Prosper Ikiriko

Introduction

Why is it that we think we don have to continue our self-development once we have finished our education? Maybe it is because we equate learning and development with the educational institutions that we have spent so much time in during our early years. Of course, we continue to develop throughout our lives, and continue to gain new skills and attributes throughout our working lives and our lives as partners, parents, grandparents, and our involvement with our communities.The desire to improve is paramount here. If we get to the point of thinking that we no longer need to improve, we are showing how closed our minds are, and how entrenched our attitudes are. This approach to life doesn allow for change and doesn allow for development. To be a fully rounded and healthy person, it is necessary to be able to respond to changes in our lives, in our environments, and our hearts and minds.Rigidity in life will impact not only on ourselves, but on others, and will make our lives difficult when change is necessary or forced upon us. No one is perfect, and no one knows everything there is to know. Thankfully we generally don need to know everything, but we do need to know when we need to learn something, and when we need to develop new skills and abilities.Generally speaking, it helps to have a goal or two in mind to guide our self-development program and to have the right sort of attitude. For example, its best not to get too worried about what it is you can do or need to improve. Rather, we should take the knowledge of our shortcomings and examine ways in which we can improve. Worrying will do no good at all.Our energy should be directed to working out exactly what it is we need to do better and how.Confidence is everything really, and confidence in your ability to learn and improve will make an amazing difference to your success. If you are convinced that you can learn something, then you have already lost the battle. If you can tell yourself that if other people can do it, then so can you, this is a sign that you are on the way to success. Making the most of yourself means treating others as you would like to be treated yourself. Treat people with respect and you are showing that you are worthy of respect too. So don mess people about, do make sure you are on time if you have arranged to meet someone and do be courteous and pleasant. If you patronize someone or treat them dismissively, they will remember this about you, and this will not be helpful to you should you need at some point to ask them a favor, or if you find that you are employing them. Once you have permitted yourself to be confident about your abilities and to hold your head high with others, you can work on the aspirations for improvement. Make sure you aim high enough. Low-level goals are too easy and don test your abilities sufficiently. Aiming too high means you are less likely to meet your target – so maybe you need to set goals that divide up the big task and deal with them one at a time. It is important to make a realistic assessment about how you are going to achieve your goals.Once you know what you are aiming for, you need to make a sensible plan of how you are going to get there. Plans are essential. Plans allocate time for certain tasks and break tasks down into manageable proportions. Plans enable you to make the best use of your time and to develop the skills required to get things done.It is important to be goal-oriented. It is all very well reading up on something, but you need to put theory into practice. For many people, its a matter of lots of talks, but not so much action. With everything you do, try and ensure there is a measurable outcome that you can identify as a target, and can be seen to be done.Don let obstacles get in your way. When things get difficult, its important that you don give up. If we never have to overcome problems on our way, we would find life to be an easy ride. The test is how you overcome problems on the road to achievement and success.If you consider some of the most successful people in the world today, you will find many of them have had more than one career, and many of them have experienced failure in the first degree and continued to great future success. This reflects their self-belief and determination. So when things go wrong, learn from your mistakes and the mistakes of others. Never think you know best all the time, and acknowledge that sometimes you do. You should always think it possible to learn something new.There are various stages in the path to self-development. First, you need to take stock of yourself, your life, and your dreams. If you don have any dreams, or visions of the future, then you need to spend some time working out where you are going in your life, and whether you should be changing anything.You need to consider carefully whether your attitudes, feelings and beliefs, behavior, and actions, are quite what you want them to be. Are they going to hinder or help you achieve your goals and desires? Or do you need to take steps to retrain yourself in certain ways, and work towards a healthier, better life management plan?Self-confidence, self-belief, a certain amount of modesty, a positive attitude and a serious commitment are all essential elements of self-development. Self-development involves work, but it is work that will enable you to live your life fully, and give you the satisfaction of making not only your dreams come true, but helping others to do so too. Learn Self Confidence is all important. Confidence in yourself will influence how other people see you, and the extent to which they trust you both as an individual, and as a part of a team. If you can put aside self-doubt and mistrust, and stop thinking that you can do this or can do that, you are on your way to self-confidence and success.Some people are just born oozing self-confidence, and others develop it as they grow up and develop specific skills and abilities and establish their life path.For others, however, its something that needs to be worked on as an adult. This may be because they have too often been told that they are useless, incapable, etc. They may have been unfortunate enough to have overbearing parents or older siblings or perhaps been bullied at school or by others in the neighborhood.It can be hard to unlearn those views of yourself that have probably been internalized over many years. However, it is always, always worth shedding self-doubt and re-learning about your self-worth.There are lots of ways that you can achieve this. Self-hypnosis, using affirmations, and neurolinguistic programming techniques are all possible aids to learning self-confidence.For all of them, however, you first of all need to understand that we, as humans, are programmed. Our brain and our conscious and subconscious minds operate very effectively. If you pile into the brain statements about how useless we are, then the brain will effectively fill our data bank with this detail. If we ensure that our brain is told that we are able, can learn, and can achieve, then our data bank will reflect this.If we then ask ourselves what sort of person am I, it is the data in the brain that will give us the answer. So a data bank full of positive information will give positive answers.Opening the channel to the subconscious is the key to internalizing the data. Try playing a tape or CD of affirmations when you are just about to go to sleep. Your brain has told your conscious mind that its time to sleep – which is an example of self-hypnosis. So your conscious mind switches off, and your subconscious mind is receptive.This is the technique used to hypnotize people. When a hypnotist tells you that you are feeling sleepy and your eyes are closing, and you will listen to what is being said – this is exactly what you will do.Your subconscious mind will accept the information it receives, and any instructions it receives. So you can be hypnotized into believing that you are a mouse, a dog, a horse, etc. Equally, you can be convinced that you are sensible, capable, able, and confident. Self-hypnosis is really about learning how to open the door to your subconscious mind, and transmit the information that you want -just the same way that someone else would do. Using tapes or CDs is a good way of receiving the information you want.Using affirmations is effective and can be done anywhere and anytime. First thing in the morning, while you are getting ready in the bathroom, look at yourself in the mirror and repeat your affirmations. For example: -I am a confident and capable person.I am an achiever and will be successful. I work hard and deserve to succeed.I find solutions when there are problems. I am goal-oriented and successful. Repeating affirmations, whatever they are, have to be done regularly, and with belief in what you are saying. Self-confidence is the key to learning new skills, progressing in your work and home life, and the foundation of all self-development.