Before personal development

Recently My close friend and I discussed how personal development totally alters your life when you get started on the journey.

We frequently discuss issues like this as we assist each other in improving every aspect of ourselves and our lives. Both providing each other with new concepts, processes, mentoring and guidance.

He spoke of the concept of BPD and APD

Before personal development and after.

Before personal development, you don’t realise how studying and learning can alter your trajectory and perspective on life.

As the saying goes, You don’t know, what you don’t know.

After being introduced to personal development, you realise the importance of continually studying, improving and implementing new teachings into your life, to continually grow.

Fortunately, For a very long time, I have been an avid reader and have studied philosophy, (which many would say was the original path to personal development), alongside my martial arts practice.

Many philosophical traditions often focused on improving the self, ethical living, and the pursuit of wisdom.

Philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle from the Western tradition, and Confucius, Lao Tsu, and the Buddha from Eastern traditions, among other great thinkers, explored ways to live a good and meaningful life, develop virtues, and understand one’s place in the world.

Finding a friend or partner who can join in on this journey alongside you is extremely rewarding, but can be very, very difficult to find.

I have seen many friendships and relationships breakdown due to the disparity of mindsets and conflicting personalities of those who find the desire to improve their self and get out of their current situation.

It can be hard to bring people along with you on your journey of self improvement, especially when they resist, kicking and screaming, not knowing, what they don’t know.

It can be difficult to have them open up to the possibility that they don’t know it all. We all have our ego issues, even after personal development l, we’re far from immune.

But when you realise the positive impact it can have on their life, you want to share It with all who you love, because you not only see, but you feel the difference within yourself.

For the last couple of decades I have been a student of the Stoics and employed much of their teachings within my life.

One of the more famous of these teachers, Seneca, speaks about the desire to include loved ones in this development journey in his letter to Lucilius, on sharing knowledge.

“I am being not only reformed, but transformed. I do not yet however, assure myself, or indulge the hope, that there are no elements left in me which need to be changed.”

“And when you say ‘give me also a share in these gifts which you have found so helpful’

I reply that I am anxious to heap all these privileges upon you and that I am glad to learn in order that I may teach.

Nothing will ever please me, no matter how excellent or beneficial, if I must retain the knowledge of it to myself. And if wisdom were given me under the express condition that it must be kept hidden and not uttered, I should refuse it. No good thing is pleasant to possess, without friends to share it.”

So as Seneca says, as fantastic as developing oneself is and learning more and more, it’s even more enjoyable to have a friend or two on the journey with you, who you can help as they can help you.

For those interested too, I will be speaking at Master Your life in Wigan on September 20th alongside some other fantastic speakers in an amazing full day event.

Click the link to make sure you get your tickets and why not bring a friend?

https://www.masteryourlifeevent.com/tom-blackledge-september-myl