3 Reasons To Do Personal Development Work in 2021
Today I’m sharing the three reasons to do personal development work in 2021.
I say 2021 because you need to be doing it right now. Not next year, not next month. Now. You need to be prioritising personal development work… now.
But firstly, what do I mean when I say personal development work?
When I say “personal development”, what I’m talking about is any process of learning (and unlearning) that we go through to improve ourselves and our lives.
As humans, we come with a lot of baggage.
Some of it good and it serves us, some of it not so good. These are things we’ve learnt in childhood, things that we’re carrying from our ancestors and past lives.
Personal development is the “work” we do to wade through all of that baggage, unpack it and come to a better understanding of who we are underneath it all and what we’re here to do.
It’s growth, it’s learning, it’s healing.
Why you should be doing personal development work
If you’ve heard me talk about my story before, you’ll know that I started my coaching journey as a spiritual life coach. And before that, I was a qualified reiki healer – I did my first reiki training back in 2015.
So I was an energy healer first, and then a coach second.
And when I started coaching I went through a few iterations of what title I called myself – women’s empowerment coach, transformation coach, intuitive life coach…
But ultimately my approach to coaching was and has always been the same – I bring my experience as an energy healer together with my coaching training to support women to live more fulfilling, enriching lives.
Ultimately, the mission and the approach hasn’t changed since I began coaching in 2018.
As a spiritual business coach, I now support women to do that through entrepreneurship, but it is still with the lens of supporting women to live their best lives.
And what I’ve realised over the 6 or so years of doing this work in one way or another is that all too often people are missing the point of personal development.
They are missing the point of their own healing journey.
It sounds obvious but we don’t just do the deep inner healing work for the sake of it. The healing process isn’t the point.
We undertake the process, the journey – in whatever form it takes – for a reason.
And those reasons, those motivations will vary from person to person.
But ultimately we are doing this work FOR an outcome.
And yes – while I see personal development and healing as an ongoing journey, one that doesn’t have an end point that we reach where we can dust our hands off and say, “yep, I’m fully healed now, thanks, see you later, no need to ever do that work again” – there is still a desired outcome.
What I’ve observed is that when it comes to “missing the point” – there are two extreme ends of the spectrum and people can fall into one of two camps.
The first is the “spiritual bypassing” camp. This is when you see people loving and lighting their way through life. Spiritual bypassing is the tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues and wounds.
Toxic positivity falls into this camp too – which is the thinking that if you can just be positive all the time, think happy thoughts, focus only on things that make you feel good, avoid feeling bad, avoid anything that “brings your vibe down” – that you will continue to manifest and experience only positive things.
The flip side of that is... when something that could be perceived as negative happens, you immediately go into a place of self-blame. It’s because you weren’t thinking positively enough, your vibe wasn’t high enough, you weren’t focusing on the right things, and so on.
Which is obviously not a sustainable way to move through the world.
And it is certainly NOT personal development.
In fact, it’s avoiding personal development work.
On the other end of the spectrum is what I’m going to call the “woe is me” camp, for lack of a better term.
It’s essentially people who seemingly love to stay down in the trenches of their healing.
They aren’t afraid of doing the deep inner healing work – there is no spiritual bypassing happening here!
But instead they continue to dig at the same wound over and over, repeatedly re-living any of their traumas over and over under the guise of “doing the work”.
They essentially get stuck in a healing loop of their own making without coming up for air.
And side note, because I think it’s important to mention when we’re talking about trauma and healing and coaching – there have been many times where I have referred clients to professional mental health services. Energy healing and coaching are great for so many reasons, but sometimes you need to bring in the big guns (aka mental health professionals).
So yes, while personal development is a journey and there might be layers to your healing – staying in the space where you’re re-living the same stories and digging at the same wounds, without actually moving or shifting the energy around it, is also missing the point entirely.
Which – finally! – brings me to the first reason to do personal development work in 2021....
Reason #1. To just fucking enjoy your life
Because that is the point of personal development.
And you’re missing the point if you’re stuck in a repetitive loop of healing the same wound over and over.
You’re missing the point if you’re spiritually bypassing and pretending like everything is love and light 24/7.
The point is to do the deep inner healing, the personal development work, so that you can really just fucking enjoy your life.
We are here on this earth for a human experience. That means learning, that means growth, that means joy and love and pleasure and fun, that means highs and lows, and everything in the messy middle.
We do personal development work to enjoy our lives.
We’re not here for very long in the grand scheme of things.
Why would we let all the shit that’s happened in our lives, all the unhelpful unconscious beliefs that we’ve learned, hold us back from living a fucking great life? Especially when we have the power to change it?
That’s what personal development gives us the opportunity to do.
To heal and let go of everything that’s holding us back so that we can live a fucking great life.
Reason #2. To uncover the hidden gems of your shadow.
When I say shadow work or facing your shadow, what I’m referring to here is a concept that was first discussed by Carl Jung. The shadow refers to the unconscious parts of ourselves, as opposed to the conscious.
