If you are like practically everybody else, then you’ve probably reached some point in your life where everything just kind of sucked. Maybe it was something that happened to you long-ago in the past or it might be something you are going through right now.
The truth is, everybody goes through some type of difficulty in their life and eventually things do get better. In the same way it takes time for a tree to grow, we ourselves continue on and learn from those situations. We firmly believe that everybody’s best interest is to put time and effort into their own personal development.
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In this blog post, we are giving you 5 ways you can immediately improve your life, but first we have to answer the question…
“What is personal development and why the heck does it matter?”
Personal development is extremely important for everybody. Why?
Because anything that makes your life better implies that there was room for improvement in the first place and with that transformation also comes the effort and time needed for the changes to happen. Plus, do you really want things to stay the same way for the rest of your life?
Probably not. (Also, how boring would that be?!)
Whether you want to work on your physical health or learn to be more social, personal development spans across your entire spectrum of life. Imagine a bag holding all of your current skills and talents, natural or learned abilities, and your inner concepts and beliefs that all make up your current self in your life.
Anything that would make your life better, also requires you to learn new skills, stop bad habits, or change some type of inner belief in order to get to where you want. Maybe you want to make more money in your career, so you learn some new skills about leadership and communication. Whatever the case is, personal development is an ongoing, never-ending journey.
So you might as well enjoy it, shouldn’t you?
We think there are 5 critical areas of your life that personal development will greatly improve, and along with those 5 critical areas of life, there are also 3 really important frameworks that make up the ways you can transform the critical areas.
Framework #1 - Thinking Skills
When you think differently, new options become available. If you constantly look at life through the same lens, then you are bound to miss things your unconscious mind filters out. By learning how to change your frame of mind and to shift the focus of your attention, your life will start to naturally improve.
One way to work on your thinking skills is to start putting more focus on the things you do want instead of what you don’t want.
We call this Present State V.S. Target State.
The present state is where you are right now. More often than not, when things aren’t going so well in our life, it can seem really difficult to even notice the good things happening. A person might find themselves becoming the victim to life and its circumstances, or maybe fall into the unhelpful mindset of “Everything always happens TO me.” In order for us to find the right path we have to know the direction we are going. The easiest way a person can change their life is by starting to focus their attention on the future and what they want.
“I want X” is a great place to start understanding what it is you actually want. We often tell our students to say “I want” statements but they must do it without any negative words, like “don’t, won’t, shouldn’t, can’t.” When somebody is able to focus intently on what they want, their unconscious habits and behaviors will begin to change as well.
Framework #2 - Communication With Self and Others
The first step in changing your frame of mind is by becoming more aware of the language you use in your everyday life. It can seem like such a simple thing, but it’s often one of the most overlooked aspect of personal development.
The way you speak to yourself, internally and externally, is something that can be changed and also improved on. It’s important to understand that this improvement is also affects your external communication with other people.
By learning to speak to yourself differently, you’ll innately speak to others in a similar manner. The ways you can improve your inner language skills is by first understanding how your language directly affects you and others.
We all communicate, even when we don’t think we are. As one of the core concepts in neurolingustic programming states:
“You can not, not communicate.”
Your body language, vocal tone, the way you use inflection, the speed and rhythm of your words, the vibe or energy you are holding emotionally in your body, all of these things (and many more!) are ways in which you are always constantly 100% communicating.
So the way you can become more efficient in your language and improve your life is by asking simple questions that help you extract more information for yourself and other people.
Your brain is like a computer. That means when you ask yourself something like, “Why am I so stupid?” your brain will start to generate answers to the question. The answers you get from asking those types of questions are often mean and unhelpful.
When you ask a “why” type of question, your brain will look for evidence and information. But if you ask your brain a “what” or “how” question, it will look for solutions and step-by-step answers.
