You don’t need to open your eyes very wide to see that self-development is booming at the moment, and as the industry gets bigger and bigger, more and more lives are changing for the better. There has been a huge increase in the variety of products available both on and offline as people attempt to increase their self-confidence, improve their love lives, lose some extra belly fat, be more assertive, quit smoking, or experience past-life regression.
In fact, many stories you hear on the news or in business about someone who has had a personal breakthrough or who has achieved personal success usually has a self-development story attached to it. The late Steve Jobs, who achieved massive success in his life, was a self-development aficionado, spending seven months in India on his spiritual journey. He later became a Buddhist, and it was his faith that influenced his simplistic designs and business philosophy.
via geneticsandsociety.org
WHAT IS SELF-DEVELOPMENT?
So what, then, is self-development? If you look at Wikipedia, it will tell you that self-development is “a self-guided improvement – economically, intellectually, or emotionally – often with a substantial psychological basis. There are many different self-help movements, and each has its own focus, techniques, associated beliefs, proponents, and, in some cases, leaders.”
This explanation is pretty vague, and if you are involved with the self-development industry, you will know that it is so much more than that. In fact, I would say that the industry has undergone a transformation of late. It used to be about getting rid of an unwanted problem, but these days it seems to be appealing for more positive reasons.
Guided meditations, visualization and other subconscious techniques are used by very successful people from athletes to top-tier salespeople in an attempt to get the best possible results from themselves. In fact, I was listening to a very influential network marketing coach the other day who said it is important to “work harder on yourself than you do on your business.”
via bulletproofexec.com
WHY SELF-DEVELOPMENT IS SO IMPORTANT
Here is the bottom line. Here is the reason self-development is so important. When the most successful people realize that they can increase their results by spending half an hour a day meditating, listening to a motivational CD, or using subliminal messaging or self-hypnosis, it creates a huge opportunity. Self-development is something that is used by winners. And by winners, I mean people who have the money to invest in themselves.
The best thing is that people who want to emulate winners will follow their example. So the message has a distinct trickle-down effect. Now, as the times we live in become increasingly uncertain and more and more people are realizing that they need to develop themselves in order to keep up with change, we have seen an unprecedented growth in self-development.
Self-development is now a multi-billion-dollar industry. Last time I checked, it was worth somewhere from $17 billion to $19 billion, and it seems to double in size every few years. Why? Because it is about getting results, and people are seeing the need for results more than ever. If that wasn’t the case, we wouldn’t have seen the unprecedented growth in the number of life coaches, neuro-linguistic programming practitioners, and the like around the world.
If you also consider the growing popularity of the Law of Attraction (a consequence of the hugely popular film “The Secret”) and how this concept links into the self-development movement, then you can begin to see just how powerful an opportunity self-development is.
Of course, there is a downside to all this, and that is that everywhere you look, there is a new “wonder product” that will help you to effortlessly create miracles in your life. Such over-hyped products lower the integrity of the self-development industry.
But that being said, there is still massive opportunity for people who wish to get involved in the industry in a real and genuine way.
And on that note, I’m off to do a nice 20-minute meditation and ponder my direction.
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Photo cred: Radiantselfcare.com
