A Coherent Model of Personal Development

In this article I develop a framework for a personal development journey. It's my intention to show you how to move from an unconsciousness, un-examined framework to a model of personal development that can help you in all aspects of your life.

So let's dive in straight away. What are some of the key components to a personal development model for life and business? I've outlined 3 major ones:

1. Relevance: Here are some fundamental questions to ask yourself when digging into the idea of what makes your life relevant: what am I good at? What do I really enjoy doing? What's my burning platform? What excites me and gets me out of bed in the mornings? It's one thing to discover what really interests you, it's another thing to develop talents that relate meaningfully to the concept you're interested in. If it doesn't relate then the talent is not an applied talent, but it's just you or me as a person. We live in an evolving context, a context that is getting more and more complex by the day. So we're constantly striving to get better, faster and more outstanding at the things we do. So to cap off relevance, here's another question to ask yourself: How can I take my talents and best apply them to my context? This could for example, be in the form of a product or service related to your passion.
2. Mindset: Becoming aware of how you behave in various situations, moment to moment, is critical to mastering mindset. Your behavior is a direct indicator of your mindset. However in order to really master mindset, there are other subtleties at play that need to be integrated into our consciousness. Things like personality, pathology and emotions all have an important role to play in personal development. Other key components of mindset include questioning how your beliefs, ideologies and assumptions shape your outer realities. For example, if you're angry and not aware of the feeling, your emotion can easily shape your thinking, actions and communication. But when you're aware of the feeling and integrate it into your consciousness, you can transcend it, giving you more clarity, focus and influence over your outcomes. So mindset works at the heart of dissolving fundamental assumptions that are limiting you in any way, shape or form. Instead of reinforcing limited narratives, logic, or lines of thinking that reprove again and again the assumption of limit, you can connect more whole heartedly with your vision.
3. Vision & Purpose: Although this is the last piece of the puzzle, it's actually a good starting point to connect with, or feel into what you would like to create with your life. By writing up a really powerful vision for your life, this allows you to relax any psychological tension and intuitively move into the realms of possibility. Once you've written up a compelling vision, ask yourself: how is this vision supported? Lightly holding my vision in the one hand, I begin to craft, shape and mold my unique talents with a very relaxed focus. As a coach I'm big on questions so here's another one: Am I connected to my vision as I integrate goals, strategies, products and people? Your vision and purpose (both are inter-linked) are about developing a coherent philosophy by which to live your life. Vision is important because it helps us make an association by connecting the dots between a large number of unassociated fragments. I agree with Terence McKenna when he noted; "The path of complexity to its goals is through connecting things together." When things are scattered, everything becomes very complex, very quickly. There's little focus. In this model of personal development we therefore seek to align our mindset by dissolving any dis-functionality in the alignment process by connecting intuitively with our vision.

I would say these are the 3 core pillars of a personal development model, which I believe if worked on simultaneously and integrated into all aspects of your life, can assist you in creating the kind of life you desire. If you would like to discuss these concepts further, or if you have any questions or queries, please leave a comment below or get in touch with me via my website www.simoninglis.com