In other words, if you ask Google, “Why are my cookies burning?” you’ll get answers like, “Probably because your oven was set too high.” or “You forgot to use cooking spray?” or “Because you used broil instead of bake!” If you asked Google though, “What are the steps needed to bake the perfect cookie” or “How can I bake the perfect cookie” you’ll find google gives you step-by-step actionable items that you can often use to get a result.
Your brain simply works in a similar manner.
By improving the language you use with yourself (and others!) you’ll be able to start using your brain much more efficiently, generating creative solutions to problems, and understanding others more on a deeper level. Read our empowering questions blog post to learn more.
Framework #3 - New Behaviors
If you are the kind of person who puts things off until the last minute or loses their temper when you’re around irritating people, and you want to do something about it, then it might benefit your life to learn some new behaviors.
For the type of person who just wants to procrastinate and it’s starting to impact their life in a negative way, then we would recommend front loading the most difficult tasks first. This way, the stress or anxiety that is often associated with procrastination is dealt with and the person starts to no longer procrastinate.
It works because of the pattern mapping system in the brain going toward pleasure and away from pain. It can seem so painful to do such a hard and difficult task. That’s why chronic procrastinators will often have excuses for why they won’t do something. They’ll have some type of irrational fear around the completion of the task, which will cause anxiety and stress.
The body wants to be in balance, which is called homeostasis. Once the balance has been disrupted, it’s a natural instinct to want to return back to a calm, neutral zone. Interestingly enough though, if a person is constantly stressed, they will eventually adapt to the stress and that will become the new level of homeostasis.
The same way that a person who’s constantly stressed can adapt to the stress, the opposite is also true. Meaning, if you know you are unhappy with how life is or know that the level of stress you take on a daily basis is unhealthy, then you can also adapt to living without that stress.
And wouldn’t less stress just be really freakin’ awesome? We think so!
By asking yourself better questions and changing the way you talk to yourself, you can start making new choices and different decisions than you would have. Maybe you know somebody in your life who is just constantly unhappy, but they think they deserve to be there so they just come to expect it. What if that person was a loved one or someone you really cared for? Maybe this is you right now?
Personal development is about making the choice to improve your life in some way. The size of the action doesn’t matter because all decisions big or small are what got you where you are right now. Making small changes or big changes, no matter the size, will have an impact on your life in a powerful way.
One of the best ways you can start changing things is by learning! Learning helps you build a vast internal library of knowledge, and with more knowledge comes more options and opportunities. Learning can be simple. By reading this blog post, you are learning!
By conquering these 3 frameworks you just learned, you can apply them to life immediately and start noticing results in as little as today. Because of how effective these frameworks are, we suggest targeting these 5 critical areas of your life for maximum results.
Here are the 5 ways you can have a better life!
Job / Career
Your time on this earth is finite. It’s a harsh reality we all must come to terms with. So until that moment happens, wouldn’t it be awesome to do something that fulfills you? If you love your job and are happy doing what you are doing, that’s awesome! We are really happy and excited for you!
If you find that your work is meaningless, you feel dissatisfied, or find yourself self-sabotaging your job or career by intentionally showing up late or not showing up at all, then it might be time for you to start considering what your life would be like in a different career field.
You live at an incredible time in human history! You are able to access a college level education from the comfort of your home. The internet is like a giant shared web of the totality of human knowledge, all at your finger tips!
If you wanted to change your careers and finally take up that art degree, or teach German to children online, or become a hypnotist because you have passion for helping people, then you are a click away from stepping in a brand new direction.
(Also: Check out The Mike Mandel Hypnosis Academy, by the way! We’ll teach you how simple hypnosis can be and you might discover a new opportunity for a career change!)
If you love your job and just want to level up your ability to close a sale, get a promotion, or speak more effectively during board meetings, then having a firm understanding of the 3 frameworks of personal development will help you achieve those goals.
Imagine how easy it would be to make new decisions if you had the skills to be able to ask your employee’s simple questions that helped you get new information. Now, imagine you learned how to speak confidently to yourself and that change then gives you the courage to stand up for yourself.
