Steps to personal development Planning
To achieve great things, two things are needed;
a plan, and not quite enough time. – Leonard Bernstein
Do you want a personal development plan that can help you create positive lasting change in your life? (I mean who doesn’t, right?)
With all the self-help out there it’s very easy to get overwhelmed and stuck before you even begin. That’s why I’ve kept this as short, sweet and actionable as possible.
When I found personal development I was all over the place consuming a ridiculous amount of books, blogs, seminars, podcasts and so on.
It didn’t take me particularly long to get overwhelmed and getting very little out of the content I was trying to learn.
If I could go back in time and offer myself a helping hand I would’ve told my self to take a step back, suck on a chill pill and put all of that good stuff away for now.
“Look here, me” I would’ve said, “When you’re just starting out all you need is this simple plan and before you know it you’ll be making awesome progress, have a look!”
The Simple 3-Step Personal Development Plan
You see, getting started on your own personal growth really isn’t as at hard and overwhelming when you know where to start. If you just follow these simple steps and you’ll be well on your way:
1. Create Your Personal Growth Action List
The only logical place to start your personal development quest is with yourself. Start out with creating a list where you write down everything that you know you could be doing (but you’re currently not) that would have a positive impact on your life. Use this list of life areas as a starting point to guide you:
- Career
- Finance
- Relationships
- Home
- Health
- Learning
- Emotional
- Spiritual
- Character
- Contribution
- Fun
Try to have at least one action for each area but if you get stuck don’t worry about it. You can always come back and add stuff later. When your list is perfect good enough you sort all of the items from the easiest on top to the hardest at the bottom.
2. Get Highly Motivated
As your will-power to make these awesome changes in your life start to dwindle, you’ll need proper motivation to keep going. That’s why your next step will be to:
- Define and put into writing your personal vision and mission statements. Your vision will give you direction and serve as a source of power and inspiration. Your mission statement puts everything that you do into a bigger context which leads to a greater sense of meaningfulness and achievement as you move forward.
- Set your goals. Turn your personal growth actions into specific and measurable milestones. Make sure they have a deadline and are written in a present tense with action verbs. Here’s an example: “On the 20th of April 2014 (deadline) I am (present tense) completing (action verb) the Virgin London Marathon (specific details)”.
- Create a weekly action plan. Make sure to break your goals down into manageable pieces so that it’s easy for you to see the next small step forward as well as how far you’ve come.
