Hello. It’s Sunday night. I’m happy to be here on a Sunday night.
Actually, truth is, I’m bloody exhausted but I’m here. Every time I look at this I’m like, “Oh, thank God I’m getting a haircut.” Anyway, whole other matter.
What I wanted to talk about tonight is … Sorry, I was just bringing up my little screen here because I made some notes. I know, very exciting. What did I do with it? Oh my God, where’s it gone? Where’s it gone?
Is about personal development because if I give you a little tour around my office. Apart from a little Betty Boop stuff up there, you can probably say I read a lot. I actually used to have a blog that was called Confessions of a Self-Help Addict or Self-Help Junky. I can’t remember. I took it down actually. I don’t know why. Maybe I should have kept it up. Because I’m really into it and I kind of always have been really, really, really, really, really into it.
Well yeah. No I have, but a lot of people get confused like self-help, personal development. What is it? Do you have to do it? Dah, Dah, Dah. Well you do have to do it, otherwise you’re just going to … Your life’s going to be the mush of who you are. You know it’s not … If you don’t work on your personal development, then you’re kind of at the mercy, I guess, of those things that actually happened to you in childhood, which sometimes can be great and sometimes can not be great.
As I normally start things off, I’m going to give you the definitiony kind of thing. So what is personal development? Yes, I had a Google. Didn’t look at any of my books. I had a Google.
Personal development covers activities that improve awareness and identity. It helps if I can speak. Develop talents and potential. Build human capital and facilitate employability. Enhance the quality of life over … And contribute to the realization of dreams and aspirations. Personal development takes place over the course of a person’s entire life. There you go, I can stop now really. Can’t I? That’s it. Definitions done.
Basically personal development is the journey to becoming the person that you wish to be. You might not even know who that person is, but it is that journey that you go on. From Freud to Erikson and Kohlberg, we’ve been taught so much about the various stages of personality development, which we actually don’t have a say in. Personality developments, that stuff that happens to you when you’re younger through childhood, education, life’s lessons. That is what builds into you.
Personal development or self-help, as another way of calling it, you’ve got more control over what you’re actually going to be looking at. I think some of the things that make personal development a really great thing to be working on is your self-awareness. Like when you do something or you think something, you’re like, “Oh my God, I totally get it.” That awareness is just everything.
Direction. Having a sense of direction. Otherwise you’ve all heard that saying, “If you don’t have a roadmap of we’re you’re going to you’ll just keep driving around.” Blah de blah. Sense of directions really, really important.
Sense of purpose. Like having a vision and a … Like I’ve got a vision for my life. I have a vision statement, I have a mission statement. You don’t all have to go down that line but … Road rather. But having that sense of direction and purpose is really important.
Otherwise you just tick boxes through your life. You’re going to get to the end, at whatever age that might be. According to [Elody 00:03:37] I’ll be a hundred. Go, “Oh shit. Man, I kind of wanted to do this with my life, or help these people or” … You don’t do it if you don’t have that sense of purpose and direction.
It can help with your focus and efficiency. That’s another great thing that personal development’s good for. Your motivation and willpower. Although I actually say I’ve got truckloads of willpower, it’s my won’t power that is a wee bit … How’s your father. Yeah, I’m good at going. “I will have that.” I’m not very good at going. “I won’t have that.” I should write a book about won’t power. The power of won’t.
Resilience. Oh my God. You get knocked off your feet, and having done a lot of personal development, you bounce back up. You’re not in that meandering, “Oh my God. Someone said they don’t like me,” or, “They don’t like my dress,” or, “I didn’t get asked on the second date,” or, “They never rang,” or, “I got fired,” or any of those things, you can bounce back up. That resilience is … Can’t put a price on resilience.
Fulfillment. You’ll love more fulfillment when you have done a lot of work on your personal development because you are … You’re feeding those needs and those things, the values that are important to you.
Like how many of you have done a values exercise? There are literally hundreds of things … I’m kind of … I’m into values as much as I … I probably am passion actually, because we get sidetracked by what we think are our values. “Oh, I couldn’t have money as a value. That would be make me a terrible person.” Bullshit. Absolute bullshit. Money can be a high value to you. Sex can be a high value to you. Your kids. Doing something for shelter dogs or any of these … You can have really, really tough values on things. Strong values rather, not tough values, wrong word.
A lot of the stuff that we work on in the personal development space … I’m actually finishing my big coaching accreditation at the moment, which is really exciting. I’m enjoying it so much. But a lot of it is based on this guy could Maslow. He developed what was called Maslow’s five hierarchy of needs. He’s got five hierarchy of needs and then he’s also got seven levels in a different motivational model. I’ll just touch on the hierarchy of needs because they’re the core ones that people work with.
There’s the physiological needs. We all need things like survival, for food, shelter, clothes, warmth, all that kind of stuff. We need those things. Then we need safety things. That’s that fight or flight stuff. We need a sense of … We need to be loved and we need a sense of belonging. That’s something we work on a lot in personal development because a lot of the time we have really f’d up ideas of what love is and what true belonging is. Because it’s not what a lot of people think.
Self-esteem is another one of the hierarchy of needs, because self-esteem isn’t having a big ego and walking around like you’re queen of the world. Self-esteem’s like really important Self-esteem is core to that stuff I talk about in confidence, and charisma, and courage. It needs to be so well developed. It needs to be looked after. Like your esteem needs to be looked after. It’s like a baby. Nurture it.
Self-actualization. That’s that … You step into that extra zone in self-actualization. I can’t even say it.
I’m probably going to … I talk a lot about personal development because I’m passionate about it. It’s what I talk about a lot. I’m really sad that more people don’t talk about it more. A lot of people think it’s a bit wanky or they’ll … In certain areas of the world, certain areas of business, or world, or entrepreneurship, people will talk about personal development but I don’t think enough people do. So I am going to talk about it a lot. I’m going to share things that I’ve learned from these hundreds of books and from courses I’ve been to. All that kind of stuff, because I really, really do believe in it.
Next time I am going to go through the seven levels of motivation, on the motivational model that Maslow did, because I really, really like that model. But I just wanted to touch on the hierarchy of needs today.
If you want to know anything more, a few people have been sending me questions, go for it. Shoot me a message. I’ll answer. I might accidentally do something like I did today and I message not replied, whatever. I will get there. I’ll figure this thing out.
Until then, happy Sunday. I think my cauliflower dinner is ready by the lovely young Elody. Go Google something you want to know more about in personal development. Is there a niggly feeling that you’ve had? Is there a situation that you’re involved in that’s kind of got you thinking, “Oh, I maybe didn’t handle that well.” Ask Dr. Google or ask me and I will help you if and when I can. Have a great night.