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Your Secrets Page with Growth Resources

Many secrets are just information you have not found yet. Many successful people have shared their secrets in books, podcasts, and online videos. This page empowers you with many lists of great resources. 

 

This page includes…

  • Personal Growth Secrets
    • Guarantees in Life
    • Top 12 Personal Growth Books
    • Secrets to Reading Books
  • Professional Growth Secrets
    • Professional Growth Considerations
    • Top 12 Professional Growth Books
    • Professional Growth Online Courses
    • Side Job Ideas
  • Leadership Growth Secrets
    • Leadership Growth Considerations
    • Top 12 Leadership Growth Books
    • Growth Groups
  • Spiritual Growth Secrets
  • Meaningful Goals
This page has many good tips. You may want to link to it, or create a bookmark for it in your browser, so it is easy to revisit.

Personal Growth Secrets

Guarantees in Life

Some of the most important secrets I found was that there are guarantees in life, including opportunities, challenges, and choices. Each new day is a new trek with new opportunities, challenges, and choices. New knowledge can help you manage opportunities and challenges and make better choices. I also believe there are shortcuts in life. Getting knowledge from other people can save us years of experience. But there is no shortcut for doing the work. 

 

Almost anything you want to do or overcome, someone has written a book about it. The book, Limitless, has a good method for reading faster, and a method for remembering more of what you read. Don’t like to read? Many of the best books have online videos where the author shares the highlights. Here is a shortcut for reading… find a popular book title you are interested in, then go to YouTube and search for it. You might find a video of the highlights of the book.

 

No matter what you want to do, a good place to start is with MOD Goals. Properly set goals help us to increase a sense of meaning, focus, and productivity. Also consider a morning routine that gets you energized and starts each day well. However, a morning routine depends on getting a good night’s rest. The book, The Miracle Morning, is a good read on this topic. 

Top 12 Personal Growth Books

(other than the Bible, or The Core Bible Verses)
 
  1. Limitless (how to learn better)
  2. Learned Optimism (how to think better)
  3. Emotional Intelligence 2.0 (how to manage emotions)
  4. Strengths Finder 2.0 (understand your strengths)
  5. Decisive (how to make better decisions)
  6. The Willpower Instinct (how to follow through)
  7. The 7 Pillars of Health
  8. The Miracle Morning
  9. Atomic Habits (how to create, or break, habits)
  10. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
  11. How to Win Friends and Influence People
  12. Crucial Conversations
 
Bonus… Finish (How to accomplish your goals)
 
Personal growth and professional growth can be a competitive advantage in any industry.

Secrets to Reading Books

While reading books is proven to be helpful, not everyone enjoys it. There are shortcuts to finding and reading great books. Go to the Amazon or Barnes & Noble website and search for your topic of interest. Find ones that have high rankings and read their description to find one you are interested in. Then search YouTube for the title and author. This might lead you to a video interview with the author, where they share highlights of the book. You can also search podcasts for interviews of the author and their book.
 
Another secret to book reading is that many of the larger libraries offer free rental of popular digital audio books. They use the Libby app to rent audio books to people in their community with a library card. 
 
Another good book is the Personal Planning Package, which has simple and effective two-page plan templates. The templates include annual MOD goals, personal growth, professional growth, and social media growth. It also includes insights into our Four Core Skills including an effective decision-making process and communication. It also includes The Big List of Free Help, and the Helpful, Interesting, and Popular Lists.

Professional Growth Secrets

Professional Growth Considerations

A professional is someone who takes responsibility for their growth, and works to improve their skills. The professional growth secret that many people don’t know is that pursuing goals doesn’t just increase your clarity and focus, it also builds meaning in life. Check the Goal Setting page before you leave.
 
You can become a certified professional by finishing an apprenticeship or completing tests of knowledge in specific areas. If you are interested in an apprenticeship consider the Apprenticeship Finder at https://www.apprenticeship.gov.
 
