161: Dangers of Personal Development
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Our team is always talking about the benefits of personal development. However, there are some very real risks involved. Not that the steps you take to improve yourself involves risk to your physical health or anything like that. It is more the risk of having the wrong mindset and the problems that arise from that.
One of the biggest issues many of us may face when involved with personal development is going through depression. In personal development we are supposed to focus on growing into the best version of us that we can be. However, many of personal development ‘followers’ start comparing their lives to those of the people they want to be. The problem with this is we will always see the ‘ideal’ person as being better than us and we will never be good enough. Mainly, we are looking at the other person and saying the only reason we aren’t them is because we lack something. Then we end up giving up because we don’t have what that person has so why even try.
The point of personal development is not to make us into someone else or to become another person. It is to simply become the best ‘you’ that you can be. We can’t do that if we are looking at someone else saying we want to be them. It creates a false goal that doesn’t get us to where we need to go and makes it harder to reach our potential.
Personal Development is a lifelong process full of little successes and many failures. In many cases, you won’t be able to recognize the changes right away. However, if you look back after a long while you will see where your small changes in healthy decisions have completely changed the direction your life is going. It may not be recognizable at first glance, but as you improve and look back over your life, you will clearly see how you got to where you are. You will also find it much easier to see what changes you need to make to get where you want to go. The trick is to improve your life, not compare it to someone else’s. It is ok to have someone to look up to for inspiration or for advice, but don’t fall into the trap of comparing your life to theirs and giving up.
