Ep #237: The Goal of Personal Growth and Development

 

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Ep #237: The Goal of Personal Growth and Development

Welcome to More Than Mindset, the only podcast that bridges the gap between spirituality and success. Go beyond the mind with clarity and confidence coach, Kim Guillory, and learn how to integrate your passion to serve with your skills and experience to create a business you love. Let’s get started.

Why do we do personal development and growth? Like, what’s the point? What’s the purpose behind that? Why would anyone want to change, transform, or anything for that matter? Why isn’t right now exactly what is enough? Isn’t that a great question?

I live amongst people who really don’t understand what I do, so this question comes up a lot. Like, why not just do what you’re supposed to do and have what you have? Like, why do you go embarking on all these other things? And I was like, you know what? I’m gonna do a show on this. For me personally, and for most of my clients, it is about personal freedom. But if we were to take that down even deeper, like, what is personal freedom and why does anyone want that? Like, why do you want to be free? Why do you want to be financially free, personally free? Why do you want to live wherever you want to live? Why? Like, why would anyone want freedom?

And as I dove into this and I looked up this word because I’ve been using it so much, it’s like self-governing, like autonomy and Authority. And here’s what I came up with: when a person seeks autonomy, he or she would like to be able to make decisions independently from an authority figure. And I was like, this is exactly what I want to talk about.

I saw something on social media a couple of days ago, and it was basically like the bad of woo. So someone put up a post about their own journey and their return to God or Jesus or Christianity, and they were using personal development as the bad or the negative thing. And, you know, as I read her post, I don’t always, but this one I wanted to read because, you know, guys, I live in Louisiana, and there are a lot of things we’ve got, so much goodness about being at a small community that’s not crazily affected by the whole social world and stuff like that. It’s pretty simple living, right? You think about farmers and family. We’ve got a lot of priorities and responsibility. We’ve got that part right. We’ve got community and networking, like really good; everyone knows everyone.

I remember when I started with essential oils and yoga and coaching, that there was this dangerous thing about that, like, as if it were new age is the word that they used, and that was like anti-Christian. I don’t see it that way at all. I have not lost my soul connection. I’ve always been deeply connected on a spiritual level even as a kid, as a teenager, as a young adult. And that has really just been more enhanced as I grow and develop and take responsibility for my wants, desires, and needs. And I thought it’d be a great topic because not that I feel like I need to defend it or argue or go against this resistance, but because I wanted to do it for my own people who might see this in their communities or on their social media. You know, it’s like that meme or that little poster that goes around every once in a while about all those occultic things and bad things, and it just lists out, you know, astrology and um, I don’t want to bring more of it into this. I think you know where I’m going, but I remember this with essential oils. It’s as if I am like anti-medicine, and I’m like, that’s not at all. It’s something that enhances health. It’s like whenever I put wild orange and peppermint and take a deep inhale, like, it just lifts my mood. It feels really good. The energy in my body changes; my eyes pop open, and I see more and I feel more, and I like that. But that does not mean that I don’t believe in science and medicine. And when this person kind of labeled this new age occultic, like that personal transformation and change was that I’m like, this is not true for me, so I want to talk about it.

So I got into my own brain and my journey, and I’m also considering clients that I work with and autonomy and Authority and that’s self-governing, like self-responsibility is what we are going for. Like, I don’t believe that the government is responsible for my health or my finances. I don’t believe that another person, whether this be an employer or your partner, is responsible for me meeting the demands and desires of my experience here in this material world. Like, I believe that we have a path to attain if we have a desire. I truly believe that if you want something bad enough, you can get it. Think about those who have achieved something great, like maybe it’s in sports or music or the ones who’ve overcome a lot of things. It was so they can have control, and I think that’s what autonomy is; it’s having control. You’re not responsible for it. So I don’t get to blame you. I am not entitled to it just because I want it. I’m actually willing to put in the work to go get it. I’m willing to investigate and explore and find out all the things that I need to do in order to get those results that feels good to me as a human. And I don’t think it has anything to do with a new age or like anything negative or bad. It’s, I don’t know; I guess I’m kind of disheartened by this whole thing.

Like when I wrote the book “The Punchline Approach,” it was really about how do I figure out how to want to live and not be apologetic to those around me for wanting more because I used to believe that they could make me feel bad or guilty or wrong. Now I know that it’s my thoughts about them; it’s not them. No one can make me or you feel anything. But I was such a people pleaser; I was so codependent, and all my worth and value was wrapped up in what someone else thought about me, what someone else said or did, determined if I was worthy, determined if I was good enough, if I was likable.

