Barriers to Personal Development; And How To Overcome Them

Personal Development Obstacles Come From Your Own Mind

We have said a lot in the past about how personal development can be a long journey, and how the first step on that journey can be the most important one. It is completely natural to be somewhat daunted by the idea of making that step, but it really just makes it all the more worthwhile. The bad news is that even once you get going on the road to self improvement, you will still encounter difficulties. These difficulties may well lead you to question whether it is worth persisting with your personal development journey, and they must be given short shrift. It certainly is worth carrying on, you just need to find a way to make it easier.

It may be that you have skeptical people around you. This skepticism may well not be about you, or your ability. In all likelihood, if the skeptical people are friends or family, they will have plenty of faith in you. What they doubt is more likely to be the validity of your chosen method of self-improvement. They may even utter vague remarks like “You’re just fine the way you are”, in the belief that they are helping. Although we all like to hear affirmation, chances are that you’re not doing it for them. This is your own personal decision, taken for your own reasons, and what you need is encouragement. Your friends will understand and appreciate this, if they are good friends. They will make every effort to encourage you and see things from your point of view.

Occasionally, the obstacles will come from your own mind. It takes a very strong person to take a decision that they are going to change their life, and it is no admission of weakness to have doubts even once that decision has been made. When those doubts come it is a test of your resolve, and if you can face up to them it will make you all the stronger and more ready to deal with whatever life is going to throw at you. All of us have doubts at one time or another. It is in powering through these doubts that we learn more about ourselves, and grow as people.

We may also encounter unfortunate and unavoidable circumstances which make it hard to continue with our personal development. These are the only cases in which it may be advisable to step away from your plan for a time. If you fall ill, have a family crisis or lose your job – or something happens which is similar to these circumstances – then it may actually be detrimental to your self improvement to try and forge ahead regardless.

This relies on you using your own judgement and there is a very clear difference between an excuse (which sees you using a minor problem to step off when you are bored with your project) and a reason (something which clearly interferes with your plans, may well be traumatic and needs to be dealt with on its own merits). You need to give yourself the best chance of completing your project, and if this requires a temporary hiatus then that is something you should not be afraid to take.

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 12, 2009.