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For the sake of your personal development, let’s do a little visualizing and see what kind of personal insight we can gain. Take a minute and close your eyes as you think about your ideal scenario for your life. To make things interesting, allow yourself to abandon all limitations.
If you could create your version of a deeply satisfying, enjoyable, meaningful, empowering life experience, what would it look like? What would it feel like? Who else would be there? Where would you live? What kind of activities would you spend your time on? What kind of physical, emotional, and financial space would you be in?
Go ahead and fill in all the details until the picture looks and feels just right. In fact, don’t open your eyes until you are really clear on all the details and can actually feel yourself in the picture.
Hold that beautiful vision in your mind
How does that visualized life compare with your current reality? Is it close? Are you moving toward it, or is the difference like night and day? Guess what, it really doesn’t matter because life is not a destination, it’s a journey. The important thing is that we are traveling in the direction we want to go and enjoying ourselves along the way.
The vision is important because it defines our personal development path and gives us something to move toward, not because life starts when we get there. Life is what happens along the way and that’s where we need to have that deeply satisfying, enjoyable, meaningful, empowering life experience.
How do we do that?
This is where personal development comes in. Why do you think the whole concept of personal development and self-improvement is so popular these days? It’s because our path defines our personal development process. Amazingly, most people don’t fully appreciate the life altering paradigm shift that happens as a result of pursuing our own personal development vision of a truly meaningful life.
There seems to be a natural tendency to focus on the external results that come from things like improving our communication skills or learning to effectively set and achieve goals. Don’t get me wrong, those things are certainly valuable, but there is more, much more! Striving to stay on our personal development path, and live up to a higher standard always creates greater value in our personal life and the lives of those around us.
The personal development shift
Personal development has a profound effect on every single aspect of our life. As we grow on a personal level, we begin to feel more passionate about life in general. We are naturally more motivated because learning and growing adds motivation and a sense of excitement.
Personal development provides us with both the incentive and the means to become the best possible version of ourselves. Instead of becoming more self-focused, personal development expands our frame of reference to include the people around us. As our world expands, so does our awareness of the possibilities and opportunities around us. This possibility mindset fills us with an attitude of eager anticipation as we look forward to each new day.
Forget ordinary, go for extraordinary!
Contrast this with a lifestyle that seems endlessly repetitive. A mere existence, made up of a mundane routine with nothing much to look forward to except getting through the day, the week, the year. Learning gets replaced with mindless entertainment as a person’s world grows smaller and smaller. That’s what happens to people who abandon their personal development vision.
We all started out believing that a better life is possible. At some point in our lives, we all dreamed of accomplishing great things and living a life of value and purpose. Unfortunately, it is far too easy to allow the demands and frustrations of daily living to dampen those hopes and squash those dreams. When this happens we begin to settle for just getting by. Without a personal development vision, life can be so demanding that it leaves you feeling trapped on an endless merry-go-round that never leads anywhere.
Never abandon your beautiful personal development vision!
The truth is, we all have the capacity to take charge of our lives and to make our dreams come true. Yes, this requires that we learn new life skills and change our beliefs about what is possible, but what could be more exciting than that?
Personal development is a doorway to a life that is both exciting and fulfilling – A life that is full of endless opportunities and amazing possibilities. Don’t allow your life to become an endurance contest; you deserve much more than that.
Growing as a person creates opportunities to reclaim your dreams, transform your life and make a valuable contribution to the world around you. So hang onto your personal development vision no matter what and view each day as an opportunity to move in that direction. See life as an adventure in personal development and remember, life is not a destination, it’s a journey.