It might help to find work that fits your specific personality or strengths early in your life. But, if you can’t, know that the more you do good work, improve your skills, and build “career capital,” the better you can position yourself to find future work that feels like a better fit for you. Young adults might not have job experience, but they have a fresh and unique view of the world with a specific personality and strengths, along with an energy most older adults don’t have. Plus, young adults have more time to grow their investments.
 
Getting a certification not only increases your advantage with proven skills, it shows you can be proactive. Some popular professional certifications that can apply to many different industries include CPR & First Aid, Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma, Cyber Security (like the CompTIA Security +), Project Management Professional, Scrum, Safety Certifications, Forklift Driver, Certified Professional Sales Person, Customer Relationship Management Certification (like Hubspot, Salesforce, Monday, or Zoho), Digital Marketing Certification (like Search Engine Optimization, or Google Ads, or Facebook Ads).

Top 12 Professional Growth Books

  1. So Good They Can’t Ignore You (how to increase your career capital)
  2. What Color is Your Parachute? (how to find a job, or get one created for you)
  3. Designing Your Life (how to test career ideas)
  4. Linchpin (how to become a key employee)
  5. Mastery (the art of mastery)
  6. Outliers (how practice and preparation give you an edge)
  7. Influence (the psychology of persuasion)
  8. Principles (how principles drive our lives)
  9. The Proximity Principle (how to be in the right place at the right time)
  10. The Talent Code (how talent is grown)
  11. Range (why to generalize instead of specializing)
  12. The Art of Impossible (how motivation, learning, and creativity, help flow)

Professional Growth Online Courses

If you are interested in some free professional growth online courses consider…
https://www.coursera.org
https://www.open.edu/openlearn/free-courses/full-catalogue
https://www.khanacademy.org/
https://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses
https://online.stanford.edu/free-courses
https://pll.harvard.edu/catalog/free
https://ocw.mit.edu/

Side Job Ideas

Many people are in positions where they could use a little extra money each week, or month. You never know, maybe a side job could become a full time job? Some side job ideas include handyman, executive assistant or secretary, lawncare, house cleaning, photography, used goods flipper (buy local on sale items, or garage sale items, and sell online), dog walking, ride share driver (Uber or Lyft), content creator or freelance researcher and writer, social media management, or create designs and sell at an online print on demand website like Printify.
 
There is an entire website devoted to side jobs and has a page devoted to Side Hustle Ideas… https://www.sidehustlenation.com/ideas/
 
If you have some skills that you feel comfortable helping people with, consider listing yourself on Freelancer, https://www.freelancer.com/, or Upwork, https://www.upwork.com/.

Leadership Growth Secrets

Leadership Growth Considerations

If we can agree that a leader is responsible for people and results, then I offer the idea, there are four categories of leaders, formal, informal, parental, and self-leadership. 
 
Formal leaders are sought out and given authority over people, responsibility for results, and paid. 
 
Informal leaders are usually unpaid volunteers responsible for results. 
 
Parents are not usually considered leaders, but I would argue they are the most important leaders. 
 
Most people have a future self that they imagine is in a better better place/position. If so, that future self is depending on your present self to be responsible and make good decisions.
 
If you are a young adult reading this, you probably have more potential than you think you do. If you stay out of trouble, work well, and build good relationships, you will probably go farther in life than you think you can. Especially if you take time for self-education. Competition is just human nature, and exists between individuals, organizations, communities, and countries.
 

