Personal Development: What Is Your Struggle?

Personal development is the enabler of self-leadership. “Those who lead themselves can lead a multitude”.

What is your struggle? Life in these times is an arena of a crisis a minute; together with thrills, excitements, surprises, disappointments and challenges, often in ‘special packages’ and unknowns that are hard to predict.

Learn To Love Struggle
Every one of us has his or her struggle, starting with the desire to live a progressive, fulfilling life and to overcome whatever holds us back from within or without. And next to that being confronted with situations, needs and exigencies that call for skilled handling: The greater the responsibility, the bigger the dramas, stakes, challenges, complexity and potential rewards.

The Daily ‘Tripwires’
Making the wrong decision; saying the right thing at the wrong time; doing the right thing in an in-effective way; saying the wrong thing at the wrong time; misreading and inaccurately translating what is happening; unintended reactivity; blind-spots; imploding when under pressure; inability to ask for and relate to crucial feedback – these and many more small and bigger slips and ‘mental-emotional accidents’ can be relatively harmless or irreversibly fatal to important relationships or opportunities.

So life keeps throwing at us bursts of daily challenges, from those we relish to those that we rather never encounter… And the question is: How are you engaging life? what are you engaging life with? What portion of your natural capabilities is being deployed? Do you know how to self-align; do you possess the needed insights and mental tools to engage in a correct and effective process of personal development that awakens your innate potential in a way that makes life a far more enjoyable and rewarding experience – for you and for those present within your spheres of influence?

Possibilities Unlimited
The range of possibilities that live in the unlimited worlds of personal development is mind-boggling: Developing deep self-awareness; presence of mind; expanding personal theatre; connecting to superior energies, developing will power; understanding the complex dynamics of change; developing superior perception and comprehension capabilities; knowing how to make that tiny little change to neutralise an unfortunate aspect or deficiency that is interfering with you since your childhood; developing leadership charisma; developing your powers of observation and detection; developing your unique weave of natural intelligence… to randomly mention some.

“Ask and it shall be given…” The human possibility really has no limit and the question is: Do you know what you want? Because if you do – and curiously, most people find answering this question to be quite challenging – personal development will help you get there. So it is not the goal but rather a means to an end.

The Universal Case Of Personal Development
In the corporate worlds personal development is often used in the contexts of developing specific work-related capabilities. However, at its core personal development is a process that goes much deeper and is not – and should not be – restricted by a person’s current circumstance. It rather makes the universal case of discovering and being your best and more regardless of where you are and what you do today. From that platform, to apply yourself effectively in what you do, in a way that fully benefits from your evolving best.

In observing the behaviour of influential people in the course of world history, the difference between those who attend to their personal development and those who do not is evident. Especially in noting the chasm between those whose life revolve(d) around offering their best and encouraging the same in others while working towards constructive outcomes as against those whose life is about the perilously self-arresting practices of maintaining power and control.

Personal Development Is The Enabler Of Leadership
This is why personal development is a prerequisite to developing leadership. Leadership without personal development quickly relegates itself to being nothing more than an exercise in management. Leaders in the daily struggle to develop and evolve perceive people’s struggle in a way that then enables them to exercise the humility that truly wins people into the cause that they wish to serve together.