"What is personal development?"

[Identity]

The concept of personal development gets thrown around a lot. Different people attach completely different meanings to this concept.

This interesting phrase just came to me that I wanted to share:

"Real personal development is changing what you see as personal development."

To unpack this a bit further, when we are pursuing a certain interpretation of personal development, we are creating superficial changes. Ultimately, we still operate from the same paradigm, cognitive structure, worldview. It's just that we are pursuing a life that is more in line with what that worldview sees as beneficial.

When we change our definition of personal development, that is when we really start to see ourselves and the world in a different way. New doors start to open from which we were previously unaware that they even existed.

We could see it as two directions, horizontal and verticle. That's how the spiral dynamics model describes it if I remember correctly. In the end, both are important.

However, it is rare to find someone who understands this meta-level of personal development.

What is your definition of personal development currently?

[tsuki]

I am moving away from the idea of personal development for the sake of, perhaps, personal discovery.

I do not intend to change the way in which I work through effort, but rather to understand myself better, to have a more detailed picture of myself. Sort of a way to allow myself to be myself fully. This sometimes leads to insights that transform me deeply by freeing me from falsehood, but the change is not the goal. I have no image of "me" that I ought to be and I aim to become. I'm hopelessly and totally lost within myself. Thankfully!

[mmKay]

 

[Eph75]

@Identity

Yes! 

Horizontal development is the expanding of learning inside the scope of how we currently think, it's getting better at something or learning new skills. 

Vertical development is getting at the "how" we think, which dictates what we can perceive, what kind of sense we make out of that we perceive and what kind of responses that sense making make available to us - with ever increasing complexity. 

"Personal development" can be seen as many different things, depending on our world-view, but at the heart, the mechanics of it, is about replacing what we know with something more complex, that "how" of how we think, not "what" we think, which is served by the "how" , but the very complexity of our sense-making process that serve us. 

Personal development is, so to speak, the upgrading of our human OS that makes new functionality available for use, and new "applications" showing up, as well as the upgrading of our existing "applications" to function better and also them, offering new functionality.

14 hours ago, Identity said:

"Real personal development is changing what you see as personal development."

This happens in that process, iteratively so. 

Also vertical and horizontal development feed back into each other. The horizontal/learning adds knowledge and confidence that eventually reduces anxieties that allows us/makes us step outside of our existing world, stretching outside and upward from our comfort zone, and that affects the vertical development, at the same time as that vertical development and the new "how" of the mind puts existing knowledge into new light and opens new doors for deeper learning.

Note, this is referring to EDT stages specifically and not specifically to SD stages, but the increasing complexity of ones cognitive sense-making correlates with our perspective and the values we hold, as described by SD.

My definition of personal development would be: the letting go of whatever self we identify with and allowing ourselves to play outside of ourselves without the feeling that something is at stake, and without specifically trying to achieve a desire or need, and through the beingness that is development itself; at flux, which is natural, and flow, with no [or as little as possible] resistance. 

Edited January 11, 2021 by Eph75
Added sketch

[Jacob Morres]

Great question i will contemplate and get back to you - not at home atm