Becoming a Development Animal

Presenting the SCHOOL Tool

The best compliment of my life came two years ago from my Mum. She said, "Simone, I have never seen anyone develop at the pace you can." It shouldn’t have felt like a compliment because personal development is what I do, but her recognition meant the world to me.

There was a time when I felt like I couldn’t develop and went around in many circles while she stood on the sidelines watching. Now, I've created a development program that works, and her acknowledgement was the cherry on top.

Personal development is an area that offers the potential for massive growth – or massive disappointment. Often, you’ll start a programme with huge enthusiasm, and then, somewhere along the way, you run out of steam. Or it just doesn’t spark the fire inside you, and you end up feeling frustrated. How do you set yourself up to succeed?

Over the years I’ve tried different personal development programmes for various aspects of my life. I wanted to be slimmer, stronger and fitter, have my finances under control, and develop amazing relationships. But somehow, I never quite achieved the level I was aiming for. I didn’t see the body I wanted reflected in the mirror, my bank balance wasn’t dramatically going up, and I didn’t have that magic relationship dynamic with the key people in my life that I wanted. I felt like a failure.

Until I worked out that the reason I failed was less about my capability to succeed and more about the way I was attempting to learn something new.

The work we do at Genius You is all about how people can understand themselves better, and develop the insights, tools, and practices to smash your defences, and go from a timid tweaking of your life to genuine and lasting change.

It’s good to remember that we weren’t born already knowing everything. We had to go through a process to learn how to do everything we do – from walking, to holding a pencil, to learning how to ride a bike. The same goes for personal development. If what we’ve done before hasn’t worked, we need to give ourselves the opportunity of a new way to learn.

At Genius You, we have created a framework that helps you understand what you need to learn well. We call it SCHOOL.

The SCHOOL acronym stands for:

Structure
Conditions
Help
Operationality
Objective
Learning Process

And SCHOOL is the environment that sets the mind up for learning complex concepts.

Here’s how it works: 

STRUCTURE

These are the rules and principles that you need in place to learn something new. If you didn’t know the rules before, you need the structure to give you the framework to enable you to learn.

CONDITIONS

What do you need to create in order to have the right attitude for success? Is it surrounding yourself with the right people? Do you need to move your home or your work to have the best conditions for learning?

HELP

What do you need to help you succeed? Is it in the form of a teacher to guide you, or more support in particular areas?

OPERATIONALITY

What is the equipment you’ll need to succeed, and how will you make it work for you? Do you need books, online support, face-to-face meetings? How will you bring this personal development process to life?

OBJECTIVE

What is your end goal? What results are you ultimately aiming for? How will your measure your success?

LEARNING CONTENT AND PROCESS

What do you need to learn to help you achieve your objectives and enable a growth mindset? How do you learn best? Are you a visual, auditory, or tactile learner? What’s the best way for you to implement this new knowledge as a regular practice, and how do you measure your success?

Here’s how my self-development transformation took place.

I didn’t know what would really move the dial for me to get fitter and stronger. I realised that I needed help in the form of a personal trainer and nutrition expert to get my physical body in shape. It turns out that we are what we eat, and she gave me the information I needed to eat what was right for me. I committed to regular workouts, and we meet up several times a week so she can kick my butt/encourage me. As a result of doing things differently, I’m now in the best shape I’ve ever been!

I used the same process to get my financial and personal life under control. I looked for help from people who understood what my end goal was. I understood that I was doing something new, so the old way of learning had to go. Smashing my defence system in both these areas was hard and a bit messy, but it really was worth it.

My old belief systems about money and relationships were replaced with new thinking and new systems and processes. I had to open up and be vulnerable while I was doing this and that was hard too. But every time I put a new process in place, and practised it, those synapses in my brain rewarded me by building new pathways – and my life changed. I gained a deeper understanding of where my money was going, and the systems I needed to put in place to achieve financial security. Alongside this, I was learning to communicate more openly, and be clear about what I wanted and needed.

This development animal went from a snarling tiger pacing around in a cage at the zoo to a sleek, satisfied version running at full speed in the wild, because it was finally getting to experience life at its full potential. That’s the power of Genius You.