Pursuing Personal Development & Growth To Improve Your Life

What is personal growth? If you have heard this term being bandied around but aren’t sure what it means or you need to pay attention to it, personal growth is essential for improving your behaviours and habits and allowing yourself to develop as a person.

Personal growth is the action of learning new skills, changing your reactions to others and situations and looking inward at yourself to assess your feelings and thoughts and look at how you can learn from your experiences to help you become a better version of yourself.

For many people this is something that can come naturally as they get older, with many people learning as they live their lives and experience different circumstances. For others it is a process you need to actively follow to allow yourself to grow and move on and push through anything that is holding you back.

 

There are many reasons why you might feel the need to improve who you are and what you do. But at the heart of it, is paying attention to what you do and say and you impact the world and vice versa.

Why Is Personal Development Important? 

Personal development is a driver in increasing maturity, awareness of the world, other people and allows you to develop into the best you that you can be. It is vital for everyone to go through this process to help them learn more about themselves and their impact on those around them.

Being able to increase your self awareness will allow you to develop your skills, achieve your goals and achieve your ambitions. 

How to Undertake Personal Development

Personal development doesnt need to be difficult, although it can be quite uncomfortable at times as you need to address some behaviours within yourself. 

 

Acceptance

Before you do anything else, you need to start your journey with accepting who you are now and allowing yourself to believe you deserve to change and you deserve the chance to push forward and grasp everything available to you. You need to be able to allow yourself to move forward with your dreams and accept you are just as deserving of achieving them as possible.

 

Get To Know Yourself

“The unexamined life is not worth living” Socrates.

 

Part of the process of self acceptance is getting to know yourself and looking more deeply than the surface. Who really are you as a person, what do you like about yourself, what don’t you like, can you change anything, why do you want to change and what are you truly capable of? It might be uncomfortable and potentially painful, but it is important to go through this process because unless you really understand who you are and why you act the way you do, you won’t be able to make changes for the best.

 

Set Your Goals

You need to set yourself some realistic and attainable goals. Small milestones will keep you going more than bigger steps you might struggle to climb at once. Start by listing everything you want to change about yourself or your life or do and then break it down into more manageable chunks. It could be that you want to go from being shy to confident, but this won’t happen overnight.

So instead of saying I want to be confident, why not break it down. goals such as smiling at people more, making eye contact, or standing tall can be great examples of small goals. Then as you reach these and are constantly doing them, add in more such as initiating conversations with people you know, then with strangers and so on until you get to where you want to be.

 

Get Therapy

Therapy can be an excellent way of helping you to remove any blocks in your way or even overcoming your current mindset to start on your personal development journey. Talking to a therapist or using Counselling Services can help you make sense of your life, past experiences and pain to work through your issues and clear the way to a better,brighter future you are deserving of.

 

Practise Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the art of being present in the moment and clearing your mind of everything else that is going on and being able to focus on what is happening at this point right now. Nothing else. By being aware of what you are doing, saying experiencing you can learn to control yourself better and approach things differently. It will give you a greater perspective on your life and how to get to be the person you want to be.

You can achieve mindfulness in various different ways and it can take some time to fully perfect. From meditation and yoga or taking a step back from what you are doing and allowing yourself to focus on the present by stepping in and out to increase time and duration until it comes more naturally to clear your headspace and be fully present.

 

Practise Gratitude

Being grateful for what you have, who you are and for everything and everyone in your life can help you to be more positive, show people you care, be the type of person you wish to see in the mirror and want others to think you are. The more you are content with what you have and happy with your life, the more opportunities you will come across as you progress through your life changes and improvements until you find yourself on the right path.

 

Surround Yourself with Likeminded People

If you are really serious about improving yourself and you want to learn to be a better person, surround yourself with people who also feel the same as you do. It doesn’t matter what it is you are looking to achieve, if you find others who are pursuing the same path or goals, then creating a new social circle and connections can help you to stay focused and develop yourself into the other person you want to be.

Conclusion

Personal development is an intimate journey you need to go on with yourself to discover what it is you want from life and the type of person you want to be. It can and will look different for every person but ultimately it is a journey worth taking.