What Is Personal Development?
– What Is It We Want to Achieve, and How Do We Do It?

Are you interested in getting to the core of personal development? Do you want to read about it in a simple and clear manner? Then you’ve come to the right place!

Our goal here is to give you an understanding of the concept that is ‘sharp’ and precise by cutting the topic right to the bone, so you leave here with a concrete understanding of two things:

The Goal:
– Why should you engage in personal development? (What is it you are really seeking?)

The Means:
– What is it inside yourself that you need to use? (How should you use your consciousness?)
– How can you do it? (What are the steps in the process?)
– Where can you find inspiration and like-minded people?

We (Birgitte and Søren) are highly interdisciplinary and orientated towards the big picture. We simplify and clarify complex topics by extracting the most critical elements, highlighting them, and placing them in their proper context. We are passionate about this process, and this article is the result of that endeavor.

This article contains a lot of exciting and important information, which makes it quite long. To facilitate navigation, we have provided the following overview. If there is a particular topic you are eager to read about, you can simply click on the link, and it will take you directly to that section. If you prefer to take in the whole article in its entirety, just keep reading.

– What Is Personal Development? – Improving Yourself and Your Life
– The Goal of Personal Development Is a Good Life!
– How Do You Create a Good Life (the Means)? More Consciousness and More Will
– The Greater and the More Consciousness You Give Yourself, the More You Become Yourself
– Your Will Is Your Icebreaker! You Won’t Get Anywhere Without It!
– Our Recommendation for Steps in a Personal Development Process
– Consciousness Expansion: More than 25 Ways to Do It!
– Meet Like-Minded People Also Engaged in Personal Development
– Birgitte’s and Søren’s Approach to Personal Development

Before diving into the exciting topics of the goals and means of personal development, let’s first clarify: What is personal development?

How should personal development be understood? What is it really about?

What is Personal Development?
– Improving Yourself and Your Life

As mentioned, personal development is a vast field that that can be approached in so many different ways that it can be very overwhelming. But at its core, it is, of course, about development. To develop oneself.

Development entails change or transformation — specifically of a positive nature in the form of improvement.

So in short, what is personal development?

Personal development is about improving yourself and your life.

Okay, what does that mean? Let’s make it a bit clearer what “improving yourself and your life” actually means.

Firstly, it’s important to remember that when using a word like “improve”, it doesn’t mean that there is something wrong with you or your life. It simply means that everything can get even better than it already is.

A formal definition of “personal development” and an understanding of what can be ‘improved’ can be found on Wikipedia.

A Definition of “Personal Development” from Wikipedia
– Development or Improvement of a Person’s “Capabilities and Potential”

Wikipedia’s definition of “personal development” looks like this:

“Personal development or self-improvement consists of activities that develop a person’s capabilities and potential, build human capital, facilitate employability, enhance quality of life, and facilitate the realization of dreams and aspirations. Personal development may take place over the course of an individual’s entire lifespan and is not limited to one stage of a person’s life. […] A distinction can be made between personal development and personal growth. Although similar, both concepts portray different ideas. Personal development specifies the focus of the “what” that is evolving, while personal growth entails a much more holistic view of broader concepts including morals and values being developed. Personal development can also include developing other people’s skills and personalities. This can happen through roles such as those of a teacher or mentor, either through a personal competency (such as the alleged skill of certain managers in developing the potential of employees) or through a professional service (such as providing training, assessment, or coaching).”
~ Wikipedia.org ~

As can be seen, Wikipedia emphasizes the improvement of one’s skills or self. Fortunately, the words “enhance quality of life” appear shortly after those words, which is a good thing because then a person’s life (and indirectly, a person’s experience) is incorporated into the notion of personal development.

We at goodconsciouslife.com always tend to take a broad view of things and are not afraid to say that we believe some things are more important than others. We believe that capabilities and skills (e.g., learning a new language, a new sport, a new technique, or a new art form) are beneficial and can even be enjoyable, and we think that development of “morals and values” in personal growth is interesting BUT we also believe that these things are not the most important things.

We see these aspects as means towards the goal of personal development, but they are not the goal itself.

No, we believe that when people seek personal development, it’s often because they want to create a better life for themselves. Yes, in fact, a good life is the ONE thing people most desire.

The Goal of Personal Development Is a Good Life!

Isn’t it precisely because we want a good life that we engage in personal development, such as learning a new skill or personal growth by working on our ethics and morals? Don’t we aim to realize ourselves or our dreams exactly because we want a good life?

We believe we do.

However, it is also our experience that many people are either not aware of or do not wish to acknowledge this simple goal (a good life) — perhaps they think it sounds too simple, banal, or even selfish.

But in the end — no matter what kind of development people engage in — they do it because they believe the experience will be better than if they hadn’t done it, i.e., it improves their life.

