Category: Foundations

Foundations gives you a run-down of what personal development is, while providing insights on the best practices, techniques, and methods to incorporate new teachings into your life. By exploring the articles in this section, you’ll have a strong base to make the process of personal development more efficient, and have an in-depth understanding of the core elements which makes it so important.

The Four Bodies: A Holistic Approach to Wellness And Healing
What if our society generally bas a backward idea of wellness, which is why many people have many problems? When did being healthy become such a task? One that has become more vague than ever. Have you ever wondered if there’s a better approach to health and wellbeing, one that makes sense?

Well, there is, and what you’re going to learn in this article will change the way you look at wellness in general.

Because we don’t just have a single body, we have four of them. Even though they’re all interconnected under the human umbrella, they serve as separate functioning dimensions of your life experience.

The four-bodies approach refers to the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of your being. This is a more holistic view of well-being which suggests that you are an ecosystem that thrives when you’re balanced across all dimensions of experience.

Each body serves a different purpose and is responsible for a different dimension of your life experience. To live your best life, you need to find balance with your four bodies.

Let’s look more into each of these bodies, and how you can find equilibrium among them.

The holistic approach to wellness

Western healthcare has always been a solution-oriented approach.

You have a symptom, you treat it. For the most part, this fix-it approach has gotten the job done, but there is clearly more to wellness than what meets the eye.

The truth is that we’re only looking at a fraction of wellness, and trying to slot the whole thing within a specific category. But this isn’t how you become healthy. To get a full grasp on wellness as a whole, you need to understand how different parts of you all factor in to create a whole.

Look at wellness as a balanced ecosystem. Nothing that happens to you is an isolated occurrence. Each body is thoroughly interconnected with the others, and they all influence one another to some degree.

Just trying to fix a single body doesn’t cut it anymore. If you just look at your emotional issues but neglect the spiritual side, these issues will just keep coming back up. If you only try to fix your exterior (being your life situation), let’s just say there’s a reason why the exterior isn’t looking so shiny.

As with the approach of personal ecosystems, the four-bodies approach is a holistic way to look at wellness as a whole. Because you’re not just your body, your mind, or your emotions. You’re a conglomerate of different territories which all have their own identities.
Physical body: The realm of form

The physical self

Your physical health

External reality

Your physical body represents the external dimension of your life experience. This refers to your body itself, your physiology, your physical health, and your sensory relationship with the world around you.

Look at your physical body as a vessel for consciousness, it’s like the container of your life experience. It’s through this vessel that you interact with your surroundings, and in turn, these interactions influence your experiences. Your commute will be very different if you’re driving a beautiful, polished Lamborghini compared to an old decrepit lemon.

Whether it’s your physique, or your muscle, skeletal, blood, or organ health, your physical body is a reflection of your other bodies. Our society emphasizes physical health via exercise, eating healthy, and self-care, but tends to overprioritize your physical health concerning the other bodies. Regardless, it’s important to have a healthy body and relationship with the physical world to be a fully functional, and thriving person.

Arguably, your physical health is the easiest to take care of, as there’s a direct cause-and-effect relationship. Signs of poor physical health are generally visible, and you can feel a tangible difference from a body in decay, to a body in optimal health.
Polarity: Yang (Masculine)

The physical body is considered a masculine constituent of your wellness. This is because it’s systemic, where there is a clear cause and effect relationship. Your body operates in a way that is calculated, logical, and routine, and this is the best way to take care of it.

Element: Earth (Grounding)

The physical body is associated with the Earth element due to it’s physical nature. As the physical body must be grounded within reality to flourish (that is to give it the correct nutrients and expose it to the right conditions for it to thrive), there is an innate connection with mother Earth which provides for it, and what it’s energetically connected to. Keeping your intake as pure as possible and direct from the source is a good approach to manage your physical body.
Poor health of the physical body

Your physical body being in a poor state is like the vehicle of your consciousness breaking down. There will be physical issues that prevent you from being at full vitality and capability. When there’s an issue with your physical body, it will manifest as a malfunction in some form. This is most commonly seen as illness, disease, or abnormalities.

Here are some signs of your physical body being in poor health:

General lethargy and lack of vitality

Discomfort or pain in your body

Skin conditions, rashes, and abnormalities

High susceptibility to illness and disease

Rapid ageing and signs of wear

Dysfunctions with organs

Deterioration of brain health

Obesity or malnourishment

You become more prone to injuries

Your recovery process becomes less effective

Low stamina

Weakness and a brittle body

Optimal health of the physical body

When your physical body is at its optimal health, you feel robust. All parts of your body are functioning as they should. You feel clean, healthy, and energized. Your vehicle is thriving because you’re giving it the treatment it needs.

Here are some signs of your physical body being in good health.

High vitality and energy levels

Physical strength and stamina

You’re free from bodily pain or dysfunctions

You are healthy and free from illness

Everything is functioning at high performance

Good organ health

You are fit and capable

Your bone health is good

High stamina

Strong sexual health and function

You have a quick recovery to injuries and sickness
Restoring the Physical body to optimal health

To restore your physical body to optimal health (and to maintain it), you need to incorporate practices into your daily routine that enhance your physical health. Having a healthy physical body is an endurance game. You can’t expect to be operating at your best when you have a lifestyle that doesn’t accommodate it.

