Here’s a rather nice article by Martin Avis who writes the Kickstart Newsletter

I can personally recommend Martin, his newsletter and his ‘world view’.

Check it out using the link above.

Personal development training is a huge industry that has its
roots in thousands of years old religious writing. Ever since
humans came together in societies, there has been a yearning
among many to improve our lot in life, to achieve bigger success
and to live as better, more organized, more efficient people.

It was only really at the end of the 19th and the beginning of
the 20th centuries that the whole self-improvement movement
really started to take off.

Early pioneers of what we have now come to know as bestselling
life coach courses, such as Napoleon Hill and Dale Carnegie paved
the way for a massive explosion of personal growth experts and
motivational speakers to emerge – and greatly change the way that
21st century thinking has developed.

It is no longer thought of as strange or maverick to want to
improve your life. Tony Robbins told us how to unlock the giant
within us all. All we have to do is follow the instructions.

An entire new language of personal development training emerged -
Neuro Linguistic Programming – NLP for short – has merged the
sometimes wooly self help advice that early writers published
with hard-hitting, proven psychological principles. It is no
longer enough to simply repeat affirmations to bring about change
in you life – NLP gives you powerful tools to reprogram your mind
away from the things that are holding you back and into patterns
that will almost force you to succeed.

Personal development training, as we now know it, really got
started with the publication of a book called ‘As a Man Thinketh’
in 1902, by an English writer called James Allen. He told his
readers that you don’t necessarily get what you want in life, but
you do tend to get the things that you most consistently think
about.

At the time, that was a revolutionary idea: that we are in
control of our own destiny and that our way of thinking can
change our way of being. It became a bestseller and still gets
much critical acclaim more than 100 years later.

The people who most took the message, that success comes from
thinking successful thoughts, to heart were publishers. They saw
the future and the future was personal development training!
Nobody knows how many selfhelp books have been published in the
110 years since, but the best seller lists always have several
high in the charts.

It is estimated that over half a billion copies of self
improvement books have been sold, and the real total may be even
higher.  Type ‘self help books’ into Amazon and they’ll present
you with almost 105,000 to choose from. And with the current
ebook explosion in full force, the personal development industry
is growing even faster than ever before.

Does the vast array of books, courses, CDs, tapes and DVDs that
characterize the personal growth market suggest that it is all
hot air: castles of hope built on shifting sands?

I don’t think so. It seems to me that the hope that we can change
our lot in life, the promise that a few simple actions will turn
our circumstances around and the idea that we only have to follow
the advice of a few charismatic trainers who have discovered the
secret is what personal development training is all about. Yes,
it is selling dreams, but dreams can come true.

And it is so much better to live with dreams that can come true
than to merely exist without them.