walking the path of life beside you
Peter Thomson has been in the coaching business since 1972. Years ago he developed a simple formula for assessing the potential for someone to achieve success (Success Potential). He has been able to test the validity of this formula and reports that it is still valid. There are only three measurables in this formula: knowledge, skills and personal development. Peter calls personal development Personal Development Training because PDT are his initials. The formula is simple: (K + S) x PDT = SP. Get a good education, build your skills and you’ll be successful – true / not true?  Many of us think only of knowledge and skills as a means to success. I place myself firmly in that category. Parents and teachers tell us the importance of doing well at school and getting a university degree. Professional bodies demand that members continually update their knowledge. From an early age we learn the benefits of being skilled, whether it is the skill of playing marbles, or computer games or becoming skilled at playing a musical instrument. Those with the greatest skill have the most success. Gaining knowledge and becoming skilled should be the gateway to success. Yet, many people with a great education and well developed skills are not achieving the success they and society would expect. I have always fallen into that category. I was in the top five of my class at school and also in my undergraduate degree. I have always been the go-to person wherever I find myself. In large part this is because of a lack of self-worth I feel I need to know more than everyone else just to be on a par with them. As manager of a department in a large company I understood the company procurement systems, the accounting practices and people management better than other managers. I was generally able to navigate my plans through the system quickly and easily and other people came to me for advice. I have been a Toastmaster for nine years. During the first four I took the opportunities that presented themselves and, without really planning it, I learned what the Toastmasters program truly has to offer. Now people come to me for advice on making speeches, leadership and how Toastmasters works.  When something peaks my interest I attempt to learn a new skill. I seldom become a master, but I learn a little more than the basics. I first encountered computers during my post-graduate degree when the department felt that we should at least have a smidgen of experience with computers. The university had a mainframe (one of half a dozen in the country). To run a formula meant typing it into a card printer and sending a stack of punch cards to the computer department. Send the cards in the afternoon and by the next morning you would know whether the formula ran successfully. Six years later, in 1988, I had access to a personal computer – one with two 5” floppy drives. It was used to capture data but I wanted to automate checklists and I became skilled at writing macros in 1-2-3 Lotus. I’ve continued to build skills throughout my life in various fields.  Yet, I cannot claim to have had a successful career – I was always the last of my peers to be promoted. My relationship success has been abysmal. I’ve had a lot of wonderful and interesting experiences but none have left a trail of success in my life. What’s the missing ingredient to success? So, what is this missing ingredient that Peter Thomson includes in his formula? I’ve run away from self-knowledge, defining my personal interests, determining my passion, setting life goals, New Year’s resolutions. I generally place myself last and ask: ‘what does the boss want?’; ‘what does the committee want?’; ‘what does my partner want?’ I’ve been a “people pleaser”, for want of a better word. According to Peter Thomson, if I rate myself out of 10, I might give myself these scores: K = knowledge = 8 S = skills = 7 PDT = personal-development = 2 Peter Thomson says my potential for success is: (K + S) x PDT = (8+7)x2= 30 Now I look at someone who is passionate about what they do in life and wonder why they have been so successful. I’m not going to try to assign scores to a real person, like Bill Gates, but rather use fictitious scores. Someone who was too distracted by their passion and only achieved a 6 in terms of a knowledge score. Their passion enabled them to develop a very specific set of skills that we could assign a 7. But they were focused, set life goals, defined their passion, knew their values system, managed their time. I could assign them a 6 in terms of personal development. Now look: (K + S) x PDT = (6+7)x6= 78 – less knowledge and skills but two and half times the success potential I assign myself. Knowledge plus skills can take you from 0 to 20, but personal development can elevate your success potential to 200, ten times the maximum that knowledge and skills provide. Yet, like me, many people place personal development on the back-burner. We attend training courses, build our skill-sets and wonder why other, less “dedicated”, people get what they want in life – enjoy success. We see signposts in our lives directing us to personal development training, such as Dr. John F. Demartini’s Breakthrough Experience, and we ask whether it is really worth the money and the effort. We are introduced to life coaches at work or in networking events and we listen to their “elevator speech” with half an ear and think: ‘I’m okay, how can that help me?’ Make personal-development your game-changing priority for 2018. Personal development multiplies your chances of success with the knowledge and skills you already have. New knowledge and skills only add to your success potential. This multiplying factor of personal development makes personal development the most beneficial pursuit for a successful life. Having a structured approach to personal development with multiple avenues of development such as Coaching Culture Clubs makes this revolutionary program the industry disrupter in personal development programs. The testimonials of current and past members attest to the multiplying effect their personal development has had in helping their success. 
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