The Importance of Self Development

Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound. - James Allen.

The desire to become great and a celebrity is common to all human right from the time they become conscious of self. Dale Carnegie, in his best-selling classic, describes this as the “deepest urge in human nature.”

While the majority of humankind nurse this, usually unexpressed, craving to become larger than life and be revered by fellow men, only a few individuals really choose to advance beyond desiring to pay the price required to build a great life.

The price for greatness is a disciplined and sustained investment in oneself, otherwise called personal development. Jim Rohn, a renowned business philosopher and self-development guru, once quotes his former employer and mentor to have advised him thus: “if you want to be wealthy and happy... learn to work harder on yourself than on your job.” While this may sound absurd, it is good counsel. The general practice is that most people expend their time and energy the other way round; working more and often on the job - in order to earn so much - while devoting little or no attention to improving themselves.

As normal as this may look, it is a misnomer. While it is important to be dedicated to your work and put in a good shift above the average mark, it is equally essential not to neglect the regular cultivation of your mind. Every individual who has a sense of self should have a self-development programme he or she is observing to unleash his/her potential, sharpen latent skills and bring out the champion within.

Not all of us are destined for the stage. Therefore, drawing out the champion within you does not necessarily mean that you will become a maestro with millions of followers. Your own niche may be to a few dozens of people, it doesn’t make you lesser than someone with a global fan base. The important thing is to develop yourself such that you are both useful and relevant to your world.

A personal development programme is nothing complex or far-fetched. It can be as simple as following a schedule of conscious reading, listening, speaking, and/or writing, as well as putting to practice what you are learning in the process of those exercises. It is important you are aware about your objectives for embarking on these exercises so that you can be able to track the results. You should also have a schedule for what you do, rather than merely follow your whims by doing them when you feel like it.

To Your Success!

The Keyword To Personal Growth (Part 2)

See more: open your eyes wider and see on a larger scale. Open your inner eye and see beyond the present. See the big picture. See opportunities. See options. See avenues. See possibilities. See greatness. See seeds. See potentials. See, see, and see!

Ask more: ask more questions. Seek more information. Request for more explanation, more clarification. Increase your curiosity. Double your inquisitiveness about everything. By asking more, you get to know more and be more.

Read more: if you do not have a habit of reading, you need to cultivate it. And if you already have, then you need to read more, read wider, read over, read beyond your field. By so doing, you would be cultivating your mind for sound reasoning and better decision-making.

Learn more: you need to increase your bank of knowledge by consciously seeking information on different things, from different sources. Go out and learn more on what you already know, update your mind with the latest information. By learning more, you will become more.

Try more: you might have failed in an endeavour, try again. Explore more options. Try your hands on new things, you don’t have to get it perfect at first or even at all, just do something. Try this, try that, try here, try there. Don’t stop trying, it’s the key to growth and the best way to increase your capacity.

Work more: do more work than you are wont to do. Organise your life and time in such a way that will enable you to get more work done. Do more work than you are paid for. Whatever you are doing, work more at it and don’t rest on your oars.

Do more: take more actions. Expend more efforts. Do one percent more of what you are doing. Increase your action ratio. Go an extra mile; and you are on the path to self-development, happiness and success.

Give more: give more of yourself, give more of your time, give more of your resources to your family, your friends, your work, your church and your society. Don’t stop giving, it is the secret of getting and becoming. So give more.

Be more: be more than you are to yourself, to your family, to your friends, to your company, to your church/society. Be more than “me” to yourself, be your own resource person. Be more than a husband/father to your wife/children, be their mentor. Be more than a wife/mother to your family, be their inspiration. Be more than a friend, be a motivator. Be more than an employee, be a value-adder. Be more than a colleague, be an encourager. Be more than a member in your church/society, be a contributor. Do you understand now? So break out of the status quo and be more to all!

The keyword to personal growth and development is “more”. Always ask yourself ‘what more can I do?’, ‘What more can I be?’, ‘What more can I learn?’, ‘What more can I give?’ etc. You will be amazed at how fast you would grow as well as at what you are able to accomplish.

