According to the Business Dictionary, personal development is the process of improving oneself through such activities as enhancing employment skills, increasing consciousness and building wealth. The growing success of the selfhelp and personal development movement has assisted many business managers in obtaining more qualified and motivated personnel for their companies, and it has also encouraged more people to go into business for themselves.
Personal development is however not only important in enhancing your career but also in achieving happiness and a sense of fulfillment in life. In his blog, Myrko Thum defines personal development as the conscious pursuit of personal growth by expanding self-awareness and knowledge and improving personal skills. The said skills include being in the best place in terms of your mind, your body and your spirit. You can also gauge personal development by the level of success in all aspects of your life.
For you to achieve personal development, you must decide to take a conscious journey towards personal growth. Personal growth therefore refers to various techniques you choose in an effort to become a better you. You can make steps to be a “better you” by changing your bad behaviors and habits and also improving your actions and reactions.
Personal development makes you a happy and fulfilled human being. It also means that you are equipped with the right techniques to tackle all challenges of life and keep stress at bay. Imagine that, a life free of stress and full of positive self-talk. It sounds like something that only exists in Utopia but it is, in fact, very attainable. Personal development never stops. No one is perfect and that is why spending your lifetime trying to be a better version of yourself is worth it.
Here’s why;
Have you ever sat down and asked yourself the question, “Who am I?” Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to answer this without being confused or needing some time to think about it first? Personal development is the only way you get to know who you are, what your attractive qualities are, what your weaknesses are and what areas you are currently working on improving. You get to know your values, what you cannot stand, where you are, where you want to be and what you are doing to get there. This way, you package and brand yourself in a manner that you are able to sell yourself positively and be ready to seize moments and opportunities that align with your goals and desires.
Practice self awareness.
The best way to do this is to ask yourself deep, thought provoking questions. You can have your journal and download internet templates of self awareness questions that gets you to know more about yourself and your values.
Here are some sample questions:
ii. Sense of fulfillment
Imagine getting to reap more from opportunities in life or from your relationships with others. The awareness that comes with personal development plays a key role in giving you a more fulfilled life as you are able to separate things and people that drag you down from those that build you. This way, you know where to place your investments. There are people in your life that bring out the best in you without you having to try. Such are gems that you need to hold on to. On the other hand, you will find that there are people you keep in your life who are poisonous. Just like poison, they are lethal and might kill you before you know it. Focus more energy on your gems and give less to your ‘poison’; that way you get to stay on top of everything, reach your full potential and get more from life.
Remember the last time you were having a sense of fulfillment. What are some things in life that makes you feel fulfilled. Make a list of these things and measure how often you do these things.
Personal development adds more meaning to your life. There are so many fulfillments in going after what you want. Consciously knowing where you are and where you are headed to makes it easier for you to decipher time-wasters and only focus on what will lead you towards achieving true happiness and satisfaction.
We are all born with a sense of purpose, however, along the way, we couuuld forget our purpose in life. Make a list of the certain things you would like to leave a mark on or the aspects you wish to make a difference in. For example, you wish to teach your kids to be functional adults. Part of your life purpose could be being a healthy role model to your kids.
Personal development gives you more clarity than you can imagine. You know where your focus is and are able to effectively increase your strengths and work on other areas of yourself to win in life. We all get distracted and lose focus on the important matters. Personal development enables you to realize when you are distracted and gives you the space you need to reflect and come up with strategies to overcome the distraction so you are back on track. Clarity and focus come only when you are fully committed to the journey of self-discovery.
When you have clearly outlined goals and a timeframe of when you want to achieve said goals you become more motivated to reach the finish line. Strong will can move mountains. Personal development gives you the willpower you need to want to conquer all despite the challenges that may arise along the way. Each day brings you closer to where you want to be and challenges faced only fuel you to want to get to your destination even more.
You have to know that personal development will not stop bad things from having. Life is still tough and unfair sometimes and you never know what tomorrow holds. This journey will however equip you with the necessary tools to overcome all adversaries and emerge on the other side looking back and smiling at how far you have come. It also teaches you to appreciate the ‘process’ and the experiences you end up getting along the way. With personal development, you can face challenges head on and minimize their negative impact because of your will to fight back.
