The internet and print media is overflowing with tons of counsel on personal development, self-improvement, achieving your potential and all the subcategories like setting goals, having a vision, learning from failures, increasing your will power, believing in yourself and so on and so forth.

With countless volumes written and online content published on the topic, I still believe, there’s a certain level of skepticism associated with it. The most common kind of suggestion put forth by the skeptics is, of course, that real personal development simply is not possible.

A lot of people find it difficult to fathom that a person can actually elevate himself to a place that he dreams of being at. Meanwhile, others go through various self-improvement resources, only with the approach of seeking motivation (and not real change) or thinking that they are merely feasting on a cliché expression of words that actually has no practical value.

If you have been into self-improvement for a considerably extended period of time, you must have wondered at some point along the way: why does most of this advice not work? Or better yet, does it even work?

THE MISSING LINKS

Numerous reasons actually contribute to the counterproductive mindset. Most of the personal development advice leaves out a few fundamental rules associated with the process. It does not really go beyond the superficial ideas of personal growth, presenting an impression that is far from reality.

These ‘missing links’ play an indispensable role in the journey of maximizing and actualizing your potential. The fact that these points are left out from the majority of the content that sells is the very reason why people get discouraged by it, wrongly believing in its ineffectiveness. The truth of the matter is, in fact, completely opposite to that. The truth about it is that personal development is arguably the only goal, the pursuit of which leads to one’s total fulfillment and real improvement in life.

Now rational perspective lists down these missing links below. You must realize that these are the primary blocks without which you can’t expect to erect your personal development structure, the monument that will reflect, at the end of your life, your legend in its image.

• Achieving Real Personal Improvement Is Harder Than You Think.

The first thing that you just can’t ignore is that the entire process is filled with discouraging obstacles every step of the way. It takes huge amounts of energy, courage and above all, a significant amount of time to go through real transformation. Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that everything will somehow fall into its place. No, it won’t and surely not by itself. Get ready to make big sacrifices in order to get what you want and become what you want to become.

It takes getting really organized with spending your time and energy, setting clear goals and achieving them one after the other, taming the procrastinator within you, not resting on your laurels among numerous other things. It really requires you to be extremely calculated with your decisions, being precise about the choices you make every day, driven mainly by reason and not emotion. This is the very approach that actually helps one pass successfully through the crippling moments of self-doubt.

All of these things are easier said than done as these are skills that require sheer determination to master over years. Some skills may take shorter time than others but as a whole, it will take several years to transform yourself into a totally different personality.

But when you actually realize it, the hard work is truly worth it. It has taken all your life for these bad habits (or lack of productive ones) to become a part of your personality. Thus, it is only justified for them to take a few years, at least, to achieve a reversal. You can always speed up the change by getting more focused at and dedicating more time to self-improvement.

• The Outstanding Element of the Process: A Life Changing Experience.

You keep downloading a plethora of personal development advice in to your brain. You read books, you watch all the related videos, you browse through the how-to articles on the internet; you basically do everything that is apparently required to climb up the personal development ladder. You try to practically apply all the advice you have learnt so far, hoping that you would yourself witness your transformation, only to get frustrated when you don’t see any real results.

This idea is the more important of all the missing links described here. I urge you to go and read about a dozen or more successful people around the world. What you would realize is that they went through varying experiences that contributed to their success but there is this one (two at most) experience that stands out in their transformation; one experience that left them with no way back. That experience goes on to be termed as the turning point of their lives.

What actually happens through this enchanting experience is that all the puzzle pieces come together, helping you solve the whole personal development riddle.

Moreover, it gives you that burning desire, the self-sustaining motivation, the unmistakable confidence that you have always read about and craved. Only you will know when you experience that sort of a moment in your life. Consider yourself blessed when that happens.

There are three learning outcomes attached with this idea:

1. Never let yourself get discouraged by the fact that you’re not seeing real results in front of you. That life changing experience is around the corner that will see yourself become a completely different person.
2. To help yourself get to that moment, you have to be exposed to new experiences. One can’t expect to be present at the right moment at the right time without pitting himself against challenges. After reading this, you should dare to take on all the challenges that you have been avoiding yet. Start by setting goals that you think are somewhat difficult for you to achieve and the achievement of which will shock the people around you. It is such an experience that will fill you up with unshakable confidence, the intensity of which can’t be replicated just by trying to act confidently every day.
3. What you can’t afford to forget is that you can never use this idea as an excuse to not work harder. You have to keep pushing yourself, you have to keep working harder to reach your full potential. It would be silly to wait for that experience to happen while doing nothing yourself. Also, all the smaller seemingly insignificant experiences actually gather up and culminate in you going through this watershed moment. Stay alert to that fact!

• Respecting Your Ego

Let me start by emphasizing this: Avoid getting enslaved by your ego but never should you try to enslave it either, for in its freedom lies your unique attitude about life. The sort of attitude that helps you carve out your own path leading to self-fulfillment.

One has to tame the ego monster residing within but never should he/she attempt to encage it. Befriend it but keep a close eye on it. Inflated ego is your enemy while when put under check, it becomes your partner in crime, helping you conquer obstacles that nobody else thinks you can.

Don’t love but respect your ego, backed by the understanding that it is what holds together the fabric of what makes you different. It is a thin line that you must walk on, being careful of not losing the balance in favor of either side.

• You Can’t Have It All

Finally, another important point ignored, when talking about reaching your full potential, is that you can’t have it all. It means that the bigger the goal is, the tougher the journey will be. While your goal is to develop yourself into your ideal personality, the achievement of it results in almost unimaginable rewards. Consequently, it means that you can’t simply have the same lifestyle as you have always had once you seriously start pursuing your vision.

You want to change yourself, you start with your habits. But as you start replacing your non-productive habits with the productive ones, you start becoming a different person, your daily routine doesn’t stay the same and along with it changes your life. That also means that if you keep following the same routine and doing the same things in the same manner, you can’t expect any change for yourself. The more the gap between your present self and your ideal one, the bigger is the magnitude of the changes that you have to essentially make in order to manifest your dream in your reality.

Let’s wrap it up now by stating the basic theme behind these missing links that can be described as getting brutally honest about personal development, as with everything else in your life. Remember:

If you really are hell-bent on elevating your personality, not afraid of confronting your fears and harsh realities and are willing to take more than a few leaps of faith, you will surely triumph in the end.

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