For instance, one might say that love, family, and ‘making the world a better place’ are some of the most important things in life, but these things are primarily focused on because we subconsciously know that cultivating and strengthening them gives us a good life.

Moreover, if we create a good life for ourselves, we will have more energy and capacity to help others do the same. This can certainly be seen as making the world a better place.

So, in our opinion, personal development, personal growth, spiritual development, self-improvement (or whatever one may call it) is interesting because it can, in a very focused manner and in nearly all conceivable ways, give us a better life. A MUCH better life, in fact.

The Recipe for a Good Life Is Quite Simple:

– Personal Development Is about Striving for a Good Life Experience and a Good Life in Practice

This headline is actually worth its weight in gold (if it indeed weighed anything 😉 ) because it conveys in a very precise manner what matters most in life. Let’s delve a bit deeper into what constitutes a good and fulfilling life experience.

A Good Life Experience That Is Continous and Ongoing Is What We All Seek

A good life experience that is continous and ongoing is the motivation (conscious or unconscious) behind all our actions and decisions. This may sound like a bold claim, but all our experience working with people and ourselves tell us that this is indeed the case.

When you continuously have a good life experience, you will feel satisfied, and much of the time your whole life will feel pleasant, characterized by positive states of being like joy, inner peace, love, “empowerment”, balance, meaning, freedom, and wholeness.

You can create this good life experience by choosing to work on these points in your personal development process:

– Being authentically yourself
– Doing your best to function as optimally as you can (and doing your best overall)
– Fulfilling your own needs
– Realizing your potential (with strengths and weaknesses) in a well balanced manner
– Prioritizing your health so you become whole, healthy, well, and balanced – both physically, mentally, emotionally, energetically, and spiritually

A Good Life in Practice Is Important but Is Second to A Good Life Experience

Most of us have learned it in reverse order, but here is how it actually works: First, you choose that you want a good life experience (especially: a good, positive state of being inside), and then you choose your practical expression of it.

The practical expression can, for example, be through family, relationships, sex, communication, education, work, finances, leisure, creative expression, house, transportation, means of communication, other material things, etc.

It is important that your inner world (your state of being) comes before the outer world (the practical expression), and that it is in fact, guiding!

Unfortunately, we have learned it the other way around:

We have learned the misconception that it is external things that should give us an internal state. So if we are not satisfied with our internal state, we should try if, for example, a new car, house, partner, or a new job can help with our happiness.

And maybe it can – for a brief moment. But then we are back to where we started. For this reason:

Our external life is but a mere reflection of our internal life, our state of being. Our external life is and remains determined by our internal life – our consciousness.

How much consciousness we have, and how we use it, pretty much controls everything in our external, practical life. So, it’s the inner world that matters. It is the life experience and positive states of being we should initially focus on, not changing our jobs or partners.

Always Going for a Good Life Experience May Sound Selfish but It Is Actually Altruistic
– When You Do Something Good for Yourself, You Do Something Good for Others

If we all purposefully and without compromise strived for a good life for ourselves, the world would look very different. Much better!

Yes, we are well aware that many recoil at this statement because it may sound selfish. And it may indeed be quite selfish at the beginning … but after a while of ‘selfishness’, it naturally transforms into altruism (the best for everyone and for the world). Here’s why:

Personal Development Needs to Be Navel-Gazing in the Beginning

Some people who embark on a personal development journey actually behave quite selfishly. But that’s a good thing, a necessary thing!

For one thing, it is called personal development or self-development, so a focus on yourself is inherent the name. Additionally, the initial phase of an adult’s further development is typically quite self-focused and “navel-gazing” – out of sheer necessity.

The process that leads to personal development MUST be inward-looking because it is about consciousness, and some of the really big questions one wrestles with are “Who am I?”, “What is the meaning of it all?”, and “How do I want to live?” … BUT our family, society, and culture have given us some answers that many people find inadequate … sometimes almost deceitful.

And honestly: Who among us wants to let ourselves and our lives be defined by others? We all want to decide for ourselves and find our own answers that suit who we are.

This makes personal development a very individual-focused project, and when the person seeking development is you, we believe the following:

It will be of great benefit for you to allow yourself to be “selfish” and “navel-gazing” for the amount of time it takes you to gain a better understanding of yourself and life.

Once you’ve “got the point” and started aiming directly for a good life experience, you’ll find that it to a very high degree consists of helping others and the world (you become more altruistic). That’s just how it is for us humans – we are social, and we thrive when we are there for each other, help each other, and collaborate to create positive things that make everything better for all of us (and for our surroundings, such as the environment).

This is one way to explain the effect of personal development. Another, equally valid perspective is this, seen from a slightly larger viewpoint and described in five short points:

1. A good life experience is one that encompasses lots of positive states of being such as wholeness, balance, inner peace, love, joy, empowerment, freedom, and meaning.

