The distinction between being a personal growth enthusiast and a personal growth junkie may sound like mere semantics, but it’s actually an important one - especially to those of us who have experienced both sides of this personal growth coin.

As a personal growth junkie, you are intensely focused (obsessed?) with reading self-help books (or at least purchasing them). You attend seminars, and generally do whatever you can that has the self-help label attached. You charge up your credit cards, maybe even take out loans, and plan your vacation leave around attending personal growth seminars.  You can hardly help yourself.

As an enthusiast you may do many of these same things – after all, using your vacation leave for personal expansion makes sense, right? Of course.

The difference is as a junkie you keep attending, reading, etc. hoping to find “the answer” that will either explain everything to you, or finally catapult you out of your current existence, while as an enthusiast you know you won’t find the “one true answer” in any one place. You get excited about attending seminars and reading books, but you aren’t banking on finding “the answer” in any one particular place. You know that whatever the answer might be for you, it is multi-faceted and ecclectic.

Another difference is that while a junkie can’t help themselves, so to speak, the enthusiast can’t help but look at virtually everything in their lives through the personal development/self-help filter. They don’t have to attend another seminar in order to experience the high of inner awareness - a billboard inspires them into action, a movie unleashes their own greatness, or a conversation shifts their understanding of themselves.  

The other significant distinction is that as a personal growth junkie,

you keep doing self-help programs, without actually doing the self-help part of it. In other words, you keep attending, but never fully use what you learn. There is a lot of intellectual intrigue and emotional release, but it’s difficult to sustain. That’s why you need the need the next book or seminar in order to experience that feeling again. Hence the term “junkie”.

As an enthusiast you not only learn, but you also put the learning into action. Perhaps not perfectly, and probably not every single time, but the general gist is that you apply what you learn. And keep applying it. 

As a personal growth enthusiast you search, sharpen and sustain, while as a personal growth junkie, you simply keep searching.

So, which are you – junkie or enthusiast?