Posts Tagged ‘personal development for smart people’

I recently met with a friend who is about to graduate from Waseda University (one of Japan’s top universities) and is currently in the process of searching for a job. One of the biggest difficulties he is having in his search is deciding what he really wants to do. The decision is further complicated because of the influence and expectations of his family, friends, and society. He has been offered a position working for a manufacturing company, but isn’t really interested in this type of work. He would much rather prefer to work in services where he can interact with and help people. His parents, friends, and most of Japanese society push him to take what they perceive as the more secure job working at a manufacturing company. How do you choose?

This is a question that I spent a lot of time thinking about. I grew up very poor as a child living with my mother and moving to a new place each time we were evicted. When I started high school, I began living with my father. He had just started his own pest control company, and as with any new business we struggled through the first few years as the business developed. My father always told me that I should make a lot of money. That having money wouldn’t necessarily bring happiness, but having it would certainly help. Growing up in a household with no money, I could see his point.

I entered college because I felt that I needed to get an education to get a good job and distance myself from the life I had as a child. I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to study, but it had to be something that I could make good money. This mentality caused me to start giving up on dreams. All through high school I thought I wanted to work with animals, in college I eventually gave up the idea because I didn’t think I could make enough money. I instead choose to major in international business. I figured that regardless of the career I chose it was something I could use.

When it was time to find a job, again I chose places to work where I wasn’t excited about what I was doing. Actually, I was quite miserable. I felt as though I was being pulled in two separate directions. The direction my heart wanted to go and the direction I felt I was supposed to go because everyone else was. The question I kept asking myself, was did the money really matter if I had to spend most of my life doing something I didn’t really want to do?

To try and answer this question I started to re-educate myself. I began reading books on personal development, finance, time management, careers, and success. I also began to meet more people and get advice from people who had already done what I thought I might want to do. The information and advice I received was priceless. I would learn something and then try and put it into practice. I got better and more efficient at my job, greatly improved my finances, learned a lot about myself and what made me happy.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that I would be happier trying and failing at my own thing, than succeeding on my current path. I have since quit my job and am moving to a tropical island in less than two weeks. Though I do not have the security of the standard job, I feel happier and have less worries than I ever have.

I realized how important it is to do what you really want. For a long time I was afraid to follow what I wanted to do because I was afraid to fail. Eventually I came to realize that the benefits of success greatly out weighed the negatives of failure. Not to mention, I would always have the chance to jump back into the work force if I really wanted to.

Your friends and family may also encourage you to take what they consider the safe road. They may be doing this because they think that you are better off to have a stable and standard life. For some people that makes them happy. However, each person is different. Not to mention that societies and economies are always changing. What may have been considered safe and stable during your parents ages may not be so when you are looking for a job. In my friends case, his parents want him to take the manufacturing job because they believe his father has worked in a similar company and they believe it is a very stable job. With many factories being shut down and work being outsourced to cheaper areas, this may no longer be true.

I leave you with advice from the world’s richest man, Warren Buffet.

Helpful Books:

• Personal Development for Smart People
• 4 Hour Work Week
• The Dip
• Eat That Frog

Over the last year, I have read over 60 books. With a good portion of those focusing on various aspects of personal development. However, Steve Pavlina’s new book, Personal Development for Smart People is one of the few books that actually focuses on personal development as a way to achieve the things you want in life.

The book covers 7 basic principles. Truth, Love, and Power make up the foundation principles. Oneness, Authority, Courage, are found by combining the foundation principles and Intelligence is the combination of them all. The book throughly explains what each principle is and then explains how to achieve it. The reason that this is a great way to look at personal development, is because it allows you to focus on 3 main principles and then build upon them. For Instance, in order to achieve authority you must first be truthful with yourself and also give yourself power to make any changes you want.

The following chapters then go through how you can apply these principles to change your habits, improve or change your career, manage your money, improve your health and relationships, and find your own spirituality. While we all think about making more money and having a great career, many times this comes at the cost of our health and happiness. The main theme of this book is about aligning all of these to live a full and happy life rather than having parts of your life that completely disagree with each other

Since I was a child, I always believed that I had to make lots of money to be happy. Eventually I found my way to Tokyo where I planned to climb the corporate ladder. However, after doing it for a couple of years, I realized that what really made me happy had nothing to do with money at all. Since then I have quit my job in Tokyo and am moving to a tropical island to start my own business. You can read the full story here. I have never been happier. I was able to come to this decision by using many of the principles in Steve Pavlina’s book. I just didn’t understand it at the time. I just wish I could have read this book a long time ago. I would easily put this in the top 5 most helpful books I have ever read and it should be a required reading for anyone graduating high school.