2. We experience these states of being when we have clarified and expanded our consciousness, making it more whole and balanced as well as larger or “higher.”

3. So when we – completely selfishly – aim directly at giving ourselves higher or larger consciousness because we want to experience these positive states of being (joy, love, freedom, wholeness, etc.) and have a good life experience, our choices and actions will naturally be based on our now larger and higher consciousness.

4. When our choices and actions are made from a higher consciousness, it results in what we, Birgitte and Søren, call ‘universal beneficial usefullness’: Choices and actions made from a higher consciousness always yield the best outcome for everyone involved, including ourselves, others, and the world. We become more pleasant to be around for our family, partner, friends, and colleagues. And we abandon selfish beliefs, thinking, and behavior that contribute to destroying the environment and the world.

5. Thus, selfishness turns into altruism.

How Do You Create a Good Life (the Means)?
More Consciousness and More Will Are the Way Forward

Okay, if personal development is about improving yourself and your life through a good life experience and a good life in practice, how do you do it? And where do you start?

First and foremost, it’s important to know what it takes to create a good life. The answer is actually quite simple:

To improve yourself and your life, it’s all about being able to:

a) understand and handle (manage) yourself (and thereby automatically also other people)
and
b) understand and handle (manage) life

Okay, so far so good.

What are the most important overall tools in personal development?

The best means to understand and manage yourself and life are:

More consciousness and more will. The more you have of both, the easier it becomes.

This means:

Personal development works by giving yourself MORE consciousness and MORE will.

When you give yourself more consciousness and will, something very interesting and good happens, because you automatically raise your state of being and energy level. As a natural consequence this means that you will experience more positive states of being without the need for external stimuli such as activities, sensory inputs (e.g., music, food, or sex), material things, and other people.

You will experience positive states of being simply because you now inhabit, have identified with, and experience a larger and more expanded part of your consciousness.

When we are higher consciousness, we will experience positive states of being, including a profound and unshakable sense of peace. We will experience a sense of grounding where we will feel more ‘ourselves’, more authentic — while simultaneously experiencing greater clarity and overview of all things. Everything becomes easier, and we will end up making better choices and becoming more effective.

These are obviously very attractive experiences. So, let’s take a closer look at consciousness first and then will (which is, after all, a part of consciousness).

The Greater and the More Consciousness You Give Yourself, the More Yourself You Will Become

Why do we talk so much about consciousness and consider it so important?

The answer is very simple, it’s because:

You are consciousness.

Consciousness is both the most fundamental as well as the most ‘superior’ aspect of us humans. Our consciousness and will are also the most powerful elements in our lives — they are our guiding forces.

This means that if you change your consciousness, you also change everything else about yourself. This includes your perception of yourself, the world, and life.

Yes, we do indeed claim that with your consciousness, you can change EVERYTHING about your experience. And this is a claim that anyone can easily check out with their own consciousness — including you.

All you need to do is to simply enter an expanded state of consciousness, for example, through meditation or other forms of inner journeying, and explore who and what you are, as well as what consciousness is.

The experience of a larger and more expanded consciousness is always more pleasant than the experience of a small, limited consciousness (which is typically governed by the ego with all its fears). Many people experience an expanded state of consciousness as ‘Home’ (with a capital H).

Other signs that you are in an expanded state of consciousness are a greater sense of clarity, deeper insight, and the experience of positive states of being (wholeness, love, joy, inner peace, etc.). These things will tell you that you are now in the exact right place in your consciousness.

Because you are consciousness, the effect of giving yourself more consciousness is very simple:

The more expanded consciousness you give yourself, the more you become yourself. You become more of what you are. More authentically you. You will realize more of yourself and will naturally strive to fulfill more of your potential.

You will become a greater, better you — and more yourself.

And as you (and your consciousness) grow, you automatically become:

– more present (in the moment)
– happier
– more loving
– calmer
– freer
– more proactive and energetic
– more competent and empowered
– more accepting and tolerant
– more balanced and harmonious
… and, not least and most fundamentally …
– more conscious
– and
– more whole

Interestingly, these things also lead to more meaning in life.

The above aspects are worth focusing on in your spiritual and personal development.

Life in nature (of which we are a part) always behaves in this way: It grows and becomes larger (up to a certain point) and during this process it learns to cope better. Over time, there will be “more plant, more tree, more elephant, or blue whale”, and they will all become increasingly better at authentically being what they are.

Our point here is that even though personal development is about all sorts of things, the underlying theme will always be about being whole as that which you (authentically) is, as well as becoming more, larger, stronger/smarter, and balanced. It’s about wholeness, authenticity, strength, competence (“empowerment”), balance, and expansion.

