I hope most of my students walk away with a lot less than they walked in with.
Sometimes people ask me why we put such a focus on personal growth here in the I Love Real Estate Community.
It’s not the be all and end all. The primary focus is definitely with helping people become more successful investors, and if you’re not really up for looking under the hood of your own head, we’re not going to force you. You’ll still get a tonne of value out of the training on offer.
And while I think everyone can benefit from spending some time getting to know themselves better – mastering their own controls – not everyone ‘needs’ to. Many people are going to be fine. They’re happy with how their life is tracking and that’s great.
But those people are probably the lucky minority. I would guess that most people have a sense that their not hitting full-potential – that they could be getting more out of life and more out of themselves.
(That said, I’m probably working with a biased sample. Everyone I work with has already self-selected into a self-education program, so they’re already driven enough to do that. So maybe it’s not ‘most’ of the Australian population.
But if you’re reading this blog, doesn’t that mean I’m probably talking to you?)
Anyway, back to the question at hand. Why do we make personal development such a focus? Why do we make it a focus at all?
This is a big question, but over the weekend, I was thinking that it really came down to focus.
And in many ways, with personal development, it’s not about what you gain. It’s about what you lose – what you shed and let go of.
You may have noticed, but humans aren’t entirely rational. We’re a messy mix of emotions and aspirations, and we get ourselves tangled in knots all the time.
So you love singing. You want to do it because it makes you happy. You also want to do it because you’ve never felt like you were worthy of love, and maybe 10,000 screaming fans is the affirmation you are looking for.
But then you also don’t want to do it because singing in front of people makes you feel intensely vulnerable and all of your defensive mechanisms kick into gear. You also don’t want to do it because you’ve got young kids and all your body wants to do is sleep, not enrol in singing classes.
You get the point. At any point in time we are a mess of conflicting drives and desires. And I’m painting a fairly simple picture here. Most of us are much more complex.
It’s a wonder we get anything done at all.
And so what I feel happens as we get to know and understand ourselves better is that we start to untangle all of this.
You identify motivations that are coming out of your wounds, and you find ways to de-energise those.
You also identify blockages that are stopping you from doing what you want, and you dismantle those.
After that work is done, ultimately what we’re left with is a clear drive – a focused, single-minded intention.
“Single-minded” is really the perfect word for this. We don’t have a dozen different minds wrestling for control of our lives. There is one.
There is one mind that is orchestrating the whole show. And that one is our happiness. Our happiness becomes the only star we navigate by.
And then, almost effortlessly, our lives align around our mind’s clear intention – with happiness.
It’s almost magic.
That’s why we make personal growth a focus.
And it’s why I love doing what I do.