On Self-Development and Setting Your Personal Goal

Life coaches will be like “Take your life to the next level”, “Access your inner confidence and powers”, “Find your backbone and stand up for yourself.” And they promise you that if you take their 600£ training, you will achieve a better life for yourself and have a brighter future.

The truth is, they are not—and shouldn't be—in charge of that. You're the only one responsible for the direction your life takes.

You’re already on the life level you need to be in, but maybe you just need some time and introspection to find your calling. But what if everything—confidence, success, talents—was already inside you? What if what you all you need is to find out what you want to do with it, to then utilize it to shape your life the way you always dreamed?

Don't you want to find your own truth, your own personal brand and unique vision/ perspective of the world?

You don’t need anyone to know what you’re passionate about, what you feel you’re the best in the world at, what makes you confident. Those coaches will take your money and teach you THEIR truth about confidence, personal achievements, and success. You really want to shape your life according to someone else’s principles and experience?

Please, don’t waste your money on these trainings! You don’t want to find about someone’s else definition of success. I’m pretty sure we all want to create our own definition of great life achievements, built exactly at our image. So, don’t let anyone convince you that they hold the key to YOUR success. Nobody owns that but you. You hold everything in your hands, it’s all about your decisions on what your life should look like.

• When you take a deeper look at what life coaches say in their selling speech, it can be quite shocking.

The message they convey is basically: “I will analyze your life, and will tell you how to make it successful! I will be responsible of YOUR success.” It’s YOUR life, but someone else on Earth, a complete stranger in top of that, will tell YOU how success is supposed to unfold for you. As if there weren’t thousands of different types of success, someone else will tell you what success is and impose his/her definition on your life. And you have to pay them for their services!

• Turn inward to uncover—or create—your own passion

If you wake up one morning and something specific comes to your mind, take note of that. If you realize that you like to do something in particular, whether in your personal or professional life—giving advice to a friend, organize events, run projects, build partnerships, painting—write it down! Listen to what your loved ones and best friends say when they tell you what you’re good at or what makes you look happy according to them. And repeat until you can see the big picture.

You must have at least three or four things you're passionate about. When you have figured what they are, all you ought to do is to find a way to connect them and shape your own professional path.

• Early in life, we grow up with this idea that we should know what we’re good at and endeavor to follow a path allowing us to do it for the rest of our life

But while some people always knew what they wanted to become (doctors, pilots, lawyers, etc.) even as kids, it gets a little more complicated for people who have a lot of interests and can't wrap their heads around the idea of picking just one to pursue during a lifetime.

Life and personal development coaches will prey on people with many interests because they know that it will be easy for them to spot what you’re good at, and get money from you for it… While you can do that all by yourself. It just takes a bit of analysis. You don’t have to choose one or two interests, you can explore many of your interests, correlate them, and create your own profession if that’s what you want. And the beautiful thing is that you don’t need anyone to achieve that.

• Life/mindset/professional coaches use abstract notions and guilt-inducing catch phrases to build their brands and persuade you to pay for a service that looks good on paper.

What does it even mean to take someone’s life to the next level? “You want to escape the vicious cycle of procrastination and guilt? Want to overcome your fears and finally start that blog? Purchase my online course!” What does one gain in making someone else feel guilty about a personal project or business he hasn’t started yet? Maybe that someone is not ready to take the great leap forward and knows best when to start.

It doesn’t make sense to me to pay someone just to push me hard towards a direction I already chose.

It’s not about taking your life to the next level (there are no levels, life is not a game!), your life can’t be measured in levels anyway. The word “level” (or “chakra”, “inner powers”, etc.) is just used by coaches to persuade you that you have a need they can fulfill, that they will bring something valuable to your life, and to charge you for a service.

What really matters is to look within yourself to find the perfect balance between what you love to do and what you're good at doing, and then find out how you can correlate those two thing to make a living.

I admit it can take some time and even be very difficult for some people, but you need to abandon the idea that everyone was born with a calling or a well-defined passion. Sometimes, you have to be proactive and create your own passions. You can event try to look for new interests if the ones you already have can’t be used to make a living.

Remember that you don’t have to follow one of the pre-established paths defined by society for you (consultant, engineer, sales representative, etc.), you can create your own unique brand. Look for what is inside of you and get it out there for everyone to see and inspire.

Your interests, passions, dreams and ambitions are—and will always be—the most fascinating, attractive and valuable things you can put on the market.