Alex Shalman . comPractical Personal Development

Hi everybody, Alec Gullon from www.agullon.wordpress.com here. Alex has kindly invited me to post a guest post on his blog and so today I’ll be sharing with you some of my own work and he’ll be taking a small break. If you like what you read, by all means visit my blog where you’ll find a lot more of my material just waiting to be read by an eager audience.

The Missing Half of Education

What is success? This is a question that has commonly been queried in Personal Growth circles, but to put it simply, success is a positive result derived from effective action. The more effective our action, the more positive results we gain, the more successful our experience of reality. If you’re exercising effectively, you’re getting a positive boost to your health, which most people would classify as a success. Of course, our definitions of success are relative to our own expectations, but most people would agree that a positive growth experience is a successful one.

What is the most important part of this sequence? Is it the actions, the results or the experience? Without a doubt it is actions. Without actions none of this occurs – the results and the experience follow naturally from our actions, and they cannot occur without them. In fact results and experience require no handling – once they have been set into motion, you don’t have to concern yourself with them – they just flow in an easily maintainable state. If you’re exercising regularly, then all you need to maintain is the action of exercising – the results and the positive experience just follow from your exercising.

Does knowledge acquire results? To a certain degree it does – greater knowledge creates more informed decision-making, which can make your actions more effective. However knowledge is not a trigger for results – it is a trigger for more effective results, but it does not create them. What creates them is your actions – the practical application of your knowledge. You might have a ton of knowledge, but until you find a way to turn that knowledge into a sequence of actions, results and experiences, it is just useless. It is sitting in your head, making no effective impact on your life.

Many people struggle to understand this, because society has made them believe something, from a very young age, that isn’t necessarily correct. We are told from a young age what it means to be successful – a grade A in our studies and a piece of paper with our qualifications on it. A list of A’s is a success; a list of F’s is a failure. That is the general belief that we are conditioned into by our parents, our friends, our teachers and our peers. But think about it; isn’t that completely fallacious. Where’s the grade A for running a marathon? Where’s the grade A for writing articles on a blog, for being a wonderful person, for getting married?

Education can fool us into believing that the sequence of events looks like this; knowledge, results, experience. That is completely and utterly false though; results are a direct result of action not knowledge. Knowledge informs action but does not create it. Knowledge may make for more effective actions, but in the long run it’s just the icing on the cake. More important is just to start committing to action; and learn along the way. Action provides you with the most important element of your Personal Growth:

Experience

Experience informs you. It makes you aware of your weaknesses, what works for you and what doesn’t. Break out of education and start developing positive action steps in your own life. I’m not saying you abandon the development of your intelligence. I’m saying you reclaim the action that you’re putting off and develop it in tandem with your knowledge. Knowledge, action, result, experience. Don’t try to skip the active part of your growth – you’ll just sell yourself short and in the long run, you’ll stunt your growth.

I hope you enjoyed the article and you’re welcome to visit the blog where I’ve got plenty of other posts for you to indulge yourself in. I’d like to thank Alex for offering me the chance to post on his blog and you guys, for being such an attentive audience