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The Challenges of Personal Development

By Maximiliano Pedicelli, Grade 11
Today I would like to talk about personal development and self-responsibility. For a long time, I found myself affected by a lack of motivation and found myself procrastinating off things which I know could improve myself in the future.
 
Things like going to the gym and doing homework quickly rather than scrolling through Spotify endlessly and so on. This topic may seem somewhat trivial to some people, but it is actually much more difficult to fix than I, originally, thought.

When quarantine started, I lacked the motivation to develop myself personally and ended up in a cycle of essentially being unproductive. An experience I’m sure a lot of you have shared. The key I found out of this cycle was finding an element: self-respect. Getting into a routine of setting myself goals and respecting myself enough to meet those standards. This is when the relevance of personal development became clear to me.

I believe responsibility is a term misinterpreted by many. Teachers and parents use it constantly in negative connotations when lecturing the younger generation and also mostly when telling us to do things we don’t want to do. It grows in our minds to be this unattainable objective when in reality it is easy to have. Responsibility is not making up false excuses in your mind, it is having the ability to do things which must be done without delay. For example, getting one’s homework done. Let’s say you have a big assignment due Monday morning and it’s now Thursday’s study and you have nothing to do. Responsibility would imply doing the assignment and not putting it off until 11:59 on a Sunday night.

However, responsibility comes as a product of self-development. For most, the advantages of being around other people outweigh being alone yet the results from setting aside an hour or so every day to do something productive on your own are very perceptible. After high school, it will be necessary to make decisions and have the productivity to learn on your own; why not start now? Start making daily study a time of focus and productivity instead of one of distraction and amusement. Put yourself to better use and reflect on what may be improved in your everyday lives, whether it be academically or athletically. Put yourself in complicated situations that make you uncomfortable. More often than not, the experience you’ll gain from these inconvenient encounters will prevail over the discomfort of the situation.

To speak freely, for the first month of the school year, I was somewhat crowded due to the courses I take. However, having this ability to avoid excuses and work easily, I’ve been able to juggle my duties as a prefect and assignments, but still have time to spend with my friends. To finish off with a quote from Confucius: “you have two lives, the second one begins when you only have one,” meaning you don’t have time to waste on procrastination. Spend your time on the things that matter and Carpe Diem.
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