The Character Of Success

Success is fulfilling an identified personal life purpose with:

• The fear of God
• Integrity
• Sound Ethical Values
• A Sense of Mission
• Compassion
• Character

Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. It is the accumulative weight of our disciplines and our judgments that leads us to either fortune or failure. - Jim Rohn

If you develop the habits of success, you will make success a habit. - Michael E. Angier

The common denominator of success lies in forming the habit of doing things that failure don’t like to do. - Albert Gray

The Keyword To Personal Growth (Part 1)

Personal growth, or self-development, is a field of study that crystallised into an industry some decades ago. Ever since then, volumes of thoughts have been expressed on it in various forms, such as books, essays, CDs and multimedia tools, among several others. And many persons have risen to the status of expert in it, and thereby earn their living.

Personal development, in all ramifications (spiritual, mental, emotional, physical, social), is the foundation stone for all accomplishments. Many people are bewildered about how to pursue personal development because they tend to see it as an end in itself, and do not realise that it is the means to an end – be it success, wealth, promotion, balance etc. Adding credence to this, James Allen in his all-time classic, As A Man Thinketh, says, “Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.”

Jim Rohn, a leading authority in the field of self-growth, says that the key to wealth and happiness is to ‘work harder on yourself than you do on your job’. He then expatiates thus:

What you become is far more important than what you get. The important question to ask on the job is not, “What am I getting?” Instead, you should ask, “What am I becoming? “Getting and becoming are like Siamese twins: what you have today you have attracted by becoming the person you are today… Income rarely exceeds personal development. Sometimes income takes a lucky jump, but unless you learn to handle the responsibilities that come with it, it will usually shrink back to the amount you can handle… It is hard to keep that which has not been obtained through personal development.

The word of Jim Rohn sheds light on the importance of self-grooming toward attaining those ends that are the target of the daily pursuits of most men. Success, wealth, promotion, balance and the rest should therefore not be your focus; rather you should be committed to a disciplined and sustained cultivation of your person.

To achieve this, you need to break out of your comfort zone, query some of your traditional mindsets and stretch beyond your imaginary limits to the realm of can-be. One word that must be your driving force – which I call the keyword to personal growth – is “more”, “more”, and “more.” 

Wrong Concepts Of Success

• Having money, riches and wealth
• Having many properties and assets
• Being popular and in the news at all times
• Having fleet of cars
• Having many children
• Marrying many wives
• Having many admirers
• Being a public figure
• Being the envy of everyone around etc

12 Star-Performer Hacks For Nigerian Professionals

The vicissitudes of work throw different things at us. Some get to the workplace and find their rhythm or get direction for their lives, others enter and begin to struggle and only just getting by. But, one thing is certain, the world of work only rewards the star performers and they are the ones who find the most fulfilment from the self-application process of work. Nigerian professionals, renowned for their determination to succeed, are among the most productive in the world. But there are more they can add to their game.

Below some 12 steps that will elevate you to the status of a star performer.

1. Know yourself

Know yourself. Know your strengths, limits, talents, gifts, deficiencies. Know where you will thrive and flourish; know where you will struggle and not be able to cope. All of us are not supposed to work anywhere; so, once you understand yourself, it makes career choices and decisions easier. For instance, if you work in a setup where your job descriptions do not match your strengths, you will struggle and will not find joy in your work. The kind of satisfaction that comes from doing what you are naturally cut out for will elude you.

Even though research has revealed that most Nigerian workforce work mainly for the pay and not out of interest, you still owe yourself the duty of making a choice as to where you want to work, such that going to work will not be something you dread every day.

2. Confirm expectations and requirements

If you desire to turn in a five-star performance in any role, you must know what specific tasks are required of you at work. You should know what you are supposed to do on a regular, daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis to fulfil your role. This will help to have a complete picture of what you ought to do with minimal omission.

3. Ascertain the scope and coverage of your responsibilities

How long do you need to do what you are doing? How far do you need to go? What scope do you need to cover in your professional responsibilities? Having a grasp of this will help you not to dissipate energy in the wrong direction or do much where you are supposed to do little.

What am I expected to do? For how long am I expected to do them? How many of those am I required to turn in daily? These are questions star performers ask before they hit the ground running.

