What is personal development and where to begin your personal development journey
Personal development is a concept with which, unfortunately, many people have negative associations because it involves acknowledging that we are not ideal. In addition, I feel a lot of people actively jib at development and learning of new things, so they often laugh at this concept. They prefer to remain in their comfort zone and not to expose themselves to new experiences that cause stress and a sense of danger. Criticism of personal development often stems from the desire to explain our own failures and lack of action.
What is personal development in the end?
This is not about reading motivational books or attending courses. Personal development is above all a break-through and expansion of our comfort zone through active action. Active action requires us to be aware that everything we want to achieve is outside our comfort zone. It is about working on ourselves, learning new things and expecting something more from life. This is the entire key to understanding the concept of personal development.
Those who ridicule personal development, are extremely unlikely to go out of their comfort zone themselves. I often encounter disbelief and criticism towards my online activities, which are definitely outside the average social zone. However, most people who do not understand the process and criticize development, sit comfortably on their couches every day and do nothing to improve their lives.
How to implement personal development in practice?
For example, if you want a nice and healthy body, it will require some suffering and expanding your comfort zone through daily painful workouts. Want more money? In such a situation, it is worth learning a pile of new things and working hard every day — it’ll be neither straightforward nor pleasant. Want a better partner? Then, you have to be a better man, and that requires a huge change, courage and crossing your comfort zone once again. I could list more and more examples, but the conclusion is one — what you want to get requires coming out of your cosy shell and experiencing discomfort.
We must consciously submit ourselves to suffering that comes with pushing our limits. Most people are not ready to do more and will choose to criticize such a path. However, this slightly more difficult and conscious path leads to fulfilment in various aspects of our lives and gives us great satisfaction.
Barriers
The barriers that block us vary from individual to individual. If you are at a certain level of your life, then to go higher you have to climb to another step of your comfort zone. Today, there are things that may seem difficult and uncomfortable to you. However, there are people who are on a completely different level and things that are difficult for you may be trivial to them.
If you, for example, earn three thousand dollars a month today, earning five thousand dollars may seem difficult or even impossible to you. But there are people who earn such amounts in one day, they do it absolutely stress-free and they know how to do it.
Thinking traps
I myself, while still being a waiter and then a manager in a restaurant, earned about 3–4 thousand PLN after taxes (net) (as a waiter it was even less). I worked very hard and applied for a mortgage credit for my apartment. It was completely impossible for me to exceed the threshold of earnings of PLN 10,000. It was an amount attainable (as I thought then) for completely different people than me.
However, personal development, or simply learning new things, changing established beliefs and admitting to myself that I can afford to do more if I put in a little more effort — all of this allowed me to exceed the magic threshold of PLN 10,000 a month in about 2 years. Another barriers have only proved to be imaginary barriers, which has become increasingly easy to break through. Today, my full-time job in a restaurant is a thing of the past, and my annual earnings are several hundred thousand zlotys after taxes.
Personal Development — how to get started?
However, in expanding our own comfort zone and on our own personal development path, we need motivation and incentives to act in the form of inspiration and motivation. For this, we can turn to good books, motivational movies and knowledge. A good book (for example a biography of someone successful like Total Recall by Arnold Schwarzenegger) will show us that others through their actions were able to do much. With this knowledge, everyone can change their perception of what is happening around. However, it is important to use the knowledge right away. Learn, motivate your mind, and, what is the most important, act.
What is personal development?
— listen to the podcast
What is personal development?
— watch the video
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Hi! Tomek here.
From Waiter to Millionaire.
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Welcome to my video
on personal development.
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Many people laugh
at what is personal development.
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Of course, when someone
says “personal development”,
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what they often think about is coaching,
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which is some crap that everyone laughs at now.
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Maybe it’s because many people
provide very poor information in this area.
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Or a lot of people don’t
know what it’s about.
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When I have been starting my channel
on YouTube still quite recently,
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this is one of my first videos,
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I told a lot of people I’m starting
a YouTube channel about publishing books,
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motivation or whatever
you want to call it.
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I deal with publishing e-books
and paper books on Amazon,
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and I host a channel on YouTube.
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And many people, hearing it,
smile, say coaching, personal development,
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publishing books on the Internet,
is some kind of crap.
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In this video, I will tell you what
personal development is.
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How to understand it in general.
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Personal development is,
it’s probably the best definition
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it’s not about reading books,
watching videos on YouTube,
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motivating yourself some unknown way.
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It’s not like this.
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Personal development
is about acting and overcoming fear.
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Clearly, it is good to start
by reading books, biographies,
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by watching videos about
book publishing, about motivation.
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Sure, this is very cool, and necessary.
