You go to some random Pub meeting with new people and one of them starts talking about personal development, but you instantly notice that they are anything but developed. So many people who do personal development are maybe more broken than the average people, therefore mudding the label. Let’s find out why and how to do it right. This is Alex, welcome to Ensomato!

Introduction

You get bombarded by all sorts of advertisements on social media made by parasites who promise you a better and richer life just by following their “simple” instructions. Either investing in some scam or joining their free webinars or cult introduction bait. They attract you with  some motivational trickery or personal development/growth mindset quotes.

People had enough of them, they are like identical copies of each other, these people have muddied the terms Personal development and Growth Mindset. These people are my competition when I want to catch some eyeballs for my work and services. How do I distinguish myself from these parasites? Tough job.

Those people are the most obvious ones who do this work wrongly, even a grandma can spot their bullshit already. But how about those philosopher types you stumble upon? Is it true that by talking about ideas and philosophizing about politics, life’s challenges, and how to understand and overcome all that, you’re actually doing personal development?

Personal development can sound like some fancy thing that some people do, but actually everybody does personal development, it is just that some people do it consciously, strategically, and actively, while others are just following the herd and conforming to their standards and expectations as a last resort survival strategy.

For example, when two average Joes who work some silly jobs and play videogames in all their free time might seem that they never ever improved their lives. But even those people meet sometimes and talk about how badly they are treated by their boss or something like that and they come to an agreement that their boss’s behavior is unacceptable. Now that might not motivate them to change their lives but at least made them open an ethical conversation about which behaviors are acceptable and which are not.

These gamer Joes might even change some bad habits sometimes, but only when it is critically affecting their survival. For example they might do the effort of doing the dishes, vacuuming the house and buying some flowers for their spouses when they threaten to leave them because they suck too much, potentially making them become incels for some years.

But the difference between this embarrassing way of doing personal development and the way a master of life is doing it is a huge difference. The main point is that there are no “weird guys” out there who do personal development, you do it also, but you might do it in a very newbie and inefficient way.

Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset

There are two big types of people in the world, people with a growth mindset and people with a fixed mindset. Without a growth mindset and deliberate strategic action there is no chance to change your life. People with a growth mindset have a softer ego and are usually more emotionally intelligent than others, when they encounter a challenge that affects their quality of life, they try to find a solution.

Life for them is a constant challenge and has always more room for improvement. Those with a fixed mindset on the other hand, when they encounter a problem, they’ll solve it only if it critically affects their survival. For example when their boss threatens to fire them because they constantly do a poor job. But stuff like finding a fulfilling life purpose, cleaning their room, washing dishes and showing more affection to their spouse without them asking for it, may not happen too often.

See, the fixed mindset people have to be always pushed to behave by those around them, they only evolve when almost all around them evolved past them and now makes them feel guilty for not doing the same. Fixed mindset people love to distract themselves, and nowadays in our rotten society you can distract yourself with all the TV series, junkfood, TikTok, videogames and porn.

Or even with philosophy! The ego is very sneaky, it plays very intelligent cards to make you believe that you are improving yourself. Can’t even remember how many people I met who love to spin around grand ideas like how we should improve politics, infrastructure, life quality and so on, but when I ask about what they do and how they implement those ideas in their lives, crickets start to sound…

There are people who love to talk about personal development theories, and people who do personal development. If you are doing both that is great. If you are less nerdy and less inclined to contemplate for hours your own ideas but very open to change your life, still great. You can learn the ideas that nerdy and autistic people came up with, then implement them in your life.

The big problem is with those people who only talk and spin around the ideas but do not take any action, and this field is full of them. You find them on personal development forums, on social media, on philosophy circles, on political debates. A real developed person does not spend 4-5 hours a day talking crap on a forum or debating other deluded people about who is bullshitting themselves in a smarter way.

People who are serious about this work do not waste time debating nonsense, they maybe pick up some books, compare the information and decide which is the best, then they get straight to work. Again, as I said in my previous articles, if I want to see the level of development of some person, I’ll check the cleanliness of their room, their daily routine, the level of satisfaction they have with life, the level of satisfaction their friends and spouse experience by interacting with them; not about their grand theory of everything.

