Personal development should always be your second job just like any other regular job you have. But instead of working for others, you work for yourself.
Self-improvement as a job is great because it pays through everything else that you do; it enhances your career, relationships, health happiness, and anything in between.
If sometimes you feel you hate your job but you hold it just because it pays the bills, imagine this "job" makes you not just more financially successful but also more fulfilled overall. It's one of the few jobs on the planet that makes you wealthy and happy at the same time.
And with so many great benefits you might ask yourself -why aren't more people taking this job seriously, attending to it every day just like they do with a regular job?
There are a few reasons for that.
- Results are delayed and or invisible.
- The connection between effort and result is not clear
So now let's take a look at each one.
**Results are delayed and or invisible. **You might invest in yourself for months and years until you start seeing some results. This stops many people because we are accustomed to immediate results and instant gratification; patience is simply not our thing.
You can think of personal development as building the foundation for a tall building.
In constructions, planning, designing and foundation are amongst the first efforts; they're less visible but crucial to the overall construction and success of the project.
We tend to think of a building as that which is above the ground and that is because foundations by definition are invisible.
But tall buildings need to be grounded, they require a deep, firm foundation and can not exist without one.
When it comes to your personal development, it might take you a few years to build a good solid foundation; but those years are going to be spent with no visible proof that your efforts are creating anything meaningful -and that's why most people don't have the patience to invest into something that doesn't generate "results".
In other words, because people don't believe what they cannot "see", they get easily discouraged and then stop.
No direct connection between your efforts and results.
We are so accustomed to having a job that pays the bills that we find it difficult to recognize any other form of value creation; for you to see the connection you have to see the results immediately or shortly following your efforts and in the absence of that we tend to invalidate our very efforts.
Your day job is very simple -you do the work, they pay you the salary- so it's a one-to-one correlation; It's visible, it's direct, and quantifiable.
For example, when you read a book -although you might have a general sense that you are developing somehow, you don't really get to see a direct result, next month there is no salary or any other form of quantifiable reward you get because of this specific effort to read the book.
To be continued...
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