Why Personal Development?

Written by Jimmie Burroughs Email this article to a friend

Why is personal development so important anyway? Can’t we just be our natural selves and do just fine. Would you want to stay right where you started out at birth, unable to talk: unable to walk or do anything for yourself? The answer is obvious, of course not.  The purpose of life is the development of your body, soul and your inner self. No one stays neutral: you are either strengthening the positive elements or you are strengthening the negative ones. The evidence is clearly seen in those whose bodies are healthy and are people of integrity in opposition to those whose bodies are broken by bad health habits or who lives life as losers.

You are where you are right now because that is where you put yourself. No one is going to come to rescue you. It is going to be up to you to want to change things. Actually it doesn’t really matter where you may be now; it’s only where you’re headed from where you are now that counts.

Personal development does not happen overnight any more than the body matures overnight. It is a process that takes years and is never finished in this lifetime. It is the same however for each person; there must be a starting place.

Personal development is not a quick and easy fix. It can take years and includes hard work and sometimes pain to reach the objectives. It takes personal discipline to quit harmful habits and to develop new positive ones. Smoking, drinking, abusing the body and soul with fornication, lack of exercise, junk food diets, lack of rest are just a few of the bad habits that minimize life rather than maximizing it.

What is the importance of personal development? For starters it is the only way you can possibly ever reach your full potential. That is your earning potential; your potential to have a happy life; your potential to contribute to the lives of others; your potential to complete your purpose for being on the planet. In other words it is important to every facet of your existence.

Smoking alone is proven to shorten life by as much as 10 years and cost a fortune over a lifetime. The savings invested from not smoking over a lifetime would create a healthy retirement. You may think that you are too addicted to quit smoking but it isn’t true. Anyone can quit with the right mental attitude and discipline.

Here is the way to an improved life through personal development: You must first have a determined desire for personal improvement and the will to get started. Get started today, not tomorrow or next week or next year. It is not necessary to break every bad habit and form new positive ones at once; that might be somewhat overwhelming. Decide on the worst habit you have and then plan a trial 30 day period in which you are determined to refrain from it. Don’t let anything derail you. If it means staying busy doing something, then so is it. I suggest a 30 day trial because to decide on a lifetime is an overwhelming thought but 30 days is manageable. At the end of 30 days extend it another 30 days and so on until you have complete victory over it.

Developing new positive habits works the same way: set a 30 day trial period to develop a new habit. Perhaps it is a new healthy diet that eliminates junk food. It could be setting aside time to exercise or to read. Maybe it could be a TV fast that you don’t watch TV for 30 days and replace it by doing other things like exercise or reading or even spending quality time with your spouse, children or friends.

I has always amazed me how the relatives would drive hundreds of miles to visit together and spend the whole day watching football on TV. I quit TV about 4 years ago and today I have no desire to take up the habit again. I now can live life rather than passively watching someone else live it on a recorded show.

I will admit that I haven’t perfected personal development in my own life but one thing I know for sure is that my life purpose personally is to become a better person through personal development as well as helping others also to become all they can be. There are over 70 articles on this website presently toward that purpose and a lot more to come. I hope you decide to join me on this quest along with millions more who are experiencing a better life due to personal development.

Here are some suggestions of things you might want to do for 30-day trials:

• Read the book of proverbs in the Bible, two chapters the first day and one chapter a day thereafter.
• Give up TV
• Set a time to go for a long walk each day
• Make 25 business sales calls every day to build your business. “Professional speaker Mike Ferry did this five days a week for two years, even on days when he was giving seminars. He credits this habit with helping build his business to over $10 million in annual sales. If you make 1300 sales calls a year, you’re going to get some decent business no matter how bad your sales skills are. You can generalize this habit to any kind of marketing work, like building new links to your web site.”
• Give up social sites
• Shower/bathe/shave each day.
• Try and meet a new person every day; Start a conversation with strangers you meet.
• Make the effort to meet a new person every day for 30 days
• Give your wife or husband a massage every day, expressing your appreciation.
• Stay away from online forums, if you feel you’re becoming addicted
• Try spending 15 to 30 minutes cleaning your living area or office each day.
• Give up junk food, soda, cigarettes, or other unhealthy addictions.
• Write in your journal every day.
• Call a different people each day on your contact list, family, friends or business.
• Write a new entry for your blog each day.
• Get an interesting book and read for an hour a day.
• Find time to meditate each day.
• Learn one new vocabulary word each day..

If you really want to get started the right way consider a relationship with God.

I have great confidence in the progress you are going to make.

With patience and ease, in an unselfish and purposeful way, over a time period undetermined, and for a good that includes others, I intend for $1,000,000 to come to me and to others who join me in holding to this objective.


Ads by Google

To subscribe to  blog simply click on the RSS button on the left, and copy and paste the URL of our RSS feed into your RSS reader. ARTICLE INDEX _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ FREE Reproduction Rights – Feel free to publish this article on your website as long as the following information is included at the end of the article:

Jimmie Burroughs is the author of JimmieBurroughs.com ; get more tips on personal development: www.JimmieBurroughs.com

JimmieBurroughs.com is founded and maintained by Jimmie Burroughs Nashville, Tennessee. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ © 2011 Jimmie Burroughs. All rights reserved