This means that you need to adjust your lifestyle in a way that nourishes your physical health. First and foremost, you need to practice self-care by getting exercise, eating healthy, and taking care of your body. If you’re treating your body poorly by sleeping little, getting no exercise, and eating lots of junk, of course, your body is going to reflect the treatment you’re giving it. If you drink a lot of alcohol or smoke, this going to be harmful to it too.

Therefore, try to reduce how much junk food, sugar, and anything that you consume which is harmful to your body. Make sure it has all the vitamins and minerals it needs. Get plenty of sun and fresh air, and give your body some love and care like a massage now and then. Groom it, stop biting your nails, take care of your hair. Your body will respond to the love it is given, so if you give it a lot of love by nourishing it, it will reward you with vitality and performance.

After all, balance is key. You don’t need to be extremely strict like some people are, but you do need to actively take care of your physical body and incorporate those practices into your daily routine.
The Mental Body: The realm of mind

The mind

Mental health

The internal reality

The mental body refers to the realm of the mind. This body involves intellectual properties of yourself including your thoughts, belief systems, and perceptions of oneself and reality.

Look at the mental body as the toolset required to navigate reality. This is how you organize yourself, plan, and of course, survive. Your mental body has a big influence over your well-being as the way you think leads to your actions, attitudes, and decisions.

Your belief systems create the foundation for how you choose to live your life. Your knowledge and intelligence determine how you go about certain things in life, how you process information, and what the results of those processes are.

Being in the realm of mind, your mental body also encompasses things like your identity, personality, traits, and characteristics. It’s all the little pieces that make you who you currently are, and all those little pieces are malleable.

The mental body is also responsible for how you interpret situations, and how you view yourself too. If you have a poor image of yourself where you battle with limiting belief systems such as self-doubt, or you foster ways of looking at life that don’t serve your happiness, this advertently affects your well-being and sense of happiness.
Polarity: Yang (Masculine)

The mental body is masculine in nature. As your mind is responsible for navigating yourself within reality, thinking, planning, acting, behaving and doing, it’s a driving part of yourself which has an outward energy: to structure. This is due to the analytical, structured, logical, and rational nature of the mind, which is very well attuned to masculine energy.

Element: Fire (Drive)

The mental body corresponds with the element of fire. As fire represents movement, drive and power, the mental body is responsible for driving your life and creating it into something useful. It’s the sense of reason and doing. It’s the part of you that organizes your life, and lays the road that your body drives on.
Poor health of the mental body

When the mental body is in poor health, it creates problems with your mental domain. On the more mild side, this can create issues such as mental cloudiness, poor judgment, inefficient thinking, and limiting belief systems.

These problems affect your well-being by causing a lack of efficiency, clarity, or organization in your life.

On the more severe side, a dysfunctional mental body can lead to problems such as personality disorders and mental illness. People who have severe issues with their mental bodies may develop behavioral patterns such as narcissism, OCD, or paranoia. You may be egocentric and have a warped sense of self, or a distorted position of authority, importance, or power.

As your mental body also affects your social life, a poor mental body can lead to excessive shyness and insecurity caused by beliefs of unworthiness.

Here are some signs of your mental body in poor health:

Clouded mind and inability to think straight

Incessant thinking and overwhelm

Excessive stress, worry, or anxiety

Identity disorders such as bulimia

Insecurities and issues with oneself

Personality disorders and neurosis

You have harmful or limiting belief systems

You have undesirable personality traits and characteristics

Mental illness in its various forms

Poor work ethic, or inefficiency with work

Forgetfulness and short memory span

Optimal health of the mental body

A healthy mental body means that your thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions serve you, and help you achieve your full potential in life. Having a healthy mental body is a big step in wellness, as your beliefs form the reality that you are living.

When it’s functioning at its best, the mental body facilitates the ability to solve problems efficiently. It provides reason and allows you to act from a place of composure and understanding without bias or discrimination. It also facilitates effective communication, concise thinking, and the ability to comprehend a broader scope of information and ideas.

Having a healthy mental body also means that you generally have a good relationship with people. You don’t foster the limiting belief systems that cause insecurities, but rather healthy belief systems that promote confidence, charisma, positive traits and characteristics that help you navigate the world of people.

Here are some signs of your mental body in optimal health:

You feel focused and clear headed

You are proactive at problem solving

Strong comprehension and understanding of ideas

You’re efficient at planning and organizing

Desirable personality traits such as assertion

Confidence and self esteem

Your perceptions of oneself and reality serve your growth

Effective and healthy communication

Strong work ethic and efficiency working

You’re rational about what needs to be done

Good short term and long term memory
Restoring the mental body to optimal health

To restore your mental body to optimal health, you need to work on your mindsets and belief systems. Luckily, everything that forms the way you think and behave is malleable as it’s a property of the mind, meaning that with some work, you can completely change how you identify with the world, and create mental systems that drive your growth and potential.

