5 Free Personal Development Ideas for Keeping your Mental Pool Clean!

I do a lot of running in my neighborhood as part of my mental and physical fitness regimen, and would you believe that you can get great personal development ideas while you are exercising?

Actually, endurance exercise is known for it's ability to produce coherent brain waves (a.k.a. – productive!), but that is a story for another post. For now, I want to share with you some free personal development ideas that I came up with as a result of seeing…a dirty pool??

Yep, my mind just works that way, I guess! What I am actually referring to here is that by running around the streets and sidewalks in my neighborhood that are "off the beaten path," I see a lot of things that most people in this area never see. This includes some beautiful homes with well-planned and groomed yards, and it also includes some homes and landscapes – and pools – that could use a little bit of tender loving care!

It occurred to me that people are very much like that. They have a certain "up front" appearance, and a way of acting and behaving that the world sees, but then they act an entirely different way when they are alone or out of the public eye.

The inherent problem with that is that if you look or behave like a slob, you will feel like a slob, no matter how much you clean up your act in public!

You can't run around at home wearing a nasty, stained white tank top, tripping over garbage, acting like a sloth, and growing a science experiment in your pool, yet expect to feel and be treated like a king or queen when you're in public!

Those two scenarios simply don't add up. If you want to have success in life – in any endeavor – then you need to feel and act like someone who is successful in that endeavor, especially when you are all alone!

• Your Home – If you dream of having a big, beautiful house someday, yet you live in squalor in the meantime, you will never develop the mindset of someone who can live in a big beautiful house! That's like shaking your head "no" while saying the word "yes" – you are sending mixed signals. I don't care if you live in a dump, you can keep your house and your yard clean, and you can take pride in taking care of what you DO have. Otherwise, how are you training yourself to be the kind of person who can own – and take care of – a million-dollar mansion?

• Your Health – If you are stuffing down greasy, fat-filled, unhealthy food on a regular basis, yet you never exercise, do you really think that you are going to look and feel like the lean and sexy models and actors that are all over the media? If you want "six-pack" definition in your abs, or if you want a body that gives people whiplash as they turn to stare at you, then you need to practice both mental and physical fitness all the time, not just when you are out in public.

• Your Career – If you hate your job, you are constantly complaining about how much you don't want to work there, about how your fellow employees are idiots, or about how incompetent your management team is, do you honestly think that you are building the proper professional mindset to have a better job in the future? Who would hire someone who complained that much, but who didn't take consistent action to fix the issues that they were complaining about? To get to a higher point of career satisfaction, there is always something that you can be doing, even if it is just spending an hour or two every day studying for a new career. You won't feel like a career winner until you stop being a career whiner.

• Your Relationships – If you think that you are some great "prize," yet your mate is constantly making you wish that he or she would clean up their act, do you really think that you are creating a conducive mental or relationship environment that will lead to success? It doesn't matter if your mate does need to clean up his or her act, it is you who needs to feel like a worthwhile mate by acting like a worthwhile mate. Try on some words and behaviors such as caring, understanding, compassion, patience, responsibility, flexibility, etc. It doesn't matter if you are involved in a relationship right now that is terrible. You will never create the mindset of someone who deserves a better relationship until you start acting and feeling like someone who deserves a better relationship!

• Your Family – Are your children demons who have come to earth? Is your mother-in-law the wicked witch of the west? Is your brother a complete jerk that you are ashamed to call your own flesh and blood? Can you identify with any or all of those situations? Do you talk about them or think about them on a regular basis? Do you seriously think that any of those situations are going to get better by you focusing on them, or by acting as a poor example by verbalizing your negativity to the people around you? How about being truly grateful that your kids are healthy, and focusing instead on their good qualities? How about appreciating your mother-in-law for who she is – even if that is just a bad example so other people know how not to act? What about accepting the fact that your brother is your brother, and you can't "choose" your family? However, that doesn't mean that you need to focus on how lame some of your family members are. If you want a better family life, then start acting like a good family man or woman, stop focusing on the negative, and start celebrating the positive. Lead by example, and watch how many other people start to follow suit.

These 5 examples are just a taste of the many ways that you can clean up your mental practices in order to start becoming the type of person who leads the kind of life that you want to be leading. 

There is an old saying that goes: "If you can't say it, then you can't do it."

I would update that to say "If you can't be it, then you can't have it!" 

So, that being said, is it time to clean out your pool?

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