600 Personal Development Exercises
do one a day - every day!
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PERSONAL MANAGEMENT There is who I am now and who I will become. There is, what I do now and what is yet to be done. There are tasks for today and yet nothing to do. For all sits as one and all rests in you. So, my priority for today and my whole life plan is not just activity, but to make real who I am. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS 1. How will you make real all that you are? 2. What aspects of your real self, have yet to find their true voice? Day 556 of Des McCabe's Personal Development Exercises
SELF HELP I reached out to my therapist a few weeks ago. I told her it was urgent. I needed help. She said ‘I can talk to you in eight or nine days. That's my next availability’. Now, what that did was create a vacuum that I had to fill. I was basically in therapy with her, every day for eight days. I knew I had to be ready for our session. When we met, I wanted to pay my therapist immediately. I said that we didn’t need the hour, because I'd been working every hour since we scheduled the session. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS 1. How can you apply distance learning therapy to the colleagues you work with? 2. How can you apply distance learning therapy to a situation you are trying to figure out? Day 555 of Des McCabe's Personal Development Exercises
THE GATHERING It’s the gathering up, before leaving behind forever that person or place. We’re taking forward memories which will gradually fade over time. We are left with only a feeling about the place or the person now long gone. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS 1. 2. 3. Day 554 of Des McCabe's Personal Development Exercises
LOVE Your role is to share the love that God is, especially to those who do not understand, that God is love. That is all. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS 1. If we see God as love how does this change the way that we see and talk about God? Day 553 of Des McCabe's Personal Development Exercises
OUR QUIET SELF I sat for two and a half hours in Costa yesterday, in the city centre, beside Waterstones bookshop. After all the drama and busyness of Christmas and the New Year I just needed to sit. Sheffield Cathedral and Saint Marie’s had both closed early for the bank holiday. But God is in Costa coffee shops and Churches, someone once wrote. Indeed, God is with us wherever we are, for God is in us. God is part of who we are. We just need to sit and listen to our quiet self, wherever we are. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS 1. When will you take a few minutes today to sit and listen to your quiet self? 2. Where will you be? Day 552 of Des McCabe's Personal Development Exercises
UNBELIEF Do not fall into the trap of rejecting love, because others tell you to call it God or wrap it up as religion. Ignore their beliefs in Gods and religions. For there is only Love. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT EXERCIS 1. How can you express all that you believe in terms of love? Day 551 of Des McCabe's Personal Development Exercises
RADICAL REVIEW You’re never too old to do a radical review of your career, and your future. You’re never too busy to do a radical review of all that you do, and where you’re going. It’s never too late to do a radical review of all that you are, and what you will be. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS 1. Carry out a three-stage radical review. 2. Look at your career and your future. 3. Look at what you do and where you are going. 4. Look at all that you are and what you will be. Day 550 of Des McCabe's Personal Development Exercises
REMEMBERING ELVIS God has left the building. He’s had enough of being locked up in Churches. He’s fed up with being ignored, categorised and chastised. God is not waiting for us to become concert goers, to come and see him. Love is coming to us. Jesus, like Elvis, has left the building. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS 1. ‘Elvis has left the building’ was used as a phrase to disperse the crowds at the end of an Elvis Presley concert. It was first used on the 15th December 1956 by Frank Page. 2. God has escaped from the box that society put him in. Where might he be now? 3. How and where will you meet him? Day 549 of Des McCabe's Personal Development Exercises
AGENDA The same things have been going over in my head for days now. They have become all consuming and the focus of all I think about. I need to change the agenda. And so, I deliberately set out a different set of priorities for me to do and think about. All the other stuff can fit in at the end under ‘any other business’. In this way, I can reset what is important and this is the focus of my attention. All that was before, will find its rightful place and will be sorted and completed. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS 1. Write out an agenda for tomorrow. 2. How does this reflect what is important for you in the short term? 3. How does your agenda help you with your longer term priorities? Day 548 of Des McCabe's Personal Development Exercises