The sky is the limit with your career and we recommend that everyone deserves to do work that is meaningful and fun, which is why we love what we do.
Relationships
Earlier we mentioned how you are always communicating, even when you don’t think you are. There is no better time for that statement to make its way back into the blog post than the critical area of life known as your relationships.
We like to think that relationships are the totality of our daily interactions and inner-actions. Interactions, of course, is the way we communicate with other people, while inner-actions is how you speak to yourself on the inside.
In what ways could you find improvement in the way you communicate with other people? In what ways could you find improvement in the way you communicate with yourself?
If you find that you and a loved one always seem to have the same argument, or if you notice that you get triggered emotionally from the way somebody says something, then how could you behave differently?
By learning a different way to communicate with yourself, you’ll discover the way you communicate with other people also changes.
Wealth / Money
This next suggestion works really well with the critical area of your life we call wealth / money, but this suggestion also works really well in the other areas too! We suggest that in all 5 critical areas of your life you pick the biggest holes in your boat and plug them first.
When it comes to your wealth or money situation, you can find where some of your biggest holes are in your spending by keeping a simple budget. There are also several banks who will now give you an online breakdown of your monthly spending amounts. You might be surprised where all the leaks are in your financial situation.
Can you also imagine just how powerful a change in the framework of your thinking skills could be? Imagine the difference in your life if you had the ability to sort through your thoughts and discovered the inner language that you would use around money and how you used it.
Health
Of course, what better way to apply the three frameworks of personal development than with your overall health and wellbeing! This includes both your physical and mental health.
You probably already know there are strong connections between exercise and its ability to reduce the sensations of stress and improve mood, so by making changes in one area, you’ll naturally have changes in the other.
For example, if you don’t feel like working out but you know it would be in your best interest to do so, then you might need to improve your mood. Anything that will cause you to change your emotional state can help shift your way of thinking and increase your motivation.
Here are a few simple ways you can improve your mood:
- Laugh on purpose (seriously, this works! Check it out here)
- Smiling and holding a smile for a few minutes (this also seriously works!)
- Petting a puppy! (obviously this works)
- Petting a kitten! (don’t rub the belly!)
By lifting yourself up emotionally and changing your state, you’ll have the opportunity to make the choice of working out from a different frame of mind.
And best of all, if you change your state and still don’t want to work out, you can chock it up to intuition, or you can say the vibe was off! We won’t judge!
Recreation And FUN
We believe that life should be fun, effortless, and vaguely annoying to other people. That means the things you do in your down time should give you a sense of joy! (Or, at the very least, they don’t make you feel worse)
The things that you do with your time when it isn’t dedicated to work or family or whatever else you spend your daily currency on is your own prerogative. In our experience, we’ve found that the times in our life when we felt bored, complacent, and feeling stuck, we were lacking some element of fun into our life.
This might be you as well! Maybe it’s something you never considered before until just now. When you push fun and recreational activities to the side, there is a part of you that goes unnoticed - and that part of you is super important!
By becoming competent in the 3 frameworks, you can give yourself the opportunity to ask yourself better questions, give yourself direction, and make a choice about how you want to spend your time!
We all have the same 24-hours and it all depends how you use yours.
There’s No Fun In Finale
We really hate to say goodbye, but every good tale must eventually come to an end!
If you are the kind of person who is interested in improving your own life, or you are going through a struggle and want to know how you can start changing your frame of mind, then our Personal Growth Membership is perfect for you!
With the Personal Growth Membership, you’ll discover ways to improve your mindset and manage your mental and physical health. We’ve included some incredible tips and techniques that help you manage stress, anxiousness, and other unexpected emotional life circumstances!
In other words, it’s the complete self-improvement package. Each of the videos and trainings are simple to understand, short and to the point, and are designed to help you effortlessly so that you can get your time back.
Did we mention it’s incredibly affordable?
Check out our Personal Growth Membership by clicking here to see for yourself!