Profiling Steve Pavlina

As my blog is just in its infancy and I try to gather up different ideas to blog about that interest me it would be difficult not to mention bloggers that I have found to be helpful in the past in the area I am interested in. Steve Pavlina is a relatively popular and prolific blogger who has virtually started his blog up writing about specific areas on the topic of personal development and now makes over six figures a year writing a couple blog entries a week. His story is extremely interesting and inspirational. Steve graduated Cal State University, Northridge in a short three semesters of college (without summer school!) coming out with two degrees, one in computer science and another in mathematics. He attributes most of his collegiate success to simple time management and planning. His blog, stevepavlina.com, has numerous topics that are covered in detail and really aims to help the ordinary person fine tune his or her life. It would be a bit difficult to truly epitomize his entire blog with a singular topic, but a major common theme I continue to see pertains to self-improvement on various levels.


There are a couple blog entries that I want to mention because I found them to be exceptionally helpful and interesting. One of his entries speaks in detail about the law of attraction and how it specifically can take hold of us and attract into our lives whatever we constantly manifest our thoughts over. This is something that I really found interesting because isn’t that usually the case with most things? You continue to think about a particular idea or goal that you have and it somehow or someway will find its way into your life and end up a reality. This train of thought really embodies the idea of a work-hard attitude. Another entry I found particularly interesting was a topic about self-discipline which related specifically to persistence and working past the many bumps in the road that are bound to occur within our lives. He talks about the importance staying motivated so that you continue to take action toward your goal regardless of your emotional state of mind. I always seem to have trouble with this area to be honest. I will find that I don’t feel like doing something and will simply put it off because “I’m not in the mood”. It’s probably something everyone can relate to. I really feel like these two entries really only scratch the surface of what his entire blog has to offer, but they are good places to start for a person who is just beginning to read through it.

Another interesting thing that I discovered about Steve’s blog is that he just recently, in the past year, added many different new tools for those interested in becoming more interactive. There is a forum that you are can utilize if you choose, an RSS feed, and some really interesting podcasts if you are not in a reading mood. It’s clear that many of these different media tools that make up his website (RSS feed, podcast, and forum) are there to build high traffic, but I believe that he really puts some interesting content up. In relation to my own blog, I really think Steve’s blog helps analyze the many different life situations and will most definitely give me a variety of topics to comment on in my blog in the future. Hopefully everyone else will find it just as fascinating and helpful as I have. Here are a few links below to the entries that I found to be interesting. Enjoy!

Law of attraction-Steve Pavlina

Persistence-Steve Pavlina

Hello World!

My blog will be devoted to the topic of personal development. Specifically, I will try to go into detail how personal development has quickly emerged as such an integral part of many people’s lives and what it means to those who live by it.
For as long as I can remember, I have been interested in the subject of self improvement and its relationship with what life has to offer. Initially, this deep interest in personal development and self improvement began several years ago when I was introduced to a “self-help” tape by a friend. After hearing him speak as though this tape had such a miraculous effect on his life, I doubted my friend’s recommendation and brushed off the tape, as well as other priorities in my life.
Initially, I was very reluctant to listen to the tape and understand what had intrigued my friend so much. However, as I started to listen I found that the things being said had such a strong correlation and applicability to my own life. In a sense, I felt that the person on the tape was giving me guidance and advice that I had already known; but nonetheless, it was advice that I needed to directly hear from an influential and successful individual in order to truly take initiative in directing my life.
For many though, self-help programs and motivational speakers are not understood as simplistically as the experience that I shared above. Many view motivational speakers as leaders of a marketing scam that lures and exploits the naïve for commercialized reasons; authors and speakers as merely disingenuous individuals ironically attempting to “help” others for their own self-affluency.
At this point, there are no specific topics that I’d like to blog about in regards to personal development; but I know the areas for discussion are endless. This blog will be used as a tool to analyze different personal development options, as well as act as sort of an online soapbox for everyone to objectively understand the different types of self-help methods and how it has become implemented in our everyday lives.
Whether or not my audience believes in self-help as a credible method of improving a person’s life, there are without a doubt hundreds of life coaches, professionals, speakers, and authors that have become successful as a result of the success that they have brought upon others. There are countless professional speakers and authors who earn millions of dollars each year to simply give advice to CEOs, presidents, and those with authority and power in our society. It is difficult to believe that these individuals we hold to such high regard would pay large sums of money for a product that does not work.
With this blog I’m going to question the validity and credibility of what these professional “know-it-alls” have to say about their areas they claim to possess expertise in. Specifically, this will include the writers and speakers that I have found helpful and contributors to who I am today.