Monday, June 18, 2007

Chasing Personal Development

What is personal development anyway? Why are we so keen in becoming personally developed? How do we measure this progress? I remember a story: some years ago, a new boss was appointed, he came and asked me what are my training needs. I said none and then he said to me very serious: “But you should think of your personal development”. Well, I replied that I considered myself to be personally very well developed, at least for the job I had to do (I did not like that guy at all, so I could not refrain from being sarcastic almost all the time). He insisted though to send to me a seminar of Philip Kotler, which I did not attend after all, as I quit my job and went on vacation by the time it took place.�

I don’t say that chasing personal development is bad. Nor I say it is good. I think in this field there is neither bad nor good; it’s all about our desire to perfection ourselves, our desire to get liked by others, to be recognized as experts in our little corners of life. I read a bunch of so called motivational literature, some of the books were great, some others were offering patterns of living totally unsuitable with my way.

Do you know the old saying that “all roads lead to Rome”? Well, I figured out what it may be about: yes, all roads lead in the same place, but each one of us can take only one road at a time, so we spend our resources in finding out which is the best way for us, we spend our time in fears that we might have taken the wrong path, we waste our thoughts on assuming how the paths we rejected may have looked like. So, why bother? Since any of the roads leads to the same good old Rome, why trying to find the best one? They all are the best. And there are so many crossroads on the way, that instead of looking back, we would better focus on the next crossroad and leave everything that’s past behind. The crossroad I encounter in this very moment is all that matters. Now and only now I’m making the history.� You may say that there are situations in which you have no choice. I fully disagree with this. There is always a choice, we choose in any moment how we want our life to look like. What if I was attacked by thieves? My only choice to get alive would be to give them my wallet, wouldn’t it? No, I still see a few other choices here, such as joining their gang and becoming their leader in a couple of months. Or climbing the nearby tree, then jump on the roof of the nearby house, get down on the chimney and tell the people in the house that you are Santa Claus suffering from Alzheimer and this is why you came in May, without your gifts bag.�

That’s my point, now focus on your next crossroad and drop me a message if you found this useful somehow for your personal development?

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