Restoring your mental body starts by reinforcing better ways of looking at yourself and your reality. You want to cultivate thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions that benefit you and other people. Start by identifying the different mental systems that aren’t serving your happiness, and identify better systems and beliefs that do. Continuously reinforce those beliefs and make a conscious effort to change the way you think.

Stretch your mind by pushing yourself to think in different ways. Have interesting conversations with people, and observe different behavioral traits people have that are helpful. Utilize the full capabilities of your mind by learning, studying, and researching. Most importantly, strive to create change in your life by creating a stronger foundation to plan, organize, think, and perceive.

You also need to identify the negative reoccurring patterns in your life and make a conscious effort to prevent yourself from slipping into them. For example, if you identify a pattern where you shy away from intimacy, or perhaps get triggered in certain situations, be aware of it and take healthier steps to work on those perceptions.
The Emotional Body: The realm of feeling

Your emotions

Emotional health

Feeling

The emotional body refers to the realm of emotion. When it comes to your emotional body, your state of wellness is identified by how you feel.

If you carry a lot of emotional pain in the form of trauma, resentment, guilt, and anger, you feel terrible. When you feel terrible, it impacts your equanimity, sense of contentment, enthusiasm, motivation, and morale.

Look at your emotional body as your internal compass. It tells you what feels good and what feels bad. When you follow this compass, it leads you in a direction that facilitates healing, growth, and happiness. If you ignore this compass, it leads you astray, where you’ll battle emotional pain, emotional baggage, and undesirable feelings.

How you react to, and feel about different situations in your life is also tied to the emotional body. Whether you feel like life is generally unfair, or whether you have a lot of regret about things that happened in your past are signs that your emotional body is out of balance.

Experiencing emotional pain is a part of life. This is how we learn and grow as people. If a friend turns their back on you, you’re going to feel betrayed. But if you’re swimming in it where you constantly feel like crap, then there is something that needs to be healed within your emotional body.
Polarity: Yin (Feminine)

The emotional body is feminine in nature as it is deeply connected with feminine values and characteristics. feeling, intuition, and connection with self are all elements of the divine feminine. This means that the emotional body is at its best when you navigate it with feminine principals such as empathy, nonresistance, and feeling.

Element: Water (Flow)

The emotional body is represented by the water element. As water is about flow, creativity and expression, emotions are synonymous. Your emotional body is functioning at its best when it flows without resistance, that is to experience all the emotions and sensations without creating a forcing current, or preventing the expression of self.
Emotional body in poor health

When the emotional body is in poor health, it translates to a lack of joy in your life. It means that you are not healed, and this has a huge impact on your well-being, and ability to live your best life.

You’re likely to experience reoccurring painful emotions in the form of resentment, guilt, shame, hatred, and so forth. These stagnant emotions are often the residue of old traumas that have not successfully been healed. This emotional pain can lead to self-destructive behavior, self-harm, and self-sabotage because you have a mound of trauma getting in the way of your sense of inner peace.

When your emotional body is unhealthy, you may find that you have lots of triggers. You may lash out at people or find that you have disproportionate reactions to certain situations. Certain things may cause you to feel painful emotions, and those painful emotions tend to linger around for a long time. You likely also have poor ways of managing your emotions which lead to projection, blame, and escapism.

If your emotional body is unhealthy, you may have a disintegrated sense of self. That means you’re wearing a mask and you’re not authentic to who you are (or what you’re feeling). You also struggle to express yourself freely.

Here are some signs that your emotional body is in poor health:

Unresolved trauma and deep rooted emotional issues

A lack of emotional intelligence

Lack of empathy and understanding

Inability to feel love and gratitude

Emotional blockages such as the inability to get into your heart space

Emotional instability and dramatic mood swings

Emotional pain in the form of reoccurring resentment, anger, guilt etc.

Depression and feelings of hopelessness

Inability to fully express yourself

You express yourself in an unhealthy way

You have ineffective coping mechanisms

Emotional body in optimal health

If your emotional body is in optimal health, you feel good internally. This means that your expression of self is joyful, where you mostly feel positive emotions such as gratitude, compassion, and hope. You have good emotional intelligence and know how to manage your emotional body for clarity, healing, and learning.

Being emotionally healthy means that you are generally healed. You don’t carry around pain from the past, and you embrace tomorrow with a clean slate. Having a healthy emotional body means that your emotions are in balance and that you’re centered within yourself. Situations may cause you to feel pain, but you will quickly heal from that pain.

By having a healthy emotional body you are centered within your heart space. This means that you listen to your heart and the energies that come from the heart. You tap into the higher self instead of wasting your time away with the egoic self.

Here are some signs that your emotional body is healthy:

You have emotional intelligence

You are generally healed

Feeling at peace and calmness

You express yourself fully

Emotional stability

Honesty and transparency

You are transparent and honest

You are in alignment with your heart space

Inner equanimity
How to restore the emotional body

Restoring your emotional body simmers down to healing. This means that you need to work on clearing trauma and any feelings that no longer serve you. The best way to heal your emotional body is by listening to it. Sit with your emotions and feel into them rather than pushing them away or deferring them. Make a habit of being in alignment with your emotions, and your emotional body will recover.

