It’s been over 30 years since I discovered the importance of daily personal development in my life. For some of you reading this … that’s a lifetime! For me, it’s been about a lifetime of personal development – on a daily basis and I can only say that I wish that I had started sooner in my life. 

One of the challenges is the amount of information available to us on a daily basis. How does one filter all of it in order to know what has value in application?

I remember walking into a bookstore many years ago, and looking at the section labeled (at the time) “SELF HELP”. The amount of books and resources that were there were in the hundreds. I didn’t know what to choose.  A title would “grab me” and I would thumb through it.

If the book made the initial browse-through and had the right price tag, I purchased it. I would read it, implement and then, through trial and error, decide if the information had merit.

That’s a tough way to self-develop. That was before Amazon and Kindle and downloads. That was the age of real libraries and real bookstores, as the only place to get information, outside of the television or radio.

I was hungry – and spend a lot of money on books that did help me and I also inputted information that was faulty to my success (remember, trial and error). What comes to mind is that little robot in the movie from the 90s – SHORT CIRCUIT — input!!!!!! Voracious input. That is how I got started.

Oh, and Oprah’s book club – I sometimes heeded her recommendations.  I found that I could not fully trust that process of selection.  I did read a book that she promoted, and was highly touted and the author was celebrated.  It involved planets and the proposed difference between men and women.

I read most of it and was, quite frankly, demoralized. I kept finding myself on the “wrong” planet and thought my thinking was flawed and that I would never be the woman that my husband needed.  What I later found out was that the author of that highly-touted book was married and divorced multiple times – which meant that he did not have the level of results I was seeking in life.  I needed to read books with ideas and concepts from those who did have the level of results I desired.

And so, that kind of opened the door to a better system of self-development-book-selection-strategy. That strategy involved this question:  does the author have the kind of fruit on the tree that I would want to have, at least in the area of life being written about?   And so, now I had a better filter in place.

There is WAY more information available today, and WAY more interaction with social media groups, marketing,  and online promotions.  The question remains for me: is that the fruit I am looking to have in my life?  If it passes the “fruit on the tree test”, I am all about it!