The book you don’t read can’t help you. The seminar you miss cannot contribute to your success. The tapes you don’t listen to cannot give you ideas that can improve your lifestyle.

Increased knowledge is vital if we are to continue to succeed in a highly specialized and rapidly changing world. Each of us needs different types and amounts of knowledge to succeed and prosper. They are:

Career knowledge or business skills, self-knowledge, world knowledge, people knowledge, and common sense. Let’s look at self-knowledge.

Self-knowledge is the knowledge of who you really are – what you believe in and why, what you stand for and why, and what you passionately feel about and why. Many people live their lives waiting for someone else to tell them what to believe, what to feel and how to behave. These people are slaves in life rather than responsible travelers on spaceship earth.

Self-knowledge is only gained by paying attention in life, staying aware of your surroundings and reactions to them, and looking deep into the recesses of your mind and psyché for the answers to your behavior, feelings, attitudes and philosophy. People with higher degrees of accurate self-knowledge tend to have less stress, more fun, are more productive and achieve greater levels of success, regardless of how they define success.

To achieve this level of self awareness requires spending time alone in quiet introspection and thoughtfulness. Most people either will not take this necessary time, or, if they do, rush through the process expecting immediate answers.

Wouldn’t life appear to be easier if easy answers came to us for life’s challenges, issues and desires fast and exactly in the shape we wanted? Thankfully, most of the answers come only after serious deliberation, a quiet mind and hopeful spirit.

Tim Connor
http://www.timconnor.com