So You Wanna Be Happy? How to Get the Most out of Your Personal Development ‘Work’ Part 2

So, not much to say…like many of my series posts, I tend to just jump right in to the next one since you already know what I’m throwing down. Enjoy!

Don’t Make Bold Changes for Which You May not Be Ready

Change in various forms is part and parcel of this whole personal development thing. And as we all know, it is sometimes super uncomfortable and scary. That’s okay—feeling ill at ease doesn’t mean you are making a mistake. While it would be awesome if we could feel 1,000 percent confident about the choices we make, and beat any self-doubt and fear to a bloody pulp, never to surface again, that may not happen, and that’s a-okay.

But, even though  fear, doubt and other yuck may be part of the package, and you may experience some level of discomfort no matter what it is you are doing, this doesn’t mean you should force yourself to make changes that really don’t resonate with you right now, that just seem too big and scary.

There is a big difference between that natural trepidation and uncertainty about what the future may bring when we venture in a new direction, and feeling absolutely terrified and panicked on a consistent basis.

I know it can be tempting to make those really big, bold moves and really shake things up. And don’t get me wrong..people do that all the time with great success. I am not totally discouraging this or suggesting you must always take baby steps towards what you want.

What I am saying however, is that it is a good idea to honor where we are right now, our current belief system and act accordingly. The whole point of making change is to feel better, and you want to proceed in a fashion that makes you feel better, not worse.

I know I have used this example before, and I’ll use it again because I think it illustrates this point well. If you really hate your job, only have enough savings to cover you for the next month and have really crappy beliefs concerning money, walking into your boss’s office, and quitting on the spot ,may not be the best idea. It will probably feel freaking awesome in the moment, but your mindset is not one that will take this bold move so well.

Now, if you are someone who has been doing their mental work for a while–particularly law of attraction–and you have had some positive manifestations that have bolstered your belief in this concept, and your trust you will be taken care of, then you might be in a better position to make such a bold choice.

Again, it always comes down to how we feel—don’t make yourself do something if it makes you feel really badly. Only act when feeling good is predominant—again, some fear, doubt and what have you, is natural. Only you can know what is really going on, and evaluate honestly before making decisions with bigger implications.

 Great Things can Happen without You Being Perfect

You were drawn towards a growth-oriented existence because there were things in your life now that you really didn’t like. You realized certain behaviors and ways of being were holding you back in some way, and causing you pain. So, naturally, we want to change all of that so things can start getting better. And while we KNOW there is no such thing as being perfect, nor should we strive for that, how we FEEL is often very different. And we are super, super hard on ourselves. We are constantly focusing on what is still ‘wrong’ with us, what we still don’t have, and what we still need to achieve.

Jeez Louise…no wonder we have such a hard time feeling happy and content—our mind is always focusing on crap that makes us feel like crap.

But, know that great things can start to happen without you being perfect. This is a great reminder in particular, for people whose personal development work is heavily centered on law of attraction. Very few of us have a squeaky clean vibration, where we have shed every limiting belief possible, and are attracting the things that represent the highest possibilities for us.

But, even if you aren’t a perfect match for the most awesome representation of what you want, you can still become a match for some pretty great stuff. I have manifested tons of great things, and I am working on raising the bar all the time. And even though I have my blocks like anyone else, and am not quite a match to some of the things I have decided I would like to create, things have not been too shabby thus far. I have been traveling the world for the last 3.5 years, built a pretty great blog if I do say so myself, forged a successful freelancing career, and have recently started my coaching, which is bringing me such joy.

I am very interested in personal development, and it is one of my passions. Therefore, I have spent a considerable amount of time ingesting all sorts of wisdom and actually applying it. There has been a lot of self-reflection and analyzing my behavior. I have certainly learned a thing or two, and I am good at conveying these little nuggets. The life I have created for myself is some pretty solid proof I know what I am talking about.

And because of all of this, it is very easy to assume I have overcome all my demons, shattered all my blocks, no longer have any bad habits, and what have you. One of my blogging friends once said she thought I was perfect, and while it was flattering for sure that someone might have thought such a thing about little old me, I gave a big chuckle and assured her this was not the case.

Like anyone else, I have my issues. I struggle to overcome certain tendencies. I have my triggers. I can get really moody for no reason at all. Sometimes I get annoyed, or downright mad, about really stupid things, like really stupid. It doesn’t take much to elicit an eye roll from me. Luckily, my very spiritually advanced, laid back fiance Ryan, is prone to finding all my ‘quirks’ amusing rather than annoying. God bless him…if he did half the things I did, I would probably want to punch him in the face at least a dozen times a day.

So, yeah, you can make lots of lasting changes, and creating oodles of awesomeness without being perfect, whatever that means anyway. You don’t have to know everything. I am certainly not perfect nor do I know everything, but I’m still doing okay.

