After reading dozens of personal development books, and authoring one myself, I have come to the conclusion that personal development is bullshit. People fork over thousands of dollars a year on self-help material, but little progress is made. People end up in the same situation year after year.
How could this be?
If these books are supposed to make our lives better, why do so many people still wallow in misery? Why are so many avid self-improvement readers down in the dumps?
Well, there are several reasons. Two primary reasons come to my mind:
Personal Development is Not Magic
The title of this blog post was meant to get attention. I actually do not believe that personal development is bullshit.
Especially not my book. What I wrote about were some of the steps that I took to rise from the depths of incel life. I’m no multi-millionaire, and I have not reached financial independence yet, but my life is much better than it was.
The problem is that too many people read books and expect to have their problems solved. Life just doesn’t work like that.
We can read all of the blogs or books that we want and watch hours of personal development material, but this will not change our lives. Hard work and luck will change our lives. Personal development material is here to help us to help ourselves. If we do not do the work to actually help ourselves, then we can expect to stay in the pit that we have dug ourselves into.
We Cannot Forgo Professional Development
Studying personal development is great. It is something that I strongly advice. However, we must not neglect professional development.
Self-help books and literature often help us to build the confidence and mental fortitude necessary to make moves in real life. Personal development alone does not pay the bills, unless we become authors, bloggers, gurus, or other media creators. As Robert Koch of 30DaysToX states, and I paraphrase, personal development blogs make a lot less than affiliate marketing sites. It follows that we are better off not putting our eggs into this highly-competitive basket.
Personally, I wish that I had started reading good personal development material earlier in life. It provides a great bedrock on which to build.
We must not forget to build other skills though. Once that foundation of self-belief has been established, we need to build real skills on top of it. Reading books alone does not put money into our pockets, get girls in our bed, or get our websites online. Using what we have learned, continuously learning, and doing the work is what gets us these things. It seems like a little bit of luck is involved too, but this is outside of the realm of our control.
Get Up, Get Out, and Do Something!
Those of us that are striving to make our lives better will have to work for it. Most of us, at least, so this post will have value for the majority of my readers, I’ll assume.
Doing something can provide much more experience than just reading about it. Real personal and professional development come from action.
Reading personal development blogs and books is very helpful (you’re welcome to subscribe to mine). Doing so can jumpstart us on the path to success. It can also recharge our mental batteries when we hit a slump.
You are going to have to continually and systematically work towards getting what you want if you really want it though. The best thing that we can do if we have a goal (or are building a system) is to take action towards it.