Let me come right out and say it.  Personal development is a flawed idea.  

Now the topics that I generally write about would tend to be classed by many as personal development, so it might seem strange for me to say such a thing.  The problem is that I don’t really fit into an existing category.  And neither do you.  

I think personal development is flawed.  In truth, I write about the same things as spiritual writers, but I don’t typically use a lot of esoteric language, because I don’t see any distinction between physical and spiritual and so I’m not classed in that group.  So this post, which is a kind of manifesto for my philosophy of following your bliss, might disturb a few people, but hopefully it will clarify and explain why I believe it is a sounder basis than personal development.

Why Personal Development Is Screwed?

 

We are naturally multi-dimensional beings.  We react differently to different people and different contexts and we seek multiple goals.  

• We want to be healthy.  
• We want to be rich.  
• We want to be loved.  
• We want to do things that are meaningful and significant.  

So, often life seems like a delicate balancing act.

The traditional cultural belief is that happiness is the result of some kind of equation.  The equation changes depending on your beliefs, but most go something like this.  If you reach great health and have lots of money and people to share it with, then life will be perfect.  So most people would agree that we need at least;

• Health
• A satisfying career
• A rewarding relationship
• A smooth running household
• And probably some degree of spiritual meaning.

Let’s plot out that belief visually.

Now to achieve each aspect of that equation, we would have to take into account lots of different aspects of each factor.  For example, to be happy with our relationships, most of us would need;

• At least one intimate relationship,
• A healthy relationship with our Parents (Maybe Step Parents and possibly Grandparents)
• If we have Children (Step Children) to get along with them,
• Extended family, such as Aunts, Cousins etc
• Some trusted Friends,
• The ability to relate to those we meet socially,
• To get along in our career, we’ll need to be able to get along with people we interact with professionally and also acquaintances like neighbours and so on.

 So this would probably look like this visually.

 

 

In dealing with our health, we’d need;

• To pay careful attention to our diet,
• To take some exercise,
• To avoid or limit consumption of toxins, such as Alcohol and drugs,
• If we’re on medication we should be aware of the side effects and the best treatment for conditions we have,
• We’d need enough sleep and fresh air,
• And we’d need to manage our stress levels and general emotional wellbeing.

Visually, it would look something like this.

 

Then we have to manage our homelife, doing such chores as;

• paying our bills,
• doing the shopping,
• balancing the accounts,
• dealing with schools, sibling squabbles and other Parenting issues,
• keeping up with housework and maintenance and so on.

Here’s the visual of that.

Now each of those elements can then be broken down into more detailed steps, you need to be aware of and increase your competence levels at.  If you were to take just one aspect of one of those Relationships, for arguments sake, the ingredients of a successful intimate, personal relationship, you’d need to consider lots of other aspects to be sure the relationship was working for both sides.  Questions such as;

• Are you paying the other person enough attention?
• How is the communication between the two of you?
• Are you still physically attracted to each other?
• Is the sexual relationship still working?
• How open are you both, or are their barriers between you?
• Is there trust between you?
• Do you have the emotional intelligence to work through issues?
• Does your relationship work for your social life or are friends and your Partner completely separate?
• Do you have common goals and interests?
• Does the relationship still allow you to maintain a sense of personal balance?

Visually it would look something like this.

 

 

The default perspective on this is that if we get a big tick, next to each goal we will automatically be happy.  And so it seems that we have to run around keeping lots of plates spinning at the same time.  

Today, when we have reached a point where just Youtube alone has 20 hours of video uploaded every minute, we are exposed to such levels of information overload that it is impossible to keep up with almost any topic.  

And so almost all of us are stressed, exhausted and burnt out from running to keep everything we are juggling in the air.  Because once we stop everything will come crashing down to earth.  

It’s crazy.  So to put this into perspective, let’s look at just some of the plates we are trying to keep spinning.

 

 

And that’s without breaking down most of the main factors into more detail.  And when you consider that it takes 10,000 hours to develop excellence at anything, what chance do we have of mastering more than one of these tasks?

Is it any wonder that people are so burned out trying to keep up with everything they think they need to keep up with?

Conservatively, depending on how complex your life is, that’s something like 180 – 300 plates spinning in the air.  Can you really be aware of and develop all those aspects in your life?

The problem is that much of the areas that people are spending their time developing their skills is because they are trying to fit a cultural ideal rather than what is truly them.

This is why people end up taking expensive holidays to exotic locations and end up in a different location, but their time and attention are still stuck miles away through their mobiles and laptops.

