The Stigma Associated with Personal Development

Today I want to talk about something that is quite important, the stigma associated with personal development. Is personal development lame or uncool? Let's talk about it.

I am happy that I have finally come round to writing this blog post. It's something that has been in my mind for a while now. Watching the scene of the world and various attitudes around us, it becomes quite apparent that there is a sort of stigma behind personal development. This can be quite shocking, especially considering the motive behind self-help books and personal development materials. Let us discuss the essence of personal development and break down elements of stigma that are associated with the topic.

As Alex Shye mentioned in his blog post about personal development stigma, here there seems to be a view today that personal development or personal growth is lame, uncool. It's quite ironic because the whole idea with personal development is improving your life. Now who does not want to make their lives better? Yet, the topic of personal development may even be laughed out or shunned as some people hastily decide that the topic is not for them. How fascinating.

An interesting point to note is that many authors of personal development blogs, are humans just like you. And they do not claim to be superhuman or to know everything there is in the world. For myself and many other personal development bloggers, documenting personal development is our way of trying to encourage and motivate the world, using tips and tricks that we've picked up along the way. It may even be to remind ourselves of important truths as well as the reader on the other end. No human knows it all.

With my personal development blog, I simply like presenting helpful ideas and motivational thoughts that I have discovered and sharing them in a useful format. I hope to help someone else somewhere around the world who is looking for a particular answer just like I once was.

Who among us has never read a helpful 'How-To' post, thoroughly benefited from it and used it to conquer a problem? It think it is safe to say we all have at one point or another.

We also have those who shy away from advice-themed posts that they describe as 'preachy'. I honestly think it is all about your viewpoint, and how willing you are to learn and make yourself better. I think those who refuse to pay attention to personal development are honestly at a loss. We are all on a journey of personal development. Yes, a journey of personal development. And all that simply means is that throughout our lives we will need guidance, we will face obstacles and difficult situations, and we will need the helpful reminders of a friend. That is personal development... using the experiences of others to boost yourself.

This does not mean that you need to go out right now and stock up your book-shelf with hundreds of self-help books. No. I also understand those who have been put off personal development because of the hundreds of somewhat outlandish and conflicting ideas out there. You do not need to blindly gulp down all the ideas that you find on the internet. To be able to have a truly valuable experience, you need to analyse and compare, and think very carefully.

What I am saying is that we need to stop writing off personal development or thinking that it is lame. We need to break the stigma associated with personal development and instead give it a go, give it a chance. Whether you like it or not, you're gonna have to live your life, so why not live it consciously and pay a bit of attention to the quality of life that you experience? That's exactly the kind of mindset that personal development articles bring to the table.

It's not geeky or ridiculous to want to learn ways to do things better or to collect motivation to help you be more mindful. Those who are interested in personal development or those who are advocates of personal growth should not be made to feel weird. We need to start being more open-minded. Leave a narrow view of life and starting looking beyond the surface. Let us not confuse marketing efforts with cheesy headlines with real, genuine personal development blog posts and articles.

It's time to address the elephant in the room. It's time to start thinking about the bigger things in our lives, to really start living.

What do you think about this, and the stigma associated with personal development? I'd love to hear below.