Self Improvement - Time to Stand Up and be Counted

Copyright (c) 2010 Willie Horton

I provide my personal development clients with a number of what I describe as 'mental exercises' - simple meditations to enable them clear and focus their minds. After all, a clear mind is the gateway to an effortlessly happy life. However, I recall one of my clients telling me that he couldn't bring himself to explain to his wife that he was meditating and, consequently, would do his exercises whilst locked in the toilet - God knows what his wife thought he was doing! Now, I know that personal development is just that - personal - but I cannot understand how anyone would be ashamed about wanting to better themselves and their lives and, in doing so, maybe even bettering the lives of those to whom they are unprepared to reveal their secret!

Perhaps it's time for personal development to become inter-personal, for like-minded people to actually stand up and be counted for who they want to become - leaders in their own personal lives and a real and positive influence in the lives of all those that they claim to love. The world needs such positive action in the face of an unprecedented disempowerment of the ordinary people who are just trying to make the most of their ordinary lives. I've just glanced through the latest news on Europe-wide protests against the austerity measures being introduced by European governments to ensure that the markets' faith is restored in sovereign debt and the euro. But 'the markets' are run by the financiers who created the burden on sovereign debt in the first place.

For example, Ireland's sovereign debt market standing is tarnished to say the least - the market demands that it pays practically three times the interest rate on its debt that Germany is paying. Ireland's sovereign debt is burdened by the State's rescue of Anglo-Irish Bank - a financial instituions, according to Brian Lenihan, Ireland's Minister for Finance, that has no intrinsic worth as a bank but is 'systemically important' as a result of its size. In exactly the same way that the world's financial power-brokers huddled up with the political masters, so Ireland's financial elite were given unprecedented free rein to create a beast of such magnitude that it has ruined Ireland's financial standing internationally, rocked the European Union and dented the value of the euro on international markets. The Anglo-Irish Bank story is one with international ramifications - however it's but one of many similar stories. Royal Bank of Scotland, Lehman Brothers and a whole plethora of US banks. And those banks that are still standing, often as a result of the taxpayer bailing them out, are not lending to re-ignite the economy and are, in the words of on consumer watchdog, 'fleecing' the ordinary bank customer with extortionate interest rates and charges.

Now, a quick question. Which has had a greater day-to-day affect on the ordinary lives or ordinary people, 9/11 or the economic crisis? With 23m people unemployed in Europe, with double-digit unemployment in the US, Osama Bin-Laden need not have bothered. The real terrorists are wearing Armani suits and they've still got their hands on the levers of power. And just like all terrorists, these guys are fundamentalists - driven by a deeply held belief and love. But it's not love of God that's the driving force here but a deep and abiding love of large sums of money - your money, my money.

What has all this got to do with personal development? Well, it was Gandhi who said that if you want to change anything that you have to be the change. And it was that same little man, who spun the material for his own clothes, who pulled the rug out from under a super-power that once ruled one third of the world. It was Martin Luther King who had a dream that was, perhaps, fulfilled in Barack Obama's election to the Whitehouse - a victory that resulted from large number of ordinary people, and their individual donations, who really believed "Yes We Can". Whether Obama's election was real change is highly debatable - but that's because it took place in the context of a political system that doesn't care about all those grassroots people. On the other side of the Atlantic, who, during the Soviet era would have believed that a Polish shipbuilding worker could initiate the domino effect that toppled a whole world power bloc? A quarter of a century ago who would have ever even considered that South Africa might be ruled by the majority of its people?

The ordinary person in the US and across Europe is, just like the client that I mentioned earlier, hiding behind their toilet door, frightened to stand up and be counted as people who really and truly matter. Personal development and self help books make up a constantly growing major sector of the book market - yet all their readers are closet converts. Sure, you can change your own life for the better - you can be out of work but full of the joys of life, you can find your pay-packet savaged or be up to your neck in debt, but still be happier. But, as I say to my clients, if you don't have concrete results to show for your personal development (and that is not a pun on the concrete mixer that was driven through the front gates of Ireland's parliament!), you're fooling yourself. And, at present, it strikes me that there are just too many fools around.

Personal development is about making a difference - firstly in your own persona life but then, also, in the lives of others. Personal development, or self improvement, is not about keeping your mindfulnees or focus all to yourself. Don't forget, you're meant to love your neighbour as yourself - that means you first and then them. Personal development is about making your life better - and the lives of others too. Your own efforts at personal development need to be 'inter-personal'. When it becomes a real force for change, we might just witness what would be a real war on terror.

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