Personal development must be world development
Personal development junkies can be exceptionally annoying. Fresh from yet another weekend workshop (one that no doubt betrays worrying signs of being a cult) they wax lyrical about how motivated or excited they are about life. Talk soon turns to million pound yachts and being on the cover of Fortune magazine. The rest of us look on aghast. Well, I do at any rate.
On the other side of the street are the do-gooders - our activist friends just back from an eco-footprint conference or human rights rally buzzed up about making change. They wax lyrical about urgent action in Tibet or the moral degeneracy of our Western governments. Admirable but ultimately, as Gandhi let us know, any form of righteousness is just that I’m right and you’re wrong and this kind of judgement holds people in place and actually stops them changing. Remember the last time someone told you not to eat any more or shut-up what did it make you want to do?
The thing is that both groups are heading in the right direction yet both are in danger of an ethical and emotional meltdown. The trick is both areas the inside of the mind and the outside of the world can change, but they have to be done in the right sequence, and with the right heart.
Personal development without a focus on making the world a better place is nauseating, selfish and will eventually lead to a feeling of deep emptiness. Addicts jump from workshop to workshop but soon find that even being a millionaire doesn’t fill up the void.
Activists who focus on making the world work according to their moral judgements risk creating more problems than there already are out there violent and desperate people, transgressors of human rights and our environmental wellbeing, are likely to react even more violently to the sanctimony of the Western activist.
It is the order that we do things in that is key. Yes we want to change the world but change must always starts inside. Once we have the wisdom to see our own hypocrisies and shortcomings in stark silhouette on the horizon and we have the compassion to forgive ourselves for them - then, and only then, can we start to spread that love to others… and begin to alleviate the suffering running rampant across our communities and our ecosystems.
Motivational workshop warrior and eco-warrior alike working on yourself is the prerequisite for changing the world. Personal development is world development.