Gain More Consciousness by Weeding Out What’s Already Inside It
– Personal Development Typically Starts with Personal Deprogramming

So, more specifically, what does it take to gain more consciousness in your personal development process?

Yes, this may sound like a paradox, but in fact, you can gain more consciousness by removing some of the content that is already there. Not only is it logical that you will create more space by clearing things out, but there are actually some elements in your consciousness that narrow and limit it. The more of these limiting elements you remove from your consciousness, the larger and more expanded it will become.

With a slightly imprecise analogy, one can compare this to the effect of changing the bag in your vacuum cleaner: At some point, the vacuum cleaner will perform poorly (suck very little) because the bag is filled with dust and dirt. If you remove the dirt by changing the bag, the vacuum cleaner can suck at full power again.

So, one of the primary ways to get more positive stuff (authenticity, presence, joy, love, inner peace, etc.) is to remove all the things that constrict, ‘freeze’, and cramp consciousness.

This is the reason why for most people real personal development actually starts with deprogramming and a good ‘clearing things out’!

Things in our consciousness that are beneficial to get let of or improve include:

– Various types of traumas (both physical, psychological, emotional, energetic, and spiritual)
– Consciousness programming (such as beliefs, mental constructs, hierarchical thinking, dualistic thinking, expectations, culture, norms, ego, etc.)
– Shadow aspects (parts of ourselves we do not want to acknowledge)
– Our consciousness “operating system” (our relative form of consciousness that governs it)
– “Attention thieves” of various kinds (such as social media, fear-based news, etc.)
– Various stressors such as problems, information overload, general busyness, and stress
– Imbalances (in body, mind, spirit, emotions, energies, etc.)

Why may we benefit from letting go of these things in our personal development process?

Because they pull our state of consciousness down to a level where we don’t feel good. Consciousness becomes limited and influenced by thoughts and emotions that are uncomfortable, which will slowly break us down mentally, emotionally, energetically, and physically.

For example: For some reason, many of us have the following core belief: “I am not good enough.” It is indeed extremely common to believe this, but it is also (self-)destructive and in every way a bad idea: it is limiting, self-deprecating, and destructive. In other words: Believing something like that is a poor use of consciousness, and it breaks us down.

Okay, so what about when we have removed inappropriate elements, shouldn’t something new be filled in?

Almost not, but …

Deprogramming Creates Insight and Empowerment
– When You Remove Limiting Elements from Your Consciousness, There Will Be More Space for Expanding Elements

Now we’ve discussed what is advantageous to erase from your consciousness. So, the now question is, what is beneficial to ‘pour’ into it to be able better to handle and manage yourself and life? The answer is: very little, and quite a bit of it will come all by itself in the form of insights that you will gain as you expand your consciousness.

As we work on deprogramming inappropriate things in our consciousness, we will naturally become more self-aware. We will become aware of what isn’t working, and we will choose ways to handle it, thereby expanding our consciousness and making us feel better.

In fact, it’s important not to believe that you need to ‘pour’ new things into your consciousness because if you do, there’s a significant risk that your ego will take over and drive you to chase ever more knowledge and spirituality. In fact some people have, quite unconsciously, created a “spiritual ego” driven by precisely the pursuit of incorporating new ‘spiritual’ things into their consciousness. And while it may be fun and pleasant, it’s also a waste of time, attention, energy, and money because what you end up with is: more ego.

That being said, there are a few things you can benefit from focusing on giving yourself more of, namely:

• Insight: In the form of self-awareness, ‘life insight’, understanding, empathy, self-love, wisdom, etc. These things are not the same as “knowledge” in the traditional sense, which is something that comes from outside of us, no, it’s wisdom that you find within yourself (in your consciousness and in your heart).

• Empowerment: Such as strength, will, willpower, power, competence / skill, responsibility, and initiative, which enable you to handle things.

While giving yourself more of these two elements, you may greatly benefit from focusing on these two areas:

• Yourself and thereby automatically also other people: This includes aspects of your identity, worldview / paradigm, ego, beliefs, thoughts, feelings, behaviors / actions, experience, connections, etc.

• Life and various contexts: The big picture with grander connections. Here, your worldview and your paradigm influence what you can see and understand, and these are things you can directly work on improving (which means: expanding and making larger).

Your paradigm is a very fundamental thing that relates to how you allow yourself to use your consciousness, for example, to think, explore, and make decisions.

We humans are currently in the process of shifting our fundamental paradigm: We are moving from the old reductionist, physical-mechanical paradigm to a new quantum physical and consciousness-based holistic paradigm. It may be of great benefit to you to accelerate that transition within yourself. You might begin by learning more about it (for example via this book by Duane Elgin – who has a Wikipedia page here).

In short: You can benefit from giving yourself more insight and empowerment.

These are big words and topics, yes, but hopefully it will make things a bit more manageable when you now know that in the end, it all boils down to more consciousness, which can be divided into two things: insight and empowerment – in two areas (yourself and life).

