We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit. Life presents us never ending opportunities to put ourselves into personal development. We can respond to life’s challenges by either resisting or embracing them Personal development requires rigorous program. Knowing the principle of personal development will not entail any real benefit, but we should experience the same. The decision to make each day an opportunity for personal development means committing to continual and even ending improvement in some aspects of our lives. Make a list of all the qualities you like and dislike about yourself. List at least five qualities you wanted like to develop. Select a structure to support you in developing these qualities. The author explains that most of us are either experiencing by choice or are a victim of our environment. All of our past experiences combine to influence how we see and evaluate everything. The author says there is no such a thing as failure. Most people are scared to death to fail. Failure is mere an interpretation not a fact at all. He quoted the example of Thomas Edison who was the embodiment of failures before his each and every invention, which drastically change whole world. It is true that if we cannot experience set backs we do not allow ourselves the room to experiment beyond the limit of our knowledge. Our satisfaction will, therefore, come from doing the very best, free from our fear of feeling, no matter what the result is. This reminds me what Lord Krishna advises Arjuna in Bagavat Geeta: work is all the result is immaterial.
The same thing has sung by Robert Browning. It means that if we pay too much concentration of the result, we could not properly concentrate on the work. We equally enjoy the journey and our destination. Some of the courses of our journey may be hard and tedious, then we better concentrate on the destination otherwise we may tend to quit in the middle of the way. There are so many people who live in the past. The love, business or iob may have forced them to live in the past. Their involvement in these affairs in past are so intense that they are still living in the post. The author says that we should settle our past account in past and not drag them into the present to disturb our lives in present and future. It does not mean quitting any responsibility of the past but it should not be a burden in our present or future lives. It is our interpretation that some of our experiences are good or bad. “Instead of being a victim what life presents us, we can choose to be the source, the creator of how we will be affected by the challenge”. We really have the ability to reinvent our lives if we have the courage to do so.