Personal development is a not just a habit you but a lifestyle built on self awareness, a way of life that involves nurturing various areas in your life, to fulfil your full potential and become the best version of oneself.
The 5 key areas of personal development include: Physical, mental, Social, Spiritual and Emotional development. Engaging in personal development not only leads to a beautiful and improved life but also a better well rounded society.
What is Personal Development?
Personal development is the act of carefully choosing a way of life and constantly practicing it to achieve a better version of oneself, usually by setting clear and smart goals and working towards them. This action makes one achieve their highest potential, help them realize their talent and acquire a high-quality life.
Personal development is divided into five key areas:
- Mental development
- Physical development
- Emotional development
- Social development
- Spiritual development
To achieve self growth in these areas, you need to follow the 4Ps of personal development: plan, prepare, practice and perform
The 5 Main areas of Personal Development
1.Mental development:
Our minds and thoughts play a huge role on how we live our life. Mental development is the act of improving your way of thinking and understanding to develop a healthy mindset. Having a strong mindset is the key to making sound decisions and maintaining healthy relationships.
This can be achieved through constant learning on different topics and ways of life. It might be through reading personal development books, listening to podcasts or even learning through people that inspire us.
Reading five pages a day of a self health book in the morning or right before bedtime is a good way to start your self development journey. Moreover, prior to starting your self awareness journey, it is important to understand it’s fundamentals.
2.Physical Development:
Physical development goes hand-in-hand with mental development. According to statistics people that work out daily, have testified to see a great improvement on their mental health.
Eating healthy, exercising daily, practicing yoga, relaxing when needed, and having enough sleep are always that you can incorporate in your daily life to improve yourself.
A simple way to ease into a healthy lifestyle can be through watching your eating habits, and working out on your floor mats five minutes a day or even taking a 10 minutes walk every day just to have a self reflection moment.
3.Emotional Development:
Mastering your emotions is like having a sword to protect yourself. Emotional development involves your ability to focus on how you think, learn and process information.You should know how to handle your emotions, stress and personal challenges. By having self awareness on these areas, you will be able to improve on your problem solving skills, decision making and critical thinking.
Emotional intelligence can be practiced through self reflection like journaling. To manage stress, start meditating, practicing mindfulness and slow breathing in anxious situations.
If you are having difficulties in managing your emotions, you can consider visiting a free therapist around you or looking for free online therapists.
4.Spiritual Development:
Spiritual development may look different from one person to another. I believe that it involves how one connects to their inner selves and values. It may be through religion, meditation or connecting to the nature around us. Practicing spiritual development skills is important as it helps improve our inner self, bringing peace and gratitude.
5. Social Development:
Social skills are important in our day-to-day life. They determine how you communicate, network and interact with others. Having good social skills can help us secure great opportunities, jobs, business opportunities, and even have good relationships.
To strengthen your social development skills, you need to practice listening, be mindful of your body language and spend quality time on face-to-face interactions.
This could be a challenge in this age, as people are glued to their phones and electronic devices, forgetting to network in face-to-face environments.
The 4Ps : Stages of a Personal Development Plan
To successfully grow in the key areas of self development, you need to implement the four stages: plan, prepare, practice and perform.
Preparation stage
Prior to doing anything in life, one needs to prepare, some do it mentally, physically or even subconsciously.
The secret to success is through preparation, just make sure not to get caught up in the preparation stage by the chains of perfectionism.
Be truthful to yourself and determine what areas in your life are excelling and what areas need improvement. Recognize what barriers hold you back from achieving your full potential. This will help you identify how to move forward.
After determining your challenges and knowing your strengths, it is time to set your smart goals.
Smart goals are identified as specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time based.
Planning stage
Once you have completed the preparation stage and identified the areas that need improvement. It is now time to set the action plan.
This involves writing down your short and long-term goals. Block time on your schedule to work and reflect on them daily, weekly or monthly.
Consider listening to personal development podcasts , reading self help books and finding mentors that you can learn from.
If you find it hard to stay accountable, consider finding someone that can work with you through this journey
Practice stage
As we all know, having something in theory written is definitely easier than practicing it. The best way to start working on a development plan is it just by doing it. Do not overthink right until everything is perfect starts now and eventually things will fall in place.
Take small actions on a daily basis and understand what works for you. Make sure not to overwhelm yourself with too many things.
Repetition is the best way to make a routine stick and eventually fruitful. Nothing changes overnight.
Do not be so hard on yourself if you fell to achieve what you want a stick to your set routine. Dust yourself and start over until you master it. Celebrate yourself weekly on your improvements
Performance stage
Reflecting on your progress is part of the performance stage. Weather you achieved, small or big wins, tech time to acknowledge your efforts and intention.
Keep growing by creating new goals that you would like to achieve.
Journal your journey and progress to look back to and be proud or grateful.
Importance of a Personal Development Plan
- Provides clarity on goals by making them more specific.
- Speeds up time on achieving your goals.
- Increases motivation and focus as having your girls written down, keeps you accountable on ticking them off
- Helps in time management by clearly seeing the effects of your actions in the future.
- Encourages self reflection and helps your know your strength and weakness
- Boost career and financial growth.
- Improvement and emotional well-being.
Conclusion
Personal growth and self development is a long life journey. It separates the successful and from others as it brings out the best in people.
Making the choice to have a personal development plan and taking it into consideration is a decision that can change your life with a big turn.
start by small and definite goals and eventually move into bigger and life changing goals once you are familiar with the process, feel confident.