It was about 11:30 pm and the phone started ringing. It was Dmitry, who is usually a night owl, so I didn’t think it was weird or anything. He said he has been doing some thinking and he wanted to know how I’d been able to make a u-turn, “well, not a u-turn, but a drastic change” in my life for the better over the past couple of years.

Not that I was the worst before, but in his eyes I’ve grown to much higher levels of personal development and at an astounding rate. What was the moment at which I began this rapid rise? That’s what he wanted to know, and he was determined to stay on the phone until he found out. Luckily for us, I have been giving this much personal thought, so after just a few minutes it all became very clear.

Three Personal Development Principles

Accountability. Whether you are a potential employer, a friend of mine, or a curious bystander, when you google my name you get ‘AlexShalman.COM’ front and center. Everything I share with you guys automatically becomes public knowledge forever. When I let you know that I plan to do x, y, z – the world knows I am planning to stick to x, y, z, which makes it part of my identity and a bit hard to deviate from the plan.

This means that if I say something stupid when I’m hanging out with my friends, they do not hesitate to call me out on it. Several mornings ago, I was up at 4am writing a 20 page paper on ischemia-reperfusion injury (cardiology stuff), and I saw Nate Whitehill ^[1] online. I messaged him to say ‘Uhhh I’m so tired I’ve been up writing for like 36 hours’. His response? ‘Wow, that is the first time I have heard you complain’.

That’s the way the story goes in many areas of my life. People now hold me to the higher standard that I have created for myself. They leave me no room to slack because in many ways, they are enrolled into upholding that personal development identity as well. Just think of how useful that is in order to maintain my goals! It’s as if at all times of my life I am a public figure ^[2]. As you can imagine, this totally sucks if I ever want to complain… just kidding!

Constant and Never Ending Improvement. This would have to be the most fundamental rule to personal development and to success. Every single day I try to get better at something, improve upon something, or create a better paradigm for life. This consistent improvement is what fuels my fire to push forward and do personal development as a lifestyle. It gives me daily goals that make me feel absolutely exhilarated when I accomplish them.

Whether I crafted a fantastic meal by following a new recipe, learned to have a firmer handshake, read a life changing book, spent quality time with a friend, cleaned off my work area, wrote an article here to share something great with you, or sat down and made plans for our future personal development club, I feel like I’ve made progress.

Small gains in the things I deemed important, consistently, and over a long period of time, creates life altering personal development. It could be big, but it doesn’t have to be. A body builder doesn’t lift weights 10,000 times in one day to get huge, they do it a few times daily over the span of years. A farmer does not plant all the seeds in one day, they do it over a season and let the consistent labor lead to the cultivation of fruit. Small steps equal big results in personal development.

Operating With Heart. If you’ve recently looked at the about page ^[3], you would have noticed that my mission statement is included at the bottom. In this mission statement it reads “The possibility that I have created for myself and my life is the possibility of being someone who operates with the greatest good of all in mind”. Really living up to that statement changes absolutely everything about the way I think.

By not being the kind of person that would litter, get belligerent, or be a hypocrite, I am operating with heart. This follows one fundamental law that I believe in, which states: “If one person wishes to change the world, he must be the change and let the change lead by example”. I can’t stop immersing myself in personal development because I care about the fact that you will come to the website and want to read more, so I must have more available for you!

So by being accountable, having constant and never ending improvement, and operating with heart, I have been able to drastically improve the quality of my mind, my health, my life, my relationships with people and have created a new world of possibilities from which anything is possible for myself and my life. You have this very same power – just be the kind of person that does the necessary things to achieve your goals.

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