Wise words from a wise leader in the personal growth industry.

Of course, you already knew that reading books was important and valuable – that’s why you’ve been buying them, right? And then life steps in and all of a sudden weeks or months have passed and you still haven’t read that book.

Tony’s suggestion is that what we need to do is constantly find new ways to make ourselves more valuable – and that reading (and applying) the right books (great books) is an essential ingredient.

He also points out that in order to be more fulfilled in our lives, we have to have meaning beyond ourselves.
And remember, we’ve named 2010 The Year of Fulfillment here at Personal Growth Princess.

You already know that growing yourself so you can grow others is paramount. The years of self-improvement being “selfish” are long gone. Anyone who has ever had a relationship with another human being knows that the more we love ourselves, take care of ourselves, and grow ourselves, the more love, care, and generosity we have to give others.

The problem is…how to actually find the time to find new ways to make ourselves more valuable.

That’s what PersonalGrowthPrincess is here to help with. You can read more of the details about the foundation  here and here.

But the bottom line is if you are like most women, you already know what to do, and that you “should” be doing it, but you don’t have the time…or by the time you do have the time, you’re too exhausted to pick up a book and read it, must less understand and apply it!

Unfortunately we just don’t get more time. Time is what it is.We all have the same number of minutes in a day.

But, you can change the way you use the time you do have – and that will change everything.

For example, reading a 6-10 page summary of book that squeezes out all the most important points, making them easily accessible and understandable, can save you 20+ hours of reading.

Or listening to an in-depth interview with the author to hear what she or he was really thinking when they wrote their book…what it really means, and how you can use it right away…then you’ve just leveraged your time in a masterful way. Listening in the car or on your ipod maximizes your productivity even further.
And, of course, there is always the transcript of the entire interview.

So, if you want to take Tony Robbins’ advice and start focusing on the books that can help you not only make yourself more valuable in the workplace, but also help you make your life even more fulfilling, Personal Growth Princess may be the system that helps get you there.

If you want more info on what’s included, take a look at the Personal Growth Princess benefits.

Or if you are one of the decisive women, who knows good advice when she hears it, go straight to Membership!

By the way, one of the books Tony suggests, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth In Ancient Wisdom, by John Haidt, is on our list of books to include down the road – just waiting for the details to be taken care of! (Do great minds think alike, or what?)  [superemotions file="icon_wink.gif" title="Wink"]

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1. Self-Help Books – Why they give you the best advantage
2. The Trophy Effect [Book Review]
3. Are you a personal growth enthusiast, or merely a junkie?
4. Personal Growth Princess on Blog Talk Radio

Join host, Yvonne McCoy, as she interviews Nina East, founder of Personal Growth Princess about the most common mistakes people make when they “do” personal development, and how most personal growth books and seminars actually set you up to feel WORSE about yourself.

This is the 3rd part in a series addressing successful follow-through and making decisions that stick. Information, alone, isn’t enough. You need Activation, Motivation, and Evaluation to be successful.

Think you need more than a New Year’s Resolution? A Life Resolution will carry you farther. In Part 1 & 2, we talked about how you want to be and how you can make changes. This week, guest Nina East will be sharing information on how to ensure successful follow-through.

Nina is a personal growth expert, published author, and the founder of PersonalGrowthPrincess.com – a site providing self-help book summaries for smart, busy women.

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In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell studied what it takes to become masterful – at anything. What is surprising is how little talent and luck have to do with whether someone becomes a world class expert – regardless of the field they are in.

You may not be interested in becoming known as an expert in something, but there are things you would like to be able to do extremely well. There are areas you would like to master. My guess is that “personal growth” falls into this category somewhere. Not that anyone can really become a master at personal growth (I don’t even know what they might mean), but you can become an expert on yourself…and on who you are becoming. In fact, part of the reason you have been drawn to this site, or become a member, is that you want to find ways to gain knowledge, experience, and insights that are meaningful.

While natural talent or affinity affects whether you end up being drawn to a particular field – such as, if you have a natural talent for playing the piano or speaking in public, you may have been drawn to fields that require those skills without thinking about it – but talent or affinity will not determine whether you are a “success” at either. And though opportunity and luck play a role in who you get exposed to as you make your way toward mastery, even people with the same talent and same opportunity don’t achieve the same level of mastery. Talent and luck are not enough.

The key distinction, according to Gladwell, is that world-class experts have already put in 10,000 hours of practice BEFORE they “burst on the scene”. Yes, you read that right. Ten-thousand hours. Gladwell provides many examples in his book, but here are just two we think you will be familiar with.

When The Beatles “burst on the American scene”, they had already banked more than 10,000 hours of performance time. Performance time, not just practice time. They credit those hours – which sometimes came in the form of 8-hour performances – as perhaps the most important factor in their success. When you play that long, you have to learn to improvise and to entertain at a level far different than if you play a couple of one-hour sets a couple of nights a week. Being on the spot and having to do your best, for an enormous amount of time, is what forces you to get better.

