When we are at work and we become familiar with our job role, it is very easy to become complacent and stuck in a rut as we do the same job every day. But in the long term this can spell disaster for us.

The more versatile a worker we can become, the more protected we are, as we can more easily move between job roles as and when required. Acquiring a much wider knowledge base is also useful in giving us a greater understanding of the job we are currently doing.

Personal development in the workplace is also essential if we are to remain interested and passionate about the work we do. If we continue to do the same job day in, day out, we become less likely to do it well.

Think about the interests you have in your job, and ask yourself some questions to determine how you could invest in your own personal development:

# What brought you to the job in the first place?

# What skills do you have that you enjoy making use of?

# Could you further these skills in any way?

# Are there any training courses you could attend that would open the way for promotion further down the line?

# Is there anything you don't like doing any more that you would stop doing if you could?

The answers to these questions will help you to decide which areas of your working life are ripe for development. Although the term "personal development" makes us think of something we need to do, we can ask for the help of others to help us progress. Sometimes speaking to our manager will open the door to further possibilities for us to stretch ourselves in our chosen career, so don't be afraid to highlight any concerns or needs you may have. A willingness to learn and to take a pro-active approach to our own development is usually seen as a positive.

SECONDMENTS

Personal development is often associated with a complete change of job - leaving what we are doing now to take on a higher paid role with more responsibility.

But you don't need to take such a big leap in order to test the boundaries of what you may enjoy doing at work. Attending in-house or external training courses is one obvious way of expanding your knowledge and skills base. However a temporary secondment to another area within the company you work in now would also allow you to see whether another department or area of working would be suited to you.

There are plenty of ways to invest in your personal development at work. Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that you should constantly be looking for them - and making the most of these opportunities when they arise.

The role of Personal Development and Self Improvement is to help you achieve your goals in life. Both are designed to give you the skills you need to achieve whatever it is that you want to achieve. But can personal development or self improvement really improve your life situations?

Well, the purpose of both is to do just that. They are both just tools that are used to ensure you will succeed in your chosen life areas. They are designed to help you become happier on the inside and more satisfied with what you have on the outside in any are you chose to apply them!

So how do you start to set goals that truly lead to self improvement, more freedom, happiness and a better lifestyle for you and your family and ultimately more success? This question is not simple to answer because success means different things to different people. Therefore, if you want to become successful you must first have a clear understanding of what success means to you!

A fantastic way to get a clear on what success means for you is to ask yourself the question, "what would I do if I knew I couldn't fail?" Let your mind roam freely and immerse yourself in your inner vision. This vision will give you the clue that you need to unravel the mystery of success.

At an early age every human being knows what they want to do with their lives. We develop dreams and ambitions at a very early age. However as we grow older we are conditioned to believe that these dreams are not possible or are mere fantasies of our imagination. We are told to get an education, a good job, get married, have kids, a mortgage and holiday once a year with our family. By the time most people reach their mid twenties they have all but given up on their dreams or even forgotten what those dreams are. They have become conditioned into believing that they are incapable of achieving what they want in life. This fundamental belief forms the foundation of their self image and the rest of their mental attitudes are build upon it!

It is the role of personal development and self improvement to remove these conditioned mental attitudes from your inner mind and free you to pursue the life course that you chose for yourself. Through the use of personal development and self improvement you can begin today to remove mental conditioning that you received from well-meaning family, peers and teachers. In addition you will also be directed to remove all those negative mental attitudes that have been given to you by not so well-meaning people and those you have developed yourself through negative life experiences. This is not always an easy journey nor is it always enjoyable but the rewards that you receive are a thousand times the effort required.

The freedom that you can experience from removing just one negative mental and negative emotional pattern is akin to the feeling of rest and tranquility you feel after extreme physical exercise. Removing numerous negative mental attitudes and emotional stress from your mind and body is a feeling and experience that is truly hard to describe to someone who has never experienced it themselves.

Jesus Christ said, "seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you": Matthew 6:33. By removing the negative mental and emotional attitudes from your mind you free yourself to reach your goals. Let me explain.

For instance you may have a desire to be wealthy and thus set a personal development goal to become financially free. There are thousands of different ways to achieve this goal. There are thousands of methods you could follow and plans you could set in motion that would bring you closer to this goal. Millions of people have gone from rags to riches. So, why does following a plan work for one person and the same plan will not work for another?

It is due entirely to the difference in attitude and mental conditioning!

There are at your disposal numerous personal development and self improvement methods that are designed to help you achieve this goal. Now these tools and methods are not designed to show you the way to become financially free but instead are designed to free you from your own inner resistance to being financially free. Many people think this is a waste of time and would prefer to be given step by step instructions to build financial wealth and I was once one of them. Yet however hard I tried and no matter how many plans and formulas I followed my financial situation actually grow worse.

