Can Personal Development Make Me Rich?

Written By Tan Hai Liang

Whenever someone mention personal development, what is the first thing that comes into your mind? Do you think “Oh yeah its one of THOSE things to improve yourself and its not my cup of tea”. Or maybe its something like “I’m fine with myself now and I don’t need to improve myself”. Or more commonly “I don’t have time for it”. Talk about personal development and people will give you a blank stare as if you’re from space or you have some form of rare disease and avoid you. More often than not, they roll their eyes and look as if you’re recruiting them for some MLM.

Regardless, what do we understand by personal development? Many people may give you different definition but to me, it’s a term which means “Learn”.

If you can define something then it is more finite, tangible and we can see the parameters. Without a definition, things are subjective and intangible. For me, it means Learn.

In our everyday life, people are always learning about something. In a way, we learn so that we can be better at it and also to do things more efficiently. It doesn’t have to be a formal classroom type lesson, most of the time it’s hands on learning. Sometimes we can learn new things by ourselves, sometimes its best to learn from qualified experts. If you are interested in making your own furniture, don’t you think learning carpentry skills from a qualified carpenter will accelerate your learning curve and saves you time than doing it yourself?

Many of us think that after we leave school, we don’t need to study anymore. That is actually a wrong thinking. Regardless of what we do, we are constantly learning, whether formally or informally.

In the past 3 weeks, my belief in the importance of personal development deepens. I had enrolled in an internet marketing bootcamp despite of some of my other friends’ bad experience. I believe the trainer is qualified because he is successful in what he does. This is a paid bootcamp in a formal learning environment and its for my own personal development. I want to deepen and develop my own internet marketing skills, so learning from an expert accelerated my learning curve.

In pursuing to develop my internet marketing skills, I met new friends who help to encourage and motivate me in my life as well as my internet marketing journey. Also, the event also opened up new opportunities for me to make money and improve my skills to make money online.

If I had not put my mind to continually develop myself and to push myself to learn more things, I will not be able to see such opportunities to make more money. Many people are not willing to pay to learn from others. They always think that the price is too high. However, they fail to see the importance of new knowledge and skills or an improved skill. Without such new knowledge and skills, we won’t be able to spot potential opportunities. We must always remember that we can be robbed and our physical materials taken away, but nobody can take away our knowledge and skills to make money.

What I am trying to impress on readers is that, personal development is not just to improve your well being. Many people think that personal development is all about getting motivated and positive thinking etc etc. On the contrary, personal development can also mean to learn more knowledge or skills in addition to what you already know. Or to further deepen your knowledge or hone in on your existing skills and know-how. When you put effort in doing these things, your perception will change and you will discover more opportunities opening up to you. Opportunities don’t just fall on your lap. You have to go look for it.

That being said, I believe that personal development not only improves your well being, it also improves your money making potentials!