According to Wikipedia, “Personal development” consists of activities that develop a person’s capabilities and potential, build human capital, facilitate employ-ability, enhance a person’s quality of life and help realize dreams and aspirations. There are many Personal Development topics that you can master that will help you to improve your Life.
Personal development can occur throughout an individual’s entire lifespan and is not limited to one stage of life. It can include official and informal actions for developing others in roles such as teacher, guide, counsellor, manager, coach, or mentor, and it is not restricted to self-help. When personal development takes place in the context of institutions, it refers to the methods, programs, tools, techniques, and assessment systems offered to support positive adult development at the individual level in organizations.”
Basically, Personal development is about improving yourself and becoming a better version of yourself. It’s about expanding your self-knowledge and your knowledge of the world. And with today’s rapidly changing world, personal development is something that everyone should include as part of their learning process.
In this post we we discuss various topics that fall under the category of Personal Development.
Benefits of Personal Development
There are tremendous benefits that you can achieve by focusing on personal development. These can include improving your:
· Self-awareness
· Your overall personal skill set and/or helping to learn new skills and capabilities
· Self-esteem
· Strengths or Talents or helping you develop new ones
· Career or help you define a new direction and start a new career
· Skillsets that make you more employable or helps you to start your own business.
· Quality of your life, time-management
· Health and well-being
· Wealth
· Ability to Fulfill personal life aspirations
· Ability to define and achieve your personal development plans (PDPs)
· relationships, whether with yourself or others.
· Spiritual Growth
My Personal Experiences with Personal Development
I have been involved in the Personal Development process for over 30 years and have found it gratifying. In that time-frame, I tried many different things. On this journey of self-improvement, I have read tons, attended many lectures/courses, watched an incredible number of videos, etc. Heck, I’ve even gone Fire-walking six times – yup walking on hot coals in bare feet.
As a byproduct of my Personal Development process, I became a Master Practitioner of Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) and a hypnotherapist.
I review personal developing topics daily, and I’m committed to continual learning. I want to state clearly that I have absolutely zero regrets, and instead, I have a great deal of gratitude for all that I’ve learned over the years.
In this post, I will address areas that I have benefited from and helped me expand my knowledge?
The following are a list of personal development topics that you should focus on:
A) Vision and Purpose
An excellent place to start is to determine what you want from life. You can help yourself in this process by defining what kind of life you want to achieve.
Start by asking yourself, “What is it I want for my life” or “What do I want to do with my life?” And see what percolates out of your subconscious mind. (Know that this can change over time, but establishing a clear direction to start with will help will happy to focus on creating a better life.)
Where we are now is pretty obvious. After all, all you have to do is look around. Where am I living? What am I doing with my life? Do I like what I do for a living? Do I want my relationships, or am I getting what I want?
You can ask yourself better questions as you know where you currently are: Where do I want to be in, 10 years, 20 years, when I’m 65? Ask yourself these questions, then let the answers percolate to the surface. Some may come quickly, and some may take days (or longer).
Defining vision and/or purpose helps you to have a goal, and now you can determine the roadmap on how to get there.
This is a powerful process and will help you have a clear l short-term and long-term vision for your life. Your vision will help you to stay focused on your long-term goals. It is beneficial when you get off track for whatever reason.
B) Your Health and Well-Being
Your health is the most important thing you have. If you have poor health, it’s tough to focus on anything else. Instead of focusing on goals and working to achieve them, we have to focus on getting healthy, and everything else falls to the wayside with poor health.
No matter where you are, it’s crucial to bring your health to the top of the list. The benefits of being healthy are apparent and also necessary if you won’t have any decent quality of life. Simply being healthy will help you to be able to have the energy you need to reach the goals you defined with your vision and purpose.
Being healthy requires getting on top of issues like weight, diet, exercise, mental health, managing stress, focusing on your vision. It can also mean learning new skills like cooking, new forms of exercise, monitoring your blood pressure, doing weight-based exercises, especially when you get older.
If you’re physically able to operate at an optimum level of health, it will permeate through all areas of your life. It will help you maintain a positive attitude, resulting in less stress and happier overall.
C) Improving Your Self-Confidence (if needed)
Having a strong sense of self and self-confidence will make it easier for you to go out into the world and achieve your vision. Focusing on personal development and what you will learn will help you raise your self-confidence and self-esteem.
When people focus on raising their self-confidence and helping them to be able to believe in themselves. One thing that will help you lock with this is learning how to program your subconscious mind! If you have a goal you not achieving, there’s a good chance your subconscious mind is not on board.
The main ways to reprogram your subconscious mind is through suggestion and repetition. Suggestions can come in the form of personal affirmations. A great time to focus on affirmations is right before bed and again first thing in the morning. Your mind is more open to suggestions during these periods, and your affirmations can easily reach your subconscious mind.
Another way to raise your self-confidence is by doing things you may be challenged by. As a result of rising above these challenges, it can help you boost your level of self-confidence.
D) Increase Your Ability to “Focus”
In today’s modern world, especially since the invention of the Internet, it seems to be continually inundated with information. It comes in so many different forms, and it’s hard to go very far without some new input.