So, you may love personal growth and attend all the personal development seminars you can…but that doesn’t mean you’ve actually mastered how to apply what you have learned. In fact, that’s probably the biggest source of frustration or let down people feel when they leave a personal development seminar. They get home, only to discover they’ve learned about something, but not truly how to use it and master its usefulness in their life. They got in some good, condensed “practice time”, but it takes hours of practice and application to actually master the new information.

Another example is Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft and clearly at the world-class expert level of computers and programming. He was lucky that he attended a high school that invested in computer access – but so was every other student who attended that school. He was fortunate that the university he went to kept their computer center open 24-hours a day – but every other student also had that same access. What set Bill Gates apart is that he USED that opportunity and access for hours and hours of computer experience. In one 7-month period he logged 1575 hours working on programming – that comes out to 8 hours a day, 7 days a week. There’s no doubt Bill Gates was blessed with a great mind and some great opportunities. But the real difference is that he put in tens of thousands of hours “practicing” before he “made it.”

When you think about your own journey with personal development, there’s no doubt that you’ve put in a lot of hours, right? But if you had to assess them more closely, how many of those hours were just learning about something – and how many were hours where you were applying the learning, actually practicing it?

Something to think about….

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4. Are you a personal growth enthusiast, or merely a junkie?

Seems a bit silly to ask that, doesn’t it? After all, everybody knows the difference, right?
Well, perhaps not so much…

Dabblers are people who “try” something out. They think about it, maybe take a teensy bit of action, but always have a reason they don’t fully commit. They don’t have time, they don’t have money, they aren’t sure, they aren’t sure if it will work…

Doers, on the other hand, well…Do. They make a decision and then take action. They may not get exactly what they want, but by DOING, they are at least moving in the direction they want, and can make course corrections along the way.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of places where it makes sense to dabble to your heart’s content – hobbies, entertainment, maybe even gardening (depending on your penchant for beautiful flowers or healthy vegetables), etc. I’m sure you can think of many places in your life where it makes sense to dabble.

But the question is, are you dabbling where you ought to be doing?
If you don’t like the word “ought”, ask yourself if you are getting the results you want in a particular area. If not, are you dabbling there, or have you truly committed, past the “trying” stage? Are you taking consistent action toward what you want?

For me, the distinction between doer and dabbler was a mind-altering one. It led me to take a clear look at various projects I’m involved in, and gave me a whole new way of evaluating the progress with each one. It was clear that where I was most frustrated, I was also dabbling. Where I felt most fulfilled, I was doing.

There were certainly areas where I wasn’t making the progress I had hoped for, but I wasn’t frustrated by it. That tells me that dabbling in those areas was OK with me. Obviously they weren’t priorities.

But, where something was a priority in my mind, but only worth dabbling in my actions, I experience monster-sized levels of frustration.

As a result of this, I have shifted how I think about my business and my personal life. It has given me great relief to stop beating myself up when I dabble in dabble-appropriate areas [superemotions file="icon_cool.gif" title="Cool"]  and a new sense of focus and mission in the areas which are my highest priorities.

What about for you? Are there places you are dabbling where being a doer would serve you better?

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1. Personal Growth Princess on Blog Talk Radio

Common beliefs are that if someone is “highly sensitive”, chances are they are pretty emotional or attract drama into their lives. This misconception, and the subsequent comments and judgments, have led highly sensitive people to look on this trait as a weakness – something they need to change, and perhaps ought to be ashamed of.

Highly sensitive people tend to hide their sensitivity – not showing their true reactions to a person, situation, event, or even a thought. Because of this, they aren’t showing up authentically – aren’t playing fully in their lives. This presents obvious challenges…and Princesses want to show up authentically.

Many people who are drawn to personal growth, who crave personal development, have at least a bit of the super-sensitivity trait. We are very attuned to ourselves and how we are responding to the outside world as well as the inside world. But, because the cultural bias is toward suppressing this trait, we may mistakenly use personal growth opportunities and resources as a way to become less sensitive, rather than finding the value in the sensitivity and how we can use it to serve others as well as ourselves.

To put your mind at ease a bit, there is some evidence that super sensitivity may have a biological component. Some people have blue eyes, some have green. Some people are tall, others are short. And some people are very sensitive, and others are not. Thinking of it this way makes room for the possibility that being highly sensitive might actually be an advantage.

What are the advantages of being highly sensitive?

You are more tuned in to what is going on around you.
Highly sensitive people tend to be highly affected by their environment and the “energy” in the space or among people. This high susceptibility means you need to set up environments that support you. It ALSO means that you recognize what is happening in a situation before others do. This highly tuned sensitivity means you pick up on nuances – more quickly and more accurately. (More accurately because you are so well practiced at it.)

You are incredibly resilient.
Even if you appear tender or fragile, you have had to become remarkably resilient in order to make it through the day. This resilience will serve you in many ways!

You’ve already mastered the basics of personal growth.
You know yourself so well that the basic programs don’t cut it for you anymore. You are ready for more advanced opportunities – which means you seek out challenges and embrace them (even if you are a little fearful). This is excellent role modeling for others in your life.

You tend to be effective, and get things right.
Highly sensitive people are often very creative – but because of the sensitivity, may have a tendency toward  perfectionism in order to avoid criticism. This can be a problem when taken to the extreme, but can also be a great asset. You will notice things others do not…and therefore have the ability to correct them – positively affecting not only your experience, but others’ as well.