You are pushed to believe that success, money and fame are the biggest indicators of your level of development, but this is so far from the truth. Usually the richest and most successful people around are some of the most broken people in the world.

These things will only be another challenge for you, and if you are not ready to deal with it, it will make you even more unhappy and miserable. Money, success, and fame will corrupt the ego and inflate it. You would need iron hard discipline, awareness and understanding of the mind in order to face these challenges. Here is your biggest trap, do not chase success, let it be just a consequence of your development.

Most people who are very serious about making the best of their lives usually suffer quite a lot. That suffering softened their ego and motivated them to think for themselves and find solutions not just follow the sheep herd. This happened to me also, I had a tough childhood that made me decide to detach from the crab bucket people I had around. Most people (crabs) will drag you back down when wanting to get out the bucket (mediocrity). Without this courage of becoming a nonconformist and daring to think for yourself will be almost impossible to make it in this field.

Imagine this: If you were born in the Roman Empire and passively accepted everything you’ve been told, you might believe that owning slaves and beating them when they don’t behave is a totally normal practice. If you’ve been born in Germany recently, you may have been introduced to post-modern ideals of relativity, socialism, world peace and other Spiral Dynamics Stage Green values.

Great values, but, most probably you are a progressive leftist because you grew up in a progressive leftist environment, in the same way if you would’ve been born 400 years ago in the same country you would believe that society needs to imprison witches based on some rumors then torture them until they recognize they are witches and burn them at a stake. Or even 80 years ago, you would’ve still gas jews for some invented excuse. You see how dangerous it is to just naively believe what your culture tells you?

This is why I am so turned off by conformists, especially those who believe they are smart. Everything you know is because of the culture you grew up in, and you had the luck to be born in 21st century leftist Germany. 400 years ago with the same mentality you would’ve hunted witches.

Maybe you do not believe in witches but you still believe that going to some boring and stressful 9 to 5 job that you and your colleagues hate, borrowing thousands of dollars from the bank in order to buy some house and car, eating poison food because you don’t have the right nutrition knowledge, don’t have time and energy to cook at home, spending time in traffic away from your children and by this practice completely destroying the air and the quality of life of pedestrians and cyclists in the city, all of this seems totally acceptable to you.

Now I understand that if you live in a big city and have children you are pretty much forced into this lifestyle, if you did not prepare a plan before all this. After you fall into this trap and reach a mid-life crisis you will realize how important personal development is, a bit too late though.

My friends rolled their eyes 10 years ago when hearing this, now it’s me who rolls eyes when I see their lives. There still is hope for a turnover, but it will be harder. I totally respect your brave decision to have children in these dark times and to sacrifice for them, maybe your love for them will motivate you to get out of this trap and free yourself so you could love them and spend time with them.

Beware of toxic positivity! Just because you ignore all the negative signs that show how bad your situation is and distract yourself instead, does not mean you have a happy life, you just live in denial and escapism. Take the courage to accept what is actually wrong with your life and fix it instead of sticking your head into the sand like an ostridge. Everyone wants change but how many accept that they have to change? Much easier is to mock and laugh at those “weird” people who do personal development.

How did I manage to do it right?

A very important thing that I noticed quite early is that I have to change my inside, not just my outside. Our Western culture promotes changing your outsides a lot, becoming a successful athlete, businessman, actor and so on. But how many of these people are actually fulfilled and happy? We hear of many actors and top athletes admitting their loneliness and depression. We look up to them, but they might also look up to simple people.

Their problem is that they summon powers that they cannot control, they become so rich and successful but their soul, their insides, are anything but rich and successful. I realized that my insides are the core of happiness and fulfillment. A Zen master is one million times happier than some top athlete even if he or she is a so-called “nobody”. Such people worked on their insides, that is their life purpose, some might even care so little about their outsides that they might even live on the streets. That is of course an extreme and has to be avoided, but keep mainly the inside development the core purpose of your life.

