Murky Progress – When Going Deep Into Personal Development Creates Unclear Conclusions

We’ve all had moments in our lives when burning questions occupy our minds for far too long. These questions may be general and monumental, such as “What is my life’s purpose?” or they might be specific and inconsequential, such as “Why is my dog always happier than I?” 

As these questions arise, we become excited and filled with wonder as we search for answers. Like a sweet-tooth driven kid in a candy store, our curiosity runs wild while shopping around for answers. The fountain of second-hand knowledge and experience is supplied from various sources, including books, friends, the Internet, and videos, to name a few. 

With many credible resources, it is easy to become overwhelmed. When so many resources exist, selecting a starting point becomes as difficult as finding the answer. After all, everything is here to help... right? 

Unfortunately, our journeys are not that cut and dry. It’s impossible to anticipate what we will encounter in our journeys.  When we transition from a comfortable starting point into an intellectual fog, the path once crystal clear becomes cloudier.

In a mental about-face, the path we once trusted suddenly becomes an unruly obstacle in our progress. We are left to wonder if our quest was nothing more than a façade and fantasy to separate us from our desired answers.   

The Stoics know all too well that the obstacle is the way, but it’s difficult to leverage that mindset in the midst of trials without the right attitude and experiences.  Is it possible that we bought into a vision convoluted by the world's ways, or did we misjudge what to expect in our personal development journeys?

I'll attempt to light a few lamps by providing my personal experience, including what I’ve learned, and how I would advise anyone embarking on this journey to better equip themselves. These experiences are not meant to discourage, but rather, acknowledge that the world is not as rosy as we paint it to be.

The More I Saw, The Less I Knew 

My personal development journey began in 2006. A few friends needed to go to the bookstore to look for something new to read on our way to the movies. I decided to tag along instead of waiting in the mall.

While I enjoyed writing, I loathed reading with a passion and had no interest in browsing the bookshelves. Something about being forced to read a book for school repelled me from wanting to read.

As I waited patiently for my friends and looked around the bookstore, a book on philosophy caught my eye. I decided to crack it open to see what it was about. Unfortunately, I do not remember the book's title, but the descriptions of the stories are vivid.  

My favorite story involved the author being transformed into a fly and learning that although they didn’t perceive themselves as a fly, everybody else perceived them as such, so they were always swatted. The person was trying to return as a normal human being, but was unable to find a way and met his tragic end.

For the first time since elementary school, I was interested in reading a book, so I purchased it on our way out. I remember looking at the book cover from time to time during the movie.

When I returned home, I cracked it open again and absorbed more stories like a sponge. One story led to another until I pivoted into the philosophy of world religions. From my personal studies, I discovered the parallels between the major religions and what they constituted as good and moral behaviors. 

During my year off between high school and college, I maintained an appetite for reading books on philosophy, religion, psychology, and environmental issues. Whenever I had free time, I powered off my devices to crack open a good book, delving deeper into my personal studies until I went off to college to engage in more of my studies.

I wish my high school had assigned these books to read instead of what the Common Core deemed necessary.

Further Pivots

During my first year of college, I browsed the college bookstore to find some college apparel. While browsing, a lone rotary bookshelf held books by a single author, but one specifically caught my attention: The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John C. Maxwell. 

“There are laws behind leadership?” I thought to myself. I peered inside the book and mentally devoured the book line by line.

It was as if common sense was manifested in written form, and I didn’t have to think about it too much to understand its implications.  The college housed a dedicated leadership program, which piqued my interest to get a head start. 

From then on, I made personal development part of my education, even if it wasn’t in the college curriculum.

I was adamant about ensuring that I understood people better as much as I continued my formal education in business and sciences. Even if it meant I had to train harder than everyone else and make more sacrifices, it was worth it.

When One Answer Leads To More Questions 

At first, I made great headway towards answering my initial questions.  Every answer I sought required work, but was achievable. My initial checklist of curiosities saw more checkmarks. 

However, I never anticipated the complex rabbit hole of this journey. I was always about completion, as I dared to explore every nook and cranny to leave no stone unturned. 

One of the first questions I pursued in personal development was figuring out why everyone aspired to be like one another instead of embracing uniqueness.

Growing up in a small town in Western Pennsylvania exposed me to a more tribal culture than the one I experienced in the cities. As such, I found my initial experiences skewed compared to those of those who grew up in larger cities and had a more independent mindset.  

I recognized that because small towns had fewer opportunities than larger cities, people were more likely to be more social and reach out to people around them. Their experiences moved mental roadblocks, so I connected with my smaller town on a deeper level.

Through learning about others' experiences, I realized that not only did other people experience some of my struggles, but they also found ways to overcome them.

While this breakthrough represented a significant victory for my personal development, it also opened additional questions.

