In the ancient time, there was a Chinese Medicine doctor who was known for creating miracles. Patients treated by him would recover quickly from severe illnesses. His reputation went as far as the imperial palace. One day, the emperor’s son was dying from a sudden illness. The emperor summoned this miracle doctor to the palace. But before he arrived, the son was already pronounced dead. When this doctor arrived, he took a look at the boy and offered hope. Although he had stopped breathing, there was a chance to revive him. Sure enough, after 30 minutes of acupuncture, the son’s vital signs returned. With additional couple days of treatment by herbal medicine, he fully recovered his health. Naturally, the emperor was more than pleased and bestowed the doctor with lavish gifts and enough wealth to last him many lifetimes.
Interestingly, this doctor often praised his two older brothers as far superior doctors than him. Nobody could believe this. He explained: my middle brother cures patients when they have mild symptoms. My oldest brother is the real genius. He could predict potential health issues years in advance. He focuses on nurturing the condition for health, so people under his care don’t get sick in the first place. But I am much more famous than them because I specialize in treating patients with serious illness. They are easily impressed by the difference I make when I bring them back to health. I am also wealthier because patients are willing to pay much more when they struggle in pain or are dying.
Whether it is health issue or problem in life or in business, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. While most people understand this in theory, few people make it a priority in life and practice it consistently. This is the focus of Teal Village’s design. Like the oldest brother, we focus on developing a lifestyle with the right mindset and healthy thinking and behavioral habits that don’t create issues in the first place. We do so through self-development.
However, not everyone who talks about self-development has the same idea in mind. There are a couple of common misunderstandings. The first is confusing knowledge or tools about self-development with self-development itself, therefore, turning an inherently inward-looking process into an outward looking process. We forget that the subject of development is SELF. Knowledge and tools make this process more effective, but don’t replace the process. Like training for marathon, getting a new pair of running shoes or receive a bottle of water while running can make the process easier. But, no matter how many pairs of shoes or bottles of water we accumulate, it would not make us great marathon runners.
Unfortunately, when it comes to self-development, the distinction isn’t always obvious. Many of us relentlessly acquire knowledge and tools – reading books, taking classes and learning new methods, similar to accumulating new shoes and bottles of water, but don’t do the running. One extreme example is from, let’s call him Robin, a professionally trained coach himself. In 5 years, he spent more than 300,000 dollars taking coaching classes, leadership retreat, NLP training, plus many more. His list of certifications is more than a page long. He was genuinely interested in self-development and was obviously dedicated to his goal. But the result? A pretty messy life. He has a short temper; his children are afraid of him; his marriage is falling apart; his business partner cheated on him. To cope with these issues, he added another one by drinking more, the way his father used to do in stressful situations.
What Robin had was a genuine desire to help others become better human beings. But despite of having all the knowledge and tools, he couldn’t apply them on himself. How likely we believe the “I love you” from someone who is incapable of loving himself? How likely we can trust a person’s ability to lead us if he cannot lead his own life – making wise choices and taking self-responsibilities? Most of us know that we cannot give others what we lack ourselves. Only after we have developed ourselves, we are qualified to assist or to guide others. Self-development is an inward-looking journey starting from self-awareness, then to self-mastery, and ends with a better developed self or self-leadership.
The second misunderstanding about self-development is seeing it as an emergency service, the way patients going to the doctor when they are seriously sick. For instance, losing job, going through a divorce or having management issues. This is when we think about self-development as a surgery, expecting coaches, therapists or healers to perform miracles on us. Once the symptoms are reduced, we return to old lifestyle, until another issue appears. This is the case with many people in the world.
The least costly and painful approach is turning self-development as a lifestyle by practicing mindfulness in how we think, feel and act, turning autopilot choices into conscious choices. Most issues we experience in life and in business are only issues within us projected onto the outside world, like an image projected onto a screen. When we change ourselves, we change the world outside and how we experience it. This requires radical self-responsibility. However, when we understand this – the connection between self-responsibility and the ability to change the world, we will realize how absolutely powerful we actually are.
What are you waiting for? Take actions.