Self Development — GUARANTEED [24 Things to do daily]
Self development : I know you are looking to improve/develop yourself right? This article is the answer to your prayer. Self development is a lifelong process. It is a way for people to assess their skills and qualities, consider their aims in life and set goals in order to realise and maximise their potential.
This article helps you to identify the skills you need to set life goals which can enhance your employability prospects, raise your confidence, and lead to a more fulfilling, higher quality life. Plan to make relevant, positive and effective life choices and decisions for your future to enable personal empowerment.
Although early life development and early formative experiences within the family, at school, etc. can help to shape us as adults, personal development should not stop later in life.
There is always something about ourselves we can improve on. The human potential is limitless, so it’s impossible to reach a point of no growth.
I am fascinated with self-development. I see it as an art in itself, and one that takes a lifetime of practice to master.
Whenever we think we are good, we can be even better.
What Exactly Is Personal Development?
Personal development is a lifelong process that helps you assess your life goals and upskill to fulfill your potential. It allows you to be proactive and take charge of your actions. You may not always reach your objective but you lead a more fulfilling life because your purpose is defined. Personal development contributes to both satisfaction and success in life.
You can work on your personal development by embracing certain self-improvement skills. These are traits and qualities that you already have or gain through education and training. Some common personal development skills are:
- Good communication allows you to convey your thoughts with clarity and confidence
- Interpersonal skills that help you build relationships and make an impression on others in social situations
- Problem-solving skills that enable you to find the best solutions when you encounter obstacles
- Adaptability skills that let you adjust to new things quickly and easily in addition to staying calm during unanticipated situations
- Leadership skills that help you guide others; boost morale and builds confidence
Personal Development Importance
There’s a common misconception that personal development is reserved for those who need to work harder to achieve their goals. In reality, even the most successful people constantly strive for improvement. Your brain needs new information so that you can continue to flourish. Learning is a continuous process and doesn’t stop unless you want to. Personal development may be time-consuming but there are many advantages to this process.
- Provides Clarity To Personal Vision
Personal development helps you define your personal vision and life goals more clearly. When you establish targets for yourself, it becomes easier to create a plan and work towards those objectives.
- Improves Existing Skills
Learning and personal growth are the hallmarks of personal development. You learn from your past mistakes and overcome challenges through education, training and guidance.
- Helps Identify True Potential
The more you work on your skills and abilities, the more you discover your hidden potential. You learn to push your boundaries and explore new things because you know how to best utilize your knowledge.
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- Drives Motivation And Satisfaction
Personal development is empowering as it lets you take control of things. Since there is constant improvement, you feel more confident and motivated. Your productivity increases and your performance gives you satisfaction.
- Helps Focus On The Bigger Picture
When you acknowledge your shortcomings, you hold yourself accountable for your mistakes. This level of self-awareness helps you look at the bigger picture and not beat yourself up about things that are beyond your control.
What Is Self-Development?
‘Personal development’ is often used interchangeably with ‘self-development’, but they’re two different approaches to life. The former focuses on developing new capabilities and adding a new direction to life. The latter focuses on ways to improve things that are already a part of one’s life. Both processes deal with personal development and complement each other but shouldn’t be confused with each other.
Self-development is a conscious process of improving oneself in various aspects of life. It’s a constant pursuit of growth by developing skills, competencies and knowledge. The ultimate goal for self-development is to be a self-fulfilled person. The process includes three key components:
- Skill Enhancement:
There are two skill enhancement processes, personal and interpersonal effectiveness. Interpersonal skills focus on how you interact with others and develop relationships. Personal effectiveness skills like goal-setting, time management, decision-making and stress management benefit you personally.
- Mental Conditioning:
The process of building and strengthening our minds is known as mental conditioning. We’re able to focus on our objectives by visualizing what we want to achieve. This helps maintain a positive focus, improving self-image and self-confidence. Some mental conditioning techniques like meditation, breathing exercises and relaxation activities have proved useful in boosting concentration and bettering performance.
