“You are what you think about,” said Earl Nightengale. If that’s true, then we can change our lives by changing our thinking. According to John C. Maxwell in “Thinking For a Change,” this is how it works:

•  When you change your thinking, you change your beliefs.
•  When you change your beliefs, you change your expectations.
•  When you change your expectations, you change your attitude.
•  When you change your attitude, you change your behavior.
•  When you change your behavior, you change your performance.
•  When you change your performance, you change your life.

Maxwell says, “If you want to improve an area of your life, don’t start by trying to change your actions. Start by changing your mind.”

I agree.

How do we change our thinking? Through personal development.

On a conceptual level, personal development is everything we do to improve ourselves–our thoughts, our attitudes, our habits, our knowledge, and our skills. It affects everything–who we are, what we accomplish, how much we earn, our health, our entire quality of life. It is based on the so-called “Law of Attraction” which says, “like attracts like,” the idea being that we get what we ARE (as defined by our thoughts), not necessarily what we WANT.

Why is it that “the rich get richer” and some people are “always lucky”? The Law of Attraction.

Why is it that “negative” people always have negative things happening to them? The Law of Attraction.

According to the Law of Attraction, if you want a more prosperous life, you need to first become a more prosperous person (though your thoughts, habits, attitudes, etc.) and personal development is how you do it.

Ben Franklin was speaking about personal development when he said that if he had three hours to chop down a tree, he would spend two hours sharpening his ax. Jim Rohn said, “Success is not to be pursued, it is to be attracted by the person you become.” He also said, “To attract attractive people, you must be attractive. To attract powerful people, you must be powerful. To attract committed people, you must be committed. Instead of going to work on them, you go to work on yourself. If you become, you can attract.”

So, how do you “do” personal development? There are five mechanisms:

1. Learning: (What you read, listen to; training, seminars, etc.)
2. Activities: (Practice; real-world “trial and error”)
3. Modeling: (Associating with people who have the desired thoughts, habits, skills, etc.)
4. Mentoring/Coaching: (Contextual advice from others; structured accountability)
5. Teaching: (Teaching/coaching others, speaking, writing)

Personal development is a process, something you do for the rest of your life. I like to think of it as Continuing Personal Education.

Personal development takes commitment and it takes time, but you can start with as little as thirty minutes a day. (You may already be doing things that “count” towards your CPE credits.) Start by scheduling time each day for reading and/or listening. Check this blog for recommended books, web sites, CDs and audio downloads.

Be an active reader or listener. Think about what you are learning. Take notes. Write down questions. Apply what you learn to your activities. As you get better results from your activities, that feedback will influence future learning. Learned knowledge, followed by activity knowledge, followed by more learned knowledge. Over time, you develop better thoughts, and eventually, you attract a better life.