For example, I started to wonder :

1. Why were people in larger cities more reclusive, despite having a disproportionately greater number of options?

2. Why did people who grew up in rural or urban environments tend to stay where they were?

3. Why were the arts more prominent in the city than in smaller towns?

4. Why do people...

As you might imagine, the more stones turned over, the more stones were uncovered under them. What we glean on the surface deceives us, as there are times when we believe there is a root cause that is in plain sight, when in fact it's dozens of layers below.

I realized that the further down this journey I went, the more I disliked incompletes. As one box was checked, three more appeared to take its place. The math wasn't zeroing out, as I was locked into a perpetual cycle that kept amplifying worse than audio feedback on a stage.

Suddenly, new questions appeared on top of that:

1. How does anyone bring full closure to their incompletes when the end of one question leads to opening five more? 

2. Does the pattern ever end, or is it a perpetual result of endless personal development expeditions?

Naturally, none of us can take on everything.  We must prioritize our choices in personal development, which are determined by our current unique circumstances. 

Generally, we tend to select the actions that we perceive to yield the greatest reward for the least effort.  However, this thinking leads us to chase shiny toys that bring short-term satisfaction, but not long-term progress. 

From my journey, it became clear that I needed to find a way to track my progress, actions taken, and results experienced. Keeping track of everything in my head was more of a fool’s errand than I initially expected. 

My Tipping Point In Personal Development 

From my journey, I had to recognize that my final destination was no more than a waypoint for the next step of the journey. By crossing these milestones, new opportunities unfold before me, unlike video games, which are programmed to end when the final boss is defeated.

Schools have their own experience, similar to games. The journey is well-defined, and the tests and final projects represent the bosses in games.

Unlike school, repeating certain lessons is required for full understanding and benefit. Progress no longer has a linear path but rather a unique, unrepeatable journey for any two people. 

I recognized that personal development was not like the games I played and the school systems I experienced. This created a paradigm shift in my journey. When I started, I approached the journey as a one-and-done ordeal, believing that my life would magically transition to a wonderland where my problems would be dissolved.

As anyone on this journey would tell you, that is never the case. The only thing that happens in personal development is that we trade one set of problems for another through the results of our actions. 

However, components from school systems and the games we play can be transferred to manage ourselves better.

In games, we sometimes have opportunities to save and return to our progress. The same is true in our own personal development journeys. Unforeseen circumstances may shuffle our priorities, but if we document where we left off, it should be easy to resume our journey as time permits.

In the school system, we are taught to take notes and document concepts. While the concepts we come across may not be interesting to us at the time, we can still document aspects of our personal development journey to see how far along we've come. Our minds open up to handle major pursuits better when we document the details for our reference.

Our minds were meant to be processors and not necessarily hard drives.

How To Manage Uncertainty In Personal Development 

As we’ve discovered along the way, personal development requires us to shoulder colossal amounts of uncertainty.

Uncertainty is not necessarily a bad thing, just as certainty is not always a good thing. We love surprises and hate predicting our own failures.

We will have seasons where we are on cloud nine and others where we’re in the trenches of a mental war zone. Schools and games usually do not prepare us to face these challenges.

Luckily, we have some great tactics to deal with the unknown, although we must acknowledge they never guarantee outcomes.  However, having tools in the toolbox beats flailing in the dark when there are many moving parts to the journey.

As you consider these tactics, keep in mind that other tools exist beyond what's listed. Don't approach these tools in their singularity; feel free to combine them depending on your situation.

For now, here are some starting points that you can consider for your journey ahead: 

Understand Your Journey Is Multidimensional 

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to personal development.  Part of life is recognizing that things you worked on and mastered at one point might require further attention down the road.  Even in school, there is no one-size-fits-all style to learning, but unfortunately, the system operates as if that's true. 

There’s a stigma that once you’ve conquered an obstacle, it should be conquered for life.  Nothing can be further from the truth; that is a fairy tale used to make us believe there's an end to it all, which contradicts reality.

Therefore, we must acknowledge that our progress will sometimes be nonlinear and murky. It's more important to remember this when it appears that we’re going downhill, when in reality, we're passing through a valley on the way up to a better view. After all, no rainbows can be created without rain.

Document Your Journey 

Documenting our journeys may slow us down, but it enables us to go further than ever before.

Whether you create videos of yourself talking into them, keep a journal, or record your own data in a spreadsheet, you need to document and visualize your progress. 

In the times of highest struggle, you will look back on times when you were on top of everything, fighting your most significant battles and everything in between.  These pieces of documentation will remind you that this, too, shall pass.

There are so many easy ways to document our journeys. We do not have to make them public either, but they should enable us to see how far we've come along. This is why it's called personal development... because it's personal.

Learn From Others’ Journeys 

Our struggles in personal development are not as isolated as we expect.  Even though everyone’s journeys will be unique in their timeline and intricacies, overarching patterns and trends can be distilled to relate to the struggles of others.

