Evolutionary personal development

Do you think personal development takes a huge amount of effort? Sometimes it does—and sometimes it doesn’t. There are ways of making personal change without sweating too much.

When we think of personal development, we often think of it as something almost contrary to nature. It seems natural that we should stay the same, because it’s often a seemingly natural feeling to sit around and do nothing, as though movement is something we just need to get over and done with before we fall back into a state of rest. Movement takes effort, and rest doesn’t.

There’s some truth in this. We often do need to force ourselves to change. We often need to put effort into our self-development if we want to achieve our aims. But that doesn’t mean that change is contrary to nature, and it isn’t always something that takes hard work, at least not in the traditional sense.

I was struck by this thought on a visit to an aquarium a few months ago. I saw lots of fish and other sea creatures, sure, but the thing that caught my attention was an exhibition about the evolution of whales. Until that point I had no idea that whales evolved from an animal that looked much like a dog. It was a rather large “dog”, by all accounts, which used to go down to the sea and catch fish. Then one day it got in and began to swim, and the next thing you know—well, over the course of a few million years—the animal had lost its legs, grown a huge tail and was diving hundreds of feet deep to eat all the marine life it wanted.

So for those people who see themselves as trying to live consciously, it can be accepted as fact that change is a normal part of nature. Constantly we see the environment making profound changes on the things within it, the smaller things that make up the bigger whole. Constantly we see the smaller parts affecting the larger environment.

This fact—that nature is itself in a constant state of change—can be used as a way to galvanize us, to move us from our usual mindset of trying to keep things the same, of looking upon change as something forced rather than natural.

But even more useful is to use this fact as a way to make positive changes to ourselves, because it shows that if you change your environment you can go a long way to changing yourself—and without as much effort as you would if you stayed in the same place. That wolf-like creature didn’t make huge effort to change itself. The environment made most of the changes for it, even though it took millions of years.

The fact is that by changing our environment, by making just an initial effort to change conditions, we can make wide-ranging changes to our lives with much less effort. We just need to go to the place that supports the changes we want to make, and keep away from the places that don’t support the changes we want to make.

According to Woody Allen, 80% of success in life is due to showing up. I think it’s true, but maybe he should have added “in the right place”. Show up in the right place and you’ve got a much better chance of success—and without struggling against conditions not conducive to what you want.

Here are a few examples to think about:

• If you want to change your diet to a more healthy diet, hang around with people who eat healthy food, and keep away from people who live in junk food outlets.
• If you want to be more fit and active, hang around with people who are more fit and active.
• If you want to start your own business, hang around with people who are already in business, by joining your local Chamber of Commerce for instance.
• If you want to know how to make money, hang around with people who are making money.

(That last one might sound a bit of wishful thinking, but I’ve found that people who really are making money are usually among the friendliest people and more willing to share knowledge than people scrabbling to earn a living)

With this approach, you shouldn’t wish for instant change, but the change can be much more long-lasting and profound. The environment will become part of you, and you change almost naturally. It also enables you to make changes one step at a time. Trying to make huge changes in one fell swoop is often a recipe for failure. You become overwhelmed by the amount of work needed to make those personal changes you need to make. But by taking a slower route, each stage is easier. The summit may be thousands of feet off the ground, but when you’re just three feet from the summit, the summit is just three feet away.

And although the personal change may take time, it doesn’t take as long as you imagine. I once read that it takes just three years to get good at a skill. This is open to interpretation, since some skills are obviously more difficult to master than others. But I think it holds true that three years is plenty enough time to get pretty good at something, at least good enough to do it for a living.

So just think… How could you change your environment to give you a new outlook on life, or simply give yourself a chance to learn something new? What could you do to ignite a spurt of evolutionary growth? What would be the best environment to help you achieve your goals? What would be the best environment to help you achieve your dreams?

Like that dog-like creature of millions of years ago, it might just be a case of getting into the water to catch a few fish, then seeing the possibilities of swimming…
Just dip a toe in the water and let the natural evolutionary instinct take it from there.

These changes of environment can have a huge positive effect on our personal growth. Change is normal. And the changes don’t need to take millions of years.