealth, achievements, relationships or any external factor. Happiness is attached to your own sense that you are working towards increasing the quality of your life or the lives of others.

Benefit Number Two: Control

The amount of control we have over our lives is directly attached to our focus on personal growth. Steven Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, illustrates this point so concisely. In the book, he talks about the Circle of Influence. Anything within this circle is under our control. Anything outside this circle is beyond our ability to control.

The key, however, is that the circle doesn’t remain constant. If you put your focus and attention within your circle of influence, your circle expands. By focusing on what you can control, you increase your ability to control. By focusing on what you can’t control, your circle decreases. It is my belief that depression is largely caused by people who put so much focus outside their circle of influence that it has shrunk to a point where they don’t feel that they have any control whatsoever.

If you focus on personal development, then you naturally focus within your circle. By taking responsibility for the outcome of your life, you gain the power to decide where it will go. Will you be a leader or a follower? Will you live a life of incredible happiness, joy and contribution or will you live a life of desperation, misery and pain?

Benefit Number Three: Contribution

The more we have, the more we can give. This extends to far more than money. By being a believer in personal development, you serve as a role model to others. By overcoming obstacles you can help other people overcome those obstacles as well.

Improving yourself creates ripples outwards. These ripples disturb the natural state of other people until they too heed the call of growth and awareness. Steve Pavlina says it so eloquently when he asks, “Are you a bear or an eagle?” Do you soar above the clouds or hibernate in a cave?

By increasing the resources you have the more you can share. The more money you make, the more you can give to others. The more effectively you manage time, the more you can use it to volunteer. The more energy you have the more you can devote to projects that benefit humanity.

Ultimately, this has to be one of the primary reasons for pursuing personal development. The pursuit allows you to benefit others. Don’t you deserve to leave the world with more than you entered it?

For me, personal development isn’t an activity I pursue. I don’t devote a certain amount of my time to it as a hobby. Personal development is the compelling obsession by which I live my life. The ability to grow, expand, experience, improve and enjoy every second of life compels me forward in every moment. I frame all of my experiences in terms of how they allow me to increase the quality of my life.

Don’t be the person who reads a self-help book, tells a bunch of their friends about how great it is and then fails to use any of it in your life. Don’t let my words today go ignored. Even if your life is so out of control that you can only invest ten minutes a day towards your improvement, invest it. Even if you are so crippled by fear that you can’t see how you can ever overcome your goals, take the most minute steps today. Frame personal development into your own personal definition of its purpose.

Get the most out of your life!

Steve Pavlina recently reported that he has decided to switch from polyphasic sleeping back to ordinary monophasic sleep. For those of you haven’t been following Steve’s incredibly interesting journey with sleep, over five months ago Steve switched from sleeping through the night (monophasic) to sleeping in periods of naps throughout the day. Being one of the few people who have publicly succeeded in this experiment has drawn a lot of attention to Steve. The decision to switch back to normal sleep may come as a surprise to some people.

Steve’s main reasons for quitting were because he was finding it hard to function in a monophasic society with polyphasic sleeping. This is an example of how society does put barriers around our behavior by determining the limits for how we need to interact. I think the fact that Steve so brazenly ignored these barriers and the nay-sayers to take on this experiment is one of the reasons this story has drawn some much interest.

Barriers for how we interact exist at all levels of our society. Unfortunately, some people get stuck in a position where these barriers prevent them from really growing. Other people imagine far more barriers than actually exist, creating imaginary illusions for how they need to operate in society.

At the highest level are the barriers or structure of how humanity as a whole operates. Most of these barriers help society. The concept of morality could be considered a structure or barrier at the level of humanity. This causes people who are evil, destructive and push that barrier to become outcasts, rejected from humanity.

As we go into smaller groups, there are the barriers for which each culture operates and the barriers for how each community operates. These barriers continue down until you have the barriers for each social group. A group of friends likely have certain implied expectations and rules for how members of that group should operate.

What happens when you have a group of friends that are living at a far lower level of consciousness then you want? Those barriers form restrictions that can serve to trap you into a state where you can no longer grow. By surrounding yourself with mediocrity, you are restricted by their own mediocrity.

When this happens you have a couple choices. Your first option is to simply do nothing, and live a life of far poorer quality than you are capable of. The second option is to keep the friends and simply push against the barriers. The final option is to decrease your attachment to the group that created those barriers in the first place. This website is about personal growth so I’m not even going to discuss the potential for choosing option number one.

Option number two may suffice for some minor changes in behavior. If you want to change a minor habit, chances are it won’t push to strongly against the barriers created by your social group. If you decided to start waking up earlier, chances are that wouldn’t impact the barriers created by your social group.

What about those changes that really do push against the barriers of your social group? What if you want to become a non-smoker and all of your friends smoke, or you want to be optimistic and passionate when all your friends are depressing and nihilistic? In these cases option number three may be your only option. You may need to transition your place in society towards a group whose boundaries will encourage this new growth rather than stifle it.

I think the reason many of us were so fascinated and humbled by Steve’s polyphasic sleep habit is because he took up against the barriers that our entire culture have put up. Changing himself in a way that completely defies our culture gave a lot of us hope that we too could break through the barriers, even if they were for a much smaller scale.

Although Steve’s retreat to normal sleeping is completely understandable, I can see how this might create a bit of disappointment from the people who followed his path. In a sense, Steve’s own struggle with polyphasic sleep served as an important example of why we all need to push out against the mediocrity we surround ourselves with. Even if he has finished his experiment, I think we can all keep the lessons it teaches.