Well, it seems that there are a multitude of different reasons, but leading the pack is the fact that on some level people are afraid of 'looking a fool'. Children at a very young age begin to ask questions. Often what happens is that the child gets 'shut down' by their parents, who after a long day or a sleepless night may be tired, distracted or the like. Therefore from that young age children start to believe that it is not OK to question. This becomes very well engrained. At school we have to ask the right questions and give the right answers. Strange questions are ridiculed. Ironically these are the questions that everyone is thinking but are too afraid to voice, just in case they 'look the fool'. If it's not OK to question how do we ever get any clear answers and if we don't get any clear answers how can we possibly make any decisions, let alone good decisions?

This leads onto the second reason why people avoid personal development which is that there is a belief that "we should be able to run our lives on our own" and jointly that "what our parents taught us should have been enough". Again, as children we begin to push our boundaries - it's human nature. Parents, even with the best intentions are not well qualified at helping us push these boundaries. They tend to either let us run wild (and then come down hard on us when we mess 'it' up) or they stop us from doing 'it' completely. They don't know how to coach us. Part of the reason that they don't coach us in these things is because they haven't had any experience of it themselves. If you follow that your parent’s way of thinking was based on their parent’s way of thinking, which in turn was based on their parents way of thinking, who were born before the turn of the century. And if you think that at the turn of the century they were still bleeding people as medical treatment, well it's no wonder that some of our beliefs are out of date. We think that if we keep doing what we are doing and have been doing throughout the generations it will all be alright. Eventually somewhere along the line we have to realise that

IF YOU KEEP DOING
WHAT YOU'RE DOING
YOU ARE GOING TO GET
WHAT YOU'VE ALWAYS GOT

If what you've got is not working for you and you feel that things could be better, or even that you are unhappy or unfulfilled, then it's time to tread where people fear to tread and start pushing those age-old boundaries and asking some different questions. Then and only then may we start to get some different answers and a more positive result from our lives. What a lot of people insist on is to 'stick with the devil they know'. Then something happens that goes so completely against their morals and stretches them far beyond the limits of their boundaries. Only then do they stop to consider, re-evaluate and truly question. The key to living a happier life then is to question ourselves and our motives so that we can really get in touch with who we are and how we operate.

If this is the key then wouldn't it be great to tackle personal development head on in order to get ahead of the game? Another reason why people ignore this challenge is because people mistakenly believe that personal development is the same as psychology and 'psychology is only for sick people'. Almost everyone believes that they are different from everyone else but there is an inherent fear of what will happen if 'they find out that I'm a bit weird'. It's a scary thing to be labelled as different. After all, what do you do with someone who is different? What is necessary is to override this programming, to be reminded that it is our born right to be unique. We all like a level of familiarity and tend to avoid uncertainty. The problem with that is that there is so much change going on that there is not as much certainty as there used to be.

Herein comes the question of values. If we had clarity about whom we are and what our values really are then we would be able to use ourselves as the point of reference. This will allow us to investigate new things, questions ourselves, find answers and make decisions based on who we know ourselves to be. The problem is that not everyone knows what their values are because it's not the sort of thing we are taught to question. For the best part we like to believe that we get our values by default. This is partly true because most of the time children tend to learn by osmosis from their parents, peers and teachers. However these are not conscious values and when asked to stand up for what we believe in we often stumble and wonder why we end up in tricky situations. So the first step is to know your values so that you can use them as a launching point when facing uncertainty. If people were really clear about what would make them happy, then they could go searching for it, but people don't even attempt to go there. What makes people happy is if they know that they have value, "I am OK with me."

"How do I know that I am ok with me?" ...I have to get in touch with my values and then - live by them.
So, in conclusion the 4 basic reasons for avoiding personal development are:

1. We are afraid of looking the fool
2. We believe that we should be able to run our lives on our own and that what our parents taught us ought to have been enough
3. We think that personal development is psychology which is only for sick people
4. We fear uncertainty

The benefits of embracing personal development on the other hand is to risk getting to know yourself and to be HAPPY.

Healthy
Attitude
Productively
Pleasing
Yourself

Thank you for reading.

Warmest regards,

Peter