15 Myths About Personal Development & How to Leverage Them

Self-development is a cool trend, and modern culture has even created a cult around personal development. It is so powerful that we accept its doctrines without any analysis because we get soaked into its promises of becoming “better people” that we unconsciously decide to spend our money on those promises. However, many of these tips and suggestions are somehow thrown to us without additional information on how to actually leverage them.

Let’s analyze some of them together and bust some myths that have influenced your life too much already:

1. Personal Development Is Simply Positive Thinking

Many people don’t understand the notion that positive thinking is merely a component of the entire personal development “picture.” For some individuals, positive thinking is a much-needed aspect of their daily lives. Eliminate this misinterpretation in your mind once and for all.

2. Personal Development Isn’t for Everybody

As stated earlier, the personal development path is present in everyone’s life. It isn’t a strict skill, activity, or attitude that can be placed and interpreted in just one way because everyone is different. Still, the need for growth is hidden beneath our subconscious minds.

3. If You Tell Your Goals, You Will Fail to Achieve Them

Wrong. There are two types of people: the ones who share their goals and improve their performance, and the others who prefer keeping everything for themselves before they get any results. Find what works best for you!

4. Anything Is Possible if You Want It Bad Enough

This is a dream that has been sold for many years now. The “Law of Attraction” suggests that you can simply attract success by visually creating it every day and by desiring it a lot. However, it doesn’t state that you need to work 1000 hours, fail 33 times, and recover 33 times.

“The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.” – Oprah Winfrey

5. You MUST Write down All Your Goals

No, you don’t because there is no actual study that can confirm this, only hyped theories. However, this advice has its benefits too because when you write your goal down, you can better assess it and emotionally connect to it. Additionally, you can break it down into smaller chunks and organize it.

6. Once a Superficial Person, Always a Superficial Person

There’s no such thing as ever-lasting conditions. If someone told you that you cannot change, he just served you the most terrible lie. People can change for the better. It’s just a matter of how much they want it and how much they do for it.

7. A Habit Is Formed in 30 Days

A true habit is only going to last if the activity itself becomes a part of your subconscious mind. If you truly want to implement a habit, keep doing it (even for more than 30 days) until it “becomes a part of you.” Moreover, there’s a big difference between spending 3 or 30 minutes on it each day.

8. Multi-Tasking Is a Key to Higher Productivity

Even though this myth has started to capture attention and critics in the last several years, it is still worth remarking. David Rock writes in one of the best self-development books of all time that “even doing two things at once” severely decreases your brain’s performance. Single tasking and pure focus are a better practice!

9. We Are Using only 10% of Our Brains

Wrong. This is a myth that has been debunked for over 100 years already, yet common people still adore promoting it. When you hit your head and become paralyzed, only then you’re not able to use 100% of your brain.

10. Thinking of Positive and Negative Ideas Takes the Same Amount of Energy

It is only the shifting from positive to negative and the other way around that actually wastes your energy. When you’re thinking of something positive and you keep doing that for a long time, it doesn’t feel tiring. However, if you change from positive to something negative, you’ll have an overwhelming feeling as your mind and body are trying to adapt to what you’re actually focusing on.

11. You Can Eliminate All Your Fears Now

Nope, we can’t eliminate our fears by just clapping our fingers and saying “poof, it’s gone”. Yes, it is true that self-control helps us overcome situational fears, yet our deepest fears lie in our subconscious minds. It takes energy, time, and dedication to actually fill those gaps and change their neuro-associations.

12. Happiness Is a Born Trait

First off, happiness isn’t a trait. It is a state of mind, or better said, a state of love that overwhelms us entirely. It is true though that almost 50% of our happiness is “inherited,” yet we still get 50% of space to work on ourselves and find our own ways to reach unique happiness.

13. Positive Thinking Equals Optimist Thinking

Positive is not enough. You can keep smiling or accepting your situation without getting angry, yet it may become much harder when bad things keep coming. However, if you’re optimistic, which means that you believe that your problems aren’t permanent, nor personal, nor pervasive, you can overcome huge boundaries with ease.

14. If You Keep Doing Something, You Will Succeed

This statement is, in fact, true. Only that it lacks something very important. In order to reach your final objective, you need to keep doing something while also optimizing it consistently. Only by giving yourself constant feedback will you be able to stay on the right path.

15. You Should Pay a Coach

You don’t need expensive coaches. What you need is probably a mentor — the person, who already performs something that you want to be good at in the future. Want marketing? Find a great marketer and get closer to him. Talk to him, and learn from his mindset.

“My mentor said, ‘Let’s go do it,’ not ‘You go do it.’ How powerful when someone says, ‘Let’s!’” – Jim Rohn

Yes, it is unreasonable to believe the statements that do not hold up against criticism. There is nothing easy, fast and ideal, especially when it comes to self-development and success. Only the constant analysis of your actions, attention to your own feelings, the ability to feel the situation and invest your effort where necessary, will lead you to the desired goal.

How do you know you are on the right path towards achieving your dreams? Please let us know by commenting below!

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