I’ve been on a journey for nearly 14 years, a quest to find my place in the world; to discover how best to live my life, and for that life to mean something, to have made a difference.

In that time, I’ve spent a huge amount of time thinking about personal development – I’ve read books about spirituality and source energy; I’ve researched dozens of systems and tools for time management and personal productivity; I’ve created, recreated and reinvented lists of goals and I have learned a hell of a lot about myself and life.

The trouble is, although the inner landscape of my life changed considerably, the outer situations of my life have improved, but never really in the ways that I felt were possible. I was always recreating and reinventing my life in the future, not having any significant impact on the present moment, on today.

I also struggled mightily with finding the nuggets of genuine truth and value in a field filled with dross and rehashed ideas – Even the best books and material often embedded great ideas in a poor delivery, or in a mismatch of theory and techniques.

Beyond this, the problem I’ve faced my entire life, over and over, is how to integrate the best elements of these ideas into a consistent, usable whole. I found spiritual truths which ran counter to recommended approaches for setting goals; I found productivity systems that were grounded in a spiritual vacuum; I read about proven scientific theories which invalidated things I believed in my heart to be true.

I spent years looking into a field that immersed me in conflicting ideas, conflicting ideologies and mixed messages. The more material I consumed, the more the ideas I was reading about became a quagmire in my mind.

A New Level of Thinking

About a year ago, I consciously chose to refocus my quest – I decided that as much as I love the field of personal transformation, that it was a difficult territory to navigate and that to truly begin to implement the changes that these materials promised, that there needed to be a different way. A way that enabled these systems and tools to work together in harmony and unity.

We all have different perspectives on the many areas of personal development – Some people are staunch believers in spirituality, consciousness and alternative ways of perceiving reality; others think this is complete gobbledegook, and remain militantly focussed on objective reality, and a more grounded psychological viewpoint.

My personal exploration of personal development so far has led me more and more into the spiritual and subjective realm, but I still have a firm conviction about the benefits of the structured, scientific method way of looking at things. Reconciling these two models of reality didn’t work, no matter how flexible I tried to be; so I began experimenting with ways of thinking about life that could provide a framework for life at both ends of the belief spectrum.

I wanted a way of thinking that could help people to grow and transform their lives, no matter where they are in their life journey, and regardless of their personal beliefs about the nature of reality.

I believe I’ve found that way.

Creating a New Beginning

Over the last couple of weeks as this system of thinking finally coalesced in my mind, and I began to see the infinite potential that it held, my inner life changed dramatically. As I started to contemplate and practice this approach, allowing it to guide and shape the way I was experiencing my life, everything gradually started to shift. So far all the change has been internal – I’ve deliberately held the external situations of my life static, to enable the tectonic shifts in my inner landscape to happen without interference.

These changes continue to happen, but there has been enough successful transformation in my inner life to demand an outlet – As my ideas have crystallized into a coherent approach, these ideas demand to be shared with others.

It is to serve this inner impulse that I am creating a new beginning for myself  – The old ways of thinking about and living my life no longer truly satisfy, and I feel compelled to start changing my outer experience of life.

As I exercise my imagination, and my will to create a new life, I’m seeing different visions of how my life can unfold. Above all, I see clearly that I have a true life purpose within me, and that I must honour and obey that purpose – Rebooting this blog, and writing this post are just the first step on this purposeful path.

The main focus of this blog, and the reason why I’ve restarted it, is to begin sharing the benefits of my new way of thinking with the world – To use this holistic approach to help people achieve what they want in their lives, to experience true happiness and to make the changes that they really want.

This is the start of a new contribution to the world – I’m excited about the journey ahead, and I’m looking forward to sharing this journey with you.

[Note: I originally wrote this in March 2010, mainly to prove I could do it. The site was not updated again until March 2011, so please take this post with a pinch of salt.]

How long do you think it takes to create a new stand-alone Blog? An hour? A day? A week?

Many people would say that it all depends on the blogger – What niche they’ve picked, what they have to say and how well prepared they are. Technical skills are important, critical even, but this can be bypassed through judicious use of IT-savvy friends or a reasonably-priced freelancer.

If you search online, the “blogosphere” is awash with advice on starting, building and running blogs – And I’ve read reams of advice on what to do, what pitfalls to avoid, how to pick a niche, how to write well and what to do to become a “problogger”. What I want to know is how many prospective bloggers get put off by all this? How many genuine, value-centered people decide against a course of action (such as starting a blog, or a business) because of all the “experts” that tell them what they need?

I recently read, and was very moved by “How You Give Your Power Away” by Steve Pavlina. His article is summed up best by this extract – “Instead of focusing on your true desires, you erect false structures in front of your desires and then feed your power to those structures as a delay tactic.”

I realized that despite the best intentions of all the blogging experts out there, the effect they are having on many people is convincing them of the existence of these false structures – niche selection, domain names, technical prowess – that obstruct the path of becoming a blogger.

I bought into this mindset for a long time – I dabbled with blogging a couple of years ago, and convinced myself that I would never succeed at it unless I successfully overcame a number of challenges first. I’m a career computer programmer so technical skills weren’t my problem, but I felt I had to select the perfect niche; obtain the exact domain name that reflected what I wanted to contribute; create a theme deisgn right from launch that would astound anyone who saw it. These “false structures” kept me delayed for over 2 years while I sweated the “small stuff”. Despite my best intentions the closest I got to writing anything of value were witty Facebook updates.

Today is my birthday, and I decided that it was time to start going for the things I really wanted, rather than scrabbling around for socially conditioned crumbs of meaning. Part of this meant finally taking the plunge and blogging again, and when I started thinking about it, the shadows of all those false structures fell over me. I knew I wanted to blog, but I couldn’t work out how to get started. That was when I read Steves article – about an hour ago – And realized I had created those structures, no-one else. The only one who could get past them was me.

I had my domain name, www.leegreenwood.co.uk, and I had the technical skills to start a new blog. It took me roughly 28 minutes to get the framework of a new blog in place on that domain, completely from scratch, and another 23 minutes to write this very rough first post.

It took me less than an hour to from blogging wannabe to blogger – a change I’ve been thinking about years.

If you decided to really go 100% for the things you want, how long will it take you?