Work on your emotional intelligence and make sure that you listen to your body’s signals. Do the inner work by constantly working on yourself to become a better, happier, and healthier person. Learn how to embody behaviors and attitudes that make you feel better about yourself, and facilitate a happier life experience.

Shadow work is an important component of emotional health and balance. This is the process of integrating the abandoned parts of yourself which is required for proper integration and healing.
Spiritual body: The realm of consciousness

The soul

The astral realm

The spiritual dimension

The spiritual body refers to the realm of the spirit. This body is often interpreted as the soul or spirit, and it’s the energetic body that connects you with higher planes of existence.

Your spiritual body can be seen as the driver of your vehicle. This is your consciousness, not the body, not the mind, and not your emotions. It’s the spiritual constituent of your being that is connected to the deepest levels of reality. In essence, your spiritual body is the true you beyond all the layers of self that exist within this realm of experience.

Your spiritual body is your sense of meaning in this world. You can create, to manifest, your drive, and a deeper meaning in your life that exceeds the physical body, the mental body, or the emotional body. The spiritual body is your anchor to something deeper inside yourself that connects you to all consciousness.

In today’s world, most people’s spiritual bodies are in poor health because modern society generally doesn’t acknowledge the existence of the spiritual body. This is responsible for the general lack of a higher meaning to our social structure, however, it is making a resurgence.
Polarity: Yin (Feminine)

Your spiritual body, and spirituality in general is feminine as the pursuit for meaning is a subjective, organic process without structure or rules. Spirituality is something that must be cultivated via nontangible means such as intuition, nonresistance and feeling, which is why it’s feminine in nature.

Element: Wind (Wisdom)

The spiritual body is associated with the element of wind. As wind is the element of the elders which represents wisdom, your connection to spirituality orbits a deeper wisdom within you that exceeds the realm of form.
Spiritual body in poor health

Your spiritual body in poor health means that you’re disconnected from it and that you’re disconnected from the source of creation (or god). Being disconnected from the source causes a state of unconsciousness in a lack of a deeper awareness of self. When it comes to wellness, the spiritual body is the spark in you. It is the very reason to not just live, but thrive, change the world, and help others out.

Having an unhealthy spiritual body is like living as a husk with no meaning. You just grind through life with superficial desires, but there is no substance. There is no reason. You may find yourself getting exhausted, or that something is missing in your life, but you’re not sure what. You may feel empty inside, despite how much you try to fill that hole.

When people are disconnected from their spiritual bodies, they tend to become increasingly materialistic. Their values become warped. Disconnecting from your spiritual body results in a contraction of consciousness. This means that your scope of awareness reduces, and brings you into a state of spiritual unconsciousness.

Here are some signs that you are not connected to your spiritual body:

Lack of self awareness

General unconsciousness

You are governed by your programs

No spiritual or existential beliefs

You lack a sense of meaning in life

You have an exacerbated fear of death or mortality

Life seems sense, contracted, and simple

Spiritual body in optimal health

Spirituality nourishes you. When you are connected to your spiritual body, you have a more complete sense of wellness as it fills a hole inside you that can’t be filled any other way. You are at service, and feel the most fulfilled being at service.

Spirituality is your cord into other dimensions of experience. When this connection is strong, you tap into your soul nature more. This means that you start having more spiritual experiences and insights, and can get deeper into your spiritual practices. A very strong spiritual body may facilitate the development of psychic abilities or spiritual gifts.

When you are connected to your spiritual body, you have a higher awareness about life and oneself. You recognize that you are not your body, and a deeper connection with spirit allows you to embody the higher self rather than the egoic self.

A strong spiritual body creates space for better ways of looking at reality and your place in it. It provides better philosophies to live by, which make you feel fulfilled, happy, and at peace with your reality.

Here are some signs that you are connected to your spiritual body:

You have a deeper sense of awareness

You see beyond your conditioning

You have a connection to the higher self

You have a higher perspective of life

You feel connected with all things

You live by values

You live with morality

You regularly have deep insights and revelations

You have a sense of meaning

It facilitates self actualization and growth

Life seems limitless, expansive, and incomprehensible
How to restore the spiritual body

To restore your spiritual body you need to nourish it. This creates a stronger connection between your physical body, and the soul inhabiting it. It’s important to understand that you are more than your body. You are an infinite consciousness that is connected to all things in this universe and beyond. When you have that seed of curiosity about what you really are and life after death, make sure you water that seed and encourage it to grow!

Walk your own path of discovery to try and find a deeper sense of meaning within your life. Life is an individual journey and if you do the same things without exploring your reality, you’re not going to be fulfilled. Pursue a journey of personal and spiritual growth, and see what dimensions of your life experience unfold.

Pursue spiritual wisdom and practice spirituality. Everyone resonates with different spiritual practices whether it’s meditation, yoga, fasting, prayer, worship, or whatever makes you feel connected to a deeper part of yourself. I encourage you to explore different cultural modalities, and ancestral wisdom, and strive for understanding.
1 November 2023
Personal Ecosystems: A Better Approach to Personal Development
The concept of personal ecosystems is a holistic approach to personal development, and is based on the notion that no part of your life is an island.