You find innovative solutions.
Because you are creative, and are used to “working around the environment” when it becomes overly stimulating, you have a tendency to look at things in a different way than most people. This gives you a unique perspective which is extremely useful when problem solving.

You are aware of just about everything.
You have an incredibly memory (which at times might drive other people crazy. ).

So the next time someone tells you to “quit being so sensitive”, remember that your sensitivity gives you an advantage they simply do not understand. I’m not suggesting you start feeling “superior”, but you do bring something to the table that others do not. Your uniqueness, your sensitivity, makes you a great asset.

Select any category to see more posts.

It turns out that while women used to report being happier than men – at least on average – that trend has reversed. This “Paradox of Declining Female Happiness” is the subject of a report from the National Bureau of Economic Research. Russ Douthat wrote about this in the New York Times op-ed section.

It’s disturbing, to say the least. Especially in this culture of “happiness is next to godliness”.

Are we happy?

Is it that as women we have more and more to do than ever before? That having more choices also means having more responsibilities? Could increased responsibilities be at the root of increasing unhappiness?

Is it that we are having more and more health issues that used to belong just in the male column of health woes?

Is it that we are just now becoming aware that we are less happy?

This is such a multi-faceted issue that there probably isn’t any one primary cause. Or even just a handful of causes.

From a Personal Growth Princess perspective, the question is…what do you want to do about it?
What is your current happiness level? And are you OK with that?

How does your focus on personal growth help you be at peace with your level of happiness? Does that even matter to you…or has the “happiness craze” made you crazy?

And what’s so wrong with being happy anyway?

There is lots to say on this subject…and in a future article I’ll be discussing a provocative book which addresses how the cultural pressure to be happy (or at least act like you are) is actually decreasing your satisfaction with life, adding to your stress, and actually putting the breaks on your personal development.

What do you think about the Paradox of Declining Female Happines?

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What Happens When We Do Not Let Go?

What happens when we do not let go? Asians have a very clever trap for catching monkeys. People hollow out a coconut, put something sweet in it, and make a hole at the bottom of the coconut just big enough for the monkey to slide its open hand in, but not big enough for the monkey to withdraw its hand as a fist. They attach the coconut to the tree, and the monkey comes along and gets trapped. What keeps the monkey trapped? Only the force of desire, of clinging, of attachment. All the monkey has to do is let go of the sweet, open its hand, slip it out, and be free. But only a very rare monkey will do that.

What kind of monkey are you?  [superemotions file="icon_wink.gif" title="Wink"]

From Living Meditation, Living Insight, by Thynn Thynn

Clinging is a Stressful State

The moment we want happiness, we start to cling to it in our mind. First, we cling to our own idea of happiness. We relate to the outside world as a source of satisfaction and look outward for the things we normally associate with happiness – accumulating wealth, success, fame or power. As soon as we become attached to any idea – happiness, success or whatever – there is already some stress. Clinging isitself a stressful state, and everything that derives from it is also stressful. For example, try to clench your hand to make a fist. As soon as you start to clench your hand, you have to use energy tokeep your fingers clenched tightly. When you let go of the clenching, your hand is free again. So it is with the mind. When it is in such a state of clenching, it can never be free. It can never experience peace or happiness, even if one has all the wealth, fame and power in the world.

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As a personal growth junkie, you are intensely focused (obsessed?) with reading self-help books (or at least purchasing them). You attend seminars, and generally do whatever you can that has the self-help label attached. You charge up your credit cards, maybe even take out loans, and plan your vacation leave around attending personal growth seminars.  You can hardly help yourself.

As an enthusiast you may do many of these same things – after all, using your vacation leave for personal expansion makes sense, right? Of course.

The difference is as a junkie you keep attending, reading, etc. hoping to find “the answer” that will either explain everything to you, or finally catapult you out of your current existence, while as an enthusiast you know you won’t find the “one true answer” in any one place. You get excited about attending seminars and reading books, but you aren’t banking on finding “the answer” in any one particular place. You know that whatever the answer might be for you, it is multi-faceted and ecclectic.

Another difference is that while a junkie can’t help themselves, so to speak, the enthusiast can’t help but look at virtually everything in their lives through the personal development/self-help filter. They don’t have to attend another seminar in order to experience the high of inner awareness - a billboard inspires them into action, a movie unleashes their own greatness, or a conversation shifts their understanding of themselves.

The other significant distinction is that as a personal growth junkie,

you keep doing self-help programs, without actually doing the self-help part of it. In other words, you keep attending, but never fully use what you learn. There is a lot of intellectual intrigue and emotional release, but it’s difficult to sustain. That’s why you need the need the next book or seminar in order to experience that feeling again. Hence the term “junkie”.

As an enthusiast you not only learn, but you also put the learning into action. Perhaps not perfectly, and probably not every single time, but the general gist is that you apply what you learn. And keep applying it.

As a personal growth enthusiast you search, sharpen and sustain, while as a personal growth junkie, you simply keep searching.

So, which are you – junkie or enthusiast?

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