Personal Development

Last Friday I took a day off. I had a great morning at home, playing with our little daughter and reading a book, and in the afternoon I got out to finish some business in the nearby town.

On my way back home in the afternoon, I stopped by a local shopping centre to buy something. While making my way to the shop, I noticed a man playing an old accordion. He seemed to be in his late 50s, and there was something really tired about his look. Yet he was smiling and playing passionately something very light and pleasing. Beside him there was a box for his accordion, opened for people to throw coins into.

The music seemed very familiar. One of the tunes I’ve recognized for sure – it was a rather popular Russian romance – Ochi Chernye (Dark Eyes). I stopped to listen for a short while, but felt guilty for not dropping him a coin (I simply had no change on me) and left pretty soon.

I’ve gotten back to the car, still thinking about the man. What I actually thought was that if I was a better person, I would’ve stayed longer and got some change from the shop, and gave him a coin or two, and maybe bought him a coffee and had a friendly chat.

Do you know this feeling when deep down inside you know you’d love to do something, but you’re so unsure of how it would look to others and how you would be judged, that you start looking for any excuse to bail out? That was the feeling I was experiencing at the time.

I was coming up with one reason after another along these lines: I have no time. I need to go. It would look stupid to buy a complete stranger a coffee. He would not appreciate it anyway, he probably sees hundreds of people just like me – passing him by and never giving him a coin. The bottom line: coming back will make no difference, nothing will change.

I started the engine, and headed for the exit. I kept reassuring myself of various valid and absolutely urgent reasons to leave immediately, but instead something different happened: in the very last moment, I’ve turned and took the last parking space right next to the exit. I shut the engine down.

From that moment on, I knew – the decision was made.

It’s been a good few months of me trying to raise my awareness of everything and anything that happens to me, in order to improve myself. I absolutely hate giving in to minute weaknesses, and always try really hard to force myself and make a conscious decision about some acts and thoughts I particularly dislike. With the time, I’ve developed this external view of myself, as if I’m looking from aside, and this helps me see where I behave absolutely irrational, and I actively try to stop myself from acting like this.

The decision had been made.

It’s incredible, how hard it is to be nice to some stranger. You suddenly have all the reasons in the world to believe it will not make any difference, but trust me it will. It is hard to stop rushing somewhere and smile to someone you don’t even know, but you should try it sometime. Not smile as you’re walking, but actually stop to talk. Stop to ask how life is treating a person, and be genuinely interested.

You know what I did? I came back, and I got my coffee, and stood next to the man listening to his music. I dropped him a coin. I sat at a table of a nearby cafe, and enjoyed another 10 minutes of him playing. And when he made a pause, I walked up to him, and asked if he would like to enjoy a cup of coffee with me. He asked for an espresso, and as soon as I bought it, we sat at the table and started talking.

We talked for about half an hour. He told me about his younger years and his career of a professional musician. Apparently, he had travelled the whole Europe in his early days – he was so good that many famous people invited him for a friendly visit. He knew many great composers and artists personally, and had a house full of photos and music contests trophies back in Romania.

This man had spent his last 9 years in Ireland. He came with his big family, but couldn’t find a proper job due to various reasons. Playing accordion is his only way of bringing money into the family, and so he plays almost every day. I’ve seen him a number of times playing in the city centre, his music was always great and his smile was always a sincere and cheerful one.

We talked like some good old friends. His English wasn’t perfect, but I’ve demonstrated the ability to understand many Romanian words, and so we had a complete understanding talking on various topics.

In just half an hour I’ve learned a lot about his past, his travels and his family. He told me about 3 sons and how he taught them to play various instruments and it’s like a small family orchestra now – they are welcome guests at any party because of this. I told him about our little daughter, and we talked about eternal things like life passing by too quick to notice and children growing up in no time at all.

When the coffee was finished, I stood up and asked for his name. Severin. It sounds like a last name in Russian, but that’s his name. I gave him my name, and we shook hands.

We smiled, and in a moment I was gone.

The last thing I remembered was his box for coins, with the most sincere words I’ve ever seen written on it: NO MUSIC – NO LIFE. THANK YOU.

As strange as it sounds, many people feel like they’ve failed in their personal development. They feel the need to recover from it in order to successfully move on. Since I personally don’t believe you can fail with your personal development, I thought an article explaining my point of view on such matters might actually help.

Personal development is a process, not an event

Before I talk about anything else, let me make a statement: personal development is a life-long process, not an event. Thus, you can’t miss it and never get another chance to experience it – a chance to improve something about yourself is always around.

Once started with personal development, you will feel the urge and need to develop yourself mentally, emotionally and spiritually on a constant basis.

