Why Personal & Professional Development Matters

Many of us understand the need to live, love, learn and leave a legacy. This makes us feel whole, a contributor to humanity, and a model for our friends and family. I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t want to be remembered favorably after they have passed on. To accomplish these four L’s, we need to look at where we are in our reality and where we want to be at the end of our lives.

Why is it that some people can change their lives to accomplish anything they set their minds to, and others seem to be unable to change anything. Some people seem to be continuously successful even when bad things happen to them, and others seem to attract disaster daily.

Let me explain in a manner that will help to bring together many concepts that have been introduced to you over the last few blogs and show you how you can change your reality.

Let’s look at our brains again using the following diagram:

Our conscious mind takes in information on a continuous basis and passes this information to our subconscious mind for evaluation. Our subconscious mind is like a tape library made up of every belief we hold, experience we have had or vivid dreams we have had. As your subconscious mind takes the information the conscious mind passes along it makes associations with other experiences we have had, the reactions to those experiences, and consequences we have previously experienced. It asks itself, “Have I seen anything like this before?” And passes what it finds back up the conscious mind for it to make a decision based on what it finds.

The creative subconscious looks to resolve conflicts. It helps to create the drive and energy to resolve any conflicts that arise and maintains our belief of who we are and how we act or react.

In this process anytime conflict arises in the picture we hold of who we are, our brain would rather be right and continue to “make us look like us” than successful and become a new us. The most amazing thing is that we can change the picture! We can change the tapes in the tape library we carry by imagining with strong emotion an event as we would wish or expect it to happen if we were the people we want to be. And this is what we will help you to accomplish.

In other words, if we believe ourselves to be a middle manager who earns $40,000.00 per year and we suddenly find that we somehow did enough things that we are given a promotion to top management with a significant raise we become very uncomfortable. Our self talk (yes, we all talk to ourselves) will begin a dialog that might go something like this: You can’t be a top manager you don’t know how. How can you possibly deserve to earn that kind of money? You’ll just blow it all. This is not who you are! And low and behold you will begin making mistakes and be demoted or you’ll leave for another job that is at the level “you belong at”.

A YMCA leader once said, “Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your DESTINY.”

How Do We Change?

So how do we change? You guessed it! Through consistent and persistent personal and professional development. By changing your thoughts and by imagining with feeling what you want to be, not who you are right now or who others want you to be.

Start with 10 pages of a good book each day and you will be on the path to becoming that person who at the end of their life finds peace and contentment knowing they fulfilled their purpose and positively impacted the World. More importantly you will influence a whole lot of people to be better just because of knowing you and following your example. Leave a positive legacy!

If you need suggestions on great books to start, continue or accelerate your journey, check out the resources page on my website!

More Recent Posts: