Do you know what is the first step in personal development? Do you have any idea where to begin if you are new in personal development? I am Mădălina Ghinescu and I share with you my personal perspective about how to begin on personal development journey.

Context

Saturday, 2nd April 2016, I’ve started a mastermind group based on online meeting session about personal development. We studied the laws of personal development as they are said by John Maxwell. And we started with the first law (see 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth by John Maxwell).

The first law of personal development is the Law of Intentionality – Personal growth doesn’t just happen, it is intentional.

I didn’t agree with this law. During high school I read and read about how to develop myself. But only reading and not making any changes, it didn’t helped me much. The conclusion was that until 2 years ago I didn’t have accomplished any of my personal goals. I didn’t took care of my life and I had unfulfilled dreams yet.

 

So what did I do?

I’ve started to pay a little more attention to people around me and choose as guidelines people who had a clear personal growth and I acted like they did. I saw them read books, I read the same book. I saw them participate to some event, I searched similar events. They had great people around them, I connected with valuable people etc.

All of a sudden I’ve realized that many of us let themselves be carried away (by life). That many people aren’t pleased and happy about their lives – they don’t have the job they want, they are in a bad relationship, they don’t have time for anything else etc.

There are few people who really live the life they want. And I believe we can count them on fingers. How can some people have a fulfilled life and the majority don’t?

To this last questions, the answer lays in the law of intentionality.

To start living the life you want, you first got to take advantage of the current wave of  life.

This reminded me about a scene in Finding Nemo when Nemo’s dad meets a bunch of turtles who let themselves carried away by a current in the sea to reach their destination quicker. The turtles used the current in their own benefit.

What does it have to do with personal growth?

To start your journey in personal development, you need to start from where you are. You mustn’t wait until the time is right for you to start. It will never be the right time! Never!

So do as I did. Start from where you are and act like other people who have already done it.

 

How did I agreed with the law of intentionality?

After I observed what is that is stopping people to have the life they want, I’ve begun to agree with the law. Personal development is intentional, it is a process you must act intentionaly upon. You don’t have to agree to what I am saying. You just have to be open-minded and think about my perspective and see what’s happening next.

What is stopping people in achieving what they want and to start to grow are people assumptions.

I will share with you the most frequent assumptions about personal development:

  • assumption gap – I assume that personal development comes by itself
  • knowledge gap – I don’t know how to develop myself
  • perfect moment gap – it’s not the perfect time to begin developing myself
  • mistake gap – I’m afraid I will make mistakes
  • perfection gap – I need to identify the perfect way before I begin
  • inspiration gap – I don’t feel inspired to do this
  • compare gap – others are better than me
  •  expectation gap – I thought this would be easier

In last Saturday online session we talked about these gaps and we identify which one do we have. I did have them all but inspiration gap.

Which of these do you have?

 

In law of intentionality chapter there is an exercise that I want to share with you maybe it could help you.

Practice

  • after you identify which gap blocks your development, build up a strategy/plan to cancel each gaps.
  • what are your daily activities that are really important to you? Have a look in your agenda on the next 12 months. How much time is set for your personal development? Many didn’t plan anything or they planned to go to a seminar or two. It is not enough! Redo your agenda so that you have every week something for your personal development. Do you think you don’t have time to do it? Do it anyway because personal development is a process and you will see the result in time. But you really need to start doing something to succeed.
  • Wake up an hour early. Go to sleep an hour later. Make time to do this at the end of the week. Because otherwise you will have to give up your dreams, hopes and goals.
  • Start right now no matter what and when you read this words. Commit to develop yourself.

 

Good, now that we identify what holds us down about personal development, it isn’t enough.

You could lose your focus on your development so I send an invite to you. When you surround yourself with people who share the same goals as you, you will be more motivated to succeed.

So I invite you to contact me if you want to be part of a mastermind group organized by me on Laws of Growth. 

We will study and apply another 14 laws and I guarantee you that you will see the result much sooner than you think.

 

Until my next article, have an intentional day!

 

Mădălina G.

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