- Habit Creation:
A habit often refers to routine behaviors or tendencies that are automatic and without intention. It’s difficult to break out of habits but it’s not impossible. To make our lives more enriching we can also create new habits and bring about positive changes.
What Is Personal Growth?
Personal or self-growth is the result of both personal and self-development. It’s a process of becoming the person that motivated you to work towards self-improvement in the first place. In layman’s terms, personal growth is a transformational step made towards improving your physical, emotional, intellectual, social, spiritual and financial state in life.
Sometimes, it doesn’t matter what your abilities and skillsets are. Your attitude towards pushing yourself and stepping out of your comfort zone makes all the difference. Here are some questions you can ask yourself before you start to invest in self-improvement:
- What am I grateful for today?
- What do I want to achieve in life?
- What are the things I’m afraid of?
- How do I face my fears?
- What is that one thing I can’t live without?
>That said, here are 24 things you can do in your daily life to improve your personal development.
1. Create an Inspirational Room
Your environment sets the mood and tone for you. If you are living in an inspirational environment, you are going to be inspired every day.
If there’s a room in your house that looks messy or dull, take it to the next level by putting on a new coat of paint, buying a few nice paintings for the walls, or investing in some comfortable furniture to make it a space that will always feel welcoming and inspiring.
👉Are you overwhelmed with this whole thing of self-improvement/personal development? Here’s the BEST way to go about it
2. Read about what you want to improve.
Do you want to get better at a certain skill? Read about it. Be more meditative? Read books that explain that in detail. Want to be more productive? Spontaneous? Outgoing? Confident? All these topic areas are covered by books upon books that you can study — and by reading about it, it’ll always stay top of mind.
3. Baby Steps
To make a plan you need to include steps. Break a large goal into it’s smallest components. Keep the end result in mind as you focus on the smaller bite sized steps.
4. Learn From Other People
You can gain from the success of other people and you can learn from their mistakes. Your own experience is a harsh teacher so learn from the mistakes of others. If you can find a mentor or coach your task will be easier. 👉 Here is my recommended way to go about it
5. Overcome Your Fears
Whether it’s the fear of uncertainty, fear of public speaking, or fear of risk, all your fears keep you in the same position and prevent you from improving your life.
Recognize that your fears reflect areas where you can grow as they act as a compass pointing at areas that need attention.
👉Here is the best way to overcome your fears
6. Level up Your Skills
If you have played video games before, you’ll know the concept of leveling up — gaining experience so you can be better and stronger.
As a blogger, I’m constantly leveling up my writing skills. As a speaker, I’m constantly leveling up my public engagement abilities. What skills can you level up?
7. Wake up Early
Waking up early has been acknowledged by many to improve your productivity and your quality of life.
When you wake up early, you’ll have time to dedicate to self-improvement before everyone else is up. You’ll add extra time to your day, soak up the morning tranquility, and absorb the early-morning sunlight that will help your brain switch into its active mode.
8. Have a Weekly Exercise Routine
A better you starts with being in better shape through physical activity. I personally make it a point to jog at least 3 times a week, at least 30 minutes each time.
Try to mix it up by doing different exercises each day to prevent boredom and muscle strain.
9. Be intentional
Whatever you intend becomes your reality. Find your true intention before you resolve to do something and make sure you really want what you say you want. If your goal and your intention are not aligned, then you’ll think up lots of excuses and all sorts of situations to prevent your progress.
10. Challenge Yourself
Your goals need to be just out of reach. If you reach for an impossible target, you’re setting yourself up for a failure. If you stick to what’s easy, you’re denying yourself the satisfaction of achievement and only minimal change will occur. Find that middle ground with a stretch goal in your personal self development.
11. Stay honest with yourself
No amount of talking about it will ever instigate true change. This is the hardest part for people. It’s far easier to buy a book on self-development, carry it around, and say, “I’m working on being more present,” while staying constantly on your phone to text your friends about how you’re trying to be more present. You have to really be honest about it with yourself. You are your own judge.