 Sometimes You Won’t Feel Great, You’ll Get Off Track..It’s All Good

One of the hardest things that popped up for me when I started this whole self-improvement thing, and something that I still deal with, though on a much smaller scale, is the cold, hard truth that you probably won’t feel good all the time. Big shocker there right? We have these pesky little things called emotions, and not all of them are a picnic. We are not masters of the human experience. We have preferences, and naturally, we are not thrilled when things aren’t going our way, or to our liking.

But, even though this is something we KNOW, we tend to get all down on ourselves when we have a bad day, or when we handle something in a way that is not representative of the person we are working oh-so-hard to become.

I know at one point, I had this idea I would become some unflappable zen master. And because of this expectation, I would get all mad at myself when I responded to unwanted situations in a less than Buddha-like fashion.

There have been many a time when I threw a mini-temper tantrum courtesy of being fatigued from traveling, being a bit worn down from dealing with so many cultural differences or just concluding that the way ‘these people’ did things was just downright wrong or stupid and I had every right to be pissed.

I would get all bent out of shape about an inaccurate bus schedule,a restaurant not having the one thing I wanted to eat on the menu, or the VIP luxury bus not even having blankets and snacks..I know, inexcusable. Oh the stories Ryan could tell you about my travel crankies.

Generally, these moments are fewer and far between, and when they strike, they are usually much more muted. I realize more quickly that perhaps I am being a bit dramatic, getting disproportionately upset or what have you, and have a good laugh at myself. But then sometimes, they are full bore—the emotions surface and I let them ride in their full glory. It happens to the best of us. Sometimes we are just going to go into full-on losing our shit mode. The triggers are many, and the wisdom can just fly out the window sometimes. We are only human, like it or not.

Another thing you may find is the tendency to get off track sometimes with whatever goals you have set, specific changes you are trying to implement,etc… You told yourself you were going to meditate every day for at least 30 minutes, and three weeks have passed since you last sat. You vowed to take the time everyday to do at least one thing that makes you happy, and a bunch of crap happened that totally knocked you off course, and you haven’t fulfilled that promise for the last two weeks.

And then we experience all that fun stuff like guilt, self-criticism, anger at ourselves for ‘failing,’ worrying we won’t be able to change or that things won’t get better, blah, blah, blah.

I can tell you not to do this, but you will anyway…we almost can’t help it. But, we can work on not doing it as much. We can make a promise that even when we get off track, we will just start again. We will modify the plan if necessary. We won’t just conclude we are incapable of changing, and give up altogether.

And my third little point in this section concerns all the tools, exercises, techniques, strategies and whatever, that we employ to become the shiniest version of ourselves, break our bad habits, increase our self-esteem, shift our negative beliefs, reach our goals, and all that jazz.

The core desire for working on yourself is a desire to feel good and be happy—that is all we want at the deepest level. And, all of that stuff is great for applying what we have learned, reconditioning our minds and deliberately focusing our attention on what we want to do, be and have.

While we can just decide to be happier and make certain decisions from this day on, we usually need some assistance, so we turn to the affirmations, visualization exercises, workbooks and programs. They can be super-helpful.

But, because we often feel that we must always be engaging in some sort of activity, lest we are not really working on ourselves, doing all of this can sometimes feel forced. We really don’t feel that great. It may even make us feel worse.

Remember that the whole point of doing all these things is to feel good, so if you aren’t, don’t make yourself. When you are not really resonating with the work in the moment, you are not really going to get significant results because you are just going through the motions.

The visualizations are fuzzy and you will just feel frustrated. The affirmations will not have any positive energetic charge behind them, and they will just be words, not the successful tool for reconditioning the mind that they can be,when done right. You will not really absorb the information from a program’s teachings, and you will not really gain anything from completing the accompanying assignments.

Your time would be much better spent just doing other things that make you feel good. Take a break from it for a few hours, a few days or even a few weeks, and go back to it when you are feeling better and more inspired to tackle it all. Again, all of these things are a means to an end, an end that can be achieved in infinite ways, and are not necessary pieces of the puzzle.

In Closing…

I particularly love writing these types of posts because this whole ‘working on yourself’ thing can leave us open to a lot of unpleasant things like judgment, self-criticism, comparing ourselves to others, setting unrealistic expectations, and becoming ultra-sensitive and intolerant ,to the things we don’t like about ourselves or our lives in the moment. It isn’t always a walk in the park, but it also doesn’t have to be as hard as we make it out to be much of the time.

There is no right or wrong way to go about bettering ourselves, and different things will work for different people, and like I mentioned in part one, why it is so important to pay attention to your intuition and whether or not something resonates with you personally. Whatever you are struggling with now, I assure you—you are not the only one. I can also assure you that you are probably doing a lot better than you think, and are not giving yourself nearly enough credit.

Your Turn…

What did you think of the post? Any part stand out to you in particular? Did you experience any aha moments in relation to your own journey? Anything to add to what I wrote here? Do you have any tips to share? Looking forward to hearing from you….I learn so much from my readers, and I really love the comments so never hesitate guys!