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This should be your first step.
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It enables you to change your mindset.
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If you watch a video about
publishing books on Amazon,
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I will tell you what
tools you need to use,
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how to publish
a book on Amazon.
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Maybe you will buy a course
and learn how to publish books.
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But this is not personal development.
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Until you get up and do something, it’s
not personal development.
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This is not going
beyond your comfort zone.
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Personal development is about going
beyond your comfort zone.
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Personal development is when
you actually start doing something,
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get your butt moving
and start publishing.
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You decide you’re going to publish
your first book and you do it.
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You dedicate a month or two to publish a
book and then yet another month.
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Personal development is going for a walk,
going for a jog, going to the gym,
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and walking, doing sports
for a longer period of time.
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Personal development is
about overcoming your fear,
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and approaching that
girl or guy you like.
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Doing something that
will change your life.
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This is personal development, not
motivating yourself, watching videos.
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But action.
This is personal development.
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Maybe you are a person
who sits and watches videos
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and sits on their
fat ass and eats chocolates.
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This is not personal development.
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Personal development can be saying
something uncomfortable to someone,
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saying upfront what’s wrong.
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Maybe changing your job,
maybe doing something
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against what other people say,
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as they will say something
when you start doing something else.
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This is personal development.
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It’s about stepping out
of your comfort zone.
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If you want to achieve something, let’s
say it’s a cool job, publishing a book,
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having a cool partner,
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even getting a tattoo,
while everyone tells you “don’t do it”.
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Whatever it is.
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I had a period in my life when
I wanted to open a company.
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I wanted to get a tattoo.
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I wanted this, I wanted that.
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I wanted to go to another city.
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There was always someone
telling me: “no, don’t do it”.
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Why do you need it? You are moron.
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Why do you make YouTube videos?
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Stupid, this is personal development.
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You’ll come off as
an idiot making such videos,
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So here I’m coming off as an idiot.
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This is personal development.
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I’m overcoming my barriers,
my comfort zone.
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I’m doing it while others frown at it.
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And they think “what’s the point?”
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All those who have their
excuses about doing something,
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opening a business, changing
job, doing something uncomfortable,
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something that will give you
the results in the future.
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These people are afraid.
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They are afraid to
step out of their comfort zone.
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How many people would dare to
make a YouTube video?
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How many people would dare to make
YouTube videos for a year,
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while all the relatives
and strangers watch and judge you.
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How many?
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Do you have anything in your life
that you would like or want to do
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but you think that maybe
it’s not for you.
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All the people who think this way,
prefer to stay in their cocoon.
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Stay in their comfort zone and do nothing,
because they feel safe.
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They don’t have to
overcome their fear.
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Personal development is about overcoming
your fear and taking action.
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It is about systematic action.
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Action that is clearly backed
by knowledge, education, reading books.
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It is about going beyond
your comfort zone.
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Consider whether you step
outside of your comfort zone,
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or you just sit
on your butt and do nothing.
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You watch TV and videos over
and over again and nothing changes in your life.
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What do you think you will achieve
if you keep sitting on your butt?
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You will not achieve anything.
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If you are here and you want to be here,
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then you have to go this way.
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You can’t go that way or that way.
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You have to grow,
and you will feel discomfort.
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You will feel damn discomfort.
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But you have to develop
to achieve something.
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It will hurt. That feeling in your guts.
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If you think about something new
and you think you can’t do it.
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You can feel the tension.
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You’re about to give up.
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This is the moment that tells you
you have to do it.
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This is the situation when you’re scared.
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That means you have to do it.
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And remember, you can stay where you are.
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You can work on personal development,
which means you have to act,
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you have to move forward.
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Don’t be afraid.
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Because only by action,
by exceeding your weaknesses
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by overcoming your fear will
you achieve what you want.
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What you want is outside
your comfort zone.
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And that’s personal development.
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Acting in spite of fear.
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Conscious action as you move forward.
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If you want to learn more about
development in terms of overcoming yourself,
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overcoming your fear, in terms
of publishing products on the Internet,
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acting a little bit
differently than the society tells you.
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I mean expectations to go to school,
get a low-paid job
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or maybe you want to do something more,
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publish your books,
maybe act differently than everyone else,
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which is going to be frowned upon,
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but if that’s what you want,
I invite you to watch more of my videos,
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to subscribe to my YouTube channel,
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to subscribe to my blog,
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to read my articles that I hope
will add some value to your life,
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and force you to think
along a bit different paths,
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against the tide,
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which will be stressful,
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but which will give you something.
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Feel invited.
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Thank you for watching.
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I hope you learned a lot.
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Thank you very much.
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I wish you all the
best and hope to see you soon.