THE UPPER WINDOW The light was always on in the top window. Twenty-four hours a day for months, it stayed on. The house was empty and I think they forgot to turn off the light in the top room. Now, this morning the light is off. Have they re-visited the house, and turned off the light? Or perhaps the bulb has simply died? Whichever is true, we are all left, looking into the darkness. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS 1. How can you shine your light 24 hours a day? 2. What do you feel when you look into the darkness? Day 547 of Des McCabe's Personal Development Exercises
THE FOUR CLIENT RULE If we stop seeing our clients as necessary obstacles to earning an income, and instead view them are stepping-stones of learning, harvesting and leverage, all will work perfectly, together. For one is a journey to love itself. Another drives my productivity schedule. The third is my accountability partner and the fourth is my lever into and beyond the community of four that I’ve created. It’s the four client rule PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS 1. Who is in your community of four? 2. Who are you actively helping? (your clients) 3. How are your clients helping you? Day 546 of Des McCabe's Personal Development Exercises
VALIDATION Everyone I say this to thinks I’m nuts. You’re the first person to actively encourage me to keep going. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS 1. Who was the last person that you said words of encouragement to? 2. What is your favourite ‘encouragement phrase’? 3. Who encourages you? How? Day 545 of Des McCabe's Personal Development Exercises
DAD'S DRAWER Dad’s drawer in the kitchen usually had all that was needed for fixing and mending. Insulating tape, screwdriver, batteries, tape measure, twine, scissors, washers and fuses. It was all there, in the ‘go to’ place for refurbishment. For most things could be mended. It still breaks my heart now, to throw things away that I know can be fixed. We’ve given into replacements or the latest models, even as this increases our global waste. We’re losing the ability to re-do and re-purpose, and the opportunity to be creative and ‘have a go’. We lost the skills and experience of a different generation when we cleared out Dad’s drawer. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS 1. If you were to have a ‘Dad’s drawer’, what would be in it? 2. What did you learn from your parents about managing daily life? 3. Is there anything that’s not working, that you need help with fixing? Day 544 of Des McCabe's Personal Development Exercises
COFFEE SHOP I don’t want to go anywhere. I just want to sit here. Just sit here thinking and not thinking. Writing and dictating. Listening and not listening. Reading and reflecting. I don’t want to go anywhere. I just want to stay here. Just stay here thinking and not thinking, forever in this place of nowhere and nothing, that holds everything we are. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS 1. Where is the place that you feel holds everything for you? 2. Where can you truly be yourself? Day 543 of Des McCabe's Personal Development Exercises
INFLUENCING SKILLS Influencing is when you actively support what others want to do, by facilitating how they move forward in that direction. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS 1. When did you last use your influencing skills to help someone? 2. What is the main way that you influence a situation with the language that you use? 3. What is the main way that you influence a situation with the way you behave? Day 542 of Des McCabe's Personal Development Exercises
WHY? Why do I do what I do? Why am I here? Why am I doing things that do not make me happy? Why don’t I change the world? Why don’t I do my perfect job? Why don’t I stop working altogether? Why don’t I give me children the future I wish I had? Why am I asking these questions? Why have I ended up here? Why am I stuck? Why am I still thinking about the same things? What is my why? PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS 1. Can you find one response that will answer all these questions (this is your ‘why’?) Day 541 of Des McCabe's Personal Development Exercises
ALL THAT REMAINS When I look back, I think about the amount of time and energy I put into that project, or job, or task. It was all consuming at the time, filling my mind and my day, with so much to be done. And yet, now all the work in the project, or job, or task is gone, and all that remains is a vague memory. We can be consumed by what we do, repeating this pattern day by day, until there is no time left. And yet beneath all this activity is who we are, because in the end, this is all that remains. So, when you meet someone, do not just ask ‘what do you do?’ but take time to explore, also, who they really are. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS 1. Deep down, how would you describe who you really are? 2. How is this reflected in what you do – your work, your home life and your relationships?? 3. How might you go beneath the surface to find out who others really are? Day 540 of Des McCabe's Personal Development Exercises
