If you don’t play video games that much, RPG stands for Role Playing Game.

RPG games work as follows. At the start of the game you choose for youself a basic character with some basic skills and abilities. Most RPG games are fantasy based, so you’d get something like an Elf, that has a greater initial speed, agility and is good with bow and arrows, a dwarf which is strong and is good with axes, humans that are sort of in between, or whatever the case may be.

You then proceed on your adventure through the game’s virtual world accepting challenges and helping people while earning money to buy your character equipment and keep him alive, and at the same time getting experience from the challenges he/she faces improving the their abilities.

These improved abilities through experience and increased money then enable you to accomplish ever more difficult and lucrative challenges.

Isn’t this the primary basis for real life personal development?

One cannot go from never exercising and being unfit to rigorously exercising everyday to accomplish the expert personal fitness straight away. We need to take it step by step. Build your skills and abilities up from the beginner level you currently are to the expert level you want to be at.

If you’ve ever played the game The Sims you’ll know what I mean.

So lets try this, pretend you are an RPG character and you start your game in Life. You have some basic starting abilities and skills, and you can follow a map of different skills you can acquire and what is required for you to achieve them and what you will be able to do once you’ve achieved them.

You may want to take examples and inspiration from The Sims as it is most resembles real life that the rest of the fantasy RPG games out there.You can give yourself rewards for reaching the next skill level in each category and penalize yourself for going down skill level. Make it fun.

I’m going to write down my RPG character and game rule, and I’d like you to try the same and share it with us.

I initially started this blog as a personal journal, which then evolved with my resolution to pursue continuous personal development and discovery and then, more specifically, how can I find fun and engaging ways to this, rather than it being a chore.

Now, if there is something I’ve learned during this process of evolving this blog and giving it an new look and feel, it’s how much of a perfectionist I can be in certain things. I’m not pathological by any means, but it can be frustrating sometimes, for myself even. I wanted something that was just right. I spent about two days looking though hundreds of themes and another half a day just tweaking the theme I liked best to be just so. No doubt the blog still doesn’t look as good as what professional designers could achieve, but I’m happy with it as it is. However…

After watching the Oprah show the other day, I found out about the website Quick and Dirty Tips. Oprah had Mignon Fogarty, aka Grammar Girl, on the show talking about grammar and Mignon’s rise to popularity in the online world as Grammar Girl.

So after the show I went to the Quick and Dirty Tips website and I couldn’t help but feel jealous for the awesome website design they have. The characters are so nicely crafted, the colors are rich, but not overwhelming, and just in general the whole feel of the website is welcoming. I just love it. I keep thinking, I want to have my own character there talking about something, I want to be apart of that, whatever that is It’s not a lifestyle website, but I get the feeling that there is a culture behind that website that is compelling and makes people want to the apart of it.

I think the same thing can be said of Oprah as well and a lot of other things in the world that come to be extremely popular. That doesn’t come easy. It takes a lot of work to build a culture and feeling like that within your business, website, or even yourself, in order to attract great people into your life.

That is something I’d like to do here as well. To develop this space into a place that you all will love and enjoy and have that feeling belonging and fulfillment. I’d like to create that culture here with you now, so please give your feedback and participate.

It all starts with a vision, I believe. To create that image in your mind, that feeling in your heart of what this place will represent and mean to you all. I’d like to share with you my vision for this space, and please feel free to comment and share your’s.

Personal Success means different things to different people, however what we all have in common is that we all want the best life for ourselves and for the people we love. We can’t all be rich and famous, else there wouldn’t be rich and famous people in the world, but we can all be successful and happy.

Everybody learns in their own way, however we all learn the same things. We are all so different and yet so fundamentally alike, so let like help like and unlike broaden our horizons.

In this space I will share with you, and hopefully you can share with us, simple and fun things you can do that will bring more success and happiness to your life. Examples of this could include:

• Creativity challenges that solve specific hypothetical problems people might have
• Fun tools that build your personal power so that success comes easily.
• Inspiring stories that provide valuable life lessons
• Your suggestions welcome…

Ok, so in my previous post I mentioned I’m pursueing personal development. I also mentioned I’ve been reading a couple of personal development blogs, I also mention that I bought a whole bunch of books recently.
Well, here’s my my personal development resource list. If you can recommend anything else, please do.

Blogs
- Steve Pavlina.com
- Life Coaches Blog
- LifeDev
- Ririan Project

Blogs (Still to get and read)
- Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (Harper Business Essentials) - Jim Collins
- Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t - Jim Collins
- Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great - Jim Collins
- Endless Referrals, Third Edition - Bob Burg
- Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill
- Richest Man in Babylon - George S. Clason
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen R. Covey

I know those aren’t a lot of resources about personal development, but I don’t want to just read and read and read, and not actually try to integrate the concepts into my daily life.
If there is anyone actually reading this, what do you think? Is there anything better I you think I should be looking at?

Update: I actually forgot the other book I wanted to buy, was Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. I added it to my wishlist on Amazon, till when I finally finish reading the books I already ordered.

I don’t believe much in New Year’s Resolutions, I believe now is as good a time as any to change for the better.
However, there is one resolution I made around the end of last year into the new year, so I suppose you could call it a New Year’s resolution, and that is to pursue personal development.

I recognize I have a lot of thing’s I need to work on in all areas of my life and the more I learn about myself, the more I study and learn from other successful people and role models, the more I realize how much work I need to do in my life.

I’ve subscribed to a bunch of personal development related blogs, listened to a bunch of audio programs and through our VeloCITI Business Acceleration Program I went through a pretty extensive personal assessment, by Roland Cox from Aspiral.

Over the past couple months people have been recommending lot of books for me to read, mostly relating to my business life, but I’ve been so preoccupied with other stuff that I haven’t yet gotten around to reading them. So today was the day I went to Amazon and got all the highly recommended books I want read.
So, yay! I should be getting all books in about 2 weeks.