How Personal Development Can Change Our World

Over the last sixteen years, I have offered my personal development clients a whole range of what I call 'mental exercises' - quick meditations that help them focus their minds and keep them clear. Remember that a clear and focused mind opens the floodgates to happiness and success. But how they then practice what they've learned varies wildly. One of them recounted how he locked himself in the toilet at home to do his meditation. He couldn't bring himself to reveal his secret to his wife - God knows what the poor woman thought he was doing! OK, I realize that personal development is actually a personal thing - but I don't understand why someone would wanting to keep the fact that they are trying to better themselves a secret! Indeed, in bettering yourself, you might be even improve the lives of those you claim to love.

Perhaps it's time for personal development to become inter-personal, for like-minded people to actually stand up and be counted for who they want to become - leaders in their own personal lives and a real and positive influence in the lives of all those that they claim to love. Our world needs this positive action because, as things stand, we are faced with an historic dis-empowerment of ordinary people who are simply trying to make the most that they can of their ordinary lives. I've just glanced through the latest news on Europe-wide protests against the austerity measures being introduced by European governments to ensure that the markets' faith is restored in sovereign debt and the euro. But 'the markets' are run by the financiers who created the burden on sovereign debt in the first place.

For example, Ireland's sovereign debt market standing is tarnished to say the least - the market demands that it pays practically three times the interest rate on its debt that Germany is paying. Ireland's sovereign debt is burdened by the State's rescue of Anglo-Irish Bank - a financial institutions, according to Brian Lenihan, Ireland's Minister for Finance, that has no intrinsic worth as a bank but is 'systemically important' as a result of its size. In exactly the same way that the world's financial power-brokers huddled up with the political masters, so Ireland's financial elite were given unprecedented free rein to create a beast of such magnitude that it has ruined Ireland's financial standing internationally, rocked the European Union and dented the value of the euro on international markets. The Anglo-Irish Bank story is one with international ramifications - however it's but one of many similar stories. Royal Bank of Scotland, Lehman Brothers and a whole plethora of US banks. And those banks that are still standing, often as a result of the taxpayer bailing them out, are not lending to re-ignite the economy and are, in the words of on consumer watchdog, 'fleecing' the ordinary bank customer with extortionate interest rates and charges.

Now, a quick question. Which has had a greater day-to-day affect on the ordinary lives or ordinary people, 9/11 or the economic crisis? With 23m people unemployed in Europe, with double-digit unemployment in the US, Osama Bin-Laden need not have bothered. The real terrorists are wearing Hugo Boss suits and these guys are still manipulating the levers of power. And just like all terrorists, these guys are fundamentalists - consumed by a dearly held love. But it's not love of God that's the driving force here but a deep and abiding love of large sums of money - your money, my money.

Now, you may well ask, what has all this got to do with self improvement or personal development? Well, it was Gandhi who said that if you want to change anything that you have to be the change. And it was that same little man, who spun the material for his own clothes, who pulled the rug out from under a super-power that once ruled one third of the world. Wasn't it Martin Luther King who had his dream, perhaps fulfilled in Obama's ascent to power - a victory that resulted from large number of ordinary people, and their individual donations, who really believed "Yes We Can". It remains to be seen if Obama's election actually represents real change - but that's because it took place in the context of a political system that doesn't care about all those grassroots people. And, looking beyond the US, who would have believed that, during the Soviet era, a shipyard worker from Gdansk could set in motion the domino effect that spelt the demise of such a mighty and powerful bloc? A quarter of a century ago who would have ever even considered that South Africa might be ruled by the majority of its people?

The ordinary person in the US and across Europe is, just like the client that I mentioned earlier, hiding behind their toilet door, frightened to stand up and be counted as people who really and truly matter. Personal development and self help books make up a constantly growing major sector of the book market - yet all their readers are closet converts. Sure, you can change your own life for the better - you can be out of work but full of the joys of life, you can find your pay-packet savaged or be up to your neck in debt, but still be happier. But, as I say to my clients, if you don't have concrete results to show for your personal development (and that is not a pun on the concrete mixer that was driven through the front gates of Ireland's parliament!), you're fooling yourself. And, at present, it strikes me that there are just too many fools around.