Instinct: Self Development Strategies For Life: Instinctive Living Self Development

Introduction

INSTINCT: Self-Development Strategies For Life, would best be described as the prequel or the prelude to my Instinctive Living Self-Development Book Series.

This book is as much about self-development strategies, as it is about my general approaches and philosophies about life. In so many ways, it offers insight into who I am, and how I go about my life. It gives a sneak-peak, perhaps, into what is ahead in the series.

In any field or area of life, I think it is important that there is a proven level of experience and competence present when someone is offering expertise, guidance or advice.

I hope this book is able to demonstrate not only some of my experience and knowledge, but hopefully the value and perspective I can add to the self-development genre, and hopefully your life.

It is far too easy these days to employ anonymous ghost writers and researchers to build books from the ground-up. When we add an author's anonymity to this via use of a pen name for example, there can be a lack of ownership for what is written.

Often authors may use a pen name because they write across different genres, or have personal reasons not to use their own names. Lots do it. Many use a pen name transparently and openly. Often it is a sensible and necessary approach when a writer has multiple fields of interest.

The author may be happy to be building a series of books off the backs of other people, whilst they are happy to take the credit for it. For me, there is a lack of integrity in that approach when it is applied to the field of self-development, where there is a risk that the works lose a certain level of humanity and congruity.

When I am reading or researching, for example, I want to know that the works of the person involved, are in fact their work. Particularly with self-development approaches, I wouldn't like a mish-mash of information collected by researchers, to be then presented as something else. There isn't a lot of integrity in that approach if it is not stated clearly in the book.

Personally speaking, I wanted to put all of me into my books. Self-development is personal. I do not employ researchers or ghost writers, and I write under my name. For me there is integrity and ownership of what I do and say in this approach. My writing is as much of a spiritual journey for me as my life is.

Importantly, I look to develop a relationship with my readers, and the best way to do this is to be not only who I am, but who I am becoming. I am sharing parts of my life that have been challenges for me, to help put my journey and writings into context for this book series.

I value relationships and the power of community. It is one of the major reasons I have decided to write the Instinctive Living book series. I love working with, and for people.

As such, this book will help to put the Instinctive Living Self-Development book series into more perspective, as I set out to cover a lot of the topics and areas that many of us are interested in, and focused on further developing.

I write about what I experience. As mentioned throughout my books, my life could easily be described as being a self-development workshop. For me, this life experience is about self-development, and making the most of this time we have here to develop ourselves. Of course it is also about helping, supporting, and working with others in their lives. It's all connected of course.

Throughout my books there is a theme of transformation. Self-development is about transforming your life. Most of us seek to change parts of our lives, but many of us don't really understand the concept of transformation. It has become a bit of a throwaway line, and a generic go-to phrase for people looking for punchy presentations.

Background

As I write this book in 2017, I am 52 years of age. My interest in personal development and spirituality goes way back to my mid-teen years. It was back then that I started asking myself a lot of questions about life. I was curious about what life was about. I wasn't convinced that a lot of the beliefs I had were even relevant to me, let alone true. I felt there was much more to life.

I had an upbringing, like a lot of people, which had Christian influences. In short, at an early age I attended a Baptist Sunday school, a Catholic boys school, and a Church of England