One thing that a good seminar will do is to get you boosted and fired up. You come back with the feeling that you could take on the world. You’ve taken notes, you’ve set up goals, you’ve made plans, you have that list of things to do, what you’re going to change and what steps you’re going to take to reach the next plateau in your professional life.

There are things that you will change and chances are that you will see a dramatic increase in business for a few weeks and maybe a month or two. But as time passes there is a tendency to get back to the level that you were before taking the seminar.

Easy come, easy go says the old proverb. And that is very true as far as seminars are concerned. Your state of mind has been changed for a period of time but the effect of the seminar has not been wired in your brain. So is bound to partially disappear with time.

Something else that those seminars will do is that you will meet some very successful people. If you play your cards right, you may bond with these exceptional people and friendships may develop. Those friendships will become tremendous assets.

It is a well known fact that you eventually gravitate to become like the people that you hang around with. Hang around with winners and you’ll become a winner, hang around with losers and down the drain you go. So, if you are smart, you will nurture the relation with those that you would like to model and emulate.

Seminars will also force you to expand your horizon and open new vistas for you. You will see and hear what others have done and you probably will realize that you have been setting your goals and objectives too low. After all, if the guys sitting next to you at the seminar could do it, why could you not also do it yourself? That old testosterone will kick in and chances are that it will be a wakeup call for you.

There is no question that seminars are great and if you are serious about succeeding you certainly should take some. There is money involved but it is well worth it if you follow these rules.

1. A good seminar will open the doors for you and will get you all fired up but that feeling has to be actively sustained through daily motivational sessions. Those sessions can be done by reading motivational material, listening to tapes, CDs or videos or even reading the notes that you took at the seminar. Enthusiasm is like a fire it will soon die unless it is regularly fed.

2. Keep in touch with the new friends or contacts that you’ve made at the seminar through networking at least once a week. Share you goals and objectives with these people. It will heighten your commitments It will make sure that you keep your eyes on the ball and go through with your plans.

3. Don’t try to teach what you’ve learned at the seminar to anyone. This may sound strange but it is a very important element that must be respected if you want to really benefit from your seminar.

The reason for that is the fact that you probably will be so impressed with what you got out of that seminar that you’ll feel that the whole world should know about it. So, instead of applying that technology yourself, you will waste your time and energy trying to teach it to other. Remember that you really “got” that information because you were in the seminar’s atmosphere and that is something that cannot be replicated in the settings of everyday life.

So, keep that technology and knowledge to yourself until you have achieved your goals and objectives… and then, go out and transform the world if you still want to do it.

Some seminar experiences are elementary and essential to pave the path to success. Whatever money you invest in yourself will never be lost and will pay great dividend, if, and only if, you follow the above rules.

It is said that what you don’t know cannot hurt you. That is false. Success is a science and not a fluke. The “how” to succeed has to be learned and a motivational seminar is a great place to start. It may only be the first step to success… but you know what they say about a journey of a thousand miles, it starts with the first step.

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That’s been going on since Benjamin Franklin, father and founder of the self-improvement movement, developed what he called a plan for regulating is future conduct three hundred years ago.

Most of these seminars, books, blogs, tapes and videos are very good and they certainly should not be discounted. But at one point, some order has to be made so that we don’t get lost in all these new programs and theories or worst yet, so that we don’t spend our entire life chasing the silver bullet that will solve all out problems and give us instantaneous success.

Personal Development is, above all, a specific skill that has to be studied, learned and practiced. And, like any other skill, the most important part is the basics. It’s upon those basic rules that the whole edifice of Personal Development is built. If our knowledge of the basics is shaky, no great edifice can be built, no matter how hard we try or work at it.

The question then becomes, where can we find the basics of Personal Development? There is not the shadow of a doubt that these can be found in the classic, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. That book has withstood the test of time and most of the modern techniques and theories on the subject are based on the writings of that book.

Think and Grow Rich is not a book that should be read. It should be studied, assimilated and learned. It contains all the essentials and all the basic rules of Personal Development and as such, it should be given the attention that it deserves.

James Alan has written a wonderful summary of all 15 chapters of the book for the blog, Ezine Articles, and can be found by clicking here. This description should be copied and reviewed regularly. It will help as a refresher on Hill’s wonderful material but, the bulk of the work, for anyone who is serous about Personal Development, should be in studying that wonderful bible on self-development.

Personal Development is skill that has to be mastered like any other skill and the best way to do it is by concentrating on the basics as found in Think and Grow Rich.

The great Jim Rohn said something to the effect that by working on your job, you will earn a living but by working on yourself you will earn a fortune. Jim is right. Working on ourselves will earn us a fortune and the best place to start that work is with the book, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

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Some things are important, these are the majors, others have little significance in our lives, they are the minors. Some things can be changed to improve the quality of our lives, those also are also the majors. Some things are beyond our reach and cannot be influenced no matter how much we try, they, again, are the minors

Successful living requires controlled focus, dynamic passion and a sharp sense of direction. None of these factors can be ignored or wasted on unproductive minor endeavors.

That is not to say that life should be all work and no play. But it does suggest that we should get our priorities straight. What’s important comes first and is given major consideration whereas what is only matter of interest should take the back seat and be relayed to secondary positions.

The problem with what has been proposed so far is the fact that what we have been qualifying as the majors, or to put it into other words, what is important in the quality of our life, demand work and efforts that are not considered compelling. They are not considered to be fun things to do.

They have not considered fun things to do because they have been initially undertaken without the proper preparations. No time or thoughts have been given to set up the optic from which those tasks will be viewed.

