Waiting for an Epiphany - Scott H Young

Ultralearning

Get Better at Anything

I recently got a chance to browse the nearby bookstore. Aside from further affirming why I prefer amazon to brick and mortar bookshops, there was one other thing I noticed. Getting a chance to walk down the self-help aisle, I couldn’t help but feel my inner cynic trying to claw out.

I think one of the most damaging and pervasive myths of self-help is that of the epiphany. It is the myth that keeps self-help books outrageously popular and simultaneously keeps a lot of people from really making improvements in their lives. This is the myth that says all you need is just that one key idea, understanding or technique to overcome your problems.

What I noticed when I walked down that self-help aisle is that there is an increasing amount of books that seem to purport that all you need is their one great idea to make radical improvements in many areas of your life. The answer, it seems to be, is a better quality of ideas.

Now I can’t blame the self-help authors. They are just selling what people want to buy. But it does reveal an important problem. That problem is that many people are waiting for that sudden flash of insight that will quickly turn their fortunes and allow them to make rapid improvements in their entire life.

Epiphanies Aren’t The Answer

The problem with most people’s quest for an epiphany isn’t just that they are rare, but that even when you do have an epiphany, it doesn’t fix your problems. Just because you suddenly hit that flash of understanding and insight doesn’t mean you suddenly now have more motivation, willpower or discipline. It doesn’t mean you can suddenly overcome your procrastination and fix your life.

I have experienced many ‘epiphany’ moments of various intensities in my pursuit of personal growth. In research and experience, there have been countless times when I discovered a new, powerful idea. These flashes of insight always felt great and the ideas that they contained often did help.

But here’s the thing I realized. In looking back over my life, my improvements didn’t easily correlate to when I had those flashes of insight. Improvement in every area of my life has been a slow and steadily increasing process with sudden bumps in improvement from time to time.

At first this doesn’t seem to make sense. Why wouldn’t achieving a great idea correlate clearly with a marked improvement in your life? If the idea itself was practical, powerful and profound, why didn’t it translate to better productivity, better health or a greater quality of life?

Being Rich and Being Sexy

One of my favorite bloggers is Ramit Sethi. Being young, a student and currently jobless doesn’t leave a lot of application for personal finance, but I greatly appreciate the way he describes many personal development problems. A frequent comparison, Ramit makes is the difference between being rich and being sexy.

What he means by this is that it becoming rich is usually a dull and less exciting process of steady investments that pay off over a number of years. Being sexy with stock day-trading and fancy schemes rarely has the financial payoff then being dull but rational. Ramit’s basic advice is to stop trying to be sexy and be rich instead.

This analogy applies equally well to all aspects of personal development. Many people browse the self-help section for that sexy new idea that will dramatically improve their life. Just as there is a difference between being sexy and being rich, there is a difference between being sexy and personal development.

Epiphany seeking behavior doesn’t work because an idea on it’s own is worthless. Only through successive implementation over a long period of time does it make any difference. An idea is like an acorn and what you want is an oak. Getting new and better acorns, however, won’t help you grow the tree. Only continuous and constant effort can.

How Personal Development Really Happens

Most people have this fantasy in there head that once they find that fabulous idea, it will charge and motivate them to take all the action necessary to succeed. That once they read that magic dieting book, they will take up the diet, create the willpower and lose the weight. Once they read that personal finance book, they will immediately organize their finances, stick to a budget and invest properly to make millions.

Here is how it personal development actually works. You try to start a diet, but you make it a week because you lack willpower. Then you refine the diet to be more suitable, and you try it again, this time lasting a week and a half. Then you figure out what went wrong, remove the obstacles and try it again, this time lasting for a month.

Personal development isn’t about finding that one idea and then suddenly gaining the courage, willpower, emotional control, personality or motivation to make it happen. It is a slow process of refinement and improvement. And yeah, you will fail a lot and...