I’m writing a course on a pathway for personal development, and I’m struggling. I’ve learned a lot over the years and I like to share a lot. That overcomplicates things. And people are very busy and don’t want complicated. There are a handful of people who want to know all the in’s and out’s, but most folks are looking for the most efficient way to move from where they are to where they want to be. I get that. But I still struggle with it.
And gosh, where do you even start with a course on personal development? As I’ve noodled on this in the early mornings this past week, it dawned on me that perhaps the place to start is by sharing the three key benefits of personal development. There are lots of benefits, some that people cannot begin to imagine when they start with personal development. However, it isn’t even useful to attempt to describe what people cannot understand, even though I’m tempted to try.
I can winnow the benefits of personal development down to three things I think everyone can understand. These three things aren’t complicated:
- You Become More Capable and At Ease
- You Grow and Evolve
- You Become More of Who You Are (and Less of Who You Are Not)
Clarity is power. If you are clear on the benefit you want from personal development, you are more likely to enjoy that benefit. When you aren’t clear, your efforts will tend to sprawl, or dissipate, or produce hollow results with no real staying power. So let’s look at each of the three benefits in turn, and I’d like for you to be thinking about whether your current aim for your personal development efforts is clear and true.
You Become More Capable and At Ease
A lot of people are attracted to the idea of doing personal development work for this benefit — they want to become either more capable at something or be more at ease (and less stressed) in the world. I’ve helped many people clarify what they want from their personal development efforts. Almost always this starts with a vague notion. The person is surprised they struggle to articulate what they want. They have a feeling for it, but it isn’t really focused.
There are three “buckets” I’ve seen under this one benefit. The first two have to do with “more capable.” The last one with “more at ease.”
A. Better Achieve a Goal or Fulfill a Role
For people working in organizations, this is always among the most popular buckets. To start with, anyway. I consider both of these forms of tangible goals.
“Better Achieve A Goal” means creating or doing something tangible that we’ve not done before. It could be writing a book, creating a retirement plan, reorganizing and restructuring a business, hitting a seemingly impossible target, or some such. This is something objective you can see, touch, or measure. It is not here. Now it is here. Your personal development efforts are aimed at changing the behaviors necessary to achieve your goal.
“Fulfill a Role” means getting better at something you feel you should be doing well. Let’s look at two simple examples:
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- Maybe a role you think you struggle at is being a good manager. And if I asked you, “Why do you think you aren’t a good manager?” maybe you’d say, “I don’t delegate well.”
- Maybe the role you most struggle at is being what you think is a good parent. And if I asked you, “Why do you think you aren’t a good parent?” maybe you’d say “I don’t spend enough quality time when my children have my undivided attention.”
Here, your personal development is aimed at helping you become better at some role that’s important to you and that you feel you struggle with.
B. Better Relationships
Everything in life tends to happen through relationships, and we all tend to struggle with them. It’s not the relationships per se, but how we relate that is the problem. Maybe when we get triggered, we become harsh, cutting, aggressive, or some such. Or maybe when we get triggered, we withdraw, cut-off, become cold. Or maybe we in general are too blunt. Or too disconnected from others. Here, your personal developments efforts at aimed at making how you relate healthier, more meaningful, more real, more connected.
C. Less Stress, More Resilience
Dang, we are an overly stressed, burned out culture, aren’t we? Our whole approach to work is unworkable. Our whole approach to life seems unlivable. Here, our personal development aim is to experience a change in our inner state. We start by trying to increase our coping skills, or change the situation outside of us. So this is a trickier area to work with. It is trickier because the real personal development work here typically more directly requires learning to work with our internal state more effectively. Not changing something outside of us, doing better personal care, and the like.
Those are the three key areas of the benefit of “becoming more capable or more at ease.” If there were ONE of these you’d most like to receive as a benefit from your personal development, which one would it be? When you have ONE aim, it increases your ability to do the work required. Also, it increases your motivation. You’re clear on the pay-off of the hard work required. You are more likely to stay with it.
There are two other benefits that are more oblique. Initially, people don’t tend to come to personal development for these two benefits. Most people I know start with one or two of the three items above as their focus. But they discover the joy of the next two benefits and this tends to keep them engaged in it.
When I lived in the ski resort town, Park City, UT, we had a saying. “We came for the winters and we stayed for the summers.” This is like that. Many people come to personal development to better achieve a goal, better fulfill a role, improve their ability to relate and communicate, or reduce stress and feel more at ease in the world. That’s the winter wonderland. Yet once that starts to unfold for them, they stay for these other two benefits. They are, for these people, the glory of summer in the mountains — sunny mornings, quaking aspen groves, quick afternoon showers, and cool nights eating outside under a dome of stars.