Getting information on the Internet, social media, cell phones, TVs, outdoor advertising, radio. Your brain is constantly inundated with information, and the speed by which you receive this information seems to just continually grow.
As a result, it can be more complex and harder to focus on. I even noticed this just writing this blog post that I had to calm myself down and make a goal to sit here until I finish the post. Then again, just knowing this helped to make me more productive.
Being focused is a powerful skill to master if you want to succeed in life, especially in today’s fast past world.
When you are unfocused, you can quickly lose track of even what you’re working on at the moment, let alone your life vision. As this is becoming a global problem, you’ll find more and more coverage in the personal development field on this topic. I highly recommend you master the skill set of being focused.
Understand that being focused is a skill set that is common to successful people! It can really help you rise above the masses and achieve your goals.
E. Mastering Communication
Communication is not just about being a better speaker. It’s about understanding the whole communication process and conveying what you deem necessary to another person.
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Communication is also universal in that you use it virtually everywhere, including with ourselves! In fact, how you communicate with yourself can make a huge difference in whether you are successful in life.
I know many people with lots of potential who unfortunately spend a lot of their time communicating negative thoughts. This negative “self-talk” can undermine self-confidence and sabotage potential success. It can change your state from positive to negative etc.
If you want to have way better communication skills, please, please check this amazing program put together by award winning author and therapist, Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt- Safe Conversations which can be found HERE
Additionally, how you communicate with others can be the difference between success and failure. Hardly a day goes by that we’re not sharing with someone outside of ourselves. The real trick is to do it effectively.
As part of your communication skill set, it’s essential to learn the process of “Active Listening.” Communication is not just about getting your point across. It is also about hearing others. This includes your ability to listen to what someone else is saying in a way that they feel listened to!
Communication is an integral part of all of our relationships, at work and in everyday life, and is a skill set that few people take the time to master. Just mastering this skill set gives you a massive advantage over many people.
The great news is that there are lots of resources out there to help you learn to improve your communication skills.
F) Increasing Your Level of Productivity!
There was a piece I was reading recently, and it mentioned a having a “to-do list and filling it daily with 10 goals.” The article cited that many people create the to-do list, filling it with 10 goals then don’t achieve them. They end up keeping busy instead of being productive. At the end of the day of the 10 items on the to-do list, they have only completed three.
It’s crucial that you can distinguish between being busy and being productive if you want to make a difference in your life. Focusing on being productive will really help you with this problem. You will quickly notice that you have accomplished everything on your list at the end of the day!
Sometimes this requires being conscious of your day-to-day tasks. It helps to catch yourself wasting time and then get yourself back on track. You can ask simple questions like: “how can I accomplish a lot today,” or am I being productive in the action that I’m doing.
This is really helpful when you find yourself playing solitaire on your computer as opposed to writing a blog post 🙂
Remember that the more productive you are, the more you’ll be able to work towards your vision, and the quality of your life will improve as a result.
G) Staying Motivated to Achieve Your Vision
I placed having a clear vision at the beginning of this post because having a clear life vision to work for helps you stay motivated to move forward. If you have a clear vision and focus on this, it will help to give your life a clear direction. When you work towards this main goal there will be many minor goals that you will achieve. This will help you to remain focused.
In essence, the vision gave us the why! With that in mind, it will help you take action steps to move you towards your dream.
A good thing that can help with the vision is asking yourself,” Why do I want to achieve this goal” By understanding “the why,” it can help to raise your level of motivation as you know why you want to accomplish a particular goal.
Understanding Your Own Motivation Can Actually Help You Stay Focused.
Here is a motivation distinction that might help you. People are motivated by different things and there are 2 categories you should know about that seem universal. For people, one of these categories can be more compelling.
- Some people are motivated “moving towards pleasure,”
- While others are motivated by “moving away from pain.”
Ask yourself what motivates you more!
For example, are you more motivated by having a nice place to live or by not being broken by living on the street? Which of these motivated you more when you brought them to mind. This knowledge will help you take massive action towards where you want to be.
H) Achieving and Maintaining a Positive Mindset
A positive mindset means focusing on possibilities instead of things that don’t work.
Incidentally, a great way to better understand this topic is to distinguish between a “Fixed” and “Growth” mindset.
We have an excellent book package on achieving a “Growth Mindset” that is available on our site for only $7.99, which you can find HERE!
Check out other articles on www.attainmindset.com, which will help you create a mindset for success.
A positive mindset helps you to be able to achieve more in life improve your quality of life in your overall morale.
I) Relationship and Dating
What I have learned personally over the years is that one of the best places to learn about ourselves is through our relationships with others. This is especially the case with our primary or intimate relationships.
Relationships will:
-Bring us up against ourselves as they are unique mirrors to our inner demons.
-bring our core beliefs to the surface tour conscious thinking, which is one of the best ways for us to understand what’s running us.
– Provide us with the ability or a venue where you can examine what you believe to be true.
Always try to go into a relationship with an open mind. Understand that everyone brings wounds from the past. For the most part, getting upset requires tapping into something that was already there instead of defensively.