Everything about you is thoroughly intertwined, and this is why it’s important to view personal development as an interconnected web of experiences, rather than isolated skill sets that only serve a single function.

Conventional methods of personal development compartmentalize our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. You might not think there’s a relationship between your social skills and your mental health, or perhaps your confidence and perception of life, but these seemingly separate aspects of your life experience are interdependent.

Every trait, characteristic, mindset, skill, and ability that you have is reliant on other parts of you, and this is what the personal ecosystem approach to personal development is about: Looking at the whole, not the isolated aspects.

Everything that you experience is connected in some way, as your life experience is the collective of everything you’ve learned. Every aspect of yourself spills into other areas of your life experience, meaning that if you want to improve a skill, you’ll need to improve other areas that support that skill.

Confusing? Well, let’s look at the approach of personal ecosystems to explore this phenomenon, and why taking this approach is going to completely change your relationships with personal development.
What is a personal ecosystem?

Imagine yourself as an ecosystem. Every element of who you are works together to create a functional whole. Just as a healthy ecosystem requires a delicate balance of organisms and environmental factors, your personal ecosystem thrives when you cultivate a harmonious equilibrium among all dimensions of your life experience.

If your social skills are lacking, it’s going to make many areas of your life more difficult. This lack of skills will also affect your work life, your dating life, your access to opportunities, and perhaps your confidence or self-esteem.

Likewise, if you have some pretty deep trauma, it’s going to affect more than just your mental health. It’s also going to impact things like your social life and work life.

Your growth is not limited to the enhancement of specific skills.

While skill development is necessary, it’s just one piece of the personal development puzzle. Your relationships, emotional intelligence, habits, self-awareness, and even the environments you spend your time in collectively contribute to your overall well-being.

This is how you should perceive your journey of personal growth, that your well-being is an ecosystem that is healthy, unhealthy, or anywhere in between.

Understanding personal ecosystems: There’s always a root cause

When you’re trying to develop any particular area of your life, you’ll discover deeper layers that need to be worked on. When you start digging into those deeper layers, even more layers are discovered.

Ever find yourself in this situation? You just want a simple fix for one issue, then suddenly there are ten different things that you need to work on.

So let’s say you want to improve your social skills because you struggle to make fulfilling connections with people. You realize that it’s not just a single skill set that you need to work on, so you break it down into some key skill sets. Some of the things you need to work on involve:

Improving your communication skills

Making stronger first impressions

Improving your confidence

Becoming more self-assertive

Just by trying to improve one skill set, you realize that it branches into many different skill sets. Now you think ‘Okay, I’m going to start by building my confidence‘, so you start learning how to do that, and this one characteristic branches into many other areas that need to be worked on. Some of these areas include:

Be more outgoing

Stop seeking approval

Desensitize from the fear of rejection

Heal your abandonment wound

Suddenly, there’s a deeper layer of things that you need to work on just to improve your confidence. When you look into one of those improvements, it just leads you further down the rabbit hole.

What this tells you is that every element of self-improvement has a prerequisite. Every prerequisite has other prerequisites. Everything is connected in a web, meaning that if you develop one area of your life, you’re vicariously working on others too.

Therefore, instead of viewing personal development as working on individual aspects of yourself, don’t solely focus on learning what’s directly associated with that area of improvement.

Instead, work on everything bit by bit, and don’t neglect any areas of your life experience. Cast a broader net, and you’ll find that it’s a more efficient approach.

As you learn more valuable information regarding personal development, start applying it to your life immediately, regardless of whether it’s related to what you want to improve, or not. Take the wholesome approach to personal development, and you’re going to create a thriving, sustainable personal ecosystem.
Interconnected areas of your personal ecosystem

The four major areas of your well-being are the physical body, the mental body, the emotional body, and the spiritual body. Everything that we experience ties into these four bodies. To live a life at your optimal ability where you can achieve an amazing quality of life, it’s important not to neglect any one of these bodies.

Here we’ll have a look at what they are. To learn more about these corners of your well-being, read the article below:

The Four Bodies: Understanding the Holistic Approach to Wellness
The physical body

Your physical health is a core component of your life experience. If you are in poor health, you’re not going to have the energy or motivation to improve other areas of your life. The state of your body is also a reflection (and manifestation) of the deeper workings of your mind and spirit. They are generally congruent.

When you’re feeling at your best physically, you have a much better platform to improve the other aspects of yourself. You’re going to feel more confident in yourself, have more self-love, and generally value yourself more as you’re not treating your body like trash.

Nutrition, exercise, sleep, and self-care are integral elements that fuel your energy, vitality, and resilience. So make sure that you’re looking after yourself. Some elements of the physical body include:

Level of fitness

Physical strength and endurance

Vitality and energy levels

Strength of the immune system

Physique and appearance

Balanced brain chemistry

Occurrence of dysfunctions

The mental body

Your mental body refers to the realm of mind. When people think of personal development as a whole, they’re usually referring to the mental aspect of it, as the mind is responsible for mindsets, mentalities, and outlooks.

