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Between my day job, my night job (the one that’s eventually going to replace my day job), raising a family, etc, etc, I’ve not had much chance to post anything here.

But today, one of my favourite personal development authors wrote something that struck a chord with me. Phillip J Eby wrote:

What I’m saying is not that you have to do whatever a successful person tells you. What I’m saying is that when you are listening to a successful person…

Pay Close Attention To Your Emotions!

And whenever you feel a need to disagree, disregard, or just plain avoid something they’re saying… watch out.

Doesn’t mean they’re right. Doesn’t mean they’re wrong, either.

What it does mean, though, is that you’ve got something stored in your brain’s “cache” that conflicts with what they’re telling you. The feelings you have associated with an idea are part of your brain’s “heuristics” (a fancy programmer word for “hint” or “clue”) for selecting appropriate thoughts and actions.

And so, if you get a strong reaction to something, that’s an indication that you don’t have a lot of choice in relation to that idea.

That’s such a crucial point in effective personal development, I think. The critical thing in most situations is not actually about what happens (well, not often). It’s how you feel about what happens. And, as Phillip implies, if you feel “bad” about something, then either that’s an indication that the situation is pushing against your boundaries of what’s right and wrong, or it’s pushing against your boundaries of your comfort zone.

So pay attention to when you feel bad about something. It’s usually a clear indication that you are about to do something that goes against your principles, or that you have some negative association with the situation. And that negative association might not be based on reality - it might be based on mistaken assumptions, things you learned as a child, or other bases that are not useful to who you are now and who you want to become.

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I’ve recently read a great blog post about doing New Year’s Resolutions - the right way. Have a read of it here, then come back…

OK, this is in line with what I write about in my New Mid-Year, New You report (which you can get free by subscribing for the Personal Development Secrets eCourse).

Notice the first point in the article I linked to above: “Don’t make resolutions just because it’s New Years.”. That’s EXACTLY the point I write about in the intro to the New Mid-Year report (which I know needs a snappier title, but it was the best I could come up with at the time!). Making resolutions at New Year is setting you up for failure.

Don’t let yourself down that way. Instead, get my report, set aside an evening or a day, and make sure you won’t be disturbed. Set yourself up the right way for success - real, meaningful success - in the future.

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Steve Pavlina is one of the foremost personal development bloggers at the moment, and I’ve just come across a great post of his on empowering questions.

In particular, I like this section he wrote:

Yet weak questions are addictive. At first glance they may even seem helpful, and that’s why they’re so insidious. You might think that if you’re depressed, the best thing you can do is to ask, “Why am I so depressed?” Perhaps if you could diagnose the problem, you could cure it. But it doesn’t work that way. When you’re in a negative state or situation, you aren’t thinking clearly to begin with. You’re in no position to accurately diagnose yourself. Effectively you’re blind. So the answers you get back will be worthless.

That’s a great comment - “at first glance, they seem helpful”. As he goes on to explain, these questions add a story (or justification) to your negative state, rather than helping you focus on the positive and your intended result.

He writes some good material. Do take some time out to read his blos.

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All parents know that children are copy-cats. In fact, they copy so much, and so well, that they are virtually “copying machines”. They copy what you say, how you say it, and when you say it. They copy the way you move, how you act, how you respond to things, how you treat other people, and just about anything else you do.

But we also know that sometimes, we want to teach them something, and they learn something else. For example, you’re trying to teach them about gardening and how much fun it is to grow things, but they learn to run a mile when they see a worm or a spider, creating a new life-long phobia (or simple “extreme disgust”) at the same time.

The problem is of course that children learn at a phenomenal rate. They just don’t always learn what you want them to learn. And it’s worse because sometimes you don’t know (or don’t even think about) what you want your child to learn.

But deciding what you want your child to learn is not important when you’re sitting with your child trying to teach them something. Well, it is important, but it’s obviously at the forefront of your mind. The critical times are when you are not trying to explicitly teach your child something, but they are going to learn something anyway. It’s at those points that you really need to be aware of what your child is learning.

For example, if you and your partner are arguing about something, and one of you curses and storms off rather than dealing with the arguement rationally and fairly, what will your child learn? Well, the first thing they’ll learn is a new word, one that you don’t want them saying in public! The second thing they’re likely to learn is: “when in an argument, storm off rather than dealing with it.” Or something like that, anyway.

Another example: if you’re trying to teach your child something, but it’s not going as well as planned and you’re getting frustrated, what are they going to learn? Will they learn that you had unrealistic expectations, and that this would be a good opportunity for you to lower your expectations, and that that’s a reasonable strategy to take when they have unrealistic expectations of their own in future? Or are they going to learn to not attempt this subject/skill again, because Mum or Dad gets upset?

So knowing that your child is going to learn something in EVERY situation they are in is important. Deciding up front what you’d like them to learn is something else. And that’s why the number one empowering question for parents is: what do I want my child to learn from this?