The Free Spirit Centre is a community center devoted to personal growth, self help, self improvement and personal development

According to a dictionary, personal development is the ‘development of one's capabilities or potentialities’. So, your personal development is about the development of your person, it is about you becoming the best you can be and living the best possible life.

I am sure you would agree that in order to become the best you, you need to know yourself; you need to know who you are and where you are now; and in order to live the best life you need to know which life you want to live and how your life is now; it is quite obvious, isn’t it?

Knowing who you are and where you are now means knowing your identity, your talents, your gifts, your qualities, your strengths, your characteristics, as well as your limitations, your limiting beliefs and your weaknesses. And it also means knowing your core values, your likes and your wants. Knowing yourself enables you to make the right choices for you.

Now, how can you become the best you can be? By learning and knowing what your power really is, how it works, how you can heal yourself, how you can improve yourself and make the changes you want to your life, your thoughts, and your habits. It is about studying and continuously learning from the best and greatest teachers, and applying that to the way you are, to your life, to your personality, to your values. It has to be according to YOU. There are some extraordinary teachers nowadays, we are so lucky: learn from them and keep studying yourself.

And knowing what you want, how you want your life to look, enables you to create that in your life. And how can you find out what it is that you want if you do not know? Well, you feel inside. You have inside an incredible compass which always tells you what is right for you. If something feels good, really good, inside your soul, not superficially, you know that it is aligned with your purpose, with what you really want.

And so, you are in fact the ONLY person who knows what is good for you, what is right for you, what is best for you: YOU are your own guru.

But what happens is that many people do not know or believe this and look for answers outside themselves, someone who can fix them or someone to copy. Maybe they have low self esteem caused by a difficult past, maybe they have fears, maybe they do not trust themselves, so even if something does not feel right they keep doing it, perhaps telling themselves it is their fault. Or maybe they simply find it easier to follow the masses, without thinking of the consequences.

Some people are afraid of not being accepted, so they follow their peer group, even if it means not being true to themselves, or they feel outsiders and become socially anxious. I have had many clients who experienced social anxiety as a consequence of peer pressure to be or behave in a certain way. And other clients come to coaching saying: ‘I would like to be confident like him’. Well, to model someone and someone’s strategies is great, but you need to align that with who you are and your essence, otherwise first of all you go out of your centre and also the achieved ‘confidence’ is not very lasting. Other clients who, because of fear of being alone or low self esteem, followed the loose morality of some trends, were hit painfully hard. They lost themselves, their identity and their centre, to say nothing of broken-down relationships, depression and anxiety, among other consequences.

It is absolutely key for your mental health and your happiness that you keep true to yourself, to your identity, to your values, and to what you really want

And as I was saying above, you are a magnificent being, perfect and whole in your essence, but perhaps you do not know it yet. You have a magnificent mind, a magnificent guidance system, an extraordinary power and potential inside you to be, do and have anything you truly want.

You are a unique being, here on this planet with the purpose of making yourself happy and sharing your gifts with humanity. Keep learning, find out who you are, follow your inner guidance, follow your heart - it always knows what is right and good for you - and you are going to create an extraordinary life!

‘Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.’
Buddha