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Some Humble Thoughts About Personal Development
Look, there is no magic pill. I’m sorry.
The Secondhand Inspiration Project begins with a motivational quote and ventures wherever the creative path meanders.
“Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about un-becoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.” ― Paul Coelho
The numbers are staggering.
People purchased an estimated 18.6 million self-help books in 2019. I’m sure that number has grown, especially since many folks were locked in their homes during the Coronapocalypse, desperate to improve themselves.
Based on info from Market Research, the self-improvement market was worth $9.9 billion in 2016 and is estimated to grow to $13.2 billion by 2022 with 5.6% average yearly gains.
Per a Medium article by J. J. Pryor last year, there are 29 million blog posts each day and an estimated 1.385 million new articles posted on Medium every month. I am sure a sizeable percentage of that content deals with personal growth.
And yet, with all those options to learn and better yourself, you chose to click my little link. And for that, I thank you.
So I feel obligated to admit the truth, even though self-improvement is a passionate subject for me.
Look, there is no magic pill. I’m sorry.
I wish I could provide a proven antidote or surefire methodology. If it existed, I’d be doing it.
Personal development is like anything else you want to master. It requires incremental steps towards eventual improvement. You must work at it every day. You need to build constructive daily habits that you can stick with until they make a positive impact on your life.
Pre-pandemic, I occasionally ran races with a few motivated friends — 5Ks and 10Ks, never anything more than that. As a clique, we enjoy setting goals to challenge each other. I have been blessed with a crew of five others that match my growth mindset — we push each other and hold each other accountable, even though we don’t all live in the same town.