Short answer to a short question: “none!” – unless, of course, you’re prepared to put what you’ve learned into practice. And that’s where most people fall down. OK, they spent a day or two and it was a breath of fresh air, they felt renewed, uplifted, ready to change their world. But research has shown that it takes approximately six weeks for the benefits of the average training course to vanish – completely – and personal development training is no exception.
But how could this happen? Because it’s easier to stay the same – it’s easier to continue being “not too bad” when everybody around you is not too bad as well. It’s easier to not have your friends – or, as some of my personal development clients have told me, their family – looking at you as if you’re some kind of born-again weirdo! It’s easier to fit in. And, it doesn’t matter what new skills we learn, sooner or later, to a greater or lesser extent, we revert to type, we re-set to default, we go back to being normal. But normal is crazy – there’s seventy years of research that proves that. And not-too-bad isn’t good enough when you think about the life that you could have – effortless happiness, effortless success, peace of mind.
So, what will you do to change your life? Because, you need to understand, if you want you life to change, you’re the one who’s going to have to do something new, something different. Don’t pay any attention to anybody who tells you that you can change your life in five minutes – they’re after a quick buck. Don’t listen to anybody who will tell you that success is all about making cart-loads of money – they’re the ones who want loads of money and some of it is yours! Don’t listen to people who keep recommending the latest wonderful book that they’ve just read to you – you won’t change your life by reading – you only change your life by doing.
What have you got to do? You change your life by doing things in your life differently. Try starting with little things – like try brushing your teeth with the hand that you don’t normally use – then your mind will get used to the idea that, in every single thing that you do in your life and in every single situation in which you find yourself in your life – you have a choice. You have a choice – can choose to live automatically and mindlessly like all the normal crazy people that are content to be not-too-bad, or you can choose to focus on the moment, feel the toothbrush’s bristles on your teeth, notice how differently you’re holding the brush, taste the toothpaste. It’s in the small detail of everyday life that you will find reality. And when you find reality, you will discover that you can, indeed, achieve effortless happiness and success because, in reality, it simply happens.
