Why should you focus on personal development?

Personal development is a vital part of our lives and dictates how we grow as people. Although many people see personal development as a chore, it’s something everyone should dedicate time to. Whether you feel that you need to work on your personal life, friendships or how you present yourself at work or school – the following advice will guide you towards your goals.

What is personal development?

Personal development is a process in which you consider what your aims and goals in life are and reassess what you are doing to achieve them. It’s a lifelong task and is done to pursue a better quality of life and achieve your dreams by developing your life skills and capabilities. The self-development journey involves the following:

Exploring and identifying skills
Experimenting and evaluating
Creating plans and goals

Everyone’s growth journey is different depending on what they want from life, but personal development can be split out into three main factions.

Mental

Mental growth is not easy to achieve. Mental personal development includes developing healthy habits when it comes to studying, learning, and understanding the world around you. You could pick up a reading habit, learn a language or dedicate time to a subject that interests you. To grow mentally, you also need to look within yourself and work on any inadequacies you see – are you bad at resolving conflicts? Do you grow angry quickly? Do you lack confidence?

This can also involve working on how you handle your emotions, your overall perspective of life and the state of your relationships with others.

Spiritual

When we talk about spiritual development, this isn’t necessarily linked to religion or the belief of a higher power. Spiritual growth is all about developing awareness of your inner being, understanding who you are as a person and creating an internal belief system that improves your outlook on life.

Physical

Physical development is exactly what it sounds like – the pursuit of better physical strength and health. This is closely intertwined with mental growth, so both should go hand-in-hand. If you are not in good physical shape and are distracted by tiredness and pain, you’ll have difficulty working on other aspects of your personal development.

Your physical development shouldn’t be mirrored on other people’s ideas of physical wellness. Develop your own goals & standards, and work towards them.

How to pursue personal development

When you look at personal development, you should sit down, think about what you’re doing, and have some structure to the path ahead. This is an important starting point.

What are you good at, and what do you want to be better at?
What frustrates you, and what do you enjoy doing?
What are your motivations and values?

Write these down and work out what you can do to work towards improving your weaker points. It’s always worth sitting down and revisiting what you previously set our as goals and whether you have achieved them at any point in your self-development journey. What could you do better moving forwards? What areas have seen improvement?

These are the first steps on a very long journey. There are many apps available to help you commit to self-development, including:

Day One
Lumosity
Headspace

Why focus on personal development?

As discussed above, there are many aspects of personal development to consider, and it isn’t an easy thing to pursue by any means. You should look at focusing on this if:

You lack confidence – confidence isn’t inherent, but neither is lack of confidence. It can be grown through self-development.
You feel stagnant – life shouldn’t feel like it’s come to a stand-still at any point, if it has, you need to reflect on what you can change.
You are overwhelmed – maybe you’re trying to do too much at once, or you’re dedicating too much time to work. In either case, you need to focus on what is important, and what isn’t.

However, there are many good reasons to dedicate a good portion of