And what the personal growth and development has done for me is I now realize that, listen, I am worthy. I am responsible. And it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. But for me to say that it doesn’t matter to me is a lie; it does matter. I have not released that yet; I would like to. I’m not sure about you, but I would like to just be unapologetic and not concerned about what other people think or feel or say. But the truth is, it’s our human nature, it’s our human condition; like we are meant to care for one another. Now, you can turn it off; you can ignore it; you can bypass it, but I truly believe at the end of the day, everyone cares to some degree if you are human, if you have feelings and emotions and a brain and a body and a nervous system and you like had parents or children or family and friends and you belong to a community like I do believe you care.

But here’s the part that makes the difference: to what degree do you care? For me, it’s a little

unhealthy. I care to the degree of like it’s my responsibility, and that’s off; that’s imbalanced. And so my work is, I care to the degree that I am compassionate and empathetic and helpful, and I do desire to help you achieve and grow and get what you want, to help you to create the results to the degree that you wanted to and you’re willing to put in the work for it.

That has been an issue up until the last couple of years and even up till yesterday, just discussing, we were talking about my human design and my business and the organization and all this stuff, and in that conversation, it came up again this need to control. And so it’s like being like a visionary and being able to see and wish for other people to reach their potential and see what I see, which is my bad; like I’m going to take full responsibility for that. And then want them to get and see that too; to that degree do I suffer. Does that make sense? So who it’s the attachment is what I’m trying to say; when we have attachment to people that we love or people that we want to do well, that we want to be in community or we want to be connected to, if we are attached, if we are attached, attached, it feels weird when I say that if we’re attached to their outcome, and it’s our vision, and we see this potential, but they don’t, they don’t have the desire, maybe they don’t even have the skill set for it, right? And then we have an assumption that they do; to that degree do we suffer. They don’t suffer; I suffer. I suffer because I’m disappointed; I suffer because I’m disheartened or, um, like it’s, it’s all judgment about myself, by the way. If we turn it around, remember, it’s all a mirror. And so it’s, I put up a post about this this morning, and at the end of it was the turnaround, and that’s what we want to do with everything, and that is autonomy and freedom and responsibility of and control also because we can control the way we feel by the way that we think, by the things that we are attached to, that controls how we feel.

I’m excited; I’m disappointed if they get these results, then I feel a certain way; that is an attachment to outcome that is unhealthy. But most of the people that I know are unhealthy to the degree that they are attached to someone that they care about. And I think that’s just the classic codependent human nature, that there’s at least a part of that in all of us; we want to be seen, we want to be heard, we want to be accepted, we want to belong, we want to feel worthy, we want to know that other people think positively of us, or I do, and most of the people that I’m connected to do, and maybe it is more of a girl thing than a guy thing, but I don’t think so; I think to the degree that we wanted, and we want it for someone else is to the degree that we suffer or don’t suffer. So I’m making that switch, and the post that I put up was about exercise. When I work out in the morning, I get this, like, really high energy. I get super excited; I get a lot of creative ideas, and I mean, I’m just ready to build empires, like, I get, I want to just sell my ideas. I could come up with probably five business models and plans right now that someone else could go and do, and it’s really hard for me to not engage or react to that energy and instead just receive it for myself. Like, I’m doing the workout, and now I have this massive amount of creativity and energy; I feel like I’m high-vibing, and my inability or to the degree that I cannot receive it for myself is why I try to give it to other people, and then I get frustrated or annoyed because they don’t move forward with the idea or they don’t get the results.

But the truth is, it was mine, and we do this in personal growth and development; we get this “aha,” you know, we learn this thing that changes our life, and we feel so good, and we naturally want to give it to other people, but they aren’t like in the practice that you’re in, so it’s like we take it out of context, and then we’re like, “Oh, so-and-so needs to know this or could use this. Like, I heard them complaining the other day, so I’m gonna go give it to them so that they feel better.” That’s the people-pleasing, codependent part of us. Like, instead, if we just use it for ourselves and we become, we be it, we be the results, then they will naturally see it, sense it, and then ask about it. And if they don’t ask about it, it’s not ours to give.