12. Find role models you can look up to
Again, self-development is not easy, so it’s helpful to be able to look to others for inspiration, motivation, or even just daily reminders of how you can continue moving forward on your journey.
👉Are you overwhelmed with this whole thing of self-improvement/personal development? Here’s the BEST way to go about it
13. Measure your progress
One of my mentors taught me, “If you can’t measure it, don’t do it.” Took me a long time to understand what that meant. Regardless of how ethereal the thing that you want to work on is, you have to find some way to measure your progress. It’s the only way you’ll really know if you are moving in the right direction — and when/where to pivot as you go along.
14. Embrace Change
The world is changing all the time. Even if you do nothing you will change by default as the world turns. There is no escape from this. If people and ideas didn’t change we would all still be living in caves.
Your personal self development plan needs to include how you are going to change, what action will you take? Only action leads to results. “I see better than I hear” comes to mind here.
15. Be Accountable
You are responsible for your own progress. You are responsible for what you are today and where you are today.
That means it’s your job to initiate the steps involved in your personal development plan. If you don’t bother, no one else will. It also means you own the result and no one else is to blame. Buck stops here!
16. Consistency is the key.
Self-development doesn’t happen overnight. It happens slowly and deliberately. Consistency is what creates truly meaningful change — and this is what makes the process so difficult for people. It’s not that you pop and pill and you’re done. You don’t do it once and you’re “fixed.” Self-development is a daily practice and lifestyle.
17. Get out of Your Comfort Zone
Real growth comes with hard work and sweat. Being too comfortable doesn’t help us grow; it makes us stagnate.
Identify where your comfort zone lines are and how you can begin to step out of them little by little. Go hiking on a trail you’ve never been to, make a dish you’ve never tried, or say yes next time a friend asks you to go out when you’d normally say no.
👉Are you overwhelmed with this whole thing of self-improvement/personal development? Here’s the BEST way to go about it
18. Show Kindness to Those Around You
You can never be too kind to someone. Being kind helps us to cultivate other qualities such as compassion, patience, and love.
As you get back to your day after reading this article later on, start exuding more kindness to the people around you, and see how they react.
Also, notice how you feel as you behave kindly to others. Chances are you will feel more optimistic and grateful.
19. Reach out to People Who Dislike You
If you ever stand for something, you are going to get haters.
It’s easy to dislike the people who dislike us; it’s much more challenging to love them back. Being able to forgive, let go, and show love to these people requires magnanimity and an open heart.
Seek a resolution and get closure on past grievances. Even if they refuses to reciprocate, love them all the same. It’s much more liberating than to hate them back.
20. Let Go of the Past
Is there any grievance or unhappiness from the past which you have been holding onto? If so, it’s time to let it go as part of your self-improvement.
Holding on to it prevents you from moving on and becoming a better person. Break away from the past, forgive yourself, and move on.
👉Here's how to let go of your past
21. Start a 30-Day Challenge
Set a goal and give yourself 30 days to achieve this. Your goal can be to stick with a new habit or develop a new hobby.
30 days is just enough time to strategize, plan, get into action, review, and nail the goal.
22. Meditate
Meditation helps to calm you and be more conscious while improving your overall mental health. Meditation can also help you sleep better, be more productive, and be kinder to those around you.
👉Have a go with this 15-Minute Manifestation Anywhere, Anytime.
23. Learn Public Speaking
Interestingly, public speaking is the #1 fear in the world, with #2 being death.
Public speaking can help you learn how to communicate better, present yourself, and engage people. These skills are helpful both personally and professionally, as you’ll do better in meetings and presentations.
24. Keep Going & NEVER Give Up
Life works in cycles and moves to a rhythm. You will have ups and downs. When you hit a slow point or things don’t seem to be moving, don’t give up, keep going. There is no such thing as continual rapid advancement and that means your personal development plan needs to be achievable and balanced. Find your rhythm and go with the flow. There’s no such thing as finished personal self development. You can go on learning, changing and renewing for all of your life.
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