Tips on How to Achieve Personal Development
Personal development is a lifelong process. It is a journey to endless possibilities; giving you the privilege of discovering yourself. It is a process that helps you to refine yourself into becoming a better version.
Below are 9 tips that will help you achieve personal development:
1. Know yourself
Knowing yourself is the beginning of wisdom.
Aristotle.
Knowing yourself will enable you to identify the areas you need to improve.
Having a great relationship with yourself is essential to personal development. If you do not have a full understanding of who you are, then how are others supposed to get to know you?
Having adequate knowledge of yourself helps you build healthy and positive self-esteem. Having healthy self-esteem requires self-acceptance, self-knowledge, self-respect, empathy, compassion, and personal understanding.
Utilize these steps to know yourself better;
- Get to know your personality
- Get to know your core values
- Understand your body
- Identify your strength and weaknesses
- Journal your experience
- Question your automatic thoughts
- And finally, have a life vision and mission.
2. Understand and Accept your flaws
You make mistakes. You try to learn from them, and when you do not, it hurts even more.
Aretha Franklin.
It is vital you understand yourself. When you do, you will have a good knowledge of your weakness and strengths. Knowing and accepting your flaws is the starting point to change. Self-acceptance is a virtue that enables you to come to terms with your failings; which will eventually lead you to find solutions.
Learn from every experience you have had in life. In everything that happens to you, there is something you need to learn from it. To truly move forward in life, you need to take responsibility for everything that occurs in your life.
3. Set realistic short term goals
The goals you set for yourself must be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound). Set realistic short term goals and take one step at a time.
To set SMART short term goals, first, consider what you want to achieve in the nearest future and then commit to it.
- Set goals that will motivate you.
- Write your set goals, make them tangible.
- Then plan the steps you must take to reach your goals and cross off each one as you work through them.
4. Expand your circles
Continuously make sincere efforts to increase your network because your network determines your net worth. Expanding your circles of business contacts and friends will bring lots of benefits to you.
One of the advantages of networking is that it helps you become more visible to the right people.
Networking also makes you more visible to opportunities and also opens new doors.
You can expand your circle by;
- Joining/starting a book club
- Join a meetup
- Join a professional body
- Attend workshops and conferences
- Use alumni networks
- Volunteer
5. Meditate
Meditation plays a unique role in your personal development. Meditation helps you to examine your conscience periodically, gain clarity and emotional intelligence, control your thoughts and enjoy peace of mind.
6. Get a mentor
Getting a mentor is crucial in developing yourself. A mentor will teach you the principles of success by sharing either their personal experiences or experiences of others with you.
The result is that you will learn from their mistakes and amend yourself. A mentor shows you how to reach your potentials faster than you can ever imagine.
7. Keep learning
Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.
– Brian Tracy.
Learning is a continuous process; there is no end to it. Exposing yourself to the right knowledge develops your mind and equips you with the principles of getting ahead in life.
8. Be grateful
Develop an attitude of gratitude. Be thankful for life; for the good things you have; for the good things you have received from your friends.
Show people around you that you care.
The more grateful you become, the more opportunities will knock on your door.
I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
Gilbert K. Chesterton.
9. Surround yourself with like-minds
Always surround yourself with people who are passionate, disciplined and focused. If you are moving with the wrong people, you can never arrive at the right destination. Connect with those on the same journey with you, those that want to see you excel, and those that want the same things you want from life.
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