Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.

– Isaac Asimov

Happiness is hard work. While personal development sometimes gets a bad rap, it’s nothing more, and nothing less, than the process of curiosity, self-education, and hard work, that gives you the knowledge and skills to make your life as juicy as you want it to be. When done right, it scares the shit out of you, and that’s what makes it so worthwhile.

It was only a couple of years ago that I made the transition from skeptic to student myself, but personal development has since become a central part of my life, having used what I’ve learned to meet women, start a business, and find my passions, among other things. If you don’t take a conscious approach to creating the life you want, you risk relegating yourself to being busy, but unproductive, living a life full of answers for which there are no questions.

In this article, I’ll explore the role that personal development can have in your life: what it is and what value it adds. I’ll also offer my own perspective on the art of happiness and how a healthy curriculum of philosophy, spirituality, health, money management, productivity, and other personal growth topics can expedite your journey to a productive, intense, and interesting life.

What is Personal Development?

I define personal development as the conscious pursuit of happiness. It’s not about jumping on the latest multi-level marketing scheme, or a miracle investment technique that will “guarantee” you a 25% return year after year. It’s not about super sekrit sexual techniques or effortlessly earning $10,000/month with a generic “home-based business” that requires just 15 minutes to set up.

Everything you do that involves creating value in your life for yourself and others is personal growth. This includes playing sports, learning a new programming language, reading, writing, losing weight, travelling, expanding your social circle, bankroll management, etc. It also includes exploring the very nature of who you are, what you want, and even asking questions about existence itself:

• Why am I here?
• What are the things I value most in life?
• What kind of life am I going to create for myself?
• What would my ideal job look like?
• What kind of relationship do I want?
• What kind of friends do I want?
• How much money do I need to finance the lifestyle I want?

If it’s clever, tricky, or can be done in 24 hours, it’s not personal development. If it’s a revolutionary new system that was discovered on a remote island in the South Pacific, it’s probably snake oil. If it’s available at an amazing 75% discount, but only for the next hour, it’s probably snake venom.

But if it’s a book, an article, an audio program, or a workshop that forces you to ask tough questions about your life, makes your brain hurt a little, pushes you outside your comfort zone, and takes several months or even years to start seeing the results you desire, but produces incremental improvements along the way, it’s probably worthwhile.

It’s all the Ayn Rand books that offer insight into the central role of values and mission, and inspire you to become part of the motor of the world. It’s the Eckhart Tolles and Wayne Dyers that offer new paradigms through which to interact with the world and experience reality. It’s Thoreau and Emerson, Chopra and Osho, Tony Robbins and Tim Ferriss, and everything in between.

It’s the secret that is no secret, because there is no secret to success.

Success Doesn’t Just Happen

I’ve known guys whose biggest time management problem was figuring out how to schedule dates with all the girls they met over the weekend. I’ve worked with guys who have a higher net worth than some countries. I know lots of geeks with an incredible capacity to retain and recall information, solve complex software design problems, or craft impossibly easy-to-use, elegant UIs. I’ve even met one guy who has three hot bisexual girlfriends–what he calls an “interdependent circle.”

But I’ve never met anyone for whom success “just happened.”

The rock star developers and UI designers I’ve worked with are the same guys who work from morning till midnight, turning their thoughts into reality through the awesome power of maniacal determination. The guy who’s into circle relationships has literally made a full-time job out of his lifestyle, teaching other guys what he knows, but only after first investing years into studying dating, sex, and relationships, and consuming a wide range of literature on those and other subjects, in the conscious pursuit of his ideal life.

While I know lots of people who are extremely successful in at least one aspect of their life, I’ve never met someone who really “had it all”, who couldn’t use serious work in at least a couple areas of their life, whether it was fixing a broken relationship, or learning to replace 14 hours of busy-work with 8 hours of essential, creative production.

There’s a socially conditioned myth that “success” means some combination of rich, famous, and powerful. But for anyone who’s actually tasted these things, you’ll know that they don’t make you happy. One of the most unhappy periods in my own life was a time where I was earning a healthy six figure salary, travelling all over the world, and had just bought a beautiful condo in a trendy Montreal neighbourhood. I was very “successful”…and terribly unhappy day-to-day. Worse, I was so busy shifting the blame for my unhappiness to everyone around me, that the negative energy eventually turned into stress and anxiety that actually distracted me from my work.

That experience taught me that the things that bring the deepest joy in life can be purchased only through massive action and unshakeable intent, and in that realm, knowledge is king.

Happiness Is a Skill

As much of a nails-on-chalkboard cliché as it is to say that money can’t buy happiness, most people live as though it can.

We equate money, power, and fame to success because we think they’ll give us permission to be who we really are, to finally live the life we want. If you were rich and famous, you could approach any girl you wanted without feeling intimidated. You’d deserve a super hot girlfriend because of your big…apartment. You’d have tremendous freedom. You wouldn’t ever have to take shit from your boss again. You could live by your own rules without needing anyone’s approval.

But, guess what? You already can live this way.

You already can approach any girl, anywhere, anytime, without being intimidated. You deserve a super hot girlfriend the moment you start believing and acting like you do, the moment you actually have something better to do with your life than meet women, the moment you stop trying to find your happiness in a relationship. You already are free to choose what you work on. Even if you do have a boss, you don’t have a master. You always have the choice to leave. And you already do live by your own rules, but unfortunately, most people’s rules include the desire to please other people, even complete strangers that they’ll never see again.

Living by Coincidence

A computer programmer who doesn’t actively think about their code is said to be “programming by coincidence.” They don’t really understand what they’re doing or why, they just mindlessly plod their way through a task until the code runs. In that sense, a lot of people are “living by coincidence” as well.

The value in personal development, the reason I think it adds a lot of value to people’s lives, is that once you start digging, you can’t help but challenge almost everything you know about who you are, where you came from, where you’re going, and why you do what you do.

When you hack on the intarweb, you get to ask interesting questions like, “How can I make a page that requires 80 separate requests to load, load in one second?”

When you get into personal growth, you get to hack your entire reality: Is reality objective or subjective? How do I know? How do decide on a moral code to live by? How can I turn a 14-hour day of busy-ness into an 8-hour day of productivity? How is it possible that a guy can approach a group of 10 girls like that? And how the hell did he actually get the number of the girl he was interested in?

You can’t explore the circumstances of your life on any meaningful level without changing them. Every question magnifies the facts and the bigger the truth gets, the harder it is to ignore.

My own experience with personal development has been one of tremendous growth and change. My experiences with social skydiving completely changed my world view, as much or more than any experience I’ve ever had, and in ways that extend way beyond just meeting women. 30-day trials, an idea I picked up from Steve Pavlina, have become an integral tool for me in installing good habits and phasing out bad ones. And I’ve had all kinds of fun experimenting with spirituality and various philosophical lenses.

I think the biggest misconception about personal development, one which causes people to avoid it, is the idea that it’s a specific industry populated only by people who make their living teaching people how to be successful, whatever that means. But personal growth is nothing more than purposeful motion, the intellectual pursuit of happiness. And whether you find value in studying the advice of a marketing “guru”, a spiritual teacher, or a CEO-turned-author, it all comes down to listening to the voices that improve your results.