Why was this? Were the plans I was following just not good enough to create wealth? Were the people peddling these rags to riches methods merely conning me out of my money? Was gaining wealth just pure luck like winning the lottery?

The answer to all of the above questions is no!

The plans I followed had worked for thousands and made them rich! The people selling me the products and methods had all made their fortunes using the very same techniques they were trying to teach me! I later found out that gaining wealth had nothing to do with luck!

It wasn't that these things were not good enough to produce the wealth I craved it was that I THOUGHT I wasn't good enough. When you hold a negative self image and have a negative view of yourself and your abilities it is very difficulty to achieve success no matter how much effort you put into it! This is why it is of paramount importance to first remove the negative conditioning that is holding you back in life.

Your attitude, which is only composed of thoughts and feelings, is responsible for your actions. Thought is the creator of action! Every action you perform, no matter how small or big, first begins in your mind as a thought. Each thought begins as a feeling. Think of when you met your last partner. You first felt the attraction. Then you had the thought that you would like to meet them. Then you performed some action to make that happen. Think of the last time you went out socializing. You had the feeling that you would like to have some fun, or be with your friends, were feeling lonely etc. Then you had the thought. Then you performed the action.

If your actions are motivated by your thoughts and feelings and your attitude is composed of thoughts and feelings do you think you could succeed at a given task if you hold a negative mental attitude about it or your ability to succeed at it?

Once you embrace personal development and begin to use any of the myriad of self improvement tools to remove your negative mental attitudes you will naturally find yourself becoming more successful in life. You actions will be more positive and you will unconsciously perform the correct actions that will lead you to success. I am sure you can know see how important it is to set some personal development goals. Not only will you see improvement in your self, you will also see many symptoms of success added unto you!

It's nearly 2008 and some of you will be looking over the year and thinking about what you have achieved over the past year. For some, nothing much will have happened, for others their whole life will have changed. Personal development begins in your head and GOYA method will help a lot.

Why has nothing happened for you?

Simply put, you are too lazy to do anything about your personal development. There I have said it. I can hear screams of reluctance and abuse at me now, but it does not matter, you are only fooling yourself and you know who you are.

Therefore, for 2008 I would like to present this method for personal development.

It is an acronym for:

Get Off Your Arse!

To do something, anything, you have to take action, to take action you have to get off your arse first and make a start. That is what this article is about.

I do not want to hear whines, excuses, or anything else just read this through and then Get Off Your Arse.

Getting to the stage of SOYA

A lot of us will have gotten to the stage of SOYA (Sitting On Your Arse) at some point in our lives. Indeed it is good to have a bit SOYA time but too much can lead to a permanent state of SOYA and your arse gets flatter with all the sitting, the only exercise you get is flicking the remote and eating those packets of cheese and onion crisps. The younger SOYAs among you will get a little more exercise with the Nintendo Wii and PS3 and Xbox 360s but you are still at the SOYA stage and need to GOYA more before your life becomes a virtual world and soon the Matrix will have you.

For those of us on board the Nebucadnezzar it is still useful to read this just for a little jolt.

For those of you who do not think you are at the SOYA stage of life answer these questions:

1. Is your Arse permanently flat?

2. Does it take you about half an hour before you can walk properly getting off your couch?

3. Do you make old man noises when you get off the couch?

4. Do you make old man noises when you go to sit on the couch?

5. Do you have some goals that involve Getting Off Your Arse?

If you answered yes to any of the questions above it is time for some GOYA.

GOYA in action

There are at least two voices inside you at any one time. One voice saying take the easy option just turn the TV on, and SOYA and the other, less dominant voice, saying come on, I need some goya time.

The trick to getting off your arse is making the GOYA voice more dominant than the SOYA voice.

Quick Exercise

I want you to think back to a time, recently, where you were in two minds to go and do something but instead elected to stay in bed or sit on the couch and watch TV. For example, you need to get up and tidy the house but instead you stayed in bed or watched TV or read your book. What did that voice sound like inside your head, if you cannot remember listen for it next time. The SOYA voice sounds like MR T 'Sit on your ass fool, aint nobody gonna clean the house' and the GOYA voice sounds like Mickey Mouse on Helium 'Oh shucks, thats a shame coz the house needs a good clean'

Listening for the SOYA and GOYA voice

You will soon begin to hear the little voices whenever you have to do something. Recognising them is the first stage and when you hear them, it will be a revelation. Now when I say hear them you dont literally hear them you hear them in your head. You might not think they are there but they definitely are. Any time you have to do something they are there.

The next stage is switching the voices around.

This can be tricky at first but when you do it once it becomes very easy all the other times and you will see a dramatic difference in your life. Now I know I am being a bit tongue in cheek here but I do mean this. When you switch the voices and use the SOYA voice for the GOYA voice i.e. MR T voice is now the GOYA voice and Mickey Mouse on Helium is the SOYA voice you will see an amazing difference in your productivity, you exercise routine, everything you need the GOYA voice for.

