Members Only Post #170 – How To Know When You Need To Focus On More Than Simply “Self-Development”

Self-development is great, its essentially the crux of all of my writings. While we may delve into culture, politics, and the like, at least how they relate to topics like masculinity and how they’ll affect your life, for the most part what we focus on self development here. And that’s where everything starts from. Every man no matter what he wants to make of himself has to start with self-development.

It has to start with looking within oneself and seeing what needs to be improved and what needs to be changed. And this is a process that never stops, that can never stop. We must strive to be better tomorrow than we were today each and every day. We must forge good habits that’ll change our lives and take us where we want to go.

We must have goals that we are setting out day by day to accomplish. All of this is well and good and essential. However there comes a time when self-development is going go from our number one focus to just another focus in our life. I already said we’ll never abandon it completely, however there comes a time when we have to look beyond self-development and see what our future holds.

What is meant by this?

The Utility Of Self-Development

Self-development can’t change everything. Once you start doing something athletically, eating right, sleeping good, reading, writing, seeking out new experiences, spending time in nature, meditating,  and doing all of that great stuff there are still going to be problems that you’ll have to address and hardships that you will come across. Self-development has never been about solving all your problems or making you impervious to hardship. Nothing can do those two things. Rather it is to give you a tool and the “conditions” to best deal with what comes in life.

A smart man will do better than a dumb man in most situations. A strong man will do better than a weak man in most situations. A rich man will do better than a poor man in most situations. That is the purpose of self-development to get you in the best place that you can be. However with all that said and done there are still times when it won’t be enough and you’ll have to focus on something else.

For example maybe your country is in a war, going through great changes, perhaps you see the only way to help change its course is to run for office or start writing political books and getting them published to help change policy. Or things of that nature. Eventually your self-development has to connect with something larger and greater than yourself and that will become your number one thing.

Eventually self-development must give fruit to greater and better things. Maybe it’s having a family and growing and guiding them to give them the best advantages possible, to do the most good in this world. Maybe it’s running for office or becoming a political writer. Maybe it’s starting your own movement or ideology. Or whatever else. You know what moves you and you know what drives you and what you think is important.

You’ll never stop self-development completely, it’ll always be a daily part of your life. It has to be if you want to keep moving forward but rather it’ll take a backseat or at least ride shotgun to whatever your big first thing is.

Self-Development Must Bear Fruit

Self-development is pointless if it doesn’t lead to anything greater. Sure being healthier is great, having better relations is great, having more money is great, but what does all of this lead too? That’s the big question. What fruit is self-development going to bear in your life? What is it going to lead too? Connect to? It’s the first step and it’s a continuous step but it’s certainly not the last step either.

Sure people who give up on self-development and follow their big thing often end up in trouble. Because if you’re not growing your stagnating but at the same time those that endless focus on self-development alone, at some point, don’t go anywhere either. You need to keep self-developing while also going after your big thing in life, your big cause. If you could get the entire world to understand one thing or change their mind on one thing.

What would that one thing be?

What is your one thing? It’s important to figure this out? And it can’t be “make money”, “get girls”, “be happy” or things that either are specific or are steps to a goal, not the goal itself. Again if you could change one thing in this world what would it be? Assume you have a decent level of money, have the relationships you want romantically speaking, and are healthy as can be. What comes after that? What comes next?

What happens when you need to move on beyond self-development?

What happens then?

Think about that.