You now have the big picture of what personal development is about. You know what a beneficial goal may be: a good life experience and a good life in practice. You also know that what’s required is that you give yourself more consciousness (and will) by letting go of limiting programs and elements in your consciousness and focusing on a few topics and areas.

This is all very well.

BUT. You won’t get anywhere without your will! Everything stands and falls on your will …

Your Will Is Your Icebreaker!
You Won’t Get Anywhere Without It!

Alongside consciousness, of which will is a part, will truly deserves its own special place in this article. Will as (intention, direction, force, perseverance, etc.) is the be-all and end-all regarding whether something actually happens in your personal development process.

Throughout the many years we’ve worked with people and spiritual and personal development, we’ve wondered and tried to understand why some people really make a lot of progress in creating a good life for themselves, while others do not.

What we have found to be crucial is not the degree or size of the challenges people might face. Nor is it their ability to gain insights or their ability to connect with their higher self.

No, the crux of the matter is something entirely different. The decisive factor is simply whether they have the will to change and the willpower to stick to their choices.

Will as Paramount to Change Is Overlooked in Personal Development

For some reason, many so-called “experts,” teachers, and authors in the fields of self-development, personal development, and spiritual development overlook the significance of will and willpower.

This is quite odd, as our will remains crucial for everything important in life. If you are interested in personal development, this is something truly worth remembering. Choose to focus on and work on your will and willpower.

If we lack will or are out of practice in using it, then, as mentioned, nothing significant will happen. Will is the tool with which we make choices, and we need to consciously choose any form of personal development — and use our willpower to stick with that choice.

The challenge is that personal development is about change, and while we may be attracted to the many wonderful improvements that personal and spiritual development can bring us, we are also afraid of change.

Most of us are “change-resistant” and “change-averse”; two funny words that simply mean that we hold back because “we know what we have, but not what we will get.” Yet, two different people can, in principle, be equally afraid of change, but the one who truly has the will to change and improve himself / herself will also be the one who creates and experiences those changes.

The Discussion of ‘Free Will’ Is Irrelevant

Some people may argue (as various philosophers and others have done throughout time) that we do not have free will. In our opinion, this is a fruitless discussion. Since we can make any choice at any time, including choices that are completely unexpected, we must have free will.

BUT … and this is an important point: We can experience not having much free will if our consciousness is filled with problematic elements and programs that limit and perhaps even automate our consciousness and will. For example, we might believe that we do not have free will. In this way, without actually wanting to, simply by believing in something limiting, we can have limited both our consciousness, our will, our possibilities, and our entire life experience.

But we can change that. We just need to use the amount of will we have at our disposal to train and strengthen our will.

You Can Train Your Will as If It Were a Muscle
… and That’s a Really Good Idea!

We can train both our ability to choose (will) and our ability to stick to our decisions (willpower). We do it in exactly the same way as if we were training our muscles: By using them more!

Simply making small, new choices is a good place to start. For example, we can decide to brush our teeth with the other hand, take a completely different route than usual, or listen to some new music or try some food we’ve never had before.

When we make it a habit to make new choices we have never made before, we train our free will and show ourselves that we are in control of our lives. We are not little ‘victims’ of circumstances (or our own old habits); we are creators of our own experience. A trained will = empowerment.

Self-development, personal development, and spiritual development begin with choosing that we will change ourselves and our lives for the better.

Willpower Gets a Boost When You KNOW You’ve Made a Good Decision

Willpower can be a challenge. We all know what it’s like to want something and not really succeeding because we’re not sticking with it or pulling through. We just don’t seem to have the willpower for it.

We might spend some time and energy pushing our intentions through, but it feels like swimming against the current. It becomes too difficult, too hard, and we give up because it seems easier to just return to the old status quo.

Here’s what often happens in that situation — and what we can do about it:

It all depends on the amount of consciousness we’ve used when making our choices.

When we make big and important decisions based on our ego (i.e., low consciousness), there’s a certain risk that they are selfish and inappropriate / bad choices, which are really not good for us, others, or the world. These types of decisions give us a feeling of “pushing our intentions through” and “swimming against the current” when we try to implement them.

If, instead, we make our choices from a state of higher consciousness and with the aim of creating a good life experience, we simply make better choices. Choices made in this way are typically better and more useful. And they seem easy, often super easy, to carry out. They actually give us a sense of flow.

With good choices, there are still obstacles and problems, yes, but they seem less difficult to overcome, and we find it easier to stick to our decisions (willpower) precisely because we know we have made the right choice.

Fortunately, there is a very good way to boost your willpower, and it involves first making the right choices. If you haven’t made the right choices, the air quickly escapes from the willpower balloon. We’ve probably all experienced this.

