3 Traps of Personal Development and How to Get Out of Them

Personal development has been the rage lately.

It’s so easy to grow as a person and find solutions to your problems.

Not only that, dig deeper and go into the whole area of “Lifestyle design” and you see how it can be so “easy” to pursue your passion, follow your dreams and live a life on your own terms.

And with the internet, you can access it all practically anytime and anywhere. You just have to find the right blogs, forums and subscribe to a bunch of newsletters.

It’s all gold, for free.

There’s no doubt you will grow and become a better person.

Right?

Not exactly.

We get complacent and think it’s too easy

Has it ever crossed your mind that when something gets too easy, that’s when the actual problem arises?

And that’s a very dangerous issue as it creeps up on you unknowingly.

Thus, you fall into the traps. In this case, the traps of personal development, which turn into an ironic vicious cycle as your initial intent was to find solutions to your problems!

I personally think that it’s only human nature to what to seek the easy way out.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with that. After all, who doesn’t want our problems, woes and suffering to be solved as quickly as possible.

But we must never forget our roots, that means to say, the actual facts of life you can’t escape from.

You may subconsciously fall in the traps of personal development and not progress at all.

Let’s check out the traps and how to get out of it.

Trap #1: The supposed ease of “tips” and “hacks”

How often have you read up articles with headlines that read like, “Follow these tips to immediately solve [problem]” or, “Hacking your way to a slimmer body in just 2 weeks”?

They’re very enticing, informative even. Tips and hacks can be easily implemented too.

The problem with it is that the reader thinks that these are all that they need. As with the headlines, these tips and hacks are going to cure them overnight.

Sadly, this isn’t the case most of the time.

Solution: You need to have a strong foundation towards the problem you have.

You absolutely cannot escape hard work and the obvious solution to your problems!

E.g. If you want to lose weight, diet and exercise. Just because you drink cold water in the morning to hack your metabolism doesn’t mean you’re going to become slim just like that.

If you want to make lots of money with your blog, do your research and keep working hard to build an audience. Applying some automated, passive income-generating system alone isn’t going to work without any form of basis.

They’re very obvious answers, but more often than not, we always seek the easy way out of everything.

If you try to solve a problem with some easy tips or hacks, they aren’t going to work without a strong foundation. Instead, it’s going to fall back on your face. That’s when people give up and think nothing seems to work for them all the time.

So never think that you can escape hard work. Apply a strong mindset to want to improve, put in the effort and work hard, and THEN you apply the tips and hacks on top of it all.

Trap #2: Inspiring stories and case studies

A lot of times people look up to others and get inspired from their rag-to-riches stories or how they went from zero to hero by overcoming the odds.

Being inspired is always good, but it isn’t when you try to take the story literally and think that you can do the same.

You can try, but it wouldn’t do you any good when you keep comparing yourself to others, and then start to get down when you can’t achieve the same.

Solution: Get out there for some real world experience and forge your own path

That’s right.

You absolutely need real world experience to truly know what’d work for you and where your real destination will be.

This means to say, you need to try things on your own to see and feel what is meant to be for you. You need to fail on your own, pick yourself up and then create your very own inspiring story.

That is how you know for sure what the universe has truly planned for you, rather than trying to guess you deserve what others have instead.

Who knows, your real destination may not have a lot of money and raving fans waiting for you, but maybe something meaningful awaits.

And you’ll know it when you feel it. No questions asked.

Trap #3: Abandoning action easily

There’re two main problems here.

First, you can read up a lot on the problem and the solution. It’s easily accessible.

This is the main problem with personal development, that we think we can be magically cured overnight just by feeding ourselves with information, or worse, buying some “guru” product that guarantees fake promises.

Secondly, even if some of us do take action, we’re quick to give up when we realize it’s not as easy as we were taught.

Solution: Take action and don’t give up

That’s it!

Whoever you are, whatever problem you have, however you want to approach it, be sure to simply TRY.

No amount of reading or feeling inspired are going to help you at all if you don’t take action today.

Take action to build a strong foundation in whatever you do. Put in the effort and work hard.

Take action so you can create your own path.

And with that, there will come a certain point where you’ll definitely feel defeated and overwhelmed, but that’s just part of life.

You absolutely can continue on if you put your mind to it.

Don’t give up when it feels tough, that’s when you’re going to grow the most.

So long as you take action, only good will happen.

Life isn’t a trap

It isn’t.

Sure, it sucks sometimes, but that’s just how it is for everybody.

Don’t think that you’re the only one.

Life is good. You just have to realize that by taking responsibility for yourself, that you’ve complete power and capability to improve.

And it isn’t that hard.

Besides, you have all the resources easily available, right?

Just for Pick The Brain readers

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Posted in: Motivation, Self Improvement