How Did I Get from Personal Development to Spirituality

Is personal development the key to long-lasting happiness? Or is there another way? A short story about how I got from personal development to spirituality.

New Reason to Live

Let’s make it clear. I love personal development. It helped me in times when I didn’t know what to do next with my life. In those times I had no energy to do or change anything about myself and my surroundings.

I started my personal development journey several years back by reading the book: “The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea” and by watching a couple of videos on YouTube. I especially fell in love with motivational speakers, such as Les Brown, Tony Robbins, Will Smith, Robin Sharma, and some others. The fervor of these people filled me with fresh energy. Therefore, as I was motivated and inspired by these great people and their speeches I discover a new reason to live. I was determined to work on myself day by day. I believed that this is the path to true happiness.

For those who have never heard of these people, I recommend to watch one of the motivational videos and observe the impact it might have on us.

Is It the Right Path?

With an increasing number of books that I have read and videos that I have seen my initial motivation faded. I had a feeling that something was missing here. All these books and videos were able to momentarily motivate me, but when I was reflecting back whether it was really the right way, I started to doubt. I started to question myself: “What is the one component, which is still missing here? Personal development is after all perfect and at the same time it is based on a simple principle – if you keep working on yourself, you will be great and happy.”.

And therefore, I stopped to see a long-term recipe for happiness in the personal development itself.

From Personal Development to Spirituality and Religion

Another question that came to my mind was: “Why are there so many references to the Bible, Buddha, or Zen in the personal development books?” The concept of personal development has not been so long among us. It became popular quite recently when the idea of free thinking and decision-making – democracy – prevailed in the world. On the contrary Christianity, Buddhism, and other religion groups have been around for thousands of years. “Isn’t it worth exploring what seems to be the basis for the whole modern idea of the personal development? Maybe I can find the missing part and the key to long-term happiness there.”

Big Buddha statue in the clouds of Himalayas.

And so I found a passion in the original texts. Those texts have been here for thousands of years and are studied by people to this very day. Whether it is the Bible or far older Hindu texts – the Vedas or the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali and others.

Simple Definition of Personal Development

What is personal development? How would we define it?

As the name suggests, through personal development we develop our personality. We develop both our appearance – with a healthy diet, regular exercise or by spending half an hour in front of the mirror and in front of our closet each morning, and we also develop our qualities which cannot be seen at a first sight – especially dealing with other people, as well as accepting ourselves and further improving in certain activities we do.

To simply put it out, these are the things we see (either directly or indirectly) in an interaction with another person.

Message in a notebook: "Never stop dreaming!" - from personal development to spirituality

Simple Definition of Spirituality

On the other hand, spirituality, as the name suggests again, is about spirit, respectively, it relates to what we do not see directly.

That sounds very similar to a definition of the personal development, right? It is not by a coincidence that some perceive spirituality as a part of the personal development. But let’s try to divide these concepts and think about what they would look like afterwards.

The Difference Between Personal and Spiritual Development

Example of Spiritual Growth: We decide to start every morning with a short meditation. After a few days, we observe that we are calmer and more balanced with everything that happens around us. Our breath gets milder and our voice gets softer.

Do you see what happened? Through spiritual development, we have managed to influence our personality and thus we have achieved personal growth. However, this does not mean that personal and spiritual development is one and the same. It just points out that one affects the other and the other way around.

I personally distinguish between personal and spiritual development as follows:

Personal development affects what’s on the surface whereas spiritual development affects what is deep within us.

Let’s Dive into the Depth of Ourselves

Who am I? What am I doing here? Where is the truth? What is life? I have been asking you these questions since my first articles, but we still didn’t answer them.

Know that although the personal development may be great and full of excitement, it won’t help you in finding answers to the previous questions. How about trying to dive deeper and embark on an adventure inside yourself, apart from pursuing things on the surface?

Don’t you want to know who you are and what are you doing here?

Did you answer yes? Then let’s go together to the depths of ourselves. Into the depths, where answers to all our questions and suffering are hidden. To a place which hides long-lost treasures.

This is the seventh article in the series:

The beginning of my journey