The mind is a powerful tool to organize your reality, and it has a huge influence on your life experience. With an unhealthy mind, your life becomes a mess in so many ways. With a robust mind, you set the stage for an amazing life experience to occur.

The mental body is thoroughly connected to aspects of your life experience such as your belief systems, perceptions, the way you think, attitudes, and behaviors. Aspects of yourself such as your intelligence, resourcefulness, and cognitive clarity constitute the realm of mind. Nurturing a positive mindset, managing stress, and fostering a growth-oriented outlook all contribute to a resilient mental ecosystem. Some aspects of the mind involve:

Mindsets and outlooks

Perceptions and mentalities

Intelligence

Resourcefulness

Efficiency

Ambition

Work ethic

Knowledge

The emotional body

The emotional body is responsible for your emotional health, and your emotional health has a deep impact on every other area of your life.

As the health of your physical and mental bodies are heavily dependent on your emotional body, when you heal yourself and experience more high-vibrational emotions such as gratitude and joy, problems with your other bodies will be resolved too.

What the emotional body comes down to is healing. Everyone’s emotional body is wounded to some degree, whether you’re aware of these wounds or not. When you have trauma that was created through painful events in your life, it’s all stored in the emotional body.

We tend to carry a lot of dysfunction in our lives which are tied to this dimension of experience, as many things are a manifestation of trauma. This trauma can result in depression, anxiety, shame, guilt, loneliness, and feelings of hopelessness. The trauma stored in this body can make the experience of life extremely unpleasant. Below are some aspects of the emotional body.

The amount of trauma you carry

Whether you’re emotionally balanced

Emotional stability

How much joy you experience

How much pain you experience

How grateful you are for your life

Self-doubt and self-worth

The spiritual body

The spiritual body is the deepest layer of your well-being. In a way, everything manifests from the spiritual body.

This body represents the soul, which is your connection to other dimensions of reality. The spiritual body is responsible for the expansion of your consciousness, and for lack of a better word, how broad your life experience is.

When you embark on a journey of spiritual growth, your entire life experience begins to transform. This transformation has a profound impact on your emotional health, mental health, and even physical health. When your spiritual body is neglected, you are unaware.

You live life in your inbuilt programs. Below are some elements of your life experience that are related to the spiritual body

Sense of fulfillment

Sense of purpose

Ability to manifest

Presence

Vibration

Ability to tap into spiritual gifts

Expansion of your consciousness
Strengthening your personal ecosystem

View personal development as if you’re adding pieces to the puzzle of consciousness. When you complete the picture, that’s when you begin achieving your potential in life and making it into something that you’re proud of.

But how are you going to figure out where a single piece goes if you haven’t added many others? You need that context, that support, that perspective. When you use the personal ecosystems approach, you see your health, your relationships, and your job – they’re all pieces of the same puzzle.

It’s like taking care of a garden – when you water the plants, they all grow, and the whole garden becomes beautiful to create a whole. The garden wouldn’t have the same effect if you only took care of a few plants and let the others die. It wouldn’t be much of a garden at all.

Nurture your relationships

Having people in your life who care about you is important for your personal ecosystem, because social influence is powerful. This is why you should be careful who you give your energy to, because your social relationships are a big part of your personal ecosystem.

Whether it’s your romantic relationships, your friends, family, or the workplace, make sure you spend your time around people who are a good influence on you. Having good-quality social circles is like adding sunlight to your personal ecosystem. Everyone in your life should be pushing one another up, and mutually benefiting one another in a harmonious connection where everyone prospers.

When you’re in a toxic relationship with someone, whether it’s a relationship that doesn’t serve your growth, friends that make you feel small, or you’re in a work environment with miserable people who constantly bring down the energy, these kinds of connections are blocking out the sun from your personal ecosystem.

Talking nicely and listening is part of good communication. When we have good relationships, we feel happy. Just like plants need sun, our relationships need attention too. By improving yourself, your social relationships thrive, meaning your personal ecosystem thrives.

Continuously learn and grow

Always strive to learn new things and develop yourself inside out.

If your ecosystem is your garden, the act of learning is like planting flowers, herbs, and vegetables. The personal ecosystem becomes more efficient, effective, and overall a more beautiful place to live. It becomes more sustainable as knowledge unlocks new areas of your life experience.

When you are curious, you learn interesting new things which can be used to improve your life. You don’t just wait for teachers – you actively seek them out. Research things, talk to people,

Knowledge is everywhere, like when we read, watch, or try new things. Learning new skills, like painting or cooking, is fun and helps you grow. It’s like adding colorful flowers to our ecosystem. So, by being curious and trying new things, we make our personal ecosystem a place full of amazing learning adventures.
29 August 2023
Why Personal Development Will Change Your Life
Personal development is the bridge to a better life.

Without a doubt, my life would have taken a drastically different course if I hadn’t embraced the idea that I could change via continuous learning and practice. That’s how personal development must be viewed – that you are a work in progress with infinite potential.

After many years on this journey, something has become abundantly clear.

We all start as blank slates, and the quality of your life depends on how you build this slate. We are constantly building ourselves via life experience, exposure, influences, passive learning, active learning, practice, and repetition.

