On Twitter and Facebook on Sunday, I quoted my friend Paul Meyer, mentioning that he was the person who helped me create my first personal growth plan. In the hours afterward, I received dozens of requests, all asking the same thing: “How do you create a personal growth plan?”

The answer to that takes more than 140 characters, so I thought I’d post it here:

The key to a life of continual learning and improvement lies in developing a plan for growth and following through with it. Paul Meyer knew this. In fact, when I first met him and we had lunch, he asked me a question that changed my life: “Do you have a personal plan for growth?”

In answer, I told him about my work schedule and how much I did and how I was learning on the job.  I kept going on and on.  The more I talked, the more obvious it was that I had no plan.  Paul helped me find one.

Growth is does not happen by chance. If you want to be sure to grow, you need a plan—something strategic, specific, and scheduled.Motivational speaker Earl Nightingale said, “If a person will spend one hour a day on the same subject for five years, that person will be an expert on that subject.” Isn’t that incredible? It shows how far we are able to go when we have the discipline to make growth our daily practice.

So if you want to follow a plan, recommend that you start by identifying an area or two in which you desire to grow, such as leadership. Then start gathering useful resources – in print, online, on video, etc. Now your goal is to schedule learning time EVERY DAY. Here’s the rule of thumb I’ve used for years: read one book a month and digest one article/podcast per week.

As an example, this is the weekly schedule – 5 days a week, 1 hour a day – that I recommend for personal growth as a leader:

Monday: Spend one hour with a devotional to develop your spiritual life.

Tuesday: Spend one hour listening to a leadership recording.

Wednesday: Spend one hour filing* quotes and reflecting on the contents of Tuesday’s material.

Thursday: Spend one hour reading a book on leadership.

Friday: Spend half of the hour reading the book and the other half filing and reflecting.

The average American adult watches close to 30 hours of television per week, with little positive return. What do you think would happen if you devoted just five of those hours to personal growth?

Why not start acting on a plan today and find out? Then let me know if it was worth it.

*For my tips on how to collect and file material, read this post.

Every major difficulty you face in life is a fork in the road. You choose which track you will head down, toward breakdown or breakthrough. Dick Biggs, a consultant who helps Fortune 500 companies improve profits and increase productivity, writes that all of us have unfair experiences; as a result, some people merely exist and adopt a “cease and desist” mentality. He continues,

One of the best teachers of persistence is your life’s critical turning points. Expect to experience 3-9 turning points or “significant changes” in your life. These transitions can be happy experiences … or unhappy times such as job losses, divorce, financial setbacks, health problems and the death of loved ones. Turning points can provide perspective, which is the ability to view major changes within the larger framework of your lifetime and let the healing power of time prevail. By learning from your turning points, you can grow at a deeper level within your career and life.

If you’ve been badly hurt, then start by acknowledging the pain and grieving any loss you may have experienced. Then forgive the people involved – including yourself, if needed. Doing that will help you move on. Just think, today may be your day to turn the hurts of your past into a  breakthrough for the future.

Don’t allow anything from your personal history
to keep holding you hostage.

~ From The Maxwell Daily Reader, July 15

Well, the countdown has begun…

The final edits are complete, contributions from commenters have been added, and Everyone Communicates, Few Connect is currently at the printer.

If you remember the cover design from November, you may notice that it’s been modified just a little. After I previewed it, Justin Wise at BeDeviant.com pointed out its design similarity to the logo for a conference called Cultivate. That prompted us to revisit the design and modify it. The good news is that I think this new design is even better than the first. But of course, this does have an effect on exactly which photos made it onto the front. Fortunately, every contributor photo that we collected in the fall will be featured INSIDE cover no matter what.

On March 30, readers in the United States will find it in bookstores and online. It looks like it will be available in Europe and Asia (in English and Spanish) on the 28^th of May.

(Also, Thomas Nelson is working with publishers around the globe to make it available in other languages. We’ll share information on translations as we receive it.)

For information and for links to preorder in the US, visit Thomas Nelson’s dedicated webpage.

We are all failures – at least, all the best of us are.
~James Barrie, author of Peter Pan

This is one of the many thoughts and quotes that I’ve been posting on Twitter this week on the subject of failure. Some others:

There are many ways to be a winner, but only one way to be a loser:
to fail & not look beyond the failure.    ~Kyle Rote, Jr

I truly believe that the difference between average people & achieving people is their perception of & response to failure.

Let me illustrate from my own life with this:

The March 2009 cover of Success Magazine.

***

That was quite a cover. They made me look so SUCCESSFUL.

And the article? Well, it was so good that my wife Margaret read it and asked who it was talking about.

Ten months ago, you could find this issue on quite a few newsstands. Walk into just about any airport, and you’d see my smiling “successful” face.

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*

*

Now, let’s just contrast that amazingly flattering magazine cover with the photo that follows.

Only weeks after the Success Magazine hit newsstands,
a very different photo was taken of me…
coincidentally, IN an airport:

Yes, that IS a mug shot. Yes, I AM an idiot.

On March 13, 2009, I was arrested at my local airport.

What for? Well, probably the best thing is for you to read what I wrote right here on this blog when it happened.

If you don’t know the story, you need to see this. Today I intend to “raise the bar” on stupid for anyone who’s ever made a mistake. Go read it; I’ll wait.

***

Okay, welcome back.

Yes, it’s all true. In one instant, I went from celebrity shot to mug shot. From the penthouse to the outhouse, so to speak. Now, the good news is that ten months later, everything has worked out okay. And thanks to my friends and family – who seem to have seen my embarrassment as an answer to prayer – I’ve learned to laugh at my stupidity.

(Who else’s friends deal with their own mistakes by proclaiming, “Well, at least I didn’t try to take a GUN into an AIRPORT”?)

Here’s the truth: I’m convinced that I’m not the only one who’s done something stupid. In fact, I believe that ALL of us are just one step away from stupid. We walk a fine line. And whether our failure is a bad decision or a stupid mistake, we need to learn the right ways to respond to it.

In the last few months, I’ve taught a few lessons on failure and the best ways to handle and learn from it. Click the underlined titles to go listen and/or view them online.

Failing Forward, on Robert Schuller’s Television Hour of Power

Famous Failures, a series of three messages preached at Christ Fellowship Church (CFC), West Palm Beach, Florida

(This link takes you to all sermon archives. Click on “Famous Failures” to view/listen to my 3 specific sermons. The first, Stupid Hurts, will update you on my airport experience.)

I hope that if you’re dealing with your own failures, mistakes, or foolish choices, you’ll find some guidance and encouragement in viewing or listening to them.

And now I’ll close with just two of the many book titles suggested to me after this incident:

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Airport Security

and

Developing the Gangsta Within You

Please forgive the email/feed notification that went out on January 27, 2010.

What you received was a very rough draft of a post – one which will be published in its finished form in the next 24 hours.

I hope this clears things up. And thank you for your understanding.

~Stephanie Wetzel