Personal Growth From the Bottom Up – BroderickDurisseau.com
A Blog Dedicated to Personal Growth, Success and Goal Achievement

While in pursuit of those big, hairy, audacious goals you have, you will more than likely run into opposition. That opposition can take on many forms. People, your physical environment, or even you yourself might stand in the way of you achieving what you want. Here’s the question: Can you press on in spite of those obstacles? You know there’s something great at the finish line but do you have what it takes to jump all those hurdles in between? That’s persistence. Once you understand how powerful persistence can be, those big goals will be less intimidating. I’ll give you two examples where persistence has been key to the particular successes mentioned.  I’ll start with the most recent.

broderickallen.com

This is my 3rd blog.  The first blog was You Got Dunked On.  I wanted to take the advice given by many bloggers to blog on what you’re passionate about or what you’re interested in.  I loved seeing people get dunked on, so I made a blog that primarily consisted of pictures and videos of different basketball players getting dunked on.  I ran into some problems with this though.  I couldn’t express any creativity seeing as the pictures and video were not my original content.  Looking back I wonder why I spent so much time advertising something that didn’t belong to me.  I knew the next blog I launched would be a blog that attracted readers based on what I wrote, so I started the Houston Rockets blog All Rockets All Day.  There was another problem with this blog.  It wasn’t too long before I realized that if I wanted to deliver quality content/commentary about Houston Rockets games I would either have to watch most of the games myself or hire writers to write for me.  I didn’t want to hire writers, and I knew down the line I would get bored to tears of writing about the Houston Rockets myself, so I stopped writing and blogging all together.  After I found the field of personal growth and development, the decision to start this blog was easy.  I learned so much through the first two blogs though, which I will share in another post down the line.

Piano

I’ve been playing piano since I was about 6 and I’m 21 now.  I stopped taking piano lessons when I went to college, but I still play often.

Piano lessons went VERY inefficiently.  I didn’t really like it when I first started, so I wouldn’t practice and I’d often repeat the same lessons from week to week.  This drove my mother nuts.  Looking back I don’t blame her for being frustrated.  During the time I was taking piano lessons, I can recall about 3-4 instances where I was actually serious about quitting.  Usually it was due to changing instructors or just being fed up with practicing all together.  Each time I thought about quitting my grandmother would step in and basically deny any opportunity to quit.  She kept contributing money to pay for the lessons, but I would still be stuck repeating the same lessons over and over.  Eventually, after weeks of drilling from my instructor, I would start to practice again and the lessons would progress as they were supposed to.  I often look back and think about what it would be like today if I had of quit during those extremely difficult times.  I probably would have the nagging “wish I had of…” in the back of my head.

Today I absolutely love listening to and playing piano.  The best part to me by far is creating, but if I didn’t have those tough and often boring piano lessons, it would be much harder to create the quality of music I create today.  I guess this would be an example of forced persistence, but nonetheless its allowed me to experience first hand the tremendous results persistence can bring and the satisfaction that comes with achieving any goal or desire that offers significant opposition.

Other Examples

There’s too many to even list!   The companies that manufactured the products you have in your house had to have persistence to get the product in your house.  Many people just don’t see the work that goes in to success because it’s behind the scenes.  Before making Rocky, Sylvester Stallone got rejected over 1500 times in different agents offices.  Are you ready to get rejected 1500 times for something you want?

When To Quit

I wouldn’t say to never quit.  The idea to never give up no matter what doesn’t make sense to me.  When I look back and see the good decisions I’ve made to let go of something, I’ve always let the end result be the determining factor.  Could it be possible that your beginning vision of success was inaccurate? Maybe after spending some time pursuing this goal, you realize it just wasn’t what you thought it was and you don’t want to keep pursuing it anymore.  If you know the path you’re on isn’t going to get you where you want to go, why stay the course? Why would you keep going down a highway that isn’t going to get you to your desired destination? I would just take the next exit.

In the first example I was persistent in finding a website that would fit me, but I wasn’t too persistent with each website as far as traffic, subscribers, monetization, etc. When I came to the point where I knew I wouldn’t like where the blog was going, I scrapped it and moved on.

If you’re chasing the big goals, you’re going to need persistence. There’s going to be times you’re not motivated to take action. It might be raining outside. You could have a headache. Everyone you know keeps telling you to quit. Well…

When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn – Harriet Beecher Stowe

I’m sure if we wanted to, we could think of a million reasons why we can’t do something (aka excuses).  Here’s some if you’re running low.

• I’m too old
• I’m not old enough
• I don’t have enough money
• I don’t have enough time
• I’m not attractive enough
• I don’t have enough discipline
• I’m not tall enough
• I’m not strong enough
• I’m not smart enough
• I’m not athletic enough
• I don’t have the energy for that
• My grades aren’t good enough
• I don’t know enough about that
• I’m not blessed with natural talent
• I don’t have enough power for that
• I’m not confident enough

Those are just a few.

Maybe you don’t say “I can’t” or “I’m not”.  Instead you identify with something you don’t want to be.  I’m broke.  I’m poor.  I’m dumb.  I’m useless.  I’m lazy.  I’m shy.