You Grow
I love this one. We all start the process, quite unknowingly, somewhat broken. I hate to put it that way, but I don’t have a better way. It isn’t like we are inherently broken. In fact, we are inherently whole. But we are all identified with the ego, with the world of form. We all have had early life experiences that affected us. We’ve all been hurt and maybe wounded. And often this stuff hasn’t been healed, integrated. Personal development, done fully, can be powerfully healing. We feel less rigid or chaotic. Less like our life is hanging by a thread. More integrated. More whole.
There’s more. Growing also means increasing our level of mental complexity. Harvard professors, authors, and consultants Bob Kegan and Lisa Lahey are experts in “adult development.” Chapter 2, ‘What Do We Mean by Development?’ of their book An Everyone Culture does a wonderful job outlining what is meant by increasing mental complexity.
Increasing mental complexity doesn’t mean getting smarter. Much more than that, it means seeing the world in a more accurate, more inclusive, more complete way. We all think we see the world straightforwardly, but because of our lack of healing and integration, there are many distortions in our impulses, emotions, and thinking. We are identified with our egos. We believe we are separate from all of life.
Increasing mental complexity means constructing reality in a less constrictive, less distorted way. I love this quotation from the aforementioned chapter:
“For more than a hundred years, researchers have studied the ways human beings construct reality and have observed how that constructing can become more expansive, less distorted, less egocentric, and less reactive over time.”
More expansive. Less distorted. Less egocentric. Less reactive. I don’t know about you, but if my personal development produces that kind of benefit I’m all in!
But there’s more. It isn’t really different than this one. But I list it as a third and separate benefit because it is such a delightful surprise when the lights go on for someone really “doing the work” of personal development. When I see this benefit flicker on for someone, my heart swells in my chest. I feel like I want to cry. And I remember when I first saw this for myself.
You Become More of Who You Are (and Less of Who You Are Not)
I think many people unconsciously think they are not enough. Like they are missing something that must be added or the hole they feel inside will never be filled. This is the crux of the ego, in fact. The ego feels insecure. Not complete. Not enough. Because of that, we do a lot of crazy stuff. And then wonder where the heck it is coming from.
Because we seem to feel we are missing something, we tend to think that personal development is about adding something. You know. Finding out and adding whatever it is that we are missing. Most people wouldn’t articulate this as an expected benefit of personal development, but they sure seem to unconsciously believe that’s the way it works.
Personal development isn’t about adding something you are missing. It’s about stripping away all that you are not so you can reveal who you truly are. Underneath all your “stuff” is a flawless diamond. Personal development is about revealing it. This is probably to most unexpected benefit of personal development. And, when we glimpse this, efforting starts to cease and being starts to emerge.
This benefit comes with some other pretty incredible and unanticipated benefits. Being better able to sense and fulfill your life purpose, deeper and more satisfying relationships, a deeper understanding of and connection to life, deeper belief in and compassion for self, compassion for others, living and embodying your highest values, and an increased capacity to serve others and life.
Conclusion
There are many benefits to personal development. I’ve shared three that I’ve seen. Three that the many people I’ve worked with enjoy and appreciate.
- Achieving an important goal or better fulfilling an important role
- Getting better at relating and connecting with others, and
- Becoming more of who we are (and less of who we are not).
I recommend putting pencil or pen to paper and clarifying what benefit(s) you want to most directly receive from your personal development efforts. If you walk the full path of personal development, you will receive all the benefits. Because you will be transformed. However, this need not be your aim at all. Maybe you just want to change a behavior that enables you to better achieve a goal, fulfill a role, or relate better. Cool. Do it.
I recommend writing down two things, two benefits, to start. One that is related to either a goal you want to achieve, or a role you want to better fulfill. That’s your tangible goal. Dial that in. Secondly, sketch out a goal related to getting better at relating. That’s your relational goal. Dial that in. Then, set your intention to use your personal development work to achieve both. I think you will find they are interconnected and actually reinforce one another.
I’d love to hear what yours are. Reply to this article. Let me know. I’d find it inspiring to know what you are focused on. And it will help me write about what might be helpful to you as you apply yourself to manifesting those benefits.
Make it a good week. And, seriously, I’d love to hear what your aims are for your personal development work.
Much warmth,
Otis