Here’s what happens when you make the right (= the most appropriate for everyone and everything) choices from a higher consciousness:

True willpower is born the moment we are certain about something and have made our choice based on this sure knowledge and insight. Once this is in place, it actually becomes easy to stick to the decision, even when there are challenges along the way.

If we lack real knowledge and insight behind our decision, we will also lack willpower.

So, knowledge and insight are the first and most important steps when it comes to willpower.

Beyond that, we will probably encounter unpleasant things, such as old traumas and other problematic consciousness programming, which will constrict our consciousness and limit us. Then we will need to exercise our willpower to do something about them.

If we want to raise our awareness in the face of such consciousness-limiting challenges, we can do it! And no one says that it must be done in any particular way. There are many, many different ways, and they are all just fine.

Willpower Can Also Be Increased by Making the Same Choice Over and Over

Some former alcoholics report that they repeatedly — many times a day — have to make the choice not to drink alcohol … and that it works for them — they can stay sober that way.

This is another way to build willpower, and it can be very effective, especially when you don’t feel you have sufficient knowledge and insight about whatever but still want to avoid making a bad choice.

The example of alcoholics is interesting because there is a growing body of research in so-called psychedelic therapy, which shows that it can be an exceptionally effective way to free oneself from various addictions, such as alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, or sex. Why is this the case?

It is so for the simple reason that psychedelic therapy expands consciousness and provides knowledge and insight into oneself, others, life, the universe, and everything. This insight includes whatever it is that alcoholics, drug addicts, and other dependent individuals are trying to achieve through their addictions.

And a good guess at exactly what “whatever-it-is” might be is this: wholeness, coherence, meaning, love, freedom, inner peace, and joy — all the positive states of being that higher consciousness provides. It is quite likely that these are the things alcoholics, drug addicts, and other dependent individuals are really seeking.

Now some people may think something along the lines of:

“But if I’m afraid of psychedelics and some of the other (less intense) ways to expand consciousness, how else do I get the knowledge and insight to make appropriate choices?”

The answer is: It’s always a good idea to expand your consciousness and gain knowledge and insight, but you don’t have to do it. You can simply take a shortcut and choose to always make your choices based on the end goal which is primarily a good (inner) life experience and secondarily a good (outer) life in practice. That works too.

Now we’ve reached the more practical part of this article on what is personal development. So where do you start when you want to create change? Are there some steps you can take?

Here is our suggestion for the steps in a personal development process.

Our Recommendation for Steps in a Personal Development Process

There are many, many ways to approach personal development. Our suggestion is this simple process:

1. Get the basics in order
2. Choose a fundamental approach to everything
3. Choose your (life) purpose, let it be your main focus, and let everything be guided from that
4. Give yourself insight: Investigate and understand what everything is all about
5. Expand your consciousness by letting go of limiting elements
6. Pure / direct consciousness expansion
7. Integration into daily life (including: new choices, new practices)

In the following, we will briefly explain what each point entails.

1: Get the Basics in Order

Our experience is that there are some very fundamental things that are crucial to get in order before diving into the actual work of ‘development’ or change / improvement.

The core of the basics are:
– Sleep
– Hydration
– Healthy food
– General health and balance
– Will(power) and responsibility
– Needs
– Various other practical things

And why is it important to get the basics in order first? Well, if some of the basic things are not in order, these elements will disrupt and delay your development, and surely there’s no reason for that to happen.

For example, if your needs for things like personal time, sleep, peace, and relaxation are not met, you’ll have so many stress hormones in your body that it will be hard for you to focus on the thing you want to work on. If you don’t get enough hydration, you can’t think clearly, and if you eat so unhealthily that it affects your well-being, energy, and balance, your body’s signals for help will be so overwhelming that it might be hard to connect with higher energy and consciousness, and so on. Simply put, the basics need to be in order first.

2: Choose a Fundamental Approach to Everything

The way we approach people, the world, and life greatly influences what and how much we get out of our personal development investment. Some people, for example, are afraid of making mistakes, losing face, or not “being right” or “winning,” or whatever it might be. But fear is a very poor guide!

We recommend that you approach personal development (and life in general) in a way that is open, positive, curious, and playful. This will make both life and the process of personal development easier, faster, and, most importantly, more enjoyable.

3: Choose Your (Life) Purpose, Let It Be Your Main Focus, and Let Everything be Guided from That

As a guiding star in all your work with personal development, we recommend that you choose a purpose. In other words, a good overall reason for doing it.

Our suggestion for a good overall purpose in your life is: “I choose to create a good life in the form of an ongoing good (inner) life experience and a good (outer) life in practice.” With this as a guiding star, it will be easy to make decisions and stick to them, so you will create changes, which interestingly enough, will always be positive, both for you and your surroundings.

