Here is a brief overview
Personal development means different things to different people. Ultimately, personal development is about focusing your attention on developing or refining your skills, abilities, attitude, and awareness for your personal goal. As a category, personal development covers several areas of human activity and can be applied to business and financial growth. Socially Personal development can be applied to improve social relationships, with family of friends or colleagues, partners, employees.
Personal development in a nutshell
If you want to achieve worthwhile things in your personal and professional life, you must become a worthwhile person in your own personal development.
Brian Tracey
To sum up personal development in one sentence, you can say that personal development is about identifying challenges, finding solutions, and integrating the answers or the right course of action or behavior into your daily life or business. Personal development is about making effective changes in yourself or company procedures to better deal with the environment.
“Believe that you possess a basic goodness, which is the foundation for the greatness you can ultimately achieve.” The Browns
Value-oriented aspects
Many of the value-oriented aspects of personal development border on the realm of spirituality where people’s attention may be focused on developing better social and environmental relationships, achieving personal mastery over one’s actions, such as behavioral changes or overcoming limitations, at this level, persistence, curiosity, study and self-discipline are common themes. Professional personal development can include topics such as personal mastery and communication, developing leadership skills, etc.
In general, personal development is about cultivating a forward-thinking attitude, studying/learning and applying proper success formulas or principles, either as a company or as an individual. Much of the study of person development comes from researching people who have achieved significant growth, personally or in business.
Success leaves clues.
The early founders of the modern form of personal development have studied and cataloged the process of success and achievement. They have made considerable progress in documenting the process of personal success as a science. Napoleon Hill can be said to be the forefather of modern personal development. He laid the groundwork for our current generation of researchers, practitioners, and trainers, like superstar Anthony Robbins.
The following are some of the general topics in Personal Development
Develop or renew identity
Fulfilling aspirations/Realizing dreams
Behavior change/conditioning
Developing motivation – inspiration
improve self-awareness
Improve lifestyle or quality of life.
Improving your employability
Identify and invest in one’s potential
financial development
Develop strengths or talents.
Personal and professional mastery – Learning techniques or methods to win
Control of one’s own life
Entrepreneurial
Improve self-awareness
Development of personal development plans.
Raise awareness or define chosen lifestyle
Integrating social identity with self-identification
Raise awareness or define your own priorities
development purpose
Raise awareness or define one’s own values.
development purpose
Love
Raise awareness or define one’s own ethics.
Strategies and realization of dreams, aspirations, career priorities and lifestyle.
Develop personal discipline.
Personal development goal/material entertainment
Developing professional potential
developing talents
developing integrity
goal setting
Development of individual skills
become more affectionate
How to learn from experience
time management
Develop mature interpersonal relationships.
establishing identity
Improve the quality of lifestyle (in areas such as health, wealth, culture,
families, friends and communities)
Learning techniques or methods to expand consciousness.
Skills development
Achieving autonomy and interdependence
self-control
Managing emotions
Learning techniques or methods to achieve wisdom.
Communication skills
Philosophical practice of personal development.
Personal development can also be applied to the following disciplines, either metaphorically or philosophically in practice
Yoga
Meditation
qigong
juggle
Martial Arts
The altruistic aspects of personal development.
Some of the more altruistic elements of personal development have parallels in some of the world’s spiritual traditions. A good example would be The Eightfold Path of Buddhism, which focuses on developing skills such as:
correct vision
correct intention
correct speech
Good action
correct livelihood
Correct Effort
Right Attention
Correct Concentration
Take a look at the parallels
Correct view, this can be a taste, an open mind, beliefs, continuous learning of techniques or methods to expand consciousness, consideration.
Right Intention: This can be compared to defining one’s values or striving to develop mutually beneficial relationships for the greater and greater good.
The right intentions form a personal development point of view, this can be seen as increasing awareness of your actions and adjusting them for the common good.
Correct speaking, from a personal development perspective, this would be Communication Skills. Communication skills can also include your internal dialogue as in positive speech.
Right Action, this can be seen as exercising thoughtfulness, exercising personal integrity, exercising wisdom.
Right Livelihood, this would have a relationship with the lifestyle, since I am improving the quality of life, career and work in an ethical line of employment, etc.
Correct effort, this would relate to the discipline commitment.
persistence of determination.
Right Mindfulness, can be a consideration akin to the consideration…
… And finally
Right Concentration can be a pleasure for clarity, focus, the exercise of discipline of thoughts.
So where do you start? And what is needed?
Define an area of life in which you would like to work…
1 create a vision
2 make a plan
3 action your plan
Commit to daily actions aimed at change
Find a system or program to facilitate your growth, in some cases this may mean reading related material, books, website blogs, in other cases this may mean joining related clubs or taking courses etc. The main point is to develop a self-image that is complementary to your goal/vision.
There are no instant solutions, quick fixes or magic formulas for personal development; personal growth apart from the awareness of the need for personal growth and the desire to grow. As long as the two previous conditions are met, the awareness of the need for personal growth and the desire to grow, you will be able to find success with the following tools:
Commitment,
Discipline,
persistence
curiosity
These tools will be a good start in your chosen area of personal growth/development.
The creative power within us makes us the image of that to which we give our attention.”
Wallace Delois Wattles
Here are two typical examples of a personal development exercise:
example one
Selfie Makeover
First to achieve success in your chosen area of personal growth/development. You need to do two things, spend some time to identify and define an area that you would like to develop, ie you want a promotion.
Develop an image of yourself in your ideal finish or state/position –
how are you going to see yourself
How are you going to feel?
How will you be acting?
Develop your new image of yourself daily
example two
The following is an excerpt from Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, Hill is describing the six steps necessary to develop what he calls the burning desire necessary to lead a person to the achievement of their goals. In this example, the steps relate to money, but with creative editing, this formula can be applied to any area of goal achievement.
“First. Fix in your mind the exact amount of money you want. It’s not enough to simply say, ‘I want a lot of money.’ Be precise about the amount. This is described in a later chapter.) See the book Think and Grow Rich napoleon hill
Second. Determine exactly what you plan to give in exchange for the money you want. (There is no such reality as “something for nothing.”)
Third. Set a definite date by which you intend to have the money you want.
Four. Create a definite plan to carry out your desire and start immediately, whether or not you are ready to put this plan into action.
Fifth. Write a clear and concise statement of the amount of money you intend to acquire, indicate the time limit for its acquisition, indicate what you intend to give in exchange for the money and clearly describe the plan through which you intend to accumulate it.
Sixth. Read his written statement out loud twice a day, once just before you go to bed at night and once after you get up in the morning.
Napoleon Hill’s 13 Success Principles are;
Desire, Faith, Autosuggestion, Specialized Knowledge, Imagination, Organized Planning, Decision, Persistence, Master Mind, Transmutation, Subconscious Mind, Brain and Sixth Sense
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill is a must-have work – Think and Grow Rich is full of valuable insights
All that man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts.”