The irony is that even when they reach the threshold that they thought they’d get the tick marked off, they find it doesn’t fulfil them anyway.  Because their fundamental assumption was flawed.

Here’s Why So Many People Find That Despite Running Faster To Get Ahead, The Treadmill Just Keeps Speeding Up 

 

If you pursue great health and achieve it, you will get healthy.  

If you pursue a loving relationship and attain it, you will get a rewarding relationship.  

If you pursue and create a rewarding career, you’ll end up with a rewarding career.

But great health does not equal happiness.  Nor does a loving relationship.  Or a rewarding career.

You see, people have misunderstood this distinction for so long that it is a foundational flaw in our cultural mentality.  

Happiness is not an equation.  It is a state of being.  An emotional location of consciousness.

There are many people that are happy in poor health.  And many that are radiantly healthy and unhappy.

There are lots of people in a happy relationship, that are still unhappy.  And many people who are deliriously happy without a relationship.

And again there are people happy without a rewarding career and those unhappy with one.

So Why Are There Unhappy People Who Seem To Have It All And Happy People Who Seem To Have Little?

 

The first and second commandments that Moses gave are;

ONE: ‘You shall have no other gods before Me.‘ 

TWO: ‘You shall not make false idols.‘ 

In other words, I’m the one to focus on and don’t get distracted by worshipping false idols.  I propose that the cultural pursuit of happiness has been one of worshipping false idols. Let me explain.

We set off along a path, our path, in the journey of life, that we hope and believe will lead us to happiness.  And as we travel along this path we meet crossroads that signpost great health, wealth, relationships and so on.  At the end of each path seems a prize so bright, that we are drawn to it.  

 

The challenge of life is how well we can deal with the temptations of false idols.  Most of the time we fall into the trap of believing that if we can just contort our life out of shape for a little while, until we attain the glittering prize, we can then put everything else straight and life will be perfect.

And that is how we lose ourselves.  

We throw ourselves into our careers headfirst and sacrifice our homelife, our health and sanity.  ’If I can just get that promotion’.  

Or maybe your achilles heel is in relationships.  Do you lose contact with your friends and own interests to develop a relationship?  Do you give up your own interests, pursuits and aspirations for the sake of a relationship?

Some people get so obsessed with what they should be eating, what their exercise routine should be and delving so deep into their health and appearance that they lose all sense of balance in their life.  

Buddha covered this well with his idea of the middle way.  You can get a grasp of most issues, enough that will affect you by using the 80/20 rule.  

Now let’s deal with the God issue.  What is the idea of worshipping God?

That you can join with him and become complete, thereby achieving a state of blissful ecstasy.   Therefore aren’t the promise of the two states, being at one with God and happiness, the same?

So then if you replace the word happiness for God, the first commandment says to pursue happiness before every other goal.     And the second warns against falling for the temptations of false Gods or false goals.  

So now if we look at the path to bliss in a new light, we can see that those oh, so tempting diversions cause us confusion as we are focused on too many targets.

 

 

The truth is that there is no equation or no single path to happiness.  Happiness is the result of you being you.  It is the idea on which personal development is based on, that you have to be better, that makes you get off your own path and follow someone else’s.

“If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.”

Joseph Campbell

It might sound a little confusing if this contradicts everything you’ve previously believed.  It is not that happiness cannot co-exist with good health, happy relationships and a fulfilling career.  It’s just that you cannot ever place any of those things in front of your own happiness without losing your self and sacrificing your happiness.  

And yes, personal development can be a part of your evolving happiness.  But it’s not your business to be perfect.  Your business is to be perfectly yourself.  And being yourself might mean obsessing about a particular topic.  My path is to obsess about the nature of finding and following your bliss.  

The difference is that you do it, not because you think you should or it might make you happy, but because it takes you deeper into what you are.

So when the topic of health comes up, don’t fall for the media’s fear stories or medical doctrine,  find where you stand relative to that issue and carry on your path.

When your relationship has your attention or you begin a new relationship, don’t lose yourself to please another, find your centre and act from that.

When your Employer or major Customer demands X, Y or Z, don’t bend yourself out of shape to pacify them, act from who and what you are.

“For what shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul.” 

Tags: Finding Yourself // 909Add Comment »http://livewithoutconflict.com/blog/personal-development-follow-bliss/Personal+Development+vs+Following+Your+Bliss2009-05-21+14%3A32%3A14Rob+McPhillips