4. Identify result and productivity metrics

Star performers are always conscious of their productivity quotient. If you wish to be numbered among them, then you need to adopt a result-driven mindset like they have. You need to be clear as to what constitutes productivity for you. You are permitted to do as many things as you want, but it is not all the things you do that constitute productivity. You should know how your results will be appraised so as to align yourself to do what you are supposed to do as against what catches your fancy.

5. Set goals and objectives

Having known what you are expected to do, what scope you are required to cover, and the metrics of your appraisal; you should then set goals for yourself: These are the things I’m going to accomplish, based on what I know.

You need to set personal goals; star performers are goal-driven. They focus on the end result but do not lose sight of the process. They align with the process that will take them to their result, not activities that will take them away from it. Even if you are not given a goal by your employers or line manager, you need to have your own performance goals.

6. Count the cost

What will it take to accomplish the goals you have set for yourself or the ones set for you by your managers? What will it take to cover the scope? What will it take to meet the expectations or requirements delivered to you? What are the things you need to do to achieve all these? Asking such pertinent questions will help you determine what needs to give in order for you to achieve your objectives.

7. Set your priorities

What are your priorities? You have been told what you are supposed to do, you know how far you are supposed to go, you know what scope you are supposed to cover, and you know what will be used to assess your performance. Armed with all this knowledge, you also need to know which task to do first of all you are supposed to do; which one should come second, which one should come third, which one should be the last.

Setting priorities before you start will help to know the order you are supposed to eat your frogs.

8. Manage your time

Star performers are excellent time managers. They are strict in the way they spend time as well as to what extent they allow others who are not germane to their result to encroach on their time and space. Because they know the ephemeral nature of time, they endeavour to make every moment count. They reduce loafing to the barest minimum and input substance that will count later on in their time.

A very good tool that has helped star performers improve their productivity is the award-winning TAMS, a homegrown time-management focused human resource management application that measures punctuality at duty posts as well as overall contributions to organisational success. Trusted by over a thousand organizations in Nigeria and West Africa, TAMS also celebrates star performers with gifts and vacation packages.

9. Focus

After you set your priorities and you are able to optimise time, you have to learn to focus on what you ought to do. As simple as that sounds, it is one of the most difficult things to do. It is not easy to maintain a laser focus on a task for a prolonged spell and not be distracted.

There are noises all around us, even in your own mind, there psychological noises contending for your attention. But you must be able to sieve through them and centre on what needs to be done at any point in time. That is one of the tricks of star performers.

10. Manage people and your environment

To be productive you also need to manage the people around you. You have to learn to say, ‘No’ or promise a rain check on extraneous requests.

You need to manage your environment too, there are some environments that aid productivity, and there are those that inhibit it. You have to position yourself in an environment that allows you to be productive. For instance, the way you are seated or how you organise your table and workspace can either facilitate or slow down your work pace.

11. Review your work

Top performers have reviews ingrained in their system. After completing a task, they look at it again and ask themselves questions: Is this the best I can come up with or can I do better? They also review their day asking such questions as; how has my day been? What did I get right, what did I do wrong?

You have to review your own performance before being assessed by your superiors. You should also review your day, week, month, quarter and year. This helps you to know what you have accomplished so that you can report it and get the confidence boost to do more. It also helps you to know what is outstanding so you can pursue them.

12. Self-discipline

All the highlighted pointers that make a star performer are indicators of discipline. After you have taken note of all the points, if you are not disciplined enough to put them into practice, they will all filter away. Motivation gets you started, but self-discipline keeps you going even when you don’t feel like it.

How many excuse-makers do you know that turned out to be successful? Nobody claps for what you plan or intend to do. You only get applauded for what you have done, and it takes discipline to get difficult things done because you have to take tough decisions and be rigorous in your thinking. It is not even easy to think through a process, it takes discipline. And that is one of the hallmarks of star performers.

Principles for Overcoming Failure

1. Do not let fear control you

2. Check your attitudes

3. Do not make excuses

4. Never let failure get inside you

5. Change yourself

6. Learn from your mistakes

7. Let go of the past

8. Never give up