The ultimate goal of personal development is for you to reach your full potential and be happy. This can be achieved once you set yourself on a conscious-living path and become a self-realized person.
The first step towards personal development is accepting yourself and realizing your flaws. Stop with the justifications and rationalizations and face the difficult truths. Connect with the truth and realize that you need to grow. You can then clearly outline your destination before embarking on this journey. Working towards a particular goal is important so as you don’t get blurred lines along the way. When you feel like giving up you can get the motivation by looking at where you have come from, what you have achieved so far and what you still have to do.
There are actions that you take unconsciously then choose to ignore. Before you realize it, they become part of you and start making you unhappy and inadequate. It is critical that you bring the unconscious actions to your conscious and become self-aware if you want to have any hope of become a better version of yourself.
Just like with every journey you take, planning plays an important role. Whoever fails to plan, plans to lose. Truer words have never been said especially with regards to personal development. You will find that it is easier to attain your personal development goals when you can see the big picture and have outlined every step you need to take to lead you to the finish line. Having a plan is like having a guide of how to do life. You can always refer to your guideline in case you get lost.
Preparing before you embark on the journey means that you are met with fewer challenges as most of the risks had already been accounted for in your plan. This is the same with personal development. Having a plan increases your chances of everything going right in your life.
A personal development plan therefore entails outlining what is important to you, how you intend to achieve it, what are your strengths and what might hinder you from reaching your goal, what can you improve and in what period of time.
If you have more than one goal at a time, then you have to prioritize them in an order such that what matters the most to you is placed at the top.
Without setting a deadline, you are just another dreamer who hopes for a better tomorrow but when tomorrow comes, all you have is your hopes and nothing tangible. Wanting a better tomorrow is the first step. The next one is asking yourself “what can I do to make tomorrow better?” and actually doing it before tomorrow comes. Be realistic with your plans and the time frames. You have to remember that Rome was not built in a day. There had to have been a plan and commitment towards the plan.
Start by asking yourself, what is a perfect tomorrow? Then break down the different aspects of your answer into sub goals and objectives. If you want to be thinner, think what can you do every day to help you lose weight. You have to first be aware of your goals then do something every day to bring you closer to them.
Another aspect that you should consider during the planning phase is your strengths. As you seek to add more to your skill set and attitude, remember those good qualities that you already have and do not lose them along the way. Ever heard of the phase, “use what you have to get what you want?” Well, you can apply it here. The skills you have can be used to develop the skills you have. For example;
If you are good at marketing, you can use this knowledge to help build on branding techniques as you already know the needs of your consumer.
If you are a responsible person who is accountable for their actions, you can build on this to build on leadership skills.
As you are embracing your strengths, be sure to let go of your bad habits with the same vigor so that there is room for the new skills you intend to learn.
Finally, remember to always measure your progress and even reward yourself. Even a small progress is still progress. This should not be taken for granted but instead should act as a motivation to be better.
Make a list of your strengths. Start brain storming. Think of the aspects in life you seem to be doing well in. What makes you do well in these aspects? These are your skills and strengths.
You can ask your friends as well to get some external insight. What are some of the things your friends think you are good at? You can get surprisingly unexpected answers!
Aspects of personal development differ from one individual to the next. Your struggles might be someone else’s strengths and vice versa. One constant factor of personal development is that you must be willing to get out of your comfort zone. Learning to be “comfortable in uncomfortable situations” is a crucial step in self-awareness and trying to be successful in all your endeavors. For instance, you can learn how to; o Stop being lazy
If people call you lazy then chances are that you really are because you are not meeting the set expectation of being actively involved in your daily activities. When you are lazy, people around you are forced to do your portion of the work. While you might think that this puts you at the winning end of the deal, you are losing a lot. Laziness is discouraged for health reasons, both physical and psychological. As a lazy person, you cannot make any decision or achieve any goal. Assuming an active role in your life might be all the difference you need to improve your quality of life and make you feel like you have achieved milestones. To overcome laziness, you can look for a role model and try to emulate their actions.
