Self-Development Type Results
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Are you curious about the 5 PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PATHS -- and the ways they learn and grow?
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Seeker of Self-Authority
You are someone who reads, absorbs and is always seeking new resources.
You're collecting experiences, seeking inspiration - hoping that this will provide answers you've long held about how to make life be more of what you think it should be. You like when you find resources that provide practical exercises and methodology that makes sense to you. Throw in a bit of science and research data, and you're good to go. You're pretty sure these answers you seek are known by someone. Otherwise the friends and family and life stories you read about wouldn't be possible. You just have to figure out how to get there or find it.
Somewhere during your lifetime, things didn't really sync up.
They didn't make sense. You're interested in how to relate to your emotions in such a way that things just "feel" more balanced and uplifting. You want to know that the person teaching has grappled with the same issues you have so they can offer a deeper understanding of your journey. How else would they provide you with a well-laid plan for living that better life you seek?
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No one program will be enough though. because as you continue to try out other programs and methodologies, you'll realize something essential. The learnings you participate in only get you closer to needing to find your own answers and will definitely generate new questions you previously didn't think about. The ultimate answers aren't going to come through a program but will be embedded in mysteries that are there for you to courageously reveal. Within your lifetime and your willingness to source your own core Self.
As a way to further your evolution...
You might consider putting a renewed importance on settling into your own knowing. Slow down on the consumption and begin to write and create your own construct about life. Capture your thoughts, your feelings and celebrate their original quality. Ponder the meaning of all that you've been exposed to and think about where it leads. Creative visualizations, going inside, being in nature, are all ways to slow the consumption roll and begin to BE with the deeper parts of yourself.
Programs and courses can provide a framework for you to conceptually understand more about life, but the true acceptance of life lies in surrendering to the truths that may seem to be the opposite of what you originally thought.
You are debunking the idea that anyone else has your answers. Your growing edge lies in matching each learning experience provided by another with a desire to get underneath your reasons for feeling as if life should be different. Or somehow more explainable. The more you dive into YOU and how you came to be who you are, the more the external learning experiences will sync up with the inner knowing you are on the path to finding.
And one final thought about your search.
What if life is supposed to be this way and nothing is missing?
Seeker of Self-Belonging
You are a person who finds one modality, one community and commits.
This is because you're not just looking for helpful growth experiences but are also wanting to be part of a rich learning community. Friends, family and social spaces compel you to go further in your development.
Having found the place you feel comfortable and safe in, you're willing to dive deeper into the content, sharing in the learning alongside others who you develop lasting relationships with. You tend to process life’s events and circumstances through this group and the forums provided for dialogue and human experience.
Somewhere during your lifetime, you realized that learning isn't a solitary pleasure.
The idea that a group of people, sharing in a common conversation, helping to make sense of the things you're coping with, makes everything better. Something about being part of a bigger world, one that is grappling with the things you are, is incredibly validating. It helps you be courageous and feel confident in your choices to do life the way you do.
You are drawn to an environment where you feel safe to be yourself and anything that is of interest is considered welcome to your fellow participants. Doing it alone doesn't feel as nourishing or satisfying.
You are open to exploring content having to do with all and any aspects of life.
But any new information must be inclusive of the importance of relationship in your life. And, if you find it too disruptive to your sense of balance or continuity, you may opt for something more comfortable to engage in.
This way of learning and relating is a constant support to you. You will explore new domains of self development but they'll be vetted through the people who are part of your chosen learning community.
As a way to further your evolution...
You might consider opening up to another modality and explore it even if it seems somewhat counter to what's been provided and embraced by your community.
It would definitely represent an opportunity for growth, if you pursued a new type of learning experience, with an entirely new group of people. Allowing a new set of ideas and concepts to interface with those you've already pursued, will broaden your growth work, produce new questions and invite you to risk some of the safety you've grown accustomed to. Lastly, you might find a meditative retreat you attend by yourself, designed to have you be solely with YOU for the entire time.
Remember that content becomes familiar to the mind the more we explore it. Studying something in great depth at some point becomes limiting because we become so comfortable, we don't see what we're avoiding. We become concluded about what we've determined in our search.
When you pursue the new and encounter your resistance, you're expanding the confines of your mind and Self.