I’m definitely not immune to this way of thinking.  I remember when I was younger I knew I wanted to start a business, but I told myself I was too young and that I’ll wait until I got older and had more money.  Hey I was just a kid right?  Now I look back and wish I had of started this back when I first had the desire, and I’m also seeing more and more kids start businesses.

Those reasons you can’t do something serve as an easy way out.  You say “I’m not, I can’t” and your brain shuts off and goes on to something else.  Saying “how can I” forces your brain to do some work to accomplish a goal.  When you first wanted to start walking, did you think of all these reasons you couldn’t do it?  Did you say “I don’t think I’m good enough to walk so I’ll just crawl for the rest of my life”?  No.  You went out and you did what you had to do.

Somewhere along the line you lost that boldness though.  You let  “facts” get in the way of experimenting and discovering.  To me, the movers and shakers of the world prove “facts” wrong.

Before you start thinking about why you can’t do something, hold on a sec and

If you must  doubt something, doubt your limits – Price Pritchett

One day I’ll come to realize,
there’s no passion, there’s no heat
I wake up, work, come home,
and when that’s done I hit repeat

One day I’ll see the truth,
for what it really is
I want to break this cycle,
but I can’t just call it quits

One day I’ll see the light,
and on that day I’ll go exploring
that thought brings so much fear to me,
so that thought I’ll keep ignoring

One day I’ll do what’s in my heart,
and what was meant for me
right now I’m just not _____ enough,
so I’ll just let it be

One day I’ll take the harder road,
and I could stumble, I might fall
what I want isn’t down the easy road,
it does not resist at all

One day I’ll probably start,
to work on building and creating
I hope one day comes soon,
because my life is slowly fading

One day after another,
as time just passes by
I can’t do what I really want,
I’m scared to even try

One day I’ll look behind me,
and I’ll wish I had of done
that which I was scared to do,
that would have made life fun

Well it’s all said and done now,
and that one day never came
I didn’t make a difference,
R.I.P. to what’s-his-name

The author of Personal Development for Smart People, Steve Pavlina, is the owner of one of the most popular personal development websites with over 2 million visitors per month.  He has read hundreds of books and written hundreds of free articles on his blog within the field of personal development.  I’ve been a long time reader of his blog, so when he announced he was having a book published, there was no question I’d be purchasing it.  His blog has helped me so much that it would be hard to see me not having this book in my collection.

Summary

The subtitle is “The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth” meaning for us to grow as human beings we could have our lives force us to grow through different experiences that would naturally occur, or we can consciously pursue personal growth and align ourselves with these 7 fundamental principles.

Truth – What is reality, accuracy, accepting what is
Love – Connecting with and focusing on what you want i.e. people, emotions, physical things
Power – The ability to take action towards consciously creating the life you want

The combining of any two of the primary principals listed above form the 3 secondary universal principles – Oneness (Truth + Love), Authority (Truth+ Power), and Courage (Truth + Power).

Finally, Truth, Love, and Power come together to form Intelligence.

Part I of the book explains all the principles in detail.   Part II and shows you how to apply each of the principles to the different areas of your life such as your career, money, relationships etc.

If you need a more detailed explanation of the book you can go here.

My Personal Experience

In the beginning, he explains to readers that

This is a very content rich book packed with fresh ideas.  Take as much time as you need to read it, and don’t feel you have to race to the end.

I didn’t take his advice and I raced to the end, reading the book as fast as I could.  I read this book about 2 months ago, and after I read it I immediately went on to another book.  The only thing that stuck with me was Truth, Love and Power.  Now, I find myself using those three words everyday, and I often go back to the book to find out where I’m going wrong.

This model is genius.  It’s so simple to use, but at the same time it serves the complete purpose of highlighting strengths and weaknesses so you can easily recognize where you need to grow.  For instance, right now it feels like I’m a Truth freak and that’s definitely the area I’m strongest in.  I’ve always loved reading and learning all kinds of things from books and directly from other people because I have such a desire to find out what the truth is.  I’d say I’m definitely strong in the Power principle as well.  Once I develop clarity on the truth, taking action hasn’t been a problem for me, although I could use some help with the self-discipline component of Power.  Love is definitely where I’m the weakest, but I have no doubt that’s going to change because I’ve made a decision to consciously pursue growth in all areas.

If you’re weak in one of the principles it affects overall growth tremendously.  For example, it would be impossible for me to reach any goals I have with this website if I payed no attention to the Love principle.  To create valuable content and to market that content as effectively as possible I would have to be aligned with Love to connect with what I want – visitors.

On one hand, since I’m a long time reader of his blog, I had extremely high expectations for this book.  However, since I knew he had such a wealth of information on his blog, it made me kind of skeptical.  How could he write a whole book that would be different from what was already on his website yet still add substantial value to the field?  Well, I got my answer when I bought the book.  He satisfied everything.  He met my expectations, it’s different from his website, and it’s definitely something that wasn’t in the field before as far as I know.  Amazing.