Do It

When you move away from knowing something intellectually to actually practicing it daily with intent (to grow, become better, learn and add value), that is when you begin to take ownership of your learning and personal development.

Crawl-Walk-Run

Everything follows a sequence. If you are starting out in anything worthwhile, especially when it comes to personal development and positive psychology, there is the urge to quickly share what we’ve learned. The challenge is we haven’t yet applied, failed and mastered what it is that we’re trying to share, so it lacks the nuances and refinement.

Apply it

Before you share something or teach it, are you actually applying it to your life? Have you made mistakes with it? Have you course corrected along the way? Have you done it to such a degree that you can now own it – make it work for you as fits your circumstances and the stage you are at in life? There is nothing wrong with learning something, learning never stops, but I don’t think we should be sharing it, teaching it or coaching it until we have truly mastered it.

One of the most common challenges to avoid in our personal growth is to have spent weeks and months ‘learning’ something, only to have that still be intellectual knowledge, rather than actual result in our lives.

Use What You Have

Don’t focus on what you don’t have, focus on fully engaging with and maximizing the resources that you do have. For years I’ve “known” so much about the benefits of sleep, exercise, good nutrition, meditation, deep reading, etc. to such a degree that I took them for granted whenever I read or heard about them. “Oh yeah, mindfulness and meditation, I know about that, what’s next?”

Now, rather than saying I know about it, I ask myself, “Am I applying it consistently? Am I tracking it daily and grading it?”

Take physical exercise. I have been doing that for years and have reaped some rewards, but always felt that I had more in the tank. When I started planning and tracking my workouts (frequency, intensity), really engaging in the process (tracking nutrition, how much I slept, what time I slept and not f@#ing around in the gym), my energy, mood, mental acuity and sleep quality shot straight up into the stratosphere. And I knew it all at a new level, it moved from my head to my heart.

Good Days Rarely Interrupt You

One must treat personal development a bit like physical training to a certain extent. It’s not always pleasurable in the moment, but afterwards when you feel the benefits you feel great, and if you’re honest, it is a bit pleasurable during the process. What drives you can’t just be the pleasure but the actual gains and benefits, regardless of if you feel them in the moment or not.

You wouldn’t go to the gym once and complain afterwards that you don’t have a six pack, why would you treat your mind any differently? But after a few months in the gym… You still don’t have the six pack, but what do you have – progress, momentum, energy, self-respect, self-mastery… And if you’re honest those things trump the six pack because you could just be some skinny person with a natural six pack and have none of those added benefits.

The same holds true for the mind. You’re laying new neural pathways and although there are ways of doing that much faster than was thought possible, it still takes some time. A positive and strong psychology must be consciously built daily, rarely will you stumble upon it, and if you do, it will probably be short-lived. Building a mindset that can weather any storm, that can keep you focused on your mission and goals in this age of distraction is worth the effort. And if you would like to experience these amazing benefits rather than just know about them, then begin by committing to the process. Let the results take care of themselves.