PRODUCTIVE INCLUSION Inclusion is much more than including. It’s much more than trying to involve everybody. Inclusion in the active promotion of every person for the benefit of everyone. Inclusion is a process that expands the possibilities of the whole by realising the potential of each person. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT EXERCISE 1. How can you expand the possibiltites for each person that you know? Day 538 of Des McCabe's Personal Development Exercises MONK UMBRELLAS It’s late in the afternoon and the attendant is going around the pool, putting down the large umbrellas. He’s tying the cream covers with their cream belts, around their sturdy brown poles. The umbrellas now all stand spaced neatly apart like monks, guarding the ocean here at Cunan, Mexico. The Monk Umbrellas look out across the Atlantic to their counterparts, in the square at Candelaria. Towards the statues of the Guanches kings who ruled the pre-Castillian kingdoms of Tenerife. Together they all wait for a new day and to protect us all in the Cathedral, and by the pool. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT EXERCISE 1. What does the arrival of a new day mean to you? Day 539 of Des McCabe's Personal Development Exercises FORGETFUL Older people are sometimes viewed sympathetically or in a patronising way, when they seem to struggle to remember dates, or names, or events. But what younger people do not yet know is that as we grow older, we can be blessed with ‘the cloud of forgetting’, which is often given other names. An unknown 14th century mystic set out clearly for us, how the cloud of forgetting awaits us all, as we move upwards to become one with eternal love. Once we have this understanding, we too can experience the gift of forgetting, now. We can also look to forgetful older folks with a sense of wonder and learning. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT EXERCISE 1. How might you learn and appreciate the gift of forgetting? Day 537 of Des McCabe's Personal Development Exercises CHAIN REACTION You don’t have to know where this leads, or to see the plan completed. You don’t have to see the consequences of all that you have set in motion. For this is for others to take from here, and to follow through. Just like all that was handed to you, many years ago. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT EXERCISE 1. What was handed to you many years ago? 2. What will you hand on? And to whom? Day 536 of Des McCabe's Personal Development Exercises TEACHER TRAINING The student must become an extension of the teacher, and not just one who copies. In other words, the student must grow with the teacher, so that the student can become the teacher. And the teacher, is then the student. In this way. our role is continuously shifting. For we are all both teacher and student, at the same time. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT EXERCISE 1. Write down when you were last a teacher - and a student. 2. What is your personal definition of 'teacher' and 'student' in your life? Day 535 of Des McCabe's Personal Development Exercises ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM Illness and death await all of us. It’s the elephant in our room. It’s there, but we don’t talk about it. Years go by, the room gets smaller. and our elephant comes nearer. Soon we will be touching each other. Then our elephant will ask 'why have you ignored me all these years? We could’ve been friends and learned so much from each other. We could’ve played together'. And then he left me. The elephant in my room. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT EXERCISE 1. Have you spoken to the elephant in your room? 2. How will you play together? Day 534 of Des McCabe's Personal Development Exercises DIRECT MARKETING If you really want to make an impact. If you really want to get that sale. If you really want to build your business. If you really want to achieve a new position. If you really want to win someone’s support. Send a hand-written letter. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT EXERCISE 1. When might you use direct marketing - that is truly personal? 2. Who do you really need to make an impact with? Day 533 of Des McCabe's Personal Development Exercises COMMUNITY Community is the framework of relationships that delivers your purpose. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT EXERCISE 1. What are the key relationships that you have that enablle you to deliver your purpose? 2. Are you clear on your purpose? 3. How can you cherish and develop the relationships that really matter to you? 4. What new relationships might you need to look at? Day 532 of Des McCabe's Personal Development Exercises |
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