Understanding that you’ll never get another venue as a committed relationship to help you to grow. Your number one task is to overcome a propensity towards defensiveness. If you find yourself getting defensive, know that you’re up against something that’s not about today.
Relationships unknowingly help us to bring our unhealed wounds to the surface. If you are unconscious, you will blame your partner. If you are conscious, you will thank your partner for showing you something you need to heal inside of yourself.
Simply do the work and let go of the pain by owning your own response.
I believe relationships are a gift, and sadly few people understand how to get the most out of the relationships.
Again if you are in defensive mode, the best thing you can do for yourself is to understand that your defensiveness is from your own psyche. The pain that you may be projecting onto another is trying to get your attention. It wants to awaken you to its existence. Some old emotional wound has come to the surface to be transformed.
Always remember that it has nothing to do with the other person. They are simply your angel and are mirroring you – to yourself.
J) Mastering Compassion and allowing love in
From my own personal life experiences, I believe that a gift from relationships is that they teach us how to love. Unfortunately, this can be a bumpy ride.
The biggest thing that gets in the way is our own defensiveness which happens when old stored wounds are healed. Sadly, when people are defensive, they can create separation. This stops when people own their defensiveness and see it as their own issue instead of blaming another person.
To be more loving means focusing on the other person, giving them what they need, noticing when you get defensive, and looking for the cause of the defensiveness but, most importantly, owning it.
Try to be more compassionate and loving as a fundamental goal for your life. The worst that can do is make you into a better person.
L) Ways to Increase Your Income
As I’m sure you know already, it is hard to exist in today’s world without having money. Money, in whatever form, is the universal method for bartering or getting what you want.
Everyone wants to make more money with all the alluring toys out there.
Far too many people have ideas about money. In simple terms, I should have more of it!
The faster you learn that accumulating money is a byproduct of the transfer of value, the better you will be. If you can give people lots of value, they will provide you with lots of money.
If you can supply a (quality) service or product that adds value to someone else’s life, you have a venue to make a fortune. If you want to change your life, focus on how you can change someone else’s life.
For many, mastering making money is a huge part of personal development. You will have to learn new skills and new ways of being in the world in this process. Most of all, you’ll have to improve your relationship with yourself and make sure any internal blocks to being wealthy are removed.
K) Career
Having a promising career is related to making more money. But the goal is often different. It’s about having a promising career as a coach, employee, athlete, or whatever it is that you do.
Many people want to be promoted or climb the career ladder. Many people also want to have a career being self-employed. Know that increasing your knowledge of Personal Development can significantly enhance your skillset and help you be successful in life.
If you want to focus on your professional career, learning about Personal Development topics is ideally suited to you.
M) Increase Happiness and Personal Satisfaction
For the most part, being happy is simply a state of mind. It is a byproduct of your focus and where your thinking takes you.
Many of the problems related to being happy are greatly affected by our mental focus. While we have a brain, we never get taught how to use it. We get taught what to think but not how to think.
In some ways, Personal Development is about mastering effective ways to think.
To help you create more happiness, a great place to start is to develop a mastery of Meditation and Mindfulness. This will help you stay in the “present” or in the current moment.
Another way that can improve your happiness is focusing on helping others. To be surprised at how much joy and satisfaction you can obtain by developing a habit of “being in service. “where you help somebody else get what they need or want.
This simple change in focus from focusing on yourself to others can also help you stay in the present and out of thinking based on your past.
N) Stress Management and Meditation
With an ever-increasing stressful world, especially in the middle of the pandemic, a great skill to master is learning how to deal with stress! Controlling your stress levels is incredibly important and will make a massive difference in many aspects of your life, from productivity and motivation, but especially to your health.
If you want a great way to learn to overcome stress in your life, meditation and mindfulness are excellent skills you should focus on. Both of these focus on being present and in the moment and out of your thoughts.
What creates a lot of stress is our perception of the events in our lives. For the most part, these perceptions are based on our past experiences. Adopting meditation and mindfulness practices will help you stay in the present. This negates the internal emotional, and intellectual responses that were conditioned from events at an earlier time.
O) Goal Setting
The first topic above, vision, is about having a master goal. A clear lifetime goal is something you want to achieve. To achieve that goal, you will have to set a series of goals and then execute them as you work your way to your vision.
A significant area of personal development to focus on is how to master goal setting. You will find excellent information online to help you with this topic.
Sometimes we do what we do as a result of trapped emotions or emotional energy that remains in our neurology. A great way to release this energy is by using the BioEnergy Code which you can check out HERE
Closing Comments
The personal development process helps you have a better quality of life. Personal development is about continual improvement. It’s about realizing we were not born with all the answers and that the more that we can learn, the better our quality of life will be. Mastering various Personal Development related skills will add a lot of joy and depth to your life.
The bottom line is that delving into personal development could transform your life in a good way and turn you into the person you always want to be. Sometimes we just need more knowledge about ourselves and the world in general.
When you delve into the personal development arena, you’re going to find that the possibilities are endless. You will have powerful and empowering experiences that will significantly enhance your life experiences.
So, my friend, of all the topics above, which one do you think is most important?
Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Now take massive action and create the life of your dreams!