Shakespeare said, “Nothing is either good or bad but our thinking makes is so.” It can also be said, no job is either good or bad, fun or dull, but our thinking make it so.

Changing the lens with which we view our job or profession, which usually is the number one “major” that can affect the quality of our life, does require some imagination, it does require some thinking but it can always be done and it must be done.

It must be done if we want to see our life’s work as fun, exciting, and compelling so that we can be passionate about it and make it simple for us to major on what matters rather than wasting our time and majoring on the minor.

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Almost everyone is adversely affected by stress to some degree. The good news is that there is something that we can do about it. There are many techniques that can be used in stress reduction such as yoga, meditation, sports etc… but there is one very simple and effective technique that is almost completely overlooked and that is, Present Time Consciousness or PTC.

PTC, though highly effective, is incredibly simple, and that may be its outdoing. People find it hard to believe that something so simple and easy to learn an use can so effective. PTC is a discipline where the practitioner strive to keep his mind focused on the present. Thus the appellation, Present Time Consciousness.

With PTC, the practitioner will not let his mind wanders unto the future. As soon as thoughts of what could happen in the future enter the mind, a conscious effort is made to get back to whatever the person is doing in the present.

The reason for that is simple. Most of the time, we don’t fear what is happening now. We are dealing with it, so it is not the cause of great concern or stress. But, on the other hand, what could result from whatever is happening in the present can bring frightening scenarios of gloom and doom. And that is where most of the stress comes in.

PTC, like any other skill gets better with practice. At first, staying focused in the here and now can seem like an impossible task. However, after we have made a reasonable amount of effort to develop that skill, we get to be increasingly effective at it.

It is relatively easy to maintain Present Time Consciousness when we are involved in activities that require concentration. It is more difficult when we are involved in more mundane activities such getting dressed, doing some cleaning or mowing the grass. However, these are the best activities to practice PTC. And the way that it can be done is by caring about what we are doing.

When we care about something, we feel that it is important and we give it all our attention. So the secret is to threat everything that we do as if it was important. A disciplined mind can find as much satisfaction from cleaning pots and pans as it will solving an important problem. And the best part of that is that if we can care about menial tasks we will be even better at caring while involved in more complex endeavors.

So, to recapitulate, the best way to combat stress is to mentally stay in the present moment and the best way to stay focused in the present moment is really care about whatever it is that we are doing. The formula would then be: “Caring = Focus = No Stress”.

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Arête, or personal excellence, was sought in order to attain Eudaimonia, commonly translated as “happiness.” Times have changed but the common desire to attain happiness has not. And what was true in Aristotle’s day is still true today. The surest way of attaining happiness is through Personal Development.

Definition of the term Personal Development.

Personal Development means exactly what the words implies, developing our personal resources to its full potential. Seems easy enough to understand yet, it is probably one of the least understood term.

For most people, Personal Development means learning new tricks of gimmicks to get what we want. That’s not Personal Development. At best, it’s an insincere form of behavior and in its worst case scenario it’s just plain deceit.

The objective of Personal Development is arête or personal excellence which can be found in the character of the individual and not simply in a form of superficial behavior that the individual can adopt.

In other words, Personal Development is a quest to develop and optimize one’s original resources to make the individual more effective, better equipped to face life’s challenges and better apt to reach the objectives necessary to attain the state of self-fulfillment, self-satisfaction and happiness.

True Personal Development increases a person’s worth. It belong in the realm of personal character and not simply in the person’s behavior.

Personal Development aims to build in and build up Aristotle’s basic virtues such as: courage, temperance, generosity, friendliness and magnanimity.

Now I know that this is not exactly what people seek when they are involved in Personal Development. Mostly they seek quick fixes and slick approaches to acquiring money and material success. No wonder that after years of practicing so called Personal Development principles no lasting changes have been observed.

Does that means that the teachings of Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar et al are not worthy? Of course not. However we are all guilty of hearing what we want to hear.

Jim Rohn says something to the effect that, if you want to succeed, work harder on yourself than you do on your job and you’ll succeed. He said, work harder on yourself… he did not say learn some slick tricks. He did not say learn this formula and apply it. He said, “Work on yourself.” To work on yourself means improve who you are as an individual. Improve your character. Be a better person. Develop the basic virtues of courage, temperance, generosity, friendliness and magnanimity among others.

How can a virtue be developed? The best way to do that is by raising it in the hierarchy of personal values. We tend to protect more what we value most since losing it would cause considerable pain. So, by raising that virtue in our esteem it will increase in importance in our eyes and will be better protected and practiced.

It can also be done by emulating someone that we admire and who demonstrates that virtue prominently. Emulation is a power tool that can be used with great effectiveness. Whether we know it or not, we are highly influenced by those that we respect. That characteristic can be used consciously or unconsciously and naturally, it’s a lot more effective when we use it deliberately.

Personal Development also means self-transformation. Learning something but not changing who we are is useless. Knowledge is only effective when it is used. Years ago I would go to motivational seminars. We would get all hyped up and get back home ready to turn the world upside down. Sadly, the feeling would only last a few weeks at most.

Positive permanent changes do not come easy. Our brain is quite resistant to changes. It is said that the brain is like a muscle and that analogy is especially true as far as personal transformation is concerned. It is not easy to sculpt and transform a muscle. It takes work and dedication. The same applies to acquiring new and more empowering habits and behavior.

Alexis Carrel author of Man the Unknown said something to the effect that, the transformation of man is not an easy task for he is at the same time the block of granite and the artisan who must, through powerful blow of the hammer, sculpt and fashion the master piece that he wants to become.

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