What your life has eventuated into isn’t mere happenstance. It’s a reflection of the person you’ve crafted yourself to be, and the deliberate actions you’ve taken along the way. So let’s look at how it can take your life to a whole new level when treated with respect and grace.

What exactly is personal development?

In a nutshell, personal development means continuously working on yourself to achieve a higher quality of life. It’s a lifelong journey of continuously improving your skills, abilities, traits, and characteristics, to ultimately become the best version of yourself.

There is no modus operandi when it comes to personal development, as it involves every aspect of your life experience – from developing your social skills to improving your financial situation.

However, the core incentive is the same: ‘What do I need to do to become the person who is capable of achieving my goals’. Because at the end of the day, personal development is a quest for self-expansion, to become the best version of ourselves we can be.

The foundation of personal development is the notion that everything about you can be improved. No aspect of yourself is consolidated, which creates space for a complete transformation of self.

That’s the beautiful thing about it. You realize that your mind is elastic, and you can reshape it however you desire. We all have unlimited potential, as long as we actualize ourselves, and work diligently towards our highest personal timelines.

Embarking on the personal development journey

In some ways I was very fortunate growing up. I always had food on the table and I had a loving family. But in other ways, I wasn’t.

For the most part, I just couldn’t understand what was happening. I saw other kids generally getting on with their happy lives, but to me, life itself seemed mind-numbingly complicated.

What’s wrong with me? I thought. Other kids were developing fundamental life skills, but I sat there sucking glue.

So I grew up thinking I was defective. This was the hand of cards I had been dealt, and I had to accept that I would never be normal: A concept that became my biggest fantasy.

Believing that I had something wrong with me led me into a depression for a few years. Fuelled by my desperation to change, I stumbled upon the shining beacon I was looking for – the realization that I could change.

I could learn social skills? I could train myself to become more intelligent? I could become more confident, funnier, and more charismatic? I could become someone I’m proud of, and create a better life for myself?

It all just clicked.

A whole new chapter had been opened, and I was excited to experience it. From that moment, I committed to personal development and never looked back.

Embracing the personal development journey

The pursuit of developing myself into the person I wanted to be led me down a rabbit hole. This journey became more philosophical as I set my sights on happiness and fulfillment – which led me to explore spirituality.

It took me many years of consistent practice to create big changes in my life. It was slow going for the first few years, but I pushed forward even when it felt hopeless.

Even today, many years after embarking on this journey, I still face challenges. New challenges replace the old ones, and each stage of your growth encompasses a different dimension of your life experience.

Here’s an example.

You may begin improving your dating skills if you believe a partner is an antidote to your misery. Once you’re competent in dating and have a partner, you might discover that there is still a hole, so you start searching for the keys to fulfillment.

While searching for fulfillment, you may discover that your childhood wounds may be the cause of your contempt. So this leads you to shadow work, which then leads you to spiritual doctrines, which then leads to your mindfulness, and so forth.

Therefore, don’t perceive personal development as a linear journey. Personal development is a labyrinth, it’s an ecosystem that needs to be revitalized, and all roads will lead you further into the depths of your consciousness, one way or another.

What I’ve come to realize is that there will always be challenges. There will always be more opportunities for growth and healing. Personal development is by no means a switch that needs to be flicked, rather it’s a seed that needs to be watered daily.
How can personal development change your life?

Personal development doesn’t pertain to any particular area of your development. However, it’s wise to pick your battles and decide which areas in your life need the most improvement.

To organize yourself, we’re going apply personal development to the four-bodies approach. The four bodies approach compartmentalizes our life experiences into 4 distinct areas which are:

Your physical body

Your emotional body

Your mental body

Your spiritual body

First off, which body do you feel isn’t performing at its best? Perhaps you’re out of shape, abusing a substance, or feeling physically unhealthy. In this case, it might be wise to prioritize working on your physical body, and restoring it to a healthy state.

Perhaps you take care of your body, but your mind is the issue. Maybe your beliefs aren’t serving you, or your outlook on life/oneself needs improvement. In this case, what can you do to begin making the cognitive changes that you want?

On the other hand, maybe your emotional body needs the most work. You may have a lot of trauma that needs to be healed, You may feel generally anxious, depressed, or overwhelmed. If your emotions are out of balance, focus on your emotional body.

It’s important to look into each area of your life to assess where you need the most work, and where you should put your focus. As you begin to explore opportunities for improvement, you will naturally branch into other areas of your life experience too as they’re all interconnected.

However, this allows for a more organic process, and take it from there.
Personal development goals

Now that we’ve looked at some different areas where personal development can improve your life, let’s look at more specific paths you can take to achieve your goals.

Start by brainstorming some reasons why you want to improve any particular area of your life, what it entails, and how you can do it.

