The smallest step

It is easy to become overwhelmed with personal development. With so many areas we need to work on, where do we start? Being hit with so many ideas on how we can improve our lives can make your head spin. I can't remember how many times I've heard a personal development author or speaker claim that it was this one specific idea that was critical to success. Some say that persistence makes the difference. For others, it is the ability to dream big, discipline yourself or stretch yourself. Still I have heard others claim that skills and tools like NLP, goal-setting or GTD is the critical idea which opens the gateway to supreme enlightenment and power. With all this surrounding us, where are we even supposed to start?

The first key is to understand that there is no universal "big idea" that will transform everyone's life. Some of these ideas will create a transformation for a few people and do little for others. This doesn't mean the ideas are faulty, just that with such varied backgrounds, what ideas or messages personally speak to us will differ. Some ideas will really resonate with you and give you a new perspective while others will not do anything at all.

The truth is, most of us will never have an epiphany moment where our lives completely change in an instant. While such moments are definitely possible, they are the minority. I never had an epiphany that caused me to develop such a passion for personal development and I doubt most people have. There was no solitary idea that changed my life. It was the continuous work and integration of thousands of small ideas that made the difference. Sorry, but I can't give you the single "big idea". The big idea doesn't exist for most of us, so don't expect it to hit you in the face.

I hesitate to say personal development is not about innovation. Innovation is an important part of personal development because it is often necessary to break through to a higher level. However, I want to stress that the majority of personal development is based on optimization not innovation. Incremental and continuous improvements, not massive and rapid changes, will ultimately determine the quality of our lives.

This idea doesn't get a lot of press. Most authors focus on the innovation aspect because it is the most glamorous. We love hearing about the breakthroughs and overnight successes, even when they don't even exist. Many people talk about Wal-Mart as being an overnight success, despite the fact that they had decades of slow optimization to get to that point. From the outside it looks like a revolution, from the inside it looks like steady, incremental improvement.

The big idea is a myth. Starting personal development doesn't have to start with a lightbulb going off in your head, a cry of, "Eureka!" or a chorus of angels singing as we have reached the coveted epiphany that changes our whole life. Without this epiphany, how can we start on the path to improving our lives? It is easy to lose hope and faith when we see how far we are from where we want to be. The chasm between those two places may seem too vast for us to cross. We also wonder whether reaching that new plateau will really give us the happiness and satisfaction we desire. Maybe that new status will just come with more problems, leaving us worse off than when we started.

Focusing on position in life is dangerous. Putting all your emphasis on tomorrow is a really suboptimal way to live. You can't enjoy what you have, and when you do reach your goals there is very little sense of lasting fulfillment.

Source: www.scotthyoung.com