Ever get the feeling that all personal development and self-help messages are the same?
Ever just want to find something just that little bit different, that changes your perspective on things and takes you one step closer towards a better way of living?
There's a reason they all sound the same
The primary reason that so much information out there is similar, is because there are only so many areas of your life that you can influence and so many techniques you can apply to make your life better.
Think about your life. In what ways do you want it to get better?
Do you want more money, more friends, more material possessions, more fulfilling relationships, more peace? I'm willing to bet that there isn't much on your list that doesn't appear on many other people's lists across the world.
Now think about what you can do to make those improvements and attain those things.
Again, it's the usual suspects: define clearly what you want and how you want to get there, work out how you're going to get there, replace bad habits with good habits, reduce procrastination and replace it with action, change your mindset to appreciate what you get etc. etc.
Sound familiar?
Why more of the same can result in something different
Ok, so some advice is a bit different. Sometimes we read something and it sparks something; it triggers a new way of thinking, a revelation.
Sometimes even things that we already know, when presented in a subtly different way, can lead to something great.
Which is why more of the same is not such a bad thing.
The more people write about the same things, explore new possibilities in the same areas, the more likely we are to stumble across the next great revelation. Also, the more people who are likely to be exposed to these ideas for the first time.
Just because you or I have heard it all before, doesn't mean that everyone has. The number of times I've read a book that was written years before another, and realised the "new" ideas that I had been blown away by were actually a slightly more developed version of something that had been written years ago, isn't a bad thing. It's actually reassuring: at least they were onto the right thing all those years ago, and at least people are still working to take those ideas even further now.
The more recent books are often better too, even if just slightly better articulated or incorporating a few extra little lessons and examples.
Re-hashing ideas for the sake of creating content is a bit of a shame though...
In my "daily rubbish" posts, I am writing just to ensure I write something on a regular basis as much as anything, so sometimes there is a risk that I fall into the trap of re-hashing old ideas - but I will always try to add something extra, a new insight or a bit of commentary that is relevant to me or might be useful to others.
What does sometimes frustrate me is when I read other's blogs and articles that are clearly just taking credit for ideas that come from somewhere else, that are not only a repetition of often-told stories, but also add nothing new and are so abstract they provide no guidance on how to apply them.
How do we make things different?
There are plenty of things we can do to take these ideas forwards and make them different, a bit more useful and tangible. If you look at the best books and websites out there, they all have several things in common. Below are a few examples - if you have more please let me know:
- They include specific, real-life examples. They're not just a load of theoretical text regurgitated from a psychology textbook, they include stories on how the ideas were applied and how they worked in real life to the author or to someone else specific.
- They provide extra ideas or commentary that extend the original concepts
- They condense or re-present the ideas in a far more interesting, accessible and understandable way that more people can relate to
- They provide exercises that you can do yourself
- They provide new tools or templates to use in your own personal development
What I'm looking for is something different in personal development. Have you found it?
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