Are you failing to achieve your self-development goals? Learn 9 steps to create a personal development plan that’s guaranteed to succeed.
We could all use some self-improvement tips to learn how to deal with the daily stressors in our lives. A focus on self-improvement and personality development can help us achieve that goal.
But most people fail to meet their self-development goals because they don’t have a realistic personal development plan to help them achieve them.
9 Steps to a Personal Development Plan
In this article, you’ll find 9 steps to create a personal development plan that’s guaranteed to succeed.
1. Identify & acknowledge your blind spots
Blind spots are defined as the aspects of your personality that you’re unaware of. In order to achieve your personal development goals, you need to discover what triggers you and why, so you can deal with those issues calmly and maturely the next time they come up.
Once you’ve figured out your blind spots, you’ll be able to understand which areas of self-improvement you need to focus on. On the other hand, no one is perfect, and all of us cope with triggers in different ways. So how you deal with your flaws on a day-to-day basis is what matters most.
Your self-improvement goals can start with identifying your shortcomings, understanding them, acknowledging their origins, and finding the best possible way to address them and overcome them. This self-realization will help you identify your weaknesses and help you cope with them in the healthiest and most effective ways.
.
2. Set realistic personal development goals
What’s the point of setting big audacious self-development goals that instil a sense of doubt in you every time you try to achieve them? If you set unrealistic personal development goals and try to change too many things about yourself, you will trigger feelings of self-doubt and low self-esteem.
The role of your mind is to protect you from disappointment, so this very guardian will cause you to trip up and fail if you try to override it forcefully. Instead, work with your mind to create a personal development plan with realistic and incremental goals that will make you happy and give you a sense of achievement.
For instance, if you want to lose weight, don’t change your entire routine overnight. Change one thing at a time and stick to it for 60 to 90 days so that you can create a new habit in your life. When you take baby steps towards your personal development goals, your mind is less likely to hijack your efforts and you’ll be more likely to achieve them.
3. Stop comparing yourself to others
Comparing yourself to others is one of the most harmful tendencies we have. We often tend to align ourselves with people who are ‘out of our league’. But by doing so, we forget our own capabilities and tend to see ourselves as unworthy or “less than” in comparison to others who may have more or achieved more.
This is a game you cannot win because there will always be someone who has more or achieved more than you. As a famous quote says, “Don’t compare your Chapter One to someone else’s Chapter 20.”
Instead, focus on what you can do today to work towards your goals, rather than measuring yourself against what others have already done after years of hard work.
This will help you find room or areas for improvement and focus on using your own unique abilities to work towards your self-development goals.
4. Let go of the past
How often have you spent hours of your mental and emotional effort ruminating on something that happened to you in the past?
Living in the past drains your energy and focus until your self-development goals take a backseat to all the stuff you’re dealing with. If you’ve experienced trauma, you can work on overcoming it with the help of a professional counsellor at e-counseling.com.
Letting go of the past doesn’t mean you should forget the lessons of the past. Instead, letting go means forgiving the people who hurt you so you can move on with your life. Letting go of your pain will help you focus on the present moment, so you can make each day better than the last.
5. Commit to your goals
You can read this article and all the self-development books you want till the cows come home. But without absolute commitment and the willingness to do whatever it takes, all that information won’t make a dent in your Universe.
Commit to improving yourself by getting a life coach. Being accountable to someone else can make a huge difference in your success. The results may not be immediately apparent, but, with time, you’ll come to realize that it was worth the commitment.
6. Be open-minded
There are a lot of benefits to being open-minded. People who are open-minded tend to have a more positive and growth-oriented outlook on life. Open-minded people are willing to examine their own ideas and adopt new ones that are beneficial to them.
One way to become more open-minded is to be more attentive to the changes, challenges, opportunities, and circumstances around you. Start with understanding and actively seeking out opportunities by listening and learning from other people.
When you learn to listen, it becomes easy to shift your own flawed thinking and quickly adopt new ideas and beliefs. Attending personal development programs, conferences and workshops is another way to expose yourself to new ideas and ways of thinking.
.
7. Read self-help books
Personal development books can open your mind to another level of experience, especially those that are positive and packed with wisdom. Make it a habit to read new self-improvement books regularly to expose yourself to new ideas and to improve your mental focus.
Reading helps you keep negative thoughts at bay. A consistent reading habit can help you learn a new language, begin a new hobby and expand your imagination.
Your mind is like a computer and as the saying goes, “Garbage In, Garbage Out.” The more wisdom and self-improvement ideas you absorb, the better your own and thoughts and beliefs will be.
8. Fight your fears
Everyone experiences some sort of fear. However, some fears can be crippling and keep you stuck for ages. Fear of uncertainty, fear of taking risks, fear of people, and any other unhealthy fears have one thing in common.
They hijack your mind and your focus and prevent you from growing and achieving your dreams. A wise person once said, “The thing you fear most will eventually come to pass,” so the only way is to face your fear head-on and challenge it.
You can fight fear by taking an offensive rather than a defensive mode of dealing with it. If you need help in overcoming fears and phobias, therapy and counselling can help you achieve that goal.
9. Cultivate good habits
Bad habits corrupt character. No one wakes up one day and finds themselves engaging in bad habits all of a sudden. Instead, they tend to sneak up on you stealthily, affecting your thoughts, diminishing your productivity and output, and ultimately leading you down the path of failure.
If your pursuit of happiness is hedonistic and aimed at masking your pain, you’ll end up making choices that lead to anxiety and despair. If you’ve started to smoke, oversleep, hang out with bad company, or constantly show up late for work, the best approach is not to focus on how you should stop doing those things.
Instead, the only way to overcome bad habits is to replace them with good habits that help, not harm you and others, and take you closer to achieving your self-development goals.
You and only you are responsible for your own personal development… not the people closest to you. The sooner you create a personal development plan, and work on your personal development goals, the better you’ll feel about yourself.
I hope these self-improvement tips have inspired you to work on yourself and your goals. Do share your self-development goals in the comments below.
Also read:
- 21 Days To Recreate Yourself And Design A Life You Love
- How To Find Your Passion & Live A Life With Purpose And Meaning
- 21 Empowering Beliefs That Help Me Live A Calm, Confident Life
- How To Build High Self-Esteem: Books & Women’s Self-Esteem Activities
- How To Always Be Happy: 10 Tips To Increase Your Happiness Quotient
- How To Be Happy Alone Without Being Lonely
About the author:
Priya Florence Shah is the Group Editor at SHEROES and author of Devi2Diva, an emotional self-care book for women.
.