Here are some examples:
Develop your social skills

Why:

To have a rich and abundant social life

To have a fun and active dating life, or find someone to settle down with

To become good at networking, making friends, and finding new opportunities in life

What:

Develop good people skills

Develop conversational skills

Learn how to talk to people with ease

Work on your sense of humor

Develop confidence

Develop charisma

Work on the fear of being rejected or judged

Learn how to read people’s emotions

Become more socially calibrated

How:

Start talking to more people daily to practice conversational skills

Start getting out of your comfort zone and introducing yourself to new people

Start organizing catchups more regularly with people you know

Research social skills and see what you can apply to yourself

Find networking events or social events in the area and go to them

Take a course on socializing if you don’t know where to begin

Love yourself

Why:

To counter negative feelings and attitudes about oneself such as self-pity, the victimhood mentality

To develop self-respect, self-worth, and to value oneself

To enjoy life more

What:

Heal the underlying wounds causing this detrimental outlook

change your mindsets and perceptions

Develop the traits and characteristics that make you feel valuable

How:

Do affirmations and affirm a more positive reality

Spend time processing the underlying wounds that are causing you feelings of shame, guilt, or self-pity

Reinforce everything that you find to be valuable about yourself

Discard the traits and characteristics that you don’t like about yourself, and work on developing better characteristics that are more aligned

Be more at peace

Why:

Stop being so stressed all the time

Find inner calmness and composure

Increase mental health and vitality

What:

Change your perspective of stressful situations

Develop a higher point of view outlook

Develop existential beliefs that make you feel comfortable with your mortality

How:

Expose yourself to more situations in life, to put your life into perspective

Start meditating regularly, and practice mindfulness

Train yourself to see the silver lining and develop an optimistic view of life

Seek out spirituality and see how it changes your interaction with the world around you

Train your intelligence

Why:

Become a more capable and competent person to better navigate the world, capitalize on opportunities, and leverage your skills and abilities to get somewhere in life

What:

Increase your knowledge base

Generally become more informed, about more subjects

Improve comprehension of ideas and concepts

Increase your processing speed

Articulate information better

Increase your memory

How:

Regularly do brain training exercises

Do memory exercises

Seek out more knowledge in all forms

Develop curiosity about the world, and actively attempt to connect the dots

Have more conversations with more people, about a wider range of subjects

Read more books, watch documentaries, and pivot towards helpful media rather than entertainment

Engage in debate and question things

Put yourself in productive environments that encourage learning and growth
Cornerstones of personal growth

Cultivate awareness

Your personal development journey starts by cultivating an awareness of what you need to improve upon.

This is where you want to think critically about your life, and the areas that you’re lacking in.

Write down all the different areas of your life that you need to work on. Prioritize those items from the most crucial to the least crucial to develop. Then within each item, brainstorm things that you could do to improve that part of your life.

Seek information

Knowing what you need to work on is a start, but you probably don’t know what to do. This is why it’s important to seek out good information to guide you.

See this stage as a theoretical component of personal development. Seeking out information on the subject will give you a much deeper understanding of why you’re not where you want to be, and what you can be doing better.

Start reading books on the subject, taking courses, watching videos, signing up for programs, and going to workshops. Inundate yourself with as much knowledge as possible about your areas of focus, and you’ll have plenty of knowledge to actualize.

Set goals

Setting goals is a crucial part of personal development because if you don’t have goals, you can easily lose motivation. Goals are organizational tools.

Aiming to talk to strangers without feeling anxious by the end of the year is a good goal, and gives you something to continuously work towards. Aiming to become extremely confident and charismatic by the end of the year is not a realistic goal. Therefore, make appropriate targets, but don’t overshoot.

Create realistic and actionable goals for your areas of focus. Divide these goals into weekly goals, monthly goals, and yearly goals, and make sure you stick to them.

Take inspired action

Being relatively knowledgeable about the subject gives you information to apply. Setting goals gives you a framework to apply them. What you need to do now is put it into action, and practice.

Taking inspired action is the practical component of personal development. You can learn everything about the subject at hand, but unless you take actionable steps toward the results you want, nothing is going to change.

Make sure that you do the heavy lifting. This involves getting out of your comfort zone and failing. It involves taking a risk and pushing yourself to grow as a person.

Stay motivated

Personal development is not a quick process, rather you should see it as a lifestyle that fruits the energy you expend into it. Think of personal development as passive income. It manifests proportionately to the amount you feed it. The more energy you put into working on yourself, the more it will pay off later down the track.

It takes time to see the fruition of your hard work. At the start, you will feel like you’re grinding as the act of self-betterment is gradual, so don’t get discouraged if you don’t see instant changes.

Your desire to change fuels the process of change. If you’re not hungry for change, you will get complacent. You will give up when it gets difficult or when you feel discouraged or lost. But there needs to be a deeper yearning behind all of that.

Set your intentions and hold your reasons close because they’re going to be what carry you through to the end. Acknowledge that you will feel discouraged at times, and it might seem like a gruelingly slow process at times. But stick with it.

Be consistent

Be consistent with your effort, and continuously take small steps towards your goals. As long as you have the desire, you’re always going to be on the lookout for opportunities to develop yourself.

A small chat with a chop clerk is going to help you improve your interpersonal skills. A broken heart will teach you how to open your heart, even drinking a coffee in your garden is an act of being more mindful.

Think about how you can leverage any given experience to improve a skillset, characteristic, or mentality. Use everyday occurrences as opportunities to nudge yourself slightly closer to who you want to become.
22 January 2022