Conscious meaning we are aware of them. We can think of these conscious aspects of ourselves as being in the light.
On the other hand, those unconscious aspects are those we are NOT consciously aware of – they are there but we don’t know they are or we have chosen to ignore them for whatever reason. We can think of these aspects as being in the dark or in our shadow.
Often the things that are in our shadow are the aspects of our personalities we don’t like to admit or look at, past experiences that we have bottled up, and emotions like anger or sadness that we’ve suppressed.
And this is why shadow work is so powerful – because we are literally shining a light on those unconscious parts of ourselves in order to heal them.
“You’ve gotta feel it to heal it” – as they say. Spiritual bypassing be damned!
Now as I’ve already said, we don’t want to stay in our shadow forever, digging at our wounds over and over…but what we DO want to do is have the courage to face our shadow…
To shine a light on those things so we can shift and move through them.
Because that’s where the real growth and transformation happens! And is often where the hidden gems live.
And the reason there are hidden gems hiding away in our shadow is because sometimes we’ve suppressed our gifts, our magic, our intuition…all of these incredible parts to ourselves that we felt we had to hide away for whatever reason.
And once we have the courage to look at our shadow and heal those wounds, the hidden gems are revealed and we can access them fully. So powerful!
Reason #3. To start living your purpose.
There is absolutely no way I would be doing the work that I’m doing if I hadn’t started down the path of personal development.
And let me be clear, the work that I’m doing right now, supporting women to create lives and businesses that truly set their souls on fire…that is me living my purpose in this season of my life.
And I know it’s the same for most, if not all of my clients. Personal development was the catalyst for stepping into their purpose and starting their business.
And here’s why I think that is.
Personal development work has the power to crack you right open, to wake you up to how life could be, it gives you the permission to dream, to expand your idea of what is possible for you.
It helps you identify what lights you up, what excites you, what fills you with purpose and meaning…and then it gives you the courage to chase those dreams.
To start living your purpose, even if it doesn’t seem to make sense to others or even yourself.
We are so conditioned to stay safe.
To choose the stable path. To stay in the predictable job even if it bores you to tears. To stay in relationships that don’t excite you because this is safe, this is what you know, this is it.
Bleugh. No thanks.
And that’s not to say that finding your purpose will lead you down the path of entrepreneurship. It might, and that’s great! If you’re looking for a spiritual business coach, hit me up.
But it also might not. And that’s great too! You can be shining your light, sharing your magic and fully living your purpose in your day job.
It doesn’t matter where it’s happening – what matters is that it IS happening.
That’s what personal development work has the power to do. To help you unlock all the magic you already have inside and then give you the courage to share it, to step fully into your own power and shine your light.
That’s why you will hear me saying over and over again that owning your own business is the biggest personal development journey you’ll ever go on.
Because when you run your own business, you are constantly doing the courageous thing, putting yourself out there, sharing your magic and shining your light in newer and bigger ways.
It takes courage to do that.
And personal development work is how you get there.
Ready to take the next step?
Now, my loves, I am so excited to share with you that the doors to my 6 week personal development program, Feminine Fire are now open!
And I am so excited to be bringing her back. This is the fourth round of this program! I have taken more than 45 women through this experience now and it is safe to say that she holds a special place in my heart as the first group coaching experience I ever created.
Feminine Fire is my 6 week group coaching and sisterhood experience for you to uplevel your self worth, connect deeply with your soul purpose and ignite your feminine fire.
In this program I take you through a journey of first diving deep into your shadow to do the deep inner healing work, and then coming out the other side, up out of the shadows to integrate all the healing and learnings into your life.
The aim of Feminine Fire is for you to leave feeling deeply connected to your higher self, having ignited that spark within and becoming the literal embodiment of your inner fire. Filled with purpose and passion. Absolutely radiant. You will walk away the tools, practices and knowledge to navigate life from a place of deep self trust, self worth and purpose.
It is a deeply healing and transformational journey with me as your coach every step of the way.
Feminine Fire is a live group coaching program so I will be there to guide you through the journey as your coach. That means the opportunity to be coached by me, to ask me questions and be supported not just by me but also the incredible community of like-minded, like-hearted women in there with you.
The community aspect of Feminine Fire is ALWAYS a favourite – I truly believe magic happens when women come together in sacred sisterhood. And that’s what happens inside this container. It’s something that the women MOST often comment on in feedback and testimonials – some of which you can read over on the sales page here.
The lessons and practices and rituals that I share with you in Feminine Fire are things that I continue to come back to time and time again. They are things that I share with all my clients – because as we’ve already talked about, personal development is such a huge piece of the pie for business owners wanting to build and grow soulful, heart-led businesses.
I would SO love to support you to find that inner spark and ignite the feminine fire within. I believe that we all have a fire within that deserves to burn big and bright. No need to tone it down. No need to check yourself. No need to dim your light.
If you are ready to live as your highest self and truly transform, you can join us here.