As such, the chances that someone else has faced similar challenges are historically quite high.  As scary as it sounds, simply conversing with a professional or someone we trust is the best way to confirm that our struggles are similar.

Thanks to the Internet, the 21st century has enabled access to information like never before. Websites allow users to communicate with each other without having a face. This level of masking enables people to share their problems more openly. Great examples of platforms that are anonymous include Reddit.

Search engines such as Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo allow users to research their problems and return instant results.  These search engines have specialized algorithms that filter and return results based on what the user inputs, increasing the chances of a close match.

With the advent of AI, resources such as ChatGPT, Google Bard, and other AI platforms can take a conversational approach to listening to a user’s problems and giving suggestions on how to handle them. While the quality may indeed vary, it combines the best of two worlds: being able to have a conversation from the comfort of a device that has internet connectivity, to a robot that (hopefully) doesn't judge us.

Additionally, social networks such as Facebook and Nextdoor allow users to join specific groups where they may share their problems. However, the quality of these groups can vary drastically, so you should research before taking the advice given by users on these platforms. 

Research, Research, Research 

As we discovered in the previous section, doing our own research is important. We can do this by talking to people, reviewing online resources, and even reading books. The chances that somebody has encountered our situation are quite high, even though some details might differ.

However, we must be careful about falling in love with the first solution we discover because we want to latch onto a solution. We must be mindful while scouting candidate solutions to our problems and look at different resources.

This is similar to dating or interviewing at different companies. We don't want to take the first thing that comes our way because it lands in our laps. Shopping around for solutions is important!

I have a principle I leverage when looking for solutions: The Law of Fives.

To ensure that I’ve done enough research, I consider five solutions and assemble a new solution that best fits me from the constituents of each.  Five resources are enough to find overlap without overdoing it, without falling into paralysis by analysis. 

Some situations call for more consideration beyond five sources, such as major life-or-death situations, career transitions, moving across the country, and other dramatic shifts in life. Others may need a quicker solution that can be molded as the journey continues.

Consulting several different resources allows us to approach our situation more objectively to prevent headstrong decisions based on the first thing we see, which risks being more damaging than beneficial.

Understand You May Not Be Able To Resolve Everything... Right Now

Despite all the information, people, AI, and advancements in civilization, we must recognize that it's not feasible to solve every problem we encounter in our personal development journey.

And here's the thing... that's okay.

Problems and solutions must coexist just as light and darkness coexist. As problems appear, we develop solutions to overcome them, only for new problems to arise. Our old solutions hit a wall, and we have to refine them and continue working on them day in and day out. 

However, one constraint we all face is time.  With only 16 hours in the average waking day, we must prioritize what problems we have to solve.  Additionally, our resources, attention span, and personal energy have a ceiling to them, so prioritizing their utilization is important to solving the right problems.

As a result, we must ignore other problems to fully focus on what actions make the most headway. 

Sometimes, the problems we prioritize cannot be solved head-on, and that’s another reality we must acknowledge.  However, it doesn’t mean we should sit idly and do nothing.  Instead, an indirect route might be our best bet. It will require more resources, but it will eventually get the job done.

Some problems are long-term, while others are quick and easy. Knowing the magnitude of our problems and what is required to resolve them is key to giving them the appropriate treatment.

Everyone’s Journey Will Be Unique 

Personal development is a unique journey where everybody starts with different initial conditions, take unique paths, and have develop distinct methods of solving problems. As we get deeper and deeper into the path, we must recognize that there will be things we cannot foresee along the way.

Therefore, it’s not only important to plan our journey, but we must recognize that our plans must be malleable and become resilient.

Our journeys are unique, but that doesn't mean we must go alone. There are many great resources, such as people, books, the Internet, and other resources, to develop our skills and thinking to overcome similar challenges.

Even with all the resources at our fingertips, there will be times when we cannot overcome our current problems, at least not immediately. As we are stalled, we have two choices: either give up or try new routes. Oftentimes, the best solution is not dressed in an elegant tuxedo or pretty dress.

No matter how long we've been on the path, it's possible to face uncertainty and murkiness at new stages. Recognizing that we cannot become void of all problems in our lives is important when choosing how we get better. After all, if we don’t train at the gym, our muscles will atrophy.

This question is the cornerstone of our journey: Do we get to choose our problems, or do our problems choose us?

The Stoics know that the obstacle is the way. While we will never have 100% control over what problems we face, the more work we put into our journeys upfront, the higher the probability that we will get to choose them along the way.

It's time to continue our journeys equipped with new tools and reminders. Make those breakthroughs, challenge assumptions, take a detour, and make the most of the tools available. The solution may not be instantaneous, but rather, the unfolding of a lotus flower.