Steps of Personal Development

Posted on October 1, 2007
Filed Under Society, Spirituality |

Incremental Steps to Changing your Life When we want to change something about our lives, it is all too easy to go all out and make dramatic changes, but all too often that is not an effective method. Following on from Incremental Change of Life - let’s get down to the basics of just what we can do in order to change aspects of our life. Once we have grasped the fact that our ego really doesn’t like anything that threatens its comfort levels, we can start to move forward with taking effective control over our personal development and life situation. There are a number of ways you can work on getting your Ego to release its grip on you, and I will speak on those at another time. For now - we can concentrate simply on placing our own chosen direction on life.

“It is the little things that count.” Wise words. It is very easy to become accustomed to expecting large changes, and wanting everything right now, but we need to realize that is part of the reason that makes change so difficult. Another approach is to take incremental steps. I have been doing this for a number of years now - and my life is no longer recognizable to what it once was. I have changed and improved almost every aspect of my life situation, sure it has taken a lot of effort - but it has hardly been an uphill run. It is all about pacing.

I used to work a full-time job that I hated, and now work just two days a week, run my own business and write a website that provides an income. On the diet side of things, I used to eat a lot of junk food - I thought nothing of having burgers for dinner 3 or 4 times a week. Nearly all my food was processed and full of sugar. Nowadays I prefer a pasta salad over a large burger (and once upon a time, I could never really understand why people would say that). I have much more patience than I used to have. I don’t watch any TV. I enjoy all the things I do, and have plenty of time to write and learn. I am slowly getting to the place I always wanted to be at.

Being your journey to Personal Evolution

All this and more is very possible for you to achieve, and after a while it will become a way of life. You just need to be able to accept that change takes time. Will your ego allow for that possibility? Or if not - can you accommodate the possibility anyway and take the necessary steps?

Once you have set your intention that you want to proceed on this path, then you need to decide which aspect of your life you want to change. To start with, focus on a single area. It could be taking up a sport or hobby, changing your diet, learning a particular subject, setting up a business, making money online or even from an interest or skill you have. Once you have found what you want to change you can start walking along your new path. Here are some tips to help you along the way:

“Do I have to do it today? “

Don’t pressure yourself. Remember no-one is forcing you to change anything. It is important to not fight with yourself over this process. If you have the thought; “Oh I really don’t want to do this today.” Then examine that thought. Is it coming from your Ego? If it is - you will no doubt feel fine once you get started, the ego is plenty lazy. Or perhaps you genuinely don’t feel like partaking of the process today. That is fine. Set the intention that you will do it later or tomorrow. Give yourself freedom, but don’t let it slide for too long.

It only takes a single step to move…

Baby Steps Take it one step at a time. I used to be a total nut for sugar. I had it in all my hot drinks and over any food that could cope with it. The trick isn’t to simply drop sugar! I dropped the quantity down slowly. It took 3 months until I was happy to not have sugar in my tea or coffee. My ego would protest; “But I don’t like coffee without sugar!” The ego is pretty dumb, in the end I was simply putting in a few grains of sugar just to appease my ego. It’s surprising what it will accept when it believes you are accommodating it.

It was a similar story when I set up my computer tuition business. That took a lot of initial work, and that was very off putting to start with. Instead of just getting on with it, I kept telling myself; “Oh, I will do it one day!” The trick was to take one aspect at a time. So I sat and wrote tuition manuals for a few months, simply having pleasure in the end result of a small bound book at the end of each writing session. There wasn’t any need to focus on the larger picture - because when I spent time on the smaller elements the large picture took care of itself.

Remember that what ever you do is built from small pieces. A journey may appear to happen in one stretch, but in reality it takes many individual steps. Each one can be a pleasure.

But when will it be done?

Give yourself freedom. Set yourself a time-frame and be reasonable. You need to be comfortable with this aspect, and you needn’t set a time-frame for when you want the entire process to be complete. Break it down into stages, then give yourself a week, a month, a year or whatever to achieve it within. Don’t overly pressure yourself, if you allow it to, your body and mind will develop its own rhythm; but you must allow it the space and freedom to develop that rhythm! Even if you only take a single step a day you will eventually end up at your destination. Find the pace your mind and body will naturally work at.

Life conditions

Give yourself the necessary personal space. Environment is a very important factor. You can’t very well give up watching TV if you are in a house-hold where the TV never goes off. You can’t simply give up your full time job if you need the full amount of money it provides. But these sorts of things can all be overcome with an incremental approach. If you are trying to give up TV, and mum / husband / child insists the TV goes on, then go out for a walk for half and hour, or retreat to you bedroom to read, write or meditate.

If you want to find a job with reduced hours, but still need the same amount of money, then take it in stages. Maybe you can cut back on your spending. Or even better still, earn money from your own skills or abilities. There are plenty of ways that allow you to make a small income - developing a side income may eventually allow you to reduce the hours of your regular job. It worked for me!

Whilst you can’t necessarily control your entire environment, you can control small segments or time-frames of it. It is important to realize that you still have control over how and when you do things. Learn to identify whether you need to remove yourself from your environment for set amounts of time, or work a little bit on your own projects instead of relaxing. It’s surprising what even small modifications can achieve.

And then…

These four tips can have a dramatic effect over how well your incremental changes develop. In many respects it is all about setting up the right physical conditions for you personally. It is also about sticking to your process - and you are far more likely to stick to slow changes than any instant change!

Once you have a tried and tested plan set in place, that appears to be working, then move onto changing or developing another aspect of yourself or your life. Follow the same method you have developed as you now know it works - and with a little modification you can apply it to anything.

After you have been doing all this for a while, it will be time to move towards getting the ego to release its vice-like grip upon you. This too can be done in incremental stages, and I will be writing about that in the next part very soon.

Comments

2 Responses to “Steps of Personal Development”

Brow of Calm on October 2nd, 2007 9:36 am

Again an excellent article!
Taking things one step at a time is very important with personal development, i like the way you have used your own experience as an example. The ego is indeed pretty dumb but in the moment it can be rather genius in it’s persuasive effort.
Peace.
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Marcus on October 2nd, 2007 9:21 pm

Thanks for the comment.

Yep, the ego in genuinely a genius in its dumbness. Funny old world isn’t it…
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