Try to incorporate 7-10 minutes of exercise in your day. Getting your blood flowing energizes you and is one of the effective “anti-laziness” techniques. If you want to get motivated for cleaning the house, watch videos of people doing that. Often getting in that spirit by watching others do the things we are too lazy to do can energize us.
o Overcome procrastination
Procrastination affects so many people. Some are aware that it affects them while other people are too trapped in blissful ignorance to even realize it. Procrastination can make you miss a lot of opportunities in life. In the famous letter of the Earl of Chesterfield to his son in 1749, he wrote;
Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day.
This quote has been rephrased time and time by famous people including Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde. They must have been onto something, right? Those who procrastinate will realize that it makes you use more time. Keeping a task in your mind and thinking about doing it but postponing it can cause mental exhaustion.
Mel Robbins discovered a wonderful productivity trick, the 5 second rule. Count backwards 5,4,3,2,1 to reset your mind whenever you are procrastinating a task and always get up after the 1 without thinking.
The hardest part is always the beginning, so just force yourself to get started. Tell yourself you will work for 10 to 15 minutes then take a break. Often the case is that you will find yourself in the flow state and you don’t feel that initial resistance that you had.
As a human being, getting angry is normal but is can affect you in negative ways. Prolonged anger can raise your blood pressure causing you to react in emotional and physical ways, impacting on your relationships with others. You have to assess how anger affects your life, what your common triggers are and learn how to control it in good time. Since we cannot prevent anger from occurring, we can try managing it in healthy ways like for example, when you feel wronged, you can learn to express your feelings when they are still manageable instead of waiting until they snowball into feelings of enragement.
Whenever you feel angry, count to 10. This gives you time to reevaluate your reaction. Whenever you feel angry about something, ask yourself, will it matter in a week? In a month? If not, let it go
The first step towards overcoming addiction is realizing that you have a problem. Having the will to stop using drugs is the second step. Alcohol and drug addiction impacts negatively on your life. No situation is hopeless, with the right treatment and support as well as a strong willpower to change. You can avoid relapsing by doing meaningful stuff like trying new hobbies, getting involved in your community and doing other things you love.
It is always a good option to seek external help and support group for addiction.
Find the nearest support group for overcoming addiction. You are not alone.
There are optimists and pessimists. You will find that people tend to gravitate towards optimists are they are more enthusiastic and positive about life. When you are negative then you will attract such kind of people which may lead to stress and even depression. Optimism and positive thinking is a key component of stress management. Eliminating negative self-talk could be all you need to finally be able reap more from life.
Being responsible entails doing what needs to be done when it needs to be done. How do I become more responsible? Well, you could start by being more accountable in terms of your actions and finances; recognize what’s happening and stop blaming others when things do not work out as planned and practice healthy self-focus among others. Being responsible will earn you respect from others and reduce the chaos in your life. It also raises your self-esteem and improves your relationship with people around you.
You might be at a point where you feel like you are flat-lining in life. Doing the same thing over and over again becomes boring and tedious. May be its time you learnt a new skill or developed a new hobby to jumpstart yourself. Do not limit your skill set to your current job as expounding on these will open you up to countless opportunities. Developing a new skill may also give you a competitive edge over your peers and raise your self-esteem.
Make a list of all the possible skills you wish to deelop. For each skill, write a number of ways in which you can start practicing this skill to enhance it.
empathy n. the power of entering into another’s personality and imaginatively experiencing his experiences.
Chambers English Dictionary, 1989 edition.
According to Daniel Goleman, the five key elements of sympathy are;
Empathizing with people will make them open up more and make it easy for you to navigate difficult crowds, Developing this skill makes people gravitate more towards you.
In an argument or while listening to someone telling you about their problem, try to put yourself in their position and guess what they must be feeling.
This can help you practice empathizing with people.
Letting go of the ghosts in past can be very difficult but it’s not worth everything you will miss out on by focusing on matters that cannot be changed. Focus on the now and the future, especially the now. Accept the past for what it is and find a way to make your present better.
It may be unpleasant but try to brainstorm some of the key unpleasant moments in your life that are affecting your functioning and well being till now. Analyse why these moments have influenced your emotional trauma. Then try to forgive the person or yourself and make peace with it.
Are you the type of person who is constantly a victim of circumstances? You need to take control of your life as this is the only way you can shape the outcomes. Be a doer and accept the negative consequences of your actions then find a way to deal with them.