Definition
Personal Development is the process of improving oneself. A person develops when he measures his skills and qualities and make conscious efforts to improve them. Personal development helps him
- To fulfill the goals of his life,
- To enhance their employment chances,
- To earn wealth.
Table of Contents
What is Personal Development?
Personal development means when an individual makes extra efforts to improve his personality and to improve the quality of his life. It is a life long process. There is no specific age to start personal development. One can begin his development process at any age he wants. Sometimes, a kid at a very young age realizes that he needs to become a particular type of person to achieve specific goals.
On the other hand, some people spend their whole life without making any personal development because of the lack of clarity of goals. Sometimes a person makes deliberate efforts for personal development, and on other times personal development takes place due to the various life traumas faced by the person in life.
For example, many students start working hard at studying when they face failure in school. In addition to the inability at studies or in career, people start working on their personal development when they are in love or have faced rejection in love.
An employee starts working on his progress and skills development to get a promotion or salary hike at the workplace. There could be numerous reasons for personal development.
Similarly, there are various methods for developing your own self, and people adopt a way that suits them the most. For example, a person can develop his personality or improve his skills with the help of self-help books or by taking the help of a mentor or a teacher.
Moreover, there are professional institutes that offer courses that help people in their personal development and to boost their confidence. In addition to this, many organizations provide training to their employees to help them improve their personality and skills.
Importance of Personal Development
Personal development is very important for an individual to grow in personal as well as in professional life. By developing your own self, you not only improve your personality but also improve the chances of getting successful professionally.
A confident person is more likely to succeed than the person with low confidence. In this section, you will learn about the importance of personal development for a person.
1. Personal growth is necessary for boosting confidence
Confidence is essential to become successful in any field. Personal development helps to increase the confidence of an individual. Let us understand this with an example. For example, you will feel less confident to take on a task when you are not good at something. One can gain confidence by working on the things that they feel less confident at and by practicing.
For example, Training is important to become good at conversating in a foreign language. Having the right training and a lot of practice will make you confident.
2. Self-development strengthens your skills
When you develop your own self, you not only learn new skills but also enhance your existing skills. When an individual wants to become better on something, he has to work on several other things too.
For example, if you want to become good at public speaking, then you need to learn the tips to speak in public and the use of language and the knowledge of the subject. That means, to become good at one thing, you are required to work on several other things too.
Therefore, in the process of personal development, you also strengthen your existing skills.
3. It gives clarity of vision
A person gets more clarity of vision when he becomes aware that he needs to develop his personality, or he is required to learn specific skills. He makes a plan to achieve his goals.
He gets a clear idea of what he is needed to do in the next 2-3 months to get closer to his goal. The clarity of vision helps a person to utilize his time effectively.
4. Improving yourself motivates a person
Development of your own self always motivates an individual. When a person becomes good at something, he becomes confident and feels achieved, and this motivates him to put more effort to become successful.
The employees of an organization become motivated and loyal towards the organization if the organization includes a personal development plan as a part of its training program.
5. It provides satisfaction
Learning new things and becoming better at things provides both personal as well as professional satisfaction to an individual.
6. It helps in career growth
An employee who continually makes efforts for personal development has a more successful career than the employee who does his job and sulks around. Efforts of an employee never go unnoticed.
The employers will feel confident in providing opportunities to the employee. Moreover, the employee will also feel ready and confident to take on a chance when it comes his way.
7. Essential to become happy
It help in providing focus to an individual and provides satisfaction on achieving something. Satisfaction brings happiness. Therefore, Constant personal development is necessary to become happy in life.
8. Helps you get more opportunities
A person comes across more opportunities when he focuses on his personal development.
9. Helps your talent shines
The talent of a person goes waste if not recognized with constant practice and efforts for improvement. With personal development, a person can not only improve his talent but also feel confident to show his talent to the world.
10. Helps you in creating a positive attitude towards life
When a person focuses on personal development, he plans and utilizes his time correctly. Therefore, personal development not only improves the skills but also helps the person in creating a positive attitude towards life.
Because a person determines to learn will fail multiple times while learning, but he will never give up on learning.
Here is a video by Marketing91 on Personal Development.
9 Steps of Personal Development
In the previous section, you learned about the importance of personal development. But personal development is not something that you can do overnight. It requires a plan, dedication, and a will to keep trying until you become successful. In this section, you will learn about the different steps involved in personal development.
1. Set your goal
Setting a goal means you have a clear idea when do you want to achieve your goal. For example, as a student, your goal could be to finish your revision before the end of the year 2019, or your goal could be to obtain at least 80% marks on boards.
Or as a professional, your goal could be to learn a new skill that will help you enhance your employment status.
2. Decide a deadline
The next step and most important step in personal development are setting a deadline. A timeline will give you motivation, and you will achieve your goal in a decided period.
And once you have reached your one goal, you can start working on other goals without wasting any time.
3. Make a list of your strengths and weakness
Improving your existing skills and working on your weaknesses to convert them into strength. Therefore, before you start your personal development process, make a list of all your strengths and weaknesses so that you know where you need to put more effort.
4. Make a Time Table
Once you have decided the deadline. Now, you need to determine how you are going to take time out daily to work on your goal. To make it easy, prepare a time table and paste it in your room.
Try to follow that time table every day. In the beginning, you might find it challenging to keep up with your time table, but with constant efforts and dedication, you will start following your time table.
5. Divide your goal into small goals
Decide a daily goal. For example, if you have 15 chapters of physics to study in one month, then you need to study half a chapter a day to reach your goal on time. Dividing your goal into smaller goals will help you achieve your goal quickly.
Moreover, you will feel motivated each time you meet your daily goal.
6. Prioritize your work
This step is essential in the present world full of distractions. If you want to achieve your goal of personal development, then you are required to prioritize your work.
For example, rather than wasting your time on useless things like social media and video games, dedicate it to your personal development goal.
7. Take actions
Your plan will be ineffective if you don’t take action. Take steps as you have planned. You might fail, face unexpected events or feel distracted, but don’t lose hope and get back to your plan every time you fail.
Make efforts to turn your planning into reality and achieve your goal. Sooner or later, you will be successful in achieving your goal if you don’t give up and put effort every time you fail.
8. Take Help if Required
Don’t hesitate to take the help of others if you need it. If you want, you can take help from many sources available around you. For example, you can seek professional advice from an expert.
You can always take the help of your seniors or someone with experience in the field. Moreover, don’t forget to Google for help. You will find online classes, forums, and experts who can help you with your learning.
9. Measure your progress
It is very important to measure your progress to achieve your goal within the time decided. Make sure that you review your whole day’s work before you go to bed. If you can’t measure your progress daily, then make it weekly. By doing this, you can make all the modifications required in your plan in the decided time.
Conclusion on Personal Development
We hope this article helped you realize the importance of developing and improving yourself and how it can be done over time. To help you organize you thoughts, you should check out this article on making a personal development plan.
Liked this post? Check out the complete series on Personal Development
