The Personal Development and Growth industry is exploding, and while it grows in the fertile soil of boom economies, it also thrives in the economic downturns. Why are so many people turning to this field that here in the Western world arose out of training for Sales People?
Today we have a very tough job market. This is most evident to the younger generation. We no longer have the job market that the Boomers launched themselves into. Back in that day any university graduate had the luxury of choice: multiple job offers in their field, followed by rapid rise to management and higher salaries. Ancient history now. We have been on a slow decline ever since.
Statistics for the last 20 years have shown single digit success rates: as of 2014, only 7% of university graduates received full-time offers of work related to their field of study. That’s a very sad statistic! Many of them additionally graduate with $100,000 debt and more. A house mortgage of debt, and no viable income. No wonder so many move back home. It’s a wonder the Millennials haven’t been called the Boomerang Generation!
As for those who are older, we all know that to succeed on the job, one has to consistently distinguish oneself from the crowd. And to succeed in a job competition, one ideally wants to stand head and shoulders above the competition. Standing out in the crowd virtually guarantees success.
It is for this reason that University education became so popular. When few people were university educated, they naturally stood out. Everybody figured this out, and now there is a glut, so a university degree is no longer a distinguishing factor.
Some parents combat this by sending their offspring to private schools, and typically will subscribe to the most prestigious private school they can afford. That too worked for a while, but with success rates dipping towards the low single digits, even that is no longer enough. Your children need to literally be the best in their cohort.
School Yourself in Success
Today there is a boom in Coaching. The most successful now hire Personal Coaches. Sports stars hire Mental Performance Coaches. Managers hire Executive Coaches. All are trying to gain an edge, an enhanced state of performance so they can excel in what they do.
The price tag of these services is high. Think multiple 4 figures a month. It’s intensive, it’s tailored, and it gives people that edge that makes them stand out. On the path to the top, the expense is small compared to the reward. CEO’s now earn 300X what is earned by the average worker in a company. 300X. That is a worthwhile investment, although there is only one CEO per company.
Ok but maybe you aren’t on track to become a CEO. Maybe that isn’t your schtick. Most people want to excel at what they do. Be the best they can be. This is why sports figures hire Personal Coaches, including the Mental Performance Coaches I mentioned.
Success begins in the 6 inches between your ears.
A lot of people get it: this is why the field of Personal Development is booming.
Now, I’m a Counsellor and have even worked as a Career Counsellor. I highly recommend getting on board with Personal Development. It has the potential to change lives.
How to do this?
You can attend live events and listen to gurus, and those things will pump you up. But then you return to life and you slowly come back to the same old same old.
You can read books, and you will learn, but it’s really difficult to apply what you read.
See, the magic is in the application.
So we make resolutions (a common practice around New Year’s, right?).
We all know how successful that is!
What is the problem? Why are we generally so unsuccessful in changing things we desperately want to change?
The Key to Success is Effective Thinking
And it all comes down to our thinking. We want to make changes, but our own thinking fights against us.
We just don’t understand our thinking. Were you taught anything about successful thinking in school? Did they help you become more effective in your thinking? Or maybe (I shudder) they added to the confusion?
Here’s one example: literally everybody has had a Critic in their life, and chances are, given human nature, it has been someone close to you. A family member. Maybe even Mom or Dad. Those voices, their poison word tracks, echo around inside our heads. We try to make changes, but we are fighting against those entrenched voices.
How about the one-liners that run around inside our heads? “It’s not fair.” “It’s too hard.” “It won’t work for me.” Or the dieter that says “One cookie won’t hurt.”
What Coaches do is walk beside you and provide the piece of advice you need at the moment. They fit the knowledge to the situation. They provide access to slow steady growth to a new pattern of thinking. Effective coaches do this well, and command even higher fees.
So by all means, if you like the model, support a Coach.
The Power of Personal Development
Personally, I am more of a self-directed learner. I am not into the Guru model. I like their teachings, but I believe that every individual is unique but also sovereign, and the power to grow resides within the individual. This is supported by brain plasticity and neurological studies.
Herein lies the power of the Personal Development field.
When you read a book on a topic in Personal Development, your brain will naturally identify a concept that is of need to you, and it will incorporate that knowledge into your cognitive web. That knowledge will organically spread throughout your cognitive web, and a change in thinking has occurred. Your own Mind is your Perfect Coach.
Old Maslow knew this. That’s why he called the pinnacle of development “Self-actualization.” Not Coach actualized. Self actualized.
So then why is it so hard to continue the high after attending a live event? Why is reading books not life-changing?
The secret is in the consistency, the organization of the information, and the application.
To successfully implement changes, one needs to be consistently immersed in Personal Development. Think of a daily tear off calendar: it’s a quote a day. So, imagine a brief immersion in Personal Development daily. 10-15 minutes of high quality audio-visual for example. How powerful is that!
But it can’t be random. Again thinking of the tear off calendar: each quote of the day is broadly unrelated to the quote of the day before.
So your daily Personal Development needs to be organized and sequential. This is where books fall down: each is good and offers a solid principle to learn, but a series of books is as random as the quote of the day. And who has time to try to organize it all?
Again, enter the Coach. The effective ones offer sequential training.
Well we have circled back to Coaching again.
Give Yourself an Edge
If you want a magic wand that you can wave and problems go away and you or your children bounce to the top of the field, well, I don’t think such a thing exists. Even Harry Potter had to study. Kudos for that J.K. Rowling.
If you want that success edge for your children, give them this advantage!
If you want to change your outcomes, if you want a better future for your children, if you want greater success in any area of your life, relationships, career, health, spirituality, this is the place to start. School yourself in Success.
Now if you are self-directed, believe in the value of Personal Development, and after reading this agree that consistency and organization is important, read the addendum below.
Start your journey today!
Addendum: My Story
If you believe, like me, that the individual has the resources within them to accomplish this without the need for a guru, that you have the power within to self-actualize and that your own Mind is your Perfect Coach, then read my story below.
Even though I am a Counselor, I wanted an alternative to offer people. something they could access without the need to find a suitable talk therapist, or schedule appointments, leave the house, or even walk agonizingly through painful memories.
Yet, it wasn’t my goal to set out and create something from scratch. So I researched. I looked and looked for something that people could use on their own effectively and successfully. What I found was a product that is organized, comprehensive, offers consistency for daily learning, and has practical exercises that are real, not you know, lame or hokey. Oh and it’s won awards in both the film and the education fields.
I’ve got a few degrees, and I can tell you this is better than anything I learned in my Counselling training. In terms of the quality of the material, it’s equivalent to about 2/3 of a Master’s degree in Leadership. Plus it’s delivered in down to earth language. Complex information in an easy to understand format. Try finding that in a university professor!
Best part I think is it’s not a guru talking head thing. Presented in multi-media format, it’s experiential learning based on the stories of ordinary people like you and me who have overcome some pretty major challenges in their lives.
If they can do it, so can we!
