Personal development gets given a bad wrap. I’ve had people tell me it’s selfish, self-indulgent and even superficial. I don’t know where this idea comes from, but it has permeated our culture so deeply that we feel guilty for the slightest self-care.

Personal development isn’t the selfish pursuit of personal gain at the expense of others. Personal development is about building up the human strengths that buffer against mental illness in order to increase fulfilment in life.

One way to explain mental health and illness is by using a number line from -10 to +10, where the negative numbers represent degree of mental illness such as anxiety or depression, and the positive numbers represent degree of mental strength. We want our baseline (the number we’re on) to be as high as it can be, right? However, with the current disease model, we’re only expected to get help when we’re ill. We’re led to believe if you’re not sick, there’s no reason to focus on personal development at all.

Not-sick sounds good in theory, but it means our baseline is at zero. Zero mental illness – but also zero mental strength. At zero, if we take a hit (a breakup or job loss, for example), we’re at serious risk of dropping into the negative, into mental illness. However, if our baseline is at say, +6, and now we take a hit, we’ve got a much better chance at coping with it, and we may only drop to say, a +3 – still quite mentally strong. Therefore, increasing our mental strength is an incredibly effective preventative measure to protect against anxiety and depression.

That’s great on a personal level – but what about other people? Isn’t it selfish to spend so much time on our own mental state when we could be helping others? Well, no. When you’re sick, you demand not only your own attention but the attention of others too. Ever heard the phrase, ‘you can’t pour from an empty cup’? To give, you must fill up your own cup, and then you’re in a much better position to help the world.

As a High Performance Coach, that’s what I help people do – heighten and sustain their mental strength so they can make an impact that truly matters in the world. I help them push their own limits and rewire their thinking, using their own life as a training gym.

And how do I actually do that?

By having deep conversations, sometimes face-to-face, but mostly on Skype, and asking a lot of questions. I ask questions you’ve never thought about the answers to, until you begin to think differently, and you discover new ways of handling life’s lemons. Most of the work happens outside the conversation – when you go and apply your strengthened mindset to all the different areas of your life and watch what happens. I also have my clients set commitments and then fulfill them by a deadline they set for themselves. I push them to reach their mental potential in the most supportive way possible – like a personal trainer.

To be physically strong, you don’t need a personal trainer, but you do need to exercise your body. Similarly, to be mentally strong, you don’t need a coach, but you do need to exercise your mind. A coach is one way you can do that more effectively, but you can also read personal development books, take courses, listen to podcasts, watch documentaries and cultivate growth-friendships.

The point is, we shouldn’t take developing mental strength for granted – it’s not self-indulgent, selfish or superficial. In fact, it’s the exact opposite, because when we are mentally strong we have the capacity to help others and contribute to the world in a way that we can’t when we’re stuck in a cycle of dropping from neutral to negative and back again. Personal development is a worthy pursuit.