Therese.LockemyThere’s never a better time to start working on your personal development than now.
Prioritizing personal development not only helps you, but it can also strengthen your relationships at home, work, and other places.
If you begin to invest in yourself, show-up for yourself, you just might be amazed at how the universe shows up with support.
What is Personal Development?
Before you can start working on personal development, you obviously need to know what it is.
Personal development (aka self development) is a consistent way to better yourself, to help you live a happier and more fulfilling life.
Although this does take a bit of introspection (i.e. self awareness) to start with, you can build many of these mindsets (self-esteem, self-love, etc.) in tandem with your personal development plan.
It will also get easier to be more aware of yourself throughout this personal development journey.
What Does Personal Development Look Like?
To an extent, personal development may look different to each individual. Since you are uniquely you, the way you work on personal development does not have to be the same way I work on mine.
Likewise, the areas of your life that needs the most personal development or the areas that will even be applicable to you can vary greatly. There are many different dimensions of life that you can implement self development in. The dimensions of life fall into 10 buckets. These are spiritual, emotional, parental, financial, physical, social, intellectual, avocational, vocational and marital.
You will likely have some areas you don’t touch at all and some areas where you are doing deeper work. It will be important to recognize what area(s) of your life need the most work. This will be what you will prioritize working on when beginning your personal development plan.
There is a great book that I read that helped with this called Living Forward. Michael Hyatt walks you through the steps to live the life you intended and to stop drifting through life. This helped me tremendously in choosing the dimensions that matter the most to me.
5 Examples of Personal Development Goals
These are broad examples that may resonate with you personally. But, if none of these examples stand out to you, I encourage you to take time and write down where you want to be in the dimensions that are important to you.
I went through the very emotional process, per the steps in Living Forward to write what my obituary would look like now and what I’d want it to look like. It sounds so morbid, I know! It was no easy task.
However, it was tremendously helpful in A) providing a wakeup call and B) helping me identify what dimensions were most important and the steps I could take to get closer to the person that I wanted to be.
This self-development process will help you figure out what you focus on for your own personal development.
Example Goals:
Ex 1 I, as a wife, want to better encourage, and have patience with my husband. I will be more intentional about looking for opportunities to support my husband. I may cook his favorite dinner for an at-home date night, write an encouraging letter, or make time to discuss what is important to him. I will also schedule time every evening to pause amidst the chaos and spend time talking with him.
Ex 2: I want to have a healthier and more active lifestyle. To work on this, I will begin my mornings by stretching. I will also start a healthier diet by cooking one meal a week. At least 3 evenings out of the week I will take a walk.
Ex 3: I want to be smarter with my money. I will save 5% from each check that I am unable to touch. I also will create a reasonable budget that will allow me to live happily and still spend less. Every Sunday evening I will monitor and readjust this budget, so that it stays front and center.
Ex 4: I want to work on being more self-aware. To achieve this, I am going to meditate each morning. Along with meditations, I will journal about my day. Throughout my journaling, I will write down the highs and lows of my day, affirmations, and maybe even prayers.
Ex 5: I want to be a better colleague. Even though I know that I am more than my job and my job or performance does not define my self-worth, I want to be a role model for my coworkers and bring my best to work everyday. I will take 30 minutes every morning to plan my day and ensure I’m ready for meetings and the work I need to complete.
You will notice that all of these goals have specificity in them. I have learned that though it’s important to set specific goals like this, as it gives you structure and allows busy overachievers (like me) to put it in our schedule, that intentions are even more important. Even if you miss a day walking or meditating, if your intention is the same and you focus on that, you will get back on track.
3 Ways to Start a Personal Development Plan
When starting a self development plan, you first have to identify the most applicable and important dimensions of your life that need improvement.
After you identify which dimension(s) you want to prioritize, start to think about where you want to be, what are you looking to develop or change that made these dimensions important? Understanding your why and motivations is important to keep you going.
Write down a specific goal under that dimension and give yourself a realistic timeline to accomplish this goal. Since this will vary depending on the depth of improvements you want to make, it is okay for this to not be an exact timeline for every goal. Overall, you just want to have a way to measure your progress. It’s okay to have broader intentions for these areas and to not have a plan for every piece.
Write down a specific goal under that dimension and give yourself a realistic timeline to accomplish this goal.
Lastly, to start any plan of this sort, you need to be in a personal development and growth mindset. This doesn’t just mean that you casually think about improving yourself. To have this mindset, you have to believe that you can truly develop yourself to be the best that you can be.
Here are three ways to start a self development plan, maintain your accountability, and keep a personal development mindset.
1 Start a personal development journal/planner. I recommend getting an entirely new planner with a calendar like this, colorful pens like this, to journal with. If you need erasable ones, I love these – just don’t let your planner sit out in the heat, or you will come back to empty pages. Put in the freezer if this happens and like magic, the ink should come back.
