If you follow my content regularly, you’ve probably noticed that I am advocating for personal development, turning within, taking responsibility for your own life, etc.

This was a game-changer in my life. This is how my acceptance happened, and this is how I got relief from the pain and the negative emotions and gained hope. As a result, I could commit to Joana 100% not just physically but also completely consciously present, appreciating her at every moment, being grateful for her, no matter her medical condition, and being able to admire her for who she is: a strong, brave soul who is having this life experience and has her own perspective, journey, and lessons.

Since you are reading this article, I’ll assume that you’ve taken my advice and you started personal development. That means you checked some of the books I’ve mentioned and some of the videos, and you started some kind of 7 days or one-month challenge with a morning routine or similar.

If you did that, that means you’ve passed over the beginner phase. What comes after this phase are a lot of questions and some confusion.

I’ll help you get answers to some of them. I’ve been through this phase myself, and this is what I learned.

There are some common mistakes that all of us are making at the beginning of our personal development.

First, comparing to other people.

When you start to dive into personal development, new mindset, changing habits, etc., you are starting to notice more and more people around you doing the same. It’s a natural thing to happen. Your awareness is simply changing, and it’s like if you buy a white car and you start to notice white cars around you more often.

Then it’s very common to start comparing yourself with other people’s progress. Suddenly you think that everyone around you manages to meditate “properly,” and they are more organized than you, and they maintain positivity throughout the whole day. On the other hand, you find yourself pissed off by 10 am already.

At the beginning of my personal development journey, I found this analogy: You are buying a house where no one lived for several years, and the garden is neglected. Your neighbor next door lives here for several years and his garden is beautiful. The mistake would be to be anxious about why your garden doesn’t look like one of your neighbors. He lived here for a while, he took care of it, and this is the result. That doesn’t mean you can’t build a beautiful garden as well.

The right thing is to focus on YOUR garden, do the work, take the dry plants and grass out, plant a new seed, and nurture it day by day. In a few months, your garden will also look beautiful a gorgeous.

Note: Your garden will not change its look not one bit if you are constantly focused on the neighbor’s garden, and you are sad and bitter.

The second mistake is taking the concept of responsibility too literally. Thinking you should create everything logically with intense visualizations without stopping first and calming yourself down.

Wait a second. When you first heard the thought We create our own lives by the law of attraction principles, it’s very common that we take this superficially. There are people who succeeded in this, claiming they accomplished so many things living beautiful lives. But actually, they went a little deeper than this thought and studied this philosophy a little more.

Visualizations, affirmations, meditations, positive attitude, your intention – all this can bring you beauty and manifestations in your life. But there are two things you need to do before this: first, defining and recognizing things that are in and out of your control. And second, you need to calm yourself down first and then do the action.

This whole article speaks about the mistakes I’ve made initially, and I see this with every client. I thought if I regularly do visualizations, affirmations, and all that, I could cure Joana. This wish is completely natural. And also comes from a wrong perspective. Making someone healthy is out of our control. It can stay your desire and keep you aware of all medical and non-medical ways you could help your child. But you can’t expect that you can do it as a project, and if you fail, then it’s your fault.

The one thing you have control over is your reactions to every situation. What do you choose to do about it? But this is a topic for another article.

The third mistake, being afraid to feel and express negative emotions. I was one of these people. In the first months of learning new attitudes, positivity, and consciousness, I started to feel bad that I didn’t succeed keep my positivity when I would have an awful day. And I was afraid I am creating more negative events in my life. But what to do when the day is just awful? When Joana is crying or is having a seizure, or we are in a hospital, again, or other things are happening that are just too much – how to deal with negative emotions then?

My tactic was to force myself to suppress negative emotions and try to feel good again. See that word “force”?

As I went deeper with learning and reading and listening more on the subject, I learned that I should do the opposite. Not force me to do anything but just let it be.

I should release the emotions. I should cry if I need to or be angry (in a healthy way, not hurting people or breaking things), or simply be sad. Personal development and a conscious way of living are not about not having one single problem in your life ever again. Or about never feeling negative emotion ever again.

It’s about staying human as we are – with all of those positive and negative emotions. Also, it’s about learning techniques how we can come to balance again.

The fourth mistake, wanting to include everyone around us in personal development.

This means preaching to everyone close to us that morning routine is a great thing, and they should do it. Also, putting books and videos under the nose of people who clearly have no interest in learning what you know. And correcting every word they say, reminding them that that’s not positive thinking and they should know better.

This is what beginners do. I know why you do it. It’s because of your excitement. Because now you feel great and want everyone around you to feel the same, your mother, sister, brother, partner, friends. Besides wanting them to feel good, you also find it easier to have people closest to you accept the new habits because it will be easier for you to feel better all the time.

After you go through this phase, you will learn that you can’t make anyone else live their life your way. It won’t bring you a great feeling, quite the opposite. It will cause confrontations and fights.

But when you take your focus off them and put it on you, your actions, your choices, and your decisions, then you start to be an example. They may join you on the journey or may not. But your happiness and ease have nothing to do with what someone else is choosing in their life.

Fifth mistake, not changing bad habits.

Let’s mention this garden again. If the garden is full of junk and dry grass, garbage, and similar, would it be better to plant new seeds right away or clean them first?

What I mean by this is you won’t get much use from adopting new habits like meditating, visualizing…. if you keep all the old behaviors and habits that are not useful to you.

If you want results, you need to replace negative habits with new behaviors that are more useful.

Do you have anything to add? Have you faced other types of mistakes at the begging of your personal development?

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