After you see the first results of self-improvement, you will not be able to drop it – you will get hooked up and will use every opportunity to improve something else about yourself.

There is no such thing as failure

I like this quote by Anthony Robbins a lot. In full, it goes like this:

“There is no such thing as failure. There are only results.“

Even more so with personal development: you can’t, and you won’t fail, if you have the right attitude.

If you already read books or listen to audio materials on personal development, chances are that you’ve isolated a few areas of yourself which need improvement. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you, but it clearly shows your dedication to pushing the bar even higher for yourself.

Well, here’s some good news for you: becoming aware of your weaknesses or areas to be improved, is a huge advantage on its own. To you this means, that even if you had only agreed that some things about yourself could be improved, but had no chance or no courage to actually do something about them, you already have made positive progress!

Remember it: you cannot fail with your personal development!

There is no harm in trying

As with anything else, it is very important that you actually try doing something in order to improve yourself. What I’m saying is this: if you are not sure whether some actions on your personal development plan will work or not, do them anyway! Anything you do, no matter how insignificant it might seem, will make a positive difference in the end. You may not see any immediate results, but you will improve eventually.

Sometimes, you have to try something only to get experience. This gained experience will help you make better decisions and take proper actions trying some other parts of your personal development.

Don’t know about you, but to me it’s always better to try my best at something and not get the perfect result from the first attempt, than to never even try it.

Having not reached the goal, I will learn as much as I can from the mistakes made, and will definitely approach the same problem at a later time, just to test it again and see if I can cope with it using new experience. I never give up easily, just because I believe that you can achieve anything if you try your best. And it simply takes way too many attempts for me to be absolutely sure that I’ve tried everything I could to achieve my goal.

One very good thing such an approach gives me is certainty: I’m much more sure about my ability to get through many problems I face, simply because I know I’ll keep trying no matter what.

From the other hand, deciding to not even try something has very negative impact. It will not only discourage you from many other things, seemingly independent from what you’re giving up on, but it will also haunt you for many days (weeks and sometimes even years) to come. As time will pass, you will feel more and more confident about facing the original challenge, and you will also start getting really irritated with yourself for not trying your best back when you had the opportunity. You’ll be lucky if it’s not too late to do it, but quite often the chance is gone.

You should know: with personal development it’s never too late to start, but I advise you make the decision to improve yourself once and forever, and then fearlessly try anything that might help you improve.

Find ways to motivate yourself

Personal development is a constant process. It is very easy to get started, but it is impossible to finish. You’ll be constantly improving yourself throughout your life, so you might as well learn how to get and stay motivated about your self-growth.

Think about it this way: millions of people go through their lives without any questioning. They spend year after year, not even hoping to improve anything. Some people are genuinely happy, of course, but the majority is simply too weak and too lazy – and so, due to one reason or another, most of them never find the courage, time or motivation to get started with their personal development.

Compared to them, you’ve already made a giant leap forward: you’ve made a decision to improve. You’ve made a commitment, and you have taken the first few steps. Why stop now, that you’ve gone this far?

One very simple way of staying motivated about your personal development is to make a small improvement every day. You don’t have to make a big change or transform completely, but as long as you consciously improve something really small about yourself on a regular basis, you’re on the right track and you’ve got all the reasons to feel good about it.

Personal development opens limitless opportunities to you, because it’s a process of bringing your enjoyment of life and your self-growth to such highs which in the past were never thought possible. You not only can, but you most definitely will outgrow yourself: that’s the whole idea of personal development. Isn’t it motivating enough, to spend every day of your life changing and growing better?

Goal setting: do you know your goals?

Quite often, the disappointment comes from wrongly chosen goals. Failing in something most often means not failing to make progress, but failing to get the result you wished for. So it is very important to be able to understand where your frustration comes from in order to react.

Because your personal development is a process and not an event, you have to be conscious about a few things.

For instance, You’re not going to reach a point in your life when you’ll be 100% finished with your personal development. Just accept it, and never make it your goal. Otherwise, you’ll end up doing the right things, growing personally more and more, and still not being able to enjoy the results, because you’ll be waiting for some final state of mind which you simply can’t reach.

This is probably one of the cases when it is very appropriate to suggest: enjoy the process! Personal development is about constant self-growth and improvement, and as you grow, you’ll be setting higher and higher goals in your development, and therefore achieving more and more.

Well, hopefully you now get the picture and understand that there is really no way you could possibly fail with your personal development. Some results might take longer to show, but you will get there eventually.

Learn to enjoy your self-improvement, and always remember: one of the signs of being successful in personal development is genuinely enjoying the process of it!