You can use the colored pens to coordinate your goals and achievements and daily or monthly items on your calendar.
I use the Full Focus Planner, by Michael Hyatt. I’ve been a fan of his system for some time. If you like clear systems, then grab his planner here.
2 Find inspiration. I’m a big believer that our environment and what surrounds us can propel us forward or make us feel discombobulated and unmotivated. Grab a gratitude or positivity journal along with your planner. Something like this that brings together a practice of mindfulness, positivity and gratefulness is perfect.
Another way of doing this is through other daily prompts. I pull a power-thought card just about everyday. I also have positive messaging hanging on my wall.
3 At some point in your day, dedicate time to better yourself. Set aside a minimum of 30 minutes everyday to work on your personal development plan. Even if this time only allows you to get started on a piece of your plan, you’ll be that much closer to reaching your goals. I build this into my daily rituals, which you can include in your planner. The Full Focus Planner has a place for rituals throughout your day (morning, before work, after work and evening).
Speaking of inspiration, below are 8 quotes you can pull from to inspire you to get started and stay consistent. You can print these out, pin for later or create an image and save them as your background on your computer or phone.
8 Personal Development Quotes to Inspire You to Start Today
I know that taking the first step to work on yourself can be terrifying. But, if you can get past that feeling of fear, you’ll become unstoppable.
Here are a few of my favorite personal development quotes to help you push your own boundaries and become the very best you can be.
“Recognizing that you are not where you want to be is a starting point to begin changing your life.”
— Deborah Day
“We must become the change we want to see.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
“Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it’s holy ground. There’s no greater investment.”
— Stephen Covey
“Change is hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end.”
— Robin Sharma
“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
— Maya Angelou
“Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.”
— Ella Fitzgerald
“Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.”
— Carrie Fisher
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
Having a Personal Development Mindset
If you are willing to become aware of the dimensions of your life that need changing, you’re one step ahead of most of the world.
Once you focus on these areas and start a personal development plan by journaling, making note of your tasks, and even setting aside time to work on these traits, you’ll reach your goals and start to see small wins. Celebrate the small wins!
Although self development can be scary, it doesn’t have to be hard. Don’t forget that you can make this process simpler by having a personal development mindset that keeps your why front and center and encourages you to keep pushing through.
Being able to fully submit to needing change in your life, and being the actual change, is a very rewarding and humbling experience. Improving your personal development mindset can be as simple as setting a reminder each day to focus on your improvements and the ones that need to be made. Remind yourself, regularly, that you are worthy of being the best you can be.
Now, go out there and do it!
An inspiring read. Self awareness is vital for personal development.
Yes!
I love this Because personal development is so important. And one of the things I’ve been working on is self-esteem. i’m in the process of trying to get a gastric bypass and the doctor and I were talking about the different things to work on and she said you really need to practice self-kindness which is sad but it’s really hard! so I think we should always work on ourselves continuously to be better even if it’s the small things! no one is perfect and we all have things that we can do to be better people in general and grow and not just intellectually so I love that you brought up the different areas of personal development!
Self-compassion is so so very hard. I have high standards of others too, but I give those around me way more grace than myself.
Yes, forever growing 😀
And for what it’s worth, I think you are pretty amazing 🤗
Thanks for book tip 💕 it sounds interesting. I wonder if my library has it 🤔
Let me know what you think! I thought it was a great read and something that you can actually apply in a tangible way.
I find taking time for and focusing on myself is so hard on a consistent basis. Thanks for the reminders, and inspiring quotes. A journal and cool colours appeals to my creative side and is a great idea.
It is so hard. The pens are some of the best I used. I have been a long-time fan of the erasable ones for my planner, but now that I’ve been doing this for a while, I think I’m going to move to the TUL pens – they write so pretty and colors are strong. With you being more on the creative side, I’d suggest the Gratitude Sidekick Journal vs. the Full Focus Planner. I love the Fully Focus Planner, but it’s not as fun as the sidekick journal.
Good reminders. I’ve been working on exercise lately… I’m.currently using my elliptical 3-4 times a week for 20 minutes, and hopefully I’ll eventually be able to add a little more time to that. There are definitely some other areas I need to work on too, but it feels really good to be working on the physical aspect again.
Yay! The physical domain is one of the areas that’s important to me too and it’s one of the areas that gives me an immediate mental boost. What you are already doing on the elliptical is great! I’ve found it’s more important to form habits and to set intentions than it is to become married to a certain goal that represents frequency or duration.
Love this! I love how thoroughly written it is to make it easier to work on personal development! Self love and care is so important to make a priority!
Yes! Agree, it’s so important. So happy you found this helpful 💕