Exploring a process, alone would produce a new kind of growth. Choose something that is done as a self study, separate from anything you've every considered. Silent retreats, independent travel where you set the itinerary, an online course where you work through the entire experience driven by your own individual needs, any of these will provide a new way to relate to yourself. It will produce insight about the role of the community inside your sense of self.
Any domain would provide insight but if you've been exploring the body and the physical, then move towards emotional work. If you've been largely working with intellectual paradigms and models, then try out body work or spirituality. And, if you've been very invested in spirituality, then find feeling-based programs to take you in a new direction of human emotion and healing.
Depending upon where you are in your life's process, you have an awesome foundation to grow from if you've already found a learning community. If not and as a place to start, your learning orientation would suggest you might want to look for experiences, which bring a community of potential friends for you to connect with.
The key for your journey is to find a community, get safe, experience learning with them and then stretch beyond what's comfortable.
Seeker of the Accomplished Self
You are a person who likes structure, wants action and tangible outcomes.
You tend to be drawn to proven systems or models for self development and you like checklists, inventories and step-by-step methods to build your sense of accomplishment. Life is about living it with intention and you've consistently found results in setting a goal and working towards it. Learning new things is part of the way you feel progress. Putting the things you've already learned into action is a necessity. Sitting in one place without a purpose isn’t the easiest thing for you.
You like facilitators that bring a comprehensive approach to the type of study you're seeking.
You seek experiences that seem to be thorough and well thought out. You want to know that you are in sync with the material as it's provided, and are grasping the breadth of the coursework. Not one to take short-cuts unless they seem more productive, you appreciate learning from someone who is clearly an example of their own work. And is clear in the sharing of it. Confusion is bothersome to you.
Going slow and letting go of outcomes isn't easy.
Underneath all of your forward motion, there's a place where going slower than you deem is necessary, sitting in seeming limbo with feelings and pondering with no where to go isn't so comfortable. It's not that you won't dip into that space when it's part of a curriculum but it's likely that if you don't get enough of a result, you'll view it as less valuable. You might plan an experience that's designed around this slow-paced kind of learning but you'll likely choose it because it's essential to achieve your overall goals for personal fulfillment and self satisfaction.
As a way to further your evolution...
You might consider exploring a modality that has no obvious outcome, or method. Imagine that! A program you take just to hang out and see if anything shows up.
Sitting still and doing nothing each day, in meditation would be helpful. The key to this 'sitting still' though, is to have no expected outcome. Detaching from results and allowing it to be exactly what it is, is the key to moving yourself into more relationship with you.
The idea that you would spend your time being unproductive, in any small way, is growth. Breathing exercises, writing for writing’s sake, sitting under a tree while the breeze blows by … these are all wonderful activities for you. For you, a break from growth and development for 6 months may actually bring more growth and development.
It is likely you have periodically found, a type of self development activity that simply feeds your soul. Something you connect with like a type of music, a book, self-reflective poetry or cards, an enjoyable podcast. It's likely that you have a sensory response to these things. It's this multi-faceted sensory response you can bring to and enhance during the intentional learning experiences.
Look for it, cultivate it, go into any learning experience seeking to feel more for yourself than what is promised as an outcome.
Emotions are not organized. The body's attempt to communicate to you needs free space to share. Sometimes in your attempt to get somewhere, you can miss the Self information making its way towards your conscious mind. Learning how to listen means you have to let go of the outcome. Think of it like this, intention gets you to the event but allowing what you don't yet know about, is what you really came for.
Ultimately, your relationship with the parts of you that don't respond to the achieving context of the way you do life, are the parts that place you on your Growing Edge By seeking development experiences that help you connect with and see how they play a role in your life, you will find more of you as a whole person.
There is more growth awaiting you by letting go of achievement as your goal. Loosen up your expectations and allow the experience to come to you.
Seeker of the Creative Self
You are a person who feels this deep connection to Self and are always seeking ways to make further contact.
You follow your intuition towards meaningful information that is nurturing and has special meaning that connects to some sense of the non-intellectual part of you. Learning experiences must provide a multi-sensory experience or you'll find your attention doesn't stay focused. It must appeal to your intellect, emotion and creative centers for it to be compelling.
You process at your own pace, will deviate from the course curriculum if it doesn't sync up with your learning rhythm and don't rely on the facilitator to produce an outcome for you.
