8/29/2007

Twelve Steps for Personal Development Addicts

Lyman Reed has created an instant classic with his post Twelve Steps for Personal Development Addicts. It's hilarious and scary all at once in that I-resemble-that-remark way. Excerpt:
2. Came to believe that if the book we read last week wasn’t working, maybe if I buy another one, it will!

5. Humbly admitted to no one, especially not ourselves, that we weren’t really working on any of this stuff, just thinking about it and not taking any action.
I point out this post for two reasons. I've already stated the first, but the second is that I think I may be in recovery from this addiction. I didn't fully realize this fact until last week. In case you missed it, Kevin Eikenberry, author of Remarkable Leadership has waged a remarkable (well, duh!) campaign to catapult his book to the top of the Amazon charts. One of the ways authors will do this is to have a blitz of free bonuses for people who order on the first day (or soon after publishing). If you click on Kevin's link, you will see that he is offering not two bonuses, not ten bonuses, not fifty bonuses, but a mind-boggling 71 free bonuses!! Bravo, Kevin; that must have taken a monumental effort to assemble!

But I didn't order the book, even though I could get all that for about twenty bucks. I love free stuff as much as anyone, but about halfway down the list I realized that I would never get through even a fraction of the material, and then I'd wonder what I'd missed in the unstudied items.

I also got to thinking about Wallace Wattles and the Science of Getting Rich, and how faith, focus, perseverance, and gratitude were all I needed to succeed. I felt like the Grinch on top of Mt. Crumpit as I realized that personal development isn't about any specific system, program, or guru. They may provide useful tools I can use in my development program, but the spirit of personal development is the four items mentioned above. And I thought that perhaps creatively focusing only on them was what I should be doing. Perhaps there's hope for me yet...



posted by Mike at 4:28 PM


2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mike - I've been there done that so many times with the "Get 10 million dollars of bonuses if you buy this book" it isn't even funny. And I'll never forget the time that I actually walked into a Barnes and Noble and walked out empty handed - I had money in my pocket, but didn't buy a single book, CD, or DVD on personal growth. That was probably more life changing for me than anything I could have picked up! :)

I'm glad you liked the post. None of this stuff is "bad"; it's just so much easier to think about it than actually do it. I'm glad you mentioned Wattles' principles.

There's hope for both of us. :)

2:46 PM  
Blogger Mike said...

Lyman,

Thanks for stopping by! Amen to that "easier thought about than done" trap.

I think your post is a classic because it's so easy to fall into those patterns and not notice them.

Step twelve was priceless...

Mike

2:53 PM  

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