Top 12 Leadership Growth Books

  1. The Motive (two reasons people become formal leaders)
  2. Leadership 101 (the basics of leadership)
  3. Multipliers (how good leaders bring out the best in people, by challenging them to think better, seeding opportunity, debate, ownership, and accountability)
  4. Leaders Eat Last (how the best leaders serve people)
  5. Turn this Ship Around! (how to build leaders with clarity and competence, and giving them control)
  6. The Leadership Challenge (how people can learn to lead by inspiring a shared vision, enabling others to act, and encouraging the heart)
  7. Entreleadership (foundational formal leadership principles for business)
  8. Good to Great (the five levels of leadership, and proven principles for business)
  9. Dare to Lead (how people can lead with whole hearts, brave work, and tough conversations)
  10. Extreme Leadership (leadership lessons from U.S. Navy Seals)
  11. Call Sign Chaos (how people can learn to lead, in roles for direct, executive, and strategic leadership)
  12. Leadership and Self-Deception (how humility and reason can help people lead better)

Growth Groups

History shows us that when two or more people gather together with honesty and integrity towards a shared purpose, their experience and thinking can multiply the groups intelligence. This has been referred to as a Mastermind Group, and was explained well in the book, Think and Grow Rich. This principle is also explained well from a leadership view in the book, Multipliers. 

 

The secrets to Growth Groups are, when two or more people get together to pursue a shared purpose, they can offer insights that goes beyond adding their knowledge to multiplying their knowledge. When two or more people get together to sincerely help each other pursue their individual goals, they can offer insights and encouragement that would not be available in any other way. 

 

A recent example of a similar principle in business was when Lockheed Martin created the Skunk Works division. They gave a small group of engineers a common purpose to create advanced air power, and gave them autonomy, away from the limited thinking and constraints of corporate structure. They innovated amazing aircraft that led to stealth technology and advancements in airspeed never before achieved. 

Spiritual Growth Secrets

Over 70 percent of the world’s population believes in one of the big four largest religions, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. This is considering Taoism and Confucianism as philosophies. While they claim to believe in common shared virtues like truth, integrity, love, faith, wisdom, and courage, they have foundational differences in their beliefs about how to live out those virtues. They do all share the belief that humans are naturally selfish, depraved, or sinful, and in need of salvation, enlightenment, and growth. 
 
A secret paradox about the big four major religions is that they are all inclusive and exclusive. They are inclusive considering they welcome people into their religion if they sincerely adopt their beliefs and traditions. They are all exclusive considering that they do not welcome people into their religion if they are not willing to adopt their beliefs and traditions. Like any other meaningful organization, religions need to have order and standards if they are to commit to being a meaningful organization.
 
Religions are a collection of spiritual beliefs and traditions that help people to live better, receive salvation, achieve enlightenment, and grow beyond selfishness. The four largest religions each have their own sacred historical documents that contain the knowledge for their beliefs and traditions. They have been helping people over many centuries, and continue to this day. Of course, their knowledge, principles, and traditions can be misunderstood or misused. Science can also be misunderstood and misused. However, when science is done well it is basically revealing natural laws. More at the Spiritual Growth page. If you are interested in Christianity consider the books, Core Bible Verses, or its smaller summary, Firm Faith.

Meaningful Goals

Most people want to improve their life and help their loved ones, but they are unsure what else they can do, or they are discouraged. The Personal Planning Package can probably help. When most people think of improving their life, they think of either building more meaning into their life, or achievements.  

 

The Personal Planning Package can help with both. It includes a chapter on the four ways we build meaning in life with faith, strengths, relationships, and goals. It is interesting that these also help us with our achievements.

 

Our strengths can be traits or abilities we are naturally good at, or skills we have built up. The Personal Planning Package has a chapter on our Four Core Skills. Compound interest doesn’t just apply to money, it applies to knowledge, health, and relationships.

 

Relationships could be argued as our most important place to build meaning in life. They can also be helpful with our achievements, as long as we sincerely honor them and don’t use them as a tool to reach our achievements. No one wants to feel used.

 

Aristotle said, life has meaning when people pursue an aim (goal). The Personal Planning Package has four different two-page plan templates, one to focus just on goals, a Personal Growth Plan, a Professional Growth Plan, and a Social Media Growth Plan. Each plan has a section for goals. 

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