The 3 Steps to Self-Development

In my work, I'm supposed to take people from all walks of life with different strengths, experiences, and priorities and help them improve their communication, emotional intelligence, and leadership skills.

But where do you even start? How do you identify where they are in the process? What are the steps to take to grow and improve?

Every coach or leader should have a coaching methodology or process that identifies where somebody is in their development and helps them move to the next stage.

Today, I want to share my own framework. I've spent hundreds of hours reading and learning about human development and growth. I've spent hundreds of hours working with others, helping them improve their lives. And I've spent thousands of hours in my own company, taking some vicious bumps and bruises on my own path of growth.

I see growth as a three-step ladder we must move through to truly improve in any area of life.

Stage 1: Adopt an Attitude of Ownership 

In 1942, a boy named William was born with all sorts of issues. For most of his childhood, he was partially blind. He dealt with stomach issues long before we all had an intolerance to gluten. He dealt with debilitating back pain that plagued him most of his life, and he battled depression on and off.

Life didn’t make it any easier for him. He wasn’t particularly talented at anything. He failed miserably at his dream of becoming a painter. His wealthy father used his connections at Harvard Medical School to get him in, but he never completed a degree. 

At 30, he was deemed a complete failure by society’s scorecard and his own. He was unemployed, saw no evidence of any measurable success, was estranged from his family, and was a mess mentally, physically, and emotionally. He was Eeyore personified.  

During this time, he fell into the deepest depression he’d ever experienced and was planning to take his own life. But before he did, he’d tap one final avenue. One last “experiment,” he called it.

For one year, he’d take complete responsibility for everything in his life – his circumstances, emotions, and results. He’d do everything in his power to change his life. If nothing worked, he’d go through with his plan to end his life. 

William James became one of the most influential thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries and is now known as the father of American psychology. He attributed this shift to his success later in life and often referred to this time as a “rebirth.”

This is the first rung on the self-development ladder: taking a radical attitude of ownership for everything in your life. No more complaining, blaming, or whining. Get rid of the victim mentality in which you justify poor behavior because life is dealing you a bad hand. 

It’s important to understand the difference between fault and responsibility. Fault is a very real thing and often has nothing to do with us. We may not have caused our circumstances.

Inflation, a horrible boss, your narcissistic mother, or your dog vomiting on the rug again are not caused by you. Still, it’s our responsibility to deal with them. 

Holocaust survivor and psychotherapist Viktor Frankl once wrote: “Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.”

He said, “The last of the human freedoms is our ability to choose.” There is a space between stimulus (what happens) and response to it (our behavior). And in that space, we can choose how to act.

This is from a dude who literally spent time in a concentration camp. I think we can stop complaining about our boss or our dog chewing up our socks.

My favorite quote this year is, “power follows the finger of blame.” So many people I work with point towards their boss, the food industry, the government, work culture, or whatever for their emotional well-being and results. The problem is that if you’re pointing at things outside of yourself, you’re taking away your power to do anything about those circumstances.

When I was in my early 20s, I was underperforming in school, attending about 50% of my classes (sorry, Mom), was all in my feelings because of a breakup, and had a few run-ins with the police for doing dumb things. Of course, I didn’t change my behavior; I pointed to my ex, the police, my parents, or whoever else could catch some of this blame for my life. 

Only when I started taking responsibility for my own circumstances and emotions could I even begin to move to rung number two..

Stage 2: Develop + Practice a Set of Personal Principles

A friend of mine recently had his first baby and told me, "It's wild how completely helpless they are." We all come into the world this way, of course – completely reliant on the world around us. The first way we learn to relate to the world is through a very simple value system: does it hurt or feel good? React accordingly. 

Hungry? Demand food.

Did it hurt? Cry 

Tired? Scream until you get a nap.

We all know a few adults who've never grown out of this worldview. As we saw in the first rung, they remain a complete victim of their circumstances. A baby, if you will. They only do what feels good, avoid what feels bad, and don't care about anybody else's thoughts or feelings.

