Speaking The Language When You Travel Can Help

Not Everyone Speaks English

Going abroad for a holiday is something that everybody should do at least once in their life, finances and technicalities permitting. Of course, there is no use trying to convince someone who is a global travel skeptic that they should broaden their horizons. But for anyone else particularly anyone who is wavering over the idea, the attractions of going somewhere completely different must be underlined. They say that travel broadens the mind. They also say that it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive. Only the first of these is really true. If you are traveling, the very best thing about it is experiencing life as it is lived in a different culture.

Foreign travel affords the traveler a lot of different experiences. The very fabric of life in a foreign country is different. From standard considerations like food and climate, to more esoteric matters like architecture and entertainment, a foreign holiday can really open your eyes. But for a holiday like this to have the desired effect it is important that you participate in the experience as fully as you can. It is a truism that you can only take from an experience as much as you put into it. There are cases where this is untrue. Yet, there is a lot of truth in it. You need to be prepared for anything on a foreign holiday. As much as anything else, this means that you need to learn the language.

Now, just in case anyone is panicking, this does not mean that you need to be fluent in Russian if you are planning a short break in Moscow. Fluency in a language is something that can only be achieved by years of study and ideally a large amount of time spent “living” in the language concerned. That means working, shopping and socialising in the language. But there is really no reason not to at least make a concerted effort to learn a few phrases which you will inevitably need on your travels. You don’t need to be able to discuss the political complexities of the city and country where you are holidaying, but being able to order breakfast or book a taxi cab will be useful.

It is a very common opinion that there is little point trying to speak the language with natives, because “everyone speaks English anyway”. There are several reasons why this is a lie, and a potentially damaging one. First of all, not everyone speaks English. In point of fact, particularly in countries with an established and internationally recognized language of their own, a lot of people don’t need to learn English and therefore don’t bother. Secondly, even though some people may speak excellent English, expecting them to change to suit you is a bit presumptuous – like saying “Why bother giving this person my contact details? They can look them up anyway!”

It is more polite to at least attempt to speak the language when you are abroad. If you make the effort, your holiday will be much the better for it as the locals will receive you much more warmly due to you making the effort.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Travelnowsimply.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to Ahmed Dawn Dot Com site. This article originally published on the above website on May 29, 2009.

How To Teach Kids Personal Development

Teaching Personal Development from an Early Age

No one can possibly deny that human adults are, today more than ever, beset by problems of personal confidence and finding themselves prone to stress, depression and other anxiety related illnesses. This is a result in many cases of increased expectations and increased focus on people’s personal lives in a society that is now more open than ever in terms of speaking about the self. However, what is really worrying is that the number of children diagnosed with mental problems resulting from social anxiety and other personal worries just keeps rising. What are we to do to ensure that children are given the help they need, rather than allowing problems to fester and increase?

It is something that would benefit from being addressed practically on a case-by-case level. Too many children fall into a cycle of problems caused by feeling isolated or targeted by other children. Of these cases, a great number seem to relate to bullying. The major worry in schools today is how bullying is still a part of the school experience of a number of children. This is not a new problem, but the worrying part is that years of initiatives to counter bullying seem to have had less of an effect than we would have hoped.

If you ask around, you will hear some blasé responses that seem to signal why bullying is not dying out. People who feel that “kids will be kids” and that bullying is just an accepted part of a child’s school days, people who feel that the incidence and effects of bullying are overestimated, and people who say that it would be a mistake to interfere because it actually makes the problem worse. Nevertheless, all of these viewpoints are dangerous and incorrect. The truth of the matter is that bullying requires constant vigilance. Too many children before now have ended their own lives because of the fear and anguish caused by bullies. It is therefore essential that we address it at source as an extremely serious problem.

One approach is to teach children very specifically about the causes and effects of bullying, to drive home the message that bullying is unacceptable in any circumstances. Although there have been initiatives similar to this, they tend to take the form of a one-off talk which is just as soon forgotten about and merely has the effect of raising awareness for a short while before it falls away once more. Given the effects, that bullying has on its victims and the way that these can contribute to residual problems later in life, it is all the more important to never allow bullying to take that kind of hold on a person’s life.

One way in which this could be reinforced is by getting reformed bullies to speak about their experiences and the reasons why they stopped. They more than anyone understand a bully’s motivation, and they more than anyone can make clear why it is something that is not a desirable part of anyone’s life. The addressing, prevention and eradication of bullying in schools is more important than anything else that goes on within those walls.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Simplepersonaldevelopment.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to Ahmed Dawn Dot Com site. This article originally published on the above website on Mar 13, 2009.

Personal Development Is Not A Road To Be Travelled Alone

Give Yourself The Best Chance For Personal Growth

We are all aware of areas of our life where there is scope for personal development. It is a path that none of us can avoid taking at some time in our life, which all of us have some opinions on and some need to address in a mature and considered manner. It is also true that personal growth can be a very daunting pursuit, one which can make great demands both emotionally and physically on the person who undertakes it. For that reason, there will always be people who embark on a journey of self improvement only to find that the demands are too great and then turn their back on it at great personal cost.

In this light it is important to look at how you give yourself the best chance for personal growth. It is not something you can decide right off the bat – “I am going to succeed because I want to” – but requires a game plan that takes into account the potential drawbacks of working towards your own development. The fact is that personal development is hard work, something that requires your attention and a firm commitment to make yourself better in a number of ways. It may cause you to face difficult questions, and raise issues that require a great deal of strength if they are to be dealt with fully. For this reason, personal development plans tend to succeed more fully if they are undertaken with a friend at your side, someone who knows you well and can provide you with a boost when you need it most.