Another exercise for today

To try this method out try hearing the new GOYA voice telling you what to do whenever you are procrastinating about something. Obviously, it doesn't have to be MR Ts voice but you want a commanding voice, have a little fun with it. Eventually the voice will be your won voice and you begin to do tings you have been putting off.

The power of personal development is available to everyone. It is available to you whether you understand its internal workings or not. There is no need to be skilled in self improvement to achieve amazing results from applying a few simple techniques from its mighty arsenal. You can, right now, begin to create miracles in your life without ever having to probe the depths of personal growth. Get ready now to learn the secrets of personal development, apply some of its simple techniques and perform miracles in your life!

There are people from every walk of life who are performing miracles everyday. You may have heard the stories of a woman lifting the full weight of a car to save her child or a man walking again after years in a wheelchair. Perhaps you have heard of the British man who's body miraculously cured itself of AIDS or the men and women around the world who have found their cancer dissolve. You may even have heard of stranger things happening in places like India and Tibet.

However, you may be unaware of the miracles that ordinary people, just like you and me, are performing all over the planet. Miracles like, turning financial ruin into avalanches of wealth and abundance, finding soulmates and healing illness. Miracles are happening right now where men and women are; rekindling failing or failed relationships; healing old emotional wounds that have been carried for decades; finally reaching all there long cherished goals.

Would you like to be one of them?

The power of miracles does not lie in some long and almost forgotten past of avatars and saints. Nor does it lie in some distant mystical land or with metaphysical warriors who had studied ancient hidden arts for decades. The power of miracles lies right here in the present. Your power is in the NOW!

The reason why so many people fail to gain results from tried-and-tested techniques such as visualization, affirmations, hypnosis, subliminal programming etc., is because they are constantly living in the past. They allow hurts from the past to impinge upon the present. Every negative thought or feeling that you have is based in the past. You developed that way of thinking and feeling because of something that happened to you in your past. You must learn to release these hurts.

The secret to performing miracles in your life is to get clear on what you want. There is no need to do anything else at all. This is the truth - if you were capable of thinking of only those things and situations that you want to have then they are the only thing you would ever get. Unfortunately, you tend to think negatively when you bring to mind those things that you desire. You permit your mind to dwell on thoughts and emotions that are connected to past experiences. You may think that because you have never achieved any goal you set that there is no point in trying again. You may have been hurt in relationships and thus you allow these episodes in your life to stop you from trusting and committing. You know yourself what pains you have endured in the past. Do you want to continue recreating them or would you rather break free?

A great universal truth that is known by many but not fully understood by most is this - your predominant thoughts, backed by belief or emotion, create your reality. Quantum physics has already told us that matter cannot exist without consciousness. This new science is now telling us that it is consciousness itself that is the very driving force behind the physical universe and everything that is in it. It goes further by stating that consciousness, through thought, actually collapses the quantum field of possibilities into just one reality - in other words your thoughts and beliefs make things real! You create your own world!

Therefore the first step to creating miracles in your life is to take full responsibility for everything that you have created so far - bad relationships, terrible jobs, unfilled potential or good relationships, great jobs and goal achievements etc. By taking responsibility you regain your power because if you did it then you can undo it or redo the same way or in a way that is more pleasing to you.

Look at how you were thinking in regards to the good things in your life - the things that you are happy with. I bet you do not have much negative thoughts and feelings around them. Now look at all the things in your life that are not how you want them to be. I bet you think in negative terms about those a lot. Also look at the things you do not have. Are you in a state of wanting to have them? Are you lusting after them or grabbing at them? If so, then you are affirming to yourself and your subconscious mind that you do not have them!

Begin to dissect your thinking by reviewing how you feel about things in your life. Your emotions are a great guide to what you are currently creating. When you are in a state of happiness and your emotions are positive you will find that it is because you are mentally focused upon the things that you want in life. When you are feeling negative emotions or feeling generally unhappy this is a very strong indication that you are mentally focused on the things in life that you do not want. When you do this you are infact creating more of these things, recreating them again or attracting them to you. When you find yourself in this state you can quickly change it if you start to direct your thinking towards the things that you do want. Once you do this you will feel your mood lightening and if you are persistent you will enter a happy state. This lets you know that you are back on track and thus attracting and creating the things that you do want in life.

Seek out ways to eliminate all the hidden negative thoughts and feelings that you are currently afraid to look at. We all have them! It is strange but things that are clearly apparent to other people about ourselves are hidden from us because we refuse to acknowledge them. I am sure you know of a person that has some undesirable qualities and yet they are the first to point out those qualities in another. They just cannot see that they are like that themselves. We are all guilty of doing this!

Once you begin to eliminate your hidden negatives you will find that your thinking becomes much more positive without any conscious effort. You will find your life begins to change in magical ways. And you will surely see many miracles taking place in your life as you embrace the life you always wanted and deserve!