4: Give Yourself Insight: Investigate and Understand What Everything Is All About

Only after making these choices does the process of creating insight begin, where you investigate the thing you want to work with. Investigations create clarity, insight, and understanding — a very good foundation for change and improvement. It’s mostly about understanding where you have limited and automated your consciousness and will, and then trying various ways to expand your consciousness further, as outlined in the next two points.

5: Consciousness Expansion Through Letting Go of Limiting Elements

After you’ve figured out what it’s all about, you can begin to remove and deprogram the things from your consciousness that don’t serve you. Generally, these will be all the things that limit and automate your consciousness and will.

6: Pure, Direct Consciousness Expansion

Direct consciousness expansion is the next step. This is about opening your consciousness and having new experiences of how vast consciousness actually is and how much it can do when used appropriately.

Because you not only have but ARE consciousness, this will also show you how vast you are and how many amazing things you can do. You can give yourself these insights through inner journeys, specific training, various tools, or other methods.

In the next main section “Consciousness Expansion: More than 25 Ways to Do It!” you can find plenty of inspiration for this step, among other things.

7: Integration into Daily Life (Including: New Choices, New Practices)

This step of integrating insights and choices into daily life is extremely important. Many people go to therapy or try various alternative methods and feel fantastic right afterward, but after some time, they experience that they have ‘fallen back’ into their ‘old self and habits.’

One reason for this is that they have not integrated their experiences and insights practically into new habits and patterns in their daily life.

If your consciousness has been ‘turned upside down’ and you have realized some fundamental things that are very different from what you previously believed, it might be a good idea to seek experienced and perhaps professional help for the integration of these new insights.

This is especially true in cases where you have been on a big inner journey, perhaps with the help of psychedelics / entheogens, which is a powerful method with the potential to change a person’s life from one day to the next.

Consciousness is much larger, more varied, and more powerful than most people think, and we can have experiences and insights that very few people have had — or can even relate to. Lack of experience and understanding in a ‘helper’ (for example, a friend who is very bound by current societal norms) is, at best, useless and can be disruptive and confusing—or, at worst, almost destructive.

Our advice is therefore to place great emphasis on ensuring that the ‘helper’ has both theoretical and personal experience with the things (e.g., psychedelics / entheogens) and experiences (e.g., transpersonal experiences and insights) that you want help integrating.

Another really good thing to do in the course of your your personal development journey is to create strong bonds with like-minded people. It is important to have someone to share things with, and this is probably especially relevant in the integration phase, where you need to merge your insights with your daily life and hold onto them and all the positive things they can bring.

In the section “Find Like-Minded People Also Engaged in Personal Development” below, you can find inspiration get inspiration on where you can find people to support you and accompany you on your journey.

Consciousness Expansion: More than 25 Ways to Do It!

Here is a (non-exhaustive) list of ways we can explore and expand our consciousness, thereby cultivating personal and spiritual development (self-development):

– Meditation

– Tantric sex

– Various types of guided journeys in consciousness (e.g. Multi-Incarnational Sessions, or The Journey)

– Different forms of breathwork therapy (e.g., Holotropic breathwork)

– Hypnosis and regression therapy (especially intriguing might be the work of Michael Newton — his institute can be found here)

– Bruce Moen‘s simple technique for shifting perception mode or “phase shifting” (more info on phase shifting) (more info about Moen here)

– Biofeedback and neurofeedback (which can also be a quick shortcut to learning to meditate)

– Releasing beliefs and other consciousness limitations

– Yoga

– Out-of-body experiences or astral travel

– Sensory deprivation tanks (float therapy or “floating”)

– Manipulation of subtle energies (e.g., through qigong, acupuncture, techniques related to healing, and many other methods that can significantly change both body and consciousness)

– Sound technology (such as Hemi-Sync, Holosync, and others, which use “brainwave entrainment via isochronic tones plus monaural beats and binaural beats“ – for some people, this can be a shortcut to many things, including inner journeys (consciousness exploration), hypnosis, consciousness programming, and pain relief)

– So-called alternative courses or educations (for inspiration, see for example a book list like this one or this one.

– Reading a consciousness-expanding book (e.g., this one or this one by Stanislav Grof, or this one or this one by Eckhart Tolle, or another book from this list)

– Watch a consciousness-expanding film (see for example this list) or videos on platforms like Vimeo or YouTube

Spend time with spiritually enlightened (or just clear-minded) people perhaps in an ashram

And there are many, many more ways to do this.

Plus, of course, there are also things that have to do with consciousness-expanding plants, mushrooms, and substances, known as entheogens or psychedelics, which are used in psychedelic therapy. Arguably, there is no technique or method more powerful or effective in creating personal and spiritual development than psychedelic therapy!

Unfortunately, for decades we have been “carpet-bombed” with false information and (politically motivated) propaganda that such substances are dangerous and nearly the same as heroin and other hard drugs — something to be very afraid of. This is terrible nonsense and a lot of extremely harmful misinformation, which the legislation in some countries is unfortunately based on.