If you embark on a self improvement project, the first few days are often the hardest. You will find that changing your ways is more difficult than just deciding that “this is how things will be”. We have all found ourselves in a rut from time to time, and some of us are comfortable doing things as we have always done them. To change this requires a lot of moral strength, because it is easier and less hassle to stick with what you know. The only way to ensure that you will stick to the path is to have some encouragement, someone to rely on who will tell you to keep going, not to lose sight of why you began your personal improvement project in the first place.

By embarking on the plan with a friend or partner, you will guarantee yourself a level of encouragement and support that can make all the difference in terms of success. All too many people bring a halt to their plan for personal growth because they fall into the trap of believing the little voice that tells them “You cannot do this”. Having a friend there to contradict this voice and tell them “Of course you can do it. I believe in you” makes all the difference. So if you are looking to make a change in your life, tell a friend and encourage them to join you. It will be one of the soundest decisions you ever make – and will have positive results for both of you.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Simplepersonaldevelopment.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to this site. This article originally published on the above website on Mar 6, 2009.

Self Help Books; Are They For You?

How To Pick Self-Help Books

A thriving industry has grown up around the practice of writing self-help books. It is not actually a new thing, either, when you think back you can all probably name a few yourself. They may be about weight loss, they may be about finding (and keeping) your perfect partner. Some are about understanding the special people in your life that bit better. What they all have in common is that they address a need within a person – a need that that person has identified and considers an immediate concern. This can be just about anything – if you have lain awake at night, or spent idle moments in the day thinking about something that makes you anxious, the chances are that it has been written about somewhere by an author looking to address the problem.

What makes a self-help book is its outlook. Generally, you will find that they speak in bracing, positive terms directly to you as an individual. This differentiates a self-help book from a more scientific textbook that may address the specific problem in dry language and enumerate possible solutions to it. A self-help book will generally favour one specific approach, and concern itself with getting you to follow that approach. There is a tendency for self-help books to be written by someone who has faced the problem themselves and wants to share how they overcame it. This fact alone will be a good way of deciding whether the self-help book is for you.

Many people feel that self-help books take a simplistic, cajoling approach that offers only platitudes and a set, unchanging solution to a problem that may be a lot more complicated. As individual human beings, we have all learned over time that something that works for a friend may not be quite as beneficial for us. The same is true about plans of action for specific problems. Though you may see on the surface that your problem is similar to that of someone else, a solution that works for them might not help you – indeed it may even exacerbate your problem.

All of the above gives the impression that self-help books are of no value, but this would be misleading. Several self-help books have had results that have been proven over time. As a rule of thumb, a book that has been around for a while will have some words of wisdom in it that never go out of date and are as true for one person as they are for the next. Using a self-help book like this is certainly unlikely to do you any harm, particularly if it comes with the blessing of someone who knows you well and is aware of your needs. However, the most important thing is to always be aware that the book will not make things great all on its own. It may give you some handy advice, but it is up to you to put that advice to work for you. As was always the case, matching words with action is the key.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Simplepersonaldevelopment.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to Ahmed Dawn Dot Com site. This article originally published on the above website on Feb 28, 2009.

Welcome To The Simple Personal development Blog

Let the Simple Personal Development Journey begin

You never stop developing, as a human being, because everything we experience in life has some effect. It is like an endless cycle of change, going through life learning from experience, learning from what we hear, what we see and what we do. We are the sum total of our influences, mixed together with our own personal opinions and instincts – so anyone who says that they have done all their developing for a lifetime is, quite simply, telling a lie. Personal development has become one of the world’s true growth industries, as people realize that they are open to improvement and look to achieve it.

How do we affect our development the way we want to? Well, we need to take our lives in our own hands and decide what we want to do, and where we want to go in life. What are we scared of? Why? Why do so many of us accentuate the negative points of our lives and our personalities? Why can’t we celebrate what we do well, and improve the things we may not be so good at without being too hung up on the fact that we have weaknesses? It is so self-defeating.

The self-help industry has made millions and millions of dollars from people who are uncertain about themselves and due to low confidence will listen to anyone who tells them that they can make their problems disappear. But the simple truth is that a lot of the books that get sold on the premise of making people happy, confident, slim, attractive or witty are filled with platitudes that do not really get us any further along. If we are going to go with platitudes, then why not start with “Real self-improvement comes from inside”? It does, after all.

Self-improvement is not a simple matter, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the question of self-confidence. What we need to remember is that we are all unique human beings, with our own particular strengths, weaknesses and our own idiosyncrasies. If you buy a book that worked well for other people, that doesn’t mean it will work for you. You are another person, a different person, and the solution that works for you will be a solution that addresses you more directly, and allows you to target your areas of difficulty. By basing your self improvement on that of others, you are selling yourself short, and do you not deserve better?

Personal development is not an easy, quick fix; it is an ongoing process that requires your input and your time. It is, to use a cliché, a journey that you take along a road that is longer than you can imagine, and the fact that it takes this time and effort does not mean that it is not worth doing. It also doesn’t mean that you are worthless now. Being hyper self-critical is not constructive, so give yourself a chance.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Simplepersonaldevelopment.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to Ahmed Dawn Dot Com site. This article originally published on the above website on April 27, 2009.