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Who Do You Want To Be This Year?

Who Do You Want To Be This Year?

A quick review of all the books, audio products and seminars available on the market today for personal development products, and it’s easy to think that the science of personal development is a relatively new phenomenon.

In fact though, personal development, or self help in its modern form originated in America over 150 years ago. A major difference, however, is that whilst today’s self improvement programmes are primarily concerned with setting and achieving goals, the earlier writings were based on the formation of character.

The belief was that a prerequisite for personal success was a sound basic character.

Amazingly the same beliefs and philosophy can be traced back almost 300 years to the writings of the young Benjamin Franklin. Whilst well known for his political influence in the 18th Century, what is not so well known is that Franklin, aged just 20 at the time, developed his system for the development of what he called “moral perfection”.

Franklin came up with a set of thirteen virtues, which he practiced methodically. He wrote each of the virtues down in a book and practiced one of the virtues for a week, trying to perfect it. At the end of the week, he would evaluate his performance. At the end of thirteen weeks, he would start back on the first virtue again.

Now whilst 13 may seem a bit of a strange number to choose, in reality the number has both simplicity and elegance in it - since there are four cycles of 13 weeks in a full calendar year, each virtue is practiced exactly four times over the course of a year!

Centuries before it became fashionable, Benjamin Franklin somehow understood the importance of a holistic approach to the self, and to personal development.

So as you set your goals for 2008 and reflect upon your own personal development plan for the year, why not also consider the person you would ideally like to become…?

As well as considering what you would like to achieve, and all the things you would like to have and do, think also about the characteristics that your ideal self would have and incorporate these into your self development plan as well… to quote Einstein:

Guy Insull, Founder
“Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.”

For support and encouragement in every area of your personal development during 2008, please continue to visit us often at Champions Club.

Kind Regards,

Guy Insull,
Founder,
Champions Club

© Champions Club, 2008. The Global Success Community, with Guy Insull.