What I feel like it’s 10 years I’ve been trying to work on this and figure this out, and I’m not gonna say that I got it because I don’t think I got it, but it is getting clearer. And so why do the geeks, the personal development geeks, get attached to developing and growing? We love the control and the freedom that we can get from ourselves that we don’t have to depend on someone else in a healthy way. So what I mean by that is if I want to go on a certain trip or I want to buy something or I want to create something in my business, and the people that I’m speaking to don’t agree, and they’re like, “I don’t want to be a part of that. I think that is ridiculous,” it’s stupid, and then to the degree that I get disappointed with that, that’s my issue. But I could want it and desire it and envision it, and then take that energy and creativity and desire, and then I could channel it into a project that I push out into the world, and it could sprinkle on more people, and out of those people, someone could come and ask for it or want it or recognize it. Does that make sense? So instead, what I naturally do or habitually do is I speak to people that I already know, speak to people that are already complaining about the thing that I’m talking to. So it’s familiar to talk to them, but they’re a small group of people. So let’s just say there’s a hundred people that I speak to on a regular basis. If I channel the creativity and I channel the idea and the momentum and I get really excited about it, and it’s mine, so say it came through me from exercise, and I get into that momentum, and instead of me going to convince someone who does not want it, right, instead I channel it into a clearly defined path, results, right? I want these results; this is how I’m going to get the results. And I take that momentum and that extra energy, and I do Facebook ads or I put it on social media. I put it on TikTok; I put it on Instagram; I put it on Facebook and YouTube, and I push it out into the world. I use the energy and drive to really get it out further,

and now it lands in front of 10,000 people. Out of those 10,000 people, there’ll probably be one to ten, it’s like one to ten percent that are going to be interested. And that’s all I have to do with it. So it’s like if you have the desire or you feel called to write a book or to put out a program or anything like that, your only job is to put it out, paper, pen, computer, whatever it is, you just need to channel… Careful, I don’t want you to think I’m getting all New Age because I use the word “channel.” I’m just meaning that you take this massive amount of energy, and you bring it down, and you become the conduit for that message, and you push it out to more people. Then those people can respond, and you have a better chance. Not because these people are bad or wrong or judgmental, but because you reached more people. So you increased your chances.

But I see so many coaches, business owners, practitioners who only speak to the small crowd, and then you’re disappointed because nobody wants it. Nobody in that crowd wants it. But what about the big, wide world? What about all those people? I bet there’s a better chance that they’re going to want it. So the purpose of this episode is to really understand why we do what we do, especially those who are passionate and driven, and we get excited about creating something new and seeing change in the world. We’re like change workers, whether you are a coach or a massage therapist or a psychotherapist, someone who wants to help people heal. You’re gonna have to go beyond the 10 people that you talk to on a regular basis. It’s just how it is. And be very careful about how you interpret the people who do know and love you, how you interpret their no, and how you instantly go into this lack of control, instead of take the vision, channel it into a process, push it out into the hands, eyes, and ears of more people, and then watch it come back to you. And that’s kind of part of the whole waiting process, when we take the idea and we go here and we try to give it, give it, give it, give it, and they didn’t ask for it, they’re not looking for it, they don’t want it, they’re not hungry for it, that’s where we bump up against the brick wall, and then our mindset, attitude, negativity comes up with this story. So be very careful, especially if you are a new business owner, are you reaching enough people? Is your message super clear? Can you use the drive and excitement and momentum to drive your message out further to reach more people, instead of going into self-preservation and only telling a handful of people that you know, and then interpreting that as rejection? I hope that made sense.

So autonomy, look it up, and in the meantime, ask yourself the question: Am I in authority of my life? What I want to create, who I want to be? Am I getting the things that I want to experience? Am I happy? Am I satisfied? Am I doing what I love to do? Or am I letting other people dictate how I should or shouldn’t do? Because a lot of people think that like I work too much; I’m always working. All I talk about is work. But guys, it’s not true; number one, I have plenty of time to do other things. But even more important than that, I love doing what I do. It brings me satisfaction. And if I didn’t love it, I wouldn’t do it because I have that authority. I have that autonomy. I am in control; if I don’t like it, I won’t do it. So ask yourself that: Are you doing stuff you don’t like because you see someone else who you think is successful doing it, and then you’re trying to do what they’re doing instead of getting it from yourself, from your own authority? So do what feels good, and that’s going to open up more energy, more momentum, more excitability. And then commit to the thing that you want that comes up in that vision, and then from there, just get really specific and clear on the path of how am I going to get this out there so that I can get the results that I want. It really is about determining the goal, making the plan for what you’re going to do with that. And here’s the hardest part; well, there’s two hard parts: Who are you going to become? And so I have to become someone who is courageous and confident and clear in my message. I have to be committed, so I show up as her right now. And then what do I need to let go of? And that’s talking to people who were not interested, who have judgment, and who have issues about what I do. I’ve got to cut that away; I’ve got to quit speaking to people that don’t want me speaking to them and are not interested in what I do. So that’s what I’m going to offer you: Have an amazing week.

Thanks for listening to this episode of More Than Mindset.