Let’s see, I just finished reading Eckhart Tolle’s first book, but now he’s got a new one that’s a big hit on Oprah…gotta make time for that one. Yesterday I finished listening to an audio series by Deepak, but there’s the one from Anthony Robbins that been gathering dust on my shelf, mocking me every time I walk by without popping it into the DVD player. Then there’s those books I ordered from Amazon last month on linguistics and psychotherapy, the articles I NEED to write for my own site and all of those really insightful RSS feeds I haven’t gotten to yet but that I know I REALLY NEED to read. After all, I pared down my subscription feeds to a mere eight so that I wouldn’t feel overwhelmed anymore. But gosh, I’m so far behind and I NEED TO catch up. Maybe I’ll block out a couple of hours a day until I am able to feel as though I’m all caught up. After all, all of this stuff is supposed to make me smarter, happier, and just an overall better person. But man, there’s so much to do…
S T O P !!!
Personal development is supposed to be fun. After all, if it sucked so bad there wouldn’t be so many of us pursuing it. Face it, you have to get the grass cut and do laundry and at least slow down for red lights, but are your neighbors going to complain to the homeowners board if you’re not up on the latest in present moment awareness or if you haven’t reframed all of your limiting beliefs? The fact is that so many of us are engaged in the ongoing process of personal development because of the incredible rewards it offers. But that doesn’t mean it can’t also be fun.
Personal development is the journey of continuing to learn and grow as a person alongside whatever else happens to occupy your day. Unless of course you’ve made it your full time endeavor to assist others with their own personal growth. Then it pretty much is what you do. If so, you certainly don’t want a client or a subscriber knowing more than you about the latest and hottest success guru, do you? Or worse yet, have some smarty pants commenter on your blog point out something insightful that you yourself weren’t capable of thinking of. God forbid!!!
Personal Development is supposed to be fun!
Even when you are doing it for a living. Especially when you are doing it for a living. Who cares if somebody knows more than you about the latest emotional healing technique, soul reading method, dowsing procedure, or the hottest author from Oprah? What a blessing if this is so! It means that somebody else has already put in the effort to acquire the knowledge and all you have to do is learn from them as they share the best of what they’ve come to know. Often this beats the heck out of starting from nowhere by yourself and trying to achieve the same level of understanding. That’s less work for you and more time to play Halo3. 
Personal development is not a race, and we are not judged objectively by our friends, relatives, coworkers, fellow bloggers, or anyone else I can think of. Subjectively, people can and will judge the hell out of you, but why should you care? Setting your internal compass to the widely scattered courses charted by the opinions of others is guaranteed to get you nowhere in particular and feeling a whole lot less than authentic as you try to keep making corrections to the course of public perception.
Truth is, there is no objective outside source of how you are growing personally because personal growth happens from the inside out. YOU are in charge of discovering your own unique purpose, deciding weather you are going to live to it or not, and interpreting what every experience you have means to YOU along the way.
You can even choose to not have a purpose, not to grow, and not to listen to or read any anything from any of the gurus I mentioned previously. There’s no boss cracking a whip over your shoulder if you should fail to “get it”. The life you live is its own reward or punishment. You can just go out and have fun for the sake of having fun, and when you get tired enough of repeating certain experiences over and over you will eventually become self motivated enough to become interested in personal growth. It’s the ultimate in freedom of choice.
Here are Some Tips on Making Personal Development Fun Again:
1. Don’t take yourself too seriously.
Seriously, just don’t. There rest of us are too busy taking ourselves seriously and we demand that you focus on us instead of worrying about what we think about you. We’re not thinking about you…we’re too busy thinking about ourselves.
2. Personal growth doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Real growth only happens when you interact with other people.
All the books and tapes don’t mean anything if you act like a sh*t towards the cashier, the waiter, or that customer service rep on the phone who isn’t personally responsible for the problem you’ve been experiencing. Measure your growth in the responses you generate from others and make it a point to have a good time while doing so. The smiles you get back will be plenty of reward, and you’ll find yourself smiling inside as well.
3. Realize that trying to be the most knowledgeable person on all things self improvement is an impossibility and attempting to do so would be a huge pain in the ass.
There’s a huge ego investment in feeling like you have to know more than anybody else so that you don’t ever look foolish or be caught sounding ignorant. If you’re ever guilty simply refer back to #1 above.
And in Conclusion:
Live with authenticity. Be happy being yourself and work to change the things you don’t like along the way. It’s pretty much a never ending process so there’s no need to try and rush out and get it all done at once. Enjoy the process, and above all, be aware of how you show up and the way you treat others. Hey - didn’t some long haired guy with a beard and sandals say the same thing a couple thousand years ago?
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