The Lifecycle of Personal Development

So what's the number one reason why people give up? Well, I personally believe it's because they don't understand where they are in the process. So in this video we're gonna get a better understanding so you can start winning.

You know, when you first start set out on your own journey, if you will, one of the first things that you realize very quick is that it's actually a journey, it's not a sprint. In other words, you don't start over here and then in three weeks you're over here living the life of your dreams. It takes a process and that process can take time. Now some people, like we've done in other videos, you understand it can take, you know, five years or 50 years, right? Depending on how quickly you're able to surrender to the process. Well, one of the things I wanted to do here is to make sure you understood how personal development works, that you understood the eight stages, that you understood where you are in the process and in such a way that allows you to kind of continue on. I find that when we're able to measure where we are, we're also able to measure where we're going. If you don't know where you are today and you have no idea where you are in the journey, it's very hard to have the encouragement, the inspiration and the empowerment to take the next step over and over and over again. Alright, so let's jump in for just a second. The first step in personal development, which is probably what you're doing right now with this video and other people like me, is you're going through the process of awareness. You're going through this process of uncovering who, who you really are at your core. In some other videos we've talked about, there are really only three great questions in life and they are, who am I, why am I here and what do I do about it? Right. Well, awareness is all about who you are. Now when you get clear on that, then you can actually go to the next step. Okay, so when it comes down to awareness, personal development always starts with personal awareness. And it's personal. In other words, someone else's personal awareness is not really going to affect you other than building a relationship. So if you want to get serious about your own winning in life, you're going to have to go through the process of awareness, which is probably why you're here at the video. All right, stage two is understanding different learning styles. Now we've done entire face to face videos on both the modality of learning and the methodology of Learning. Okay. But, but it's important to understand. Here are some key aspects of that. First of all, are you a visual learner? Are you an auditory learner? Are you a kinesthetic learner? Someone who likes to work with their hands? Okay. And to take that a step further, are you someone who is more self taught? In other words, you're watching these YouTube videos, you don't have a lot of mentorship, you don't have a lot of people surrounding you to learn, and that's okay for you. Or are you more of a guided learner? There's a mentor, there's someone helping you? Or are you more of an academic learner? Do you learn best by books and things of that nature? Okay. Understanding how you best learn and what modality or what methodology you best learn is pivotal to understanding how you best digest the personal development needs that you have in your own soul, so to speak, to help you begin to win the day. Right. So make sure you go. Take the time to go to the face to face videos and actually go to how we learn. It could be vitally important to what you're doing there. Okay. All right. Intentional focus. More times than not, this is where people get a little squirrely. They know where they spend some time in this awareness phase. They begin to digest content in a way that best suits them. So they kind of get these, these first two, like in the process, you know, kind of call it like a. This is almost like a phase one kind of scenario. Right?

Right.

Well, phase two is the other side. Okay. Once you know how and what you need to learn, you know how and kind of how you're made up and what you're, who you are, at least at a basic level, then you can get some clear identity into intentional focus. What areas do you need to focus on first in order to actually build a future that you want to build to take you to where you want to go. Right. Are your finances a mess right now? Well, if you're, if they are, then finances is probably a good place to start. Okay. If it's relationships that causing you problems, meaning maybe you're, maybe you've had situations like I did where I was. I used to be prone to just take on toxic relationship after toxic relationship, especially my love life. Okay. These are areas that need intentional focus and intentional, like diligence in following, finding a solution to those problems. Okay. Most times people end up working on the wrong thing first. So if this is supposed to be finances, rather than focus on their financial well being to help get them kick Started, they'll focus on friendships or they'll focus on a career directly.

Make sure you take the time to spend the time you need to actually go through the process of intentional focus. After you discover how you need to learn it best and what you need to learn best, be intentional about the thing you need to learn now to get the greatest ROI return on investment. Okay? In other words, if I spend time here, I'm going to get this reward. If I spend time developing my finances, I'm going to stabilize my check problem, my payment problem, if you will. I'm going to have resources to actually pay my bills. Okay? So make sure you take the time. Second of all comes the discovery phase. Now, the discovery phase is actually one of my favorites because I don't believe that you should be judging yourself right now or in the future for things that you didn't know. Most people don't make mistakes because they're prone to mistakes. They make mistakes because they simply don't know any better.

How are you ever going to learn to be an entrepreneur if you don't align yourself with other entrepreneurs? You don't come out of the womb as an entrepreneur. You may come out of the womb with gifts and talents and strengths that can take you down that direction. Right? But you're going to need help along the way. The discovery process removes two things, judgment and condemnation.

Discovery allows you to skip those two personal limiting beliefs so you can take advantage of the information that comes with the learning from the mistakes made. How did I learn that toxic relationships weren't great? Well, I went through a bunch of them. And then I realized that, hey, I need a better accountability side of myself to make sure that I don't attract these people, one and two, that I can clearly articulate who I want that person to be. It caused me to write a list that later became my wife. Another story for another day. Okay, so after that comes the exploration phase. The exploration phase is nothing more than what you take away from what you learned in the discovery phase. This discovery phase, your exploration is, okay, how did that make me feel? What should I do differently? Who do I need to align myself with? What do I need to learn? What behaviors do I need to modify or completely change or eradicate? Okay? This information, all of this is really called, I'll refer to as phase two of this process.

Okay? You're going to spend time here. You're going to spend a lot of time here, right? We talk about the four seasons. Right? We talk about the struggle. We talk about the reflection. We talk about the training. And we also talk about the emergence. This is the process in which that happens. Okay. I would say that probably 70% of people who set out on a personal development journey would probably stick in this area here. And as you can imagine, as you go through this process, this number gets greatly reduced to roughly 30%. Okay. We call that a blind spot. There's a reason why you're not going through the path. There's a reason why you're not going through all eight stages of the personal development life cycle. We need to figure out what that is through a discovery process and an exploration process. So we can actually go over here and tag phase three, which is the application of new learnings and new skills.

Put those things into practice so they become a muscle memory or a behavior system. Okay? Your behaviors today are giving you the results that you have today. In order to modify the behaviors you have, you go through this process.

You apply a new piece of learning, a new skill, a new technique, a new belief system. You practice it over and over and over and over. Why? Because practice doesn't make perfect. It makes improvement.

All you need to do to win at life is to have moderate improvement. Step by step by step by step. And you can do it. Alright. Last thing is what I love to call the mastery. Okay. As you can imagine, as you practice these new skills, no matter what area of life it is, you know, relationships or financial or whatever, professional, it doesn't matter what it is. What matters is whether or not you take the time to apply yourself to the learning and the application and the practice that makes it a reality. Because if you do this over and over again, the new behavior system becomes rooted, the new learning becomes rooted, and you develop mastery, AKA life mastery. And when you can master every area of your life or even key areas of your life, that puts you in a better place. Not only to prosper in that area, but also teach others about that area and take them through discovery and exploration. Think about it. How do I know this stuff? Why? I had mentors that helped me undercover it. I didn't make it up out of thin air.

You don't know any better, which is why things aren't changing. I'm trying to help you understand what to know so you can get the change you've always wanted. Hope this video helped. See you in the next one.

Hey, it's Connor with the Journey principles. If you enjoyed that lesson on personal development, you should totally get our free ebook linked in the description of this video. Also, do us a favor and like comment and subscribe, and we'll see you on the next Life Mastery video.