You are someone who knows when the new information is relevant to what's happening inside because you maintain a special listening to yourself.
Somewhere in your lifetime, traditional learning experiences, with a lot of structure left you feeling as if something was missing. Your mind, your inner world and your unique way of processing was much more interesting and safe. So you learned to either explore new information alone or sought input from people who worked their own process in an original way and then allowed their wisdom to infuse yours. You are not going to validate another's knowledge and teaching unless it matches up with your inner knowing. You seek learning experiences that value the independent and experiential wisdom of the each participant equally to the knowledge of the facilitator.
If the learning space doesn’t encourage and amplify your inner knowing, then you move on.
You love creative and novel approaches to topics you've pondered before. And it's super exciting when a person teaching has clearly practiced with a new modality and can share it in a way that you "feel" the difference it makes.
You tend to dismiss anything that seems too mechanical. And you can sit, ponder and explore any modality that draws your need for complexity and nuance with no need for the teacher to point out what you're getting from it.
As a way to further your evolution...
You might consider choosing a program that has a start and a finish, that you choose to follow each step, as it is crafted. Because you follow your intuition, you don’t get to see the parts of yourself awaiting discovery that lie behind the structure, the guidelines and the results of staying with something even if it doesn’t intuitively feel like it’s drawing you.
Committing to structure will produce growth for you. It will bring up feelings of being confined and constrained. This by-product of the learning process will take you in a direction that opens up an entirely new vista for your intuitive and creative self to be stimulated by.
Because you've relied on your creativity to follow where it leads, you may have missed the reason for it avoiding certain types of structured learning. If you are going to work on your growing edge, then moving towards the modalities and topics you normally pass over, will bring you closer to new information. And discovering those mysteries will prove to bring unexpected self discovery.
Although your process is quite fulfilling in the way you engage in it, seeking learning experiences that are less enticing to your creative self will make for more forward progress.
Seeker of the Learned Self
You are someone who intellectualizes, organizes and investigates information. You relish in research and data.
Your self development process is driven by wanting to gain exposure to all of the viewpoints on a particular subject. You gain by comparing and contrasting the knowledge others have acquired and then integrating it with your own.
You're quite likely drawn to a source for learning because they meet your standards of being the "real deal" when it comes to their background and basis for teaching.
You'll look closely at the source of the creator’s material for validity, experience and credibility.
Once this is determined and approved, then you're a voracious consumer of content. You readily share these points of vetted data with others. You receive great joy when in social dialogue about what you've constructed from your investigation of the myriad of sources.
Somewhere along your life path, knowledge made things feel more secure and stable. The more your mind could collect information and make sense of the human experience that often seemed disruptive and unsettling, the more you were drawn to absorbing. The safety of your mind, has been beneficial because it's helped you to maintain objectivity and balance in situations when others are still feeling their way. And you like being able to share what you know in a way that others can learn.
You find joy in the ironic or synchronistic when the ideas seem to build upon one another and show you a different angle of an area of study.
You are a true student and highly value learning. And you will look at a concept from many angles before feeling like you know what someone is saying. You're a pleasure to have in a group because you ask the best questions. Others benefit from your curious mind. The minute you find some piece of new information compelling, joy is present.
You'll likely move away from learning experiences where the facilitator shares conflicting methodologies. You'll certainly inquire about why that is but if it doesn't ultimately add up to a congruous premise, you'll likely seek another to study with.
As a way to further your evolution...
You might consider going experiential. Dance, sing, paint, emotional psychodrama, these are all "out-of-the-intellect" methods for experiencing the Self. Choose programs that move your whole Self, have you create, or commune with parts of yourself that are not driven by the intellect. Emotion, shamanism, art-based programs, nature explorations … these are all wonderful ways to help you go to the next level.
What you want if you are to work on your Growing Edge is to return to the places that previously caused you to feel insecure or unsettled from your younger life experience. These moments of your early life when you experienced upset, disappointment or confusion could greatly benefit from you connecting more deeply with more than the "understanding" you have since gathered.
Your strong intellect and pursuit of learning has likely put all of that into a logical and organized context. Your Growing Edge would have to do with disrupting that which you've concluded about you and your life. Learning would broaden if you allow your mind to just receive information without vetting the who it came from and where they got their data. Trying things on just for the sake of feeling them is a great exercise for someone like you.