Underdeveloped personal development

Have you ever wondered why personal development and personal motivation are such big business growth areas? Business 101: personal growth = business growth.

Apparently, there are many people who have an underdeveloped sense of personal identity and therefore need life coaching to enhance self improvement. I wonder how this happened.

I am definitely not knocking life coaching, motivational speeches or counselling: I have used them all.

You see, I am qualified - as a seasoned user - to know how helpful these techniques are. When I was on my personal journey from floundering to treading water, I obviously didn’t look at the bigger picture. But now I have space to reflect as I take positive strokes in dream fulfilment and I find I can ask these questions.

Where do the standard social and educational systems fail so extensively that society is awash with people who feel they have a low quality of life, lack much self-esteem, have no discernable dreams or aspirations and are blatantly unaware of having any natural talents or potential?

Why do people feel inadequate for the majority of the time?

What standards are we judging ourselves against to measure our lack?

If you type “personal development” into the Google search engine you’ll come back with over 50 million (yes, that’s right 50,000,000!) results in under 2 seconds. Google can find in excess of 1 million links for “motivational speakers” in the same time. What’s going on? Why are people so de-motivated to live their best life without a crutch?

I have had some times when I think nothing is possible and many other times when I would probably be described as a dreamer and an idealist because I believe that everything and anything great is possible.

When does the excitement of learning, and just being - that are part of most children’s lives - stop being integral to us as we grow up?

I’m beginning to think that if there is so much need for a fix then maybe the solution is not in throwing more personal development courses or motivational speakers at people, but maybe in going to the root of the problem. I think we should find out when it all goes wrong. At what age does the self-belief start to seep away? And then invest in reversing this damaging trend.

Either that or I could start a new career as a motivational speaker. Mmmm.