How Should Entrepreneurs Do Self Development?

How should entrepreneurs do self-development?

Carl Jung called it “Individuation”. William James called it “Self Esteem”. Kurt Goldstein called it “Self-Actualization”. These days we call it “Self-Development” — the path toward your highest potential.

I have noticed that people who do self-development tend to do better in business. Why? Because business and self-development work synergistically:

Business accentuates your strengths, and self-development fixes your weaknesses.

If someone solely focuses on their strengths, they will be ignorant to their weaknesses and keep failing for unknown-to-them reasons.

So how should we do self-development for good results?

Rainforest retreats? Meditation retreats? Spirituality retreats? I’m not convinced. From an empirical results point of view, these are not very effective. There is a huge correlation between the people who do these things, and the people who are permanently stuck at 2-3k per month.

Here’s my current perspective:

The “self” in “self-development” is your mind. Therefore, self-development is about improving the quality of your mind. That is, improving the quality of your thoughts.

Less ignorant thoughts. Less rageful thoughts. Less scared thoughts. Less guilty thoughts.

More certain thoughts. More correct thoughts. More positive thoughts. More rational thoughts.

So you’re after things like “epiphanies”, “insights”, “realizations”. And yes, you need to “contemplate” and “reflect” to have those. But you need to contemplate and reflect on the “right thing”.

What is the “right thing”? Your own personal performance during work.

Why? Because your raw nature is fully exposed when you work.

To develop your self, you should ask questions like this:

“What are my thoughts about myself and reality?”

“What should my thoughts about myself and reality be to achieve excellent performance during work?”

If you frequently take time to sincerely ask yourself that question, you will uncover problems, which you can independently figure out how to fix.

And as you fix those problems, you will become a useful participant in your work and life, instead of a hindrance.

– Aleksander Vitkin