I found that the modern conformist life is not acceptable to me, and decided that I better be less wealthy, cycle everywhere for free watching rich people get stuck in traffic, and work part-time on something that fulfills me and makes me feel that my work has an impact in the world. I realized that happiness comes from little things.

I might rent a small room and live modestly, but the simple way I live and the lots of spiritual practice and contemplation work I did makes me feel happy by simply preparing a meal, taking a walk in the forest or cleaning my room.  When conformist people hear this, they might say: “This is not success you lazy hippy”. Oh really? What is success then? Suffering your whole life for a bit more money and raising some unhappy children?

The big secret for being happy is to spot desire and let it go. The desire is what eats your happiness. When that voice tells you that you are lonely, that you need a hot girlfriend, a bigger house, cooler friends etc., let it go. That is the main source of unhappiness I noticed. I keep it under control and stuff is going much better since. Now that does not mean I don’t grow further, it is just that I don’t care too much. If my life will evolve into something “better”, awesome, if it stays the same, still great. I’ll keep enjoying my runs, my camping trips, homemade food, and coaching people.

I’ll just be careful to not screw it up with unplanned parenthood, loans, depressing jobs, or other modern traps. Your measurement of success in this work should be your level of joy and happiness, your level of spirituality, the smoothness and beauty of your daily routines, the level of satisfaction of the people who interact with you, and the level of your general understanding of things.

This mentality is not present in more than 10% of people here in the West, they rather follow the herd and shut up. So if I, the nonconformist, come and share my honest opinions about life, they’ll feel repelled. If they hear such stuff, they either accept it and work hard to reach such a life or feel guilty for not doing anything about it. That is completely okay, it is okay to not click with most people if you are very serious about this work.

In order to relate with people in a healthy way I do the following thing: I relate professionally and politely with clients, with people whom I meet for various activities and with family. The client is not there to become my best friend, they are there to get a massage, to get trained or coached; people with whom I go for a run or I climb with are not there to hear my deepest opinions about life, they are there to train and have some fun with me; the family I have was not chosen by me, it was given to me, so I have to respect their decisions and way of living life.

The people with whom I share everything I have on my soul are my best friends and spouse. I chose them and they chose me to be best friends. We are best friends because we think similarly, we have a growth mindset and there is no problem if we share honest remarks about each other in order to become better. We pull each other up not down, a reverse crab bucket effect.

Conclusions

Let’s make a list with the traps in this work:

-consuming personal development books and content and just taking it as an ideology without putting it into practice, 

-endless debating and mental masturbation on forums and social media with people that, like you, are not doing the work, just talking about it.

-ridiculing others who really do the work

-surrounding yourself with toxic and fixed mindset people

-underestimating the power of personal development

-fear of solitude and nonconformity

-not finding your authentic self

-not learning about masculinity and femininity

-blindly believing what your culture tells you

-dismissing spirituality

-lack of auto-correcting behavior

-joining and getting bankrupted by cults, MLMs, crypto investments, fake gurus etc.

-getting corrupted by money, success and fame

Nonconformity, spirituality, living simply, surrounding yourself with high quality people, embracing solitude, thinking for yourself, and learning to love yourself so as you don’t always need external approval is key for succeeding at this work. If this is too scary for you right now, then admit it, admit that you are not ready for it and just go and play videogames or watch your favorite TV show all day.

The key is action, I repeat, ACTION. You actually have to courageously put into practice these teachings and spot your ego’s defense mechanisms. Watching some YouTube videos, posting nonsense on forums, or just listening to my content for example, might not have any impact in your life if you don’t also apply these teachings, in fact it might just confuse you further and make people roll their eyes when they hear you talking about this stuff. Instead of melting your ego you will inflate your ego. Be “normal” or be different for real, decide yourself, red pill or blue pill. Even this Matrix metaphor has become a subject of ridicule because all those incels and Andrew Tate followers use it. They take the red pill but they hate women and insult people who disagree with them, right…

I hope this material motivates you to get serious about this work and dedicate the rest of your life to a good cause instead of living like sheep. If you have questions, don’t hesitate to ask me and remember that I also am a coach, book a free 1 on 1 meeting with me if you feel that serious personalized help is needed. Have a happy life!