The Role of Personal Development in Achieving Financial Freedom

Knowing “how to” is often less than half the story, when it comes to achieving anything worthwhile. including achieving financial freedom. We are daily inundated with “how to do this” how to achieve that”, “six steps to this” and “seven steps to that”, but it is often easier said than done. Knowing how to do something is a tiny part of the jigsaw puzzle. Being able to actually do it is where the rubber meets the road.

Virtually everyone knows how to exercise, but few actually do. Losing weight is simply a matter of burning more calories than you take in, but is not as easy as it sounds. Knowing how to save to invest is the easy part. Saving and investing on a sustainable basis is what separates those going somewhere financially and those threading water. The missing link is personal development.

In order to achieve what you have not achieved before, you have to be who you have not been before. In short, you have to grow as a person. Taking the right steps sustainably involves the ability to focus and concentrate, persist, and keep going on the right course until you cross the finish line. If you are headed in the right direction, all you need is the ability to take one right step at a time, stay the course, keep on keeping up, and never give up until you get there.

Nothing beats focused learning when it comes to personal development. It may be books, audio tapes, DVDs, seminars, mentoring, etc. It involves change on the inside and developing a new mindset which results in taking the right actions. Without a new mindset, you cannot take new actions on a sustainable basis. Your old mindset will steal the wind from your sails and sabotage your noble efforts. For example, if spending makes you happy, trying to save will become an uphill task.

You don’t need books on how to save or 7 steps to stick to your budget in order to develop the discipline required to stick to your budget or spend below your income. What you need is a mindset change – from spending makes me happy, to saving makes me happy. That means giving your money away to get things (liabilities) becomes painful while watching your money grow as it works hard for you becomes the fun part. When you prioritize money over stuff, you hold onto money and let go of stuff rather than hold unto stuff and let go of your money.

When that switch happens, walking the 7 steps comes naturally. You don’t need a preacher to breathe down your neck on the virtues of spending less than your income. It becomes common sense.

While knowing the steps is not wrong in itself, if you do not have the strength to climb them, you are in the same boat as one who does not know those steps. If financial freedom gives you wings, then personal development is the wind beneath your wings. Without it, you cannot go very far.