But then, after becoming a bit more self-reliant and taking some responsibility for our lives, we learn that screaming at the top of our lungs when we're tired doesn't get us a lot of friends. We move to the adolescent stage. We start to understand trade-offs and the world's unwritten rules, so we develop slightly higher level skills. 

For example, we'll sacrifice the cheesecake craving to look good in a bikini, pretend we like Lord of the Rings to get a date, or keep our mouths shut in a meeting to avoid stirring the pot.

Although better than a child, it's not ideal. You start to live a life built on a shaky foundation of negotiating and manipulating. You don't do anything for its own sake but for some other reward. 

You start to live by the rules of society. You never take the time to understand yourself and what you want in life. You never stand for anything. Your life starts to form through all of the desires of everyone around you. 

Like the child, many people get stuck here in this stage. They say "right things" and "do the right things." They possibly have some material success, but have no idea of who they are themselves, have no idea where all this crap came from, and wonder how they have a completely unfulfilling life. 

That's where the final stage of development lies – the adult. The adult has a set of unconditional, self-directed principles. It's not about pain vs pleasure. It's not about doing things for external reasons or validation. It's about doing things they believe are right, no matter what.

This is the second wrung on the self-development ladder – developing a set of standards or principles that guide your behaviors for no other reason than that you believe they are right. 

Research shows that when people can articulate and act in line with their values, they are healthier mentally and physically, perform better at work and school, and are more resistant to stress, failure, people-pleasing, and bad habits like drinking and smoking.

There's a great quote by the writer and author Maria Popova, "When people try to tell you who you are, don't believe them. You are the only custodian of your own integrity, and the assumptions made by those that misunderstand who you are and what you stand for reveal a great deal about them and absolutely nothing about you."

Principles help guide us through all of the small decisions throughout our day. For example, in my health and fitness days, many of my clients adopted the principle of eating their body weight in protein every day. This guided their behaviors and decisions at every meal so they didn't have to wonder, "What should I eat at lunch?" 

A current principle of mine is integrity – to do what I say I'm going to do when I say I'm going to do it. This guides my decisions of what I commit to, how I prioritize and delegate my workload, and how I act personally and professionally.

Of course, I don't always nail it. But that's the thing about principles; they're aspirational towards the person we want to become. They help direct our impulses, choices, and actions.

They help us build character so we can move up to the final rung of the ladder..

Stage 3: Developing Power 

The third and final stage is power – our ability to affect the world around us. Our ability to influence others, tap into our purpose, and create ripple effects that far outlast us.

While preparing for my most recent workshop, I walked my pops through the presentation on the ole whiteboard, and I got to the place where I'd be helping people with social skills and emotional intelligence.

My dad recommended changing the terminology to "business skills" as somebody might receive "social skills" as soft. He's right, of course, but this drives me crazy because these are the skills that only the most elite leaders and most exceptional humans have. Skills like influencing others, developing purpose, driving cultures, and other elements that transcend ourselves are the hardest to develop and rare among us. 

It ain't soft.

In reality, you only get an invite to this rung on the ladder after you master the "hard skills." I often think about Navy SEALs who undergo rigorous physical and mental training to develop toughness and competence and come out with virtues like sacrifice, compassion, patience, leadership, and a deep sense of purpose. 

This third and final rung can only be pursued and developed after filling your cup. As leaders and coaches, we want power – to be able to inspire, motivate, and influence other people, to affect the world around us. This requires emotional intelligence, communication skills, a strong sense of personal meaning, a deep purpose, and a good deal of energy. And this can only be reached at the highest stage of personal development.

The mistake I made when starting Take Care was that I began by teaching people the third rung. I was so convinced of its effectiveness that I skipped over the first two rungs.

But that's not how it works.

You’ve got to start with the “hard stuff” to even begin with the soft harder skills.