Researchers and doctors in many parts of the world are now proving — again — how safe, effective, and genuinely useful most consciousness-expanding substances are when used wisely. There is even talk of a psychedelic renaissance.

No matter which ways one chooses to expand their consciousness, awareness and consciousness expansion are at the core of personal and spiritual development. It is fundamentally a GOOD and USEFUL thing to do, which many of us would greatly benefit from practicing more.

Meet Like-Minded People Also Engaged in Personal Development

We are social creatures, herd animals, and not super strong alone, but together we can achieve almost anything! We can build bridges longer than three kilometers, the pyramids, and a skyscraper that is 828 meters tall (including the spire) with 163 floors (Burj Khalifa), and we can send people to the moon and soon also to Mars.

Helping each other and collaborating is not just a good idea; it is simply how we humans survive and thrive. That’s why it feels good. This pleasant feeling is a positive state of being and worth pursuing directly, in every way possible.

Therefore, we can benefit greatly from finding others who are on the same personal development “journey” as we are.

When we look around the world there are many exciting things are happening, such as this recurring conference in England (and also in the USA) The Conference for Consciousness and Human Evolution or this recurring fair in England or this small consciousness-focused festival Conscious Camp in Wales.

There is also this place in Sweden that organizes exciting events, such as the recurring festivals No Mind Festival (Wikipedia page here) as well as the two more intimacy-focused Sexibility Festival and Tantra Festival.

In Austria, there is the small Schwelle Festival / Retreat, and many other exciting events around the world. A few are mentioned here, more (in Europe) are mentioned here, and a great place online to find even more interesting festivals and retreats worldwide is the website Festival and Retreats.

No matter what we choose, we should remember to also talk with other participants during breaks and exchange contact information with those we connect best with. Networking in this way is a perfect way to find like-minded individuals in self-development, personal development, and spiritual development, with whom you can share your “journey.”

Birgitte’s and Søren’s Approach to Personal Development

At Good Conscious Life, we are not affiliated with any religious, philosophical, professional, or political group or organization, and our approach to personal and spiritual development is based on personal experience and ‘effective pragmatism’. This means:

We primarily have opinions about what we have personally experienced and feel is true within ourselves, and what actually works when we apply it in practice.

Furthermore, we encourage you to always check everything we say or write within your own consciousness.

For example, you can verify our claims through inner journeys (exploration) within your own consciousness, or you can simply feel in your heart and intuition whether our information feels true and right for you.

Our approach is based on consciousness, or more precisely, on the answers we can all find in our own higher consciousness.

In this way, our foundation closely resembles non-religious spiritual development, which specifically focuses on all the great existential questions and answers. We have also experienced what (a version of) spiritual enlightenment means, which has been life-changing.

So yes, our basis lies in spiritual development, but since we also place enormous emphasis on making everything work in practice and being useful in daily life, we incorporate many elements from personal development, self-development, and self-help. For this, we have a vast amount of knowledge, theories, and tools “in our backpack,” but we are not staunch followers of any particular philosophy or method.

That said, we do have our own framework, the Wholeness Comprehension, which is based on our own insights and what we have found to work well in practice. The Wholeness Comprehension can be described as a comprehensive and coherent (yet, very, very simple) theory about consciousness, wholeness, humans, and life. However, it is not “a mental theory we came up with” — it is simply our attempt to articulate what we experience as true and what we know works in practice.

Due to our interdisciplinary approach, we consider ourselves to be a kind of renaissance people or polymaths. We freely mix various elements and experiment until we discover what works best for that particular person we are working with — in the specific situation they are in.

Or put another way …

We are bridge builders in consciousness:

• We build bridges between theories and techniques.

• We build bridges between higher consciousness and daily life.

• We build bridges between people (e.g., in couples therapy, conflict resolution and family therapy.

• We also build bridges “between individuals and their (higher) selves” in the form of psychotherapy, spiritual development, and psychedelic therapy and integration.

Bridging so many things is only possible because we always work from ourselves and our higher consciousness. We have invested many resources in raising our own awareness, which makes us our own measuring instruments: We measure everything against our own inner sense of truth and reality.

It also helps that we are so-called ‘highly sensitive people’.

It comes naturally to us to have a curious, playful approach, and we are so practically pragmatic that the only thing that really matters to us is whether something works or not.

We have now reached the end of this article and wish you lots of joy in your own personal development process!

Kind regards,
Birgitte Coste and Søren Lauritzen

 

Other Articles about Development

What Is Spiritual Development and Spiritual Enlightenment? – What Is It About, and How Do You Do It?

Go to the Article Library: Articles on Personal Development – An Online Library on Consciousness and Personal development

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