I believe the self-improvement field is wonderful and important to be a part of . . . but there is a dark side to all this though, I know about it all too well. I grew so in love with self-improvement, I went into debt just keeping up with it. If that isn’t stupid, I don’t know what is! But certain things are said by people of influence, whether it be a high-earning leader in your company or even a success guru, that cause you to believe in the idea of “needing” self-improvement to maintain an edge – and it’s a very slippery slope.
In an intimate conversation with one of the highest earning direct sellers in the industry, I was told what I felt was already true – there’s but a handful of books you need to get your hands on to develop skills to make you wealthy many times over, and everything else is just the same stuff reorganized or repositioned. I knew this before that person ever said that to me, but these leaders and gurus are at the top of their fields for a reason – they know how to get people to act, again and again. I allowed them to condition me into believing I had to keep buying all this “stuff” that was coming out just to keep up with my competition – and it’s simply not true.
I say “allow” because at the end of the day, YOU make up your mind, no one else does it for you. I saw many people in the same seminars I sat in, stay in their seats as I ran to the back to buy up all the products the speaker brought in to sell that day. Many in the crowd probably stayed sitting because they were flat broke, but I believe a good amount felt it just wasn’t valuable enough to make them part with their hard-earned cash or even get into debt over. I was under the illusion that the “stuff,” be it a book, audio or video, was going to make me successful. So in that frame of mind, it only makes sense to get as much “Stuff” as possible, throw it all against the wall, and see what sticks. In reality, what sticks are a few key ideas, if implemented, will cause you to reap the benefits everyone is looking for when they first get started.
Success in anything starts in the mind. If you make a decision to build your mind up, like you would a muscle, then it’s only a matter of time before what you “SEE” in your mind, becomes REAL in your life. If it’s one thing I hope a newbie takes away from this article, it’s this – focus on your WHY and the HOW will make itself known to you. All the techniques in the world won’t help if you don’t have a real plan in place to use them, and the plan would’ve been in place if you had a strong enough reason to create one in the first place.
Self-improvement presupposes improving oneself, and I’m all for that. If you want to learn how to speed read because it’ll help you gobble up necessary information you need to keep up in your industry – go for it! That’s self-improvement. If you want to learn a new language, because it’ll open up new markets for you – get it done! That’s self-improvement. If you want to learn better time management skills, so you can be as productive as possible – make it happen! That’s self-improvement. Reading 10 books ABOUT self-improvement, and all the benefits it brings, is NOT self-improvement.
I understand the idea of gleaning just one new idea from everything you experience, but time is of the essence, especially in today’s world, where competition isn’t the guy across the street anymore – it’s literally you against the world. The internet has caused the world to shrink and if you’re going to be competitive, you need to be on your A-game as fast as possible. If you take too much time looking for perfect visualizing technique, perfect time management system, or perfect closing questions, like I did for many years, you’ll be left in the dust and it won’t be because you weren’t involved with using all that stuff, that’s just the obvious answer. It’ll really be because you lost sight of your WHY or never had one to begin with. Understand the power of your WHY, focus on it, and implement your plan daily.
If there’s a million ways to skin a cat, then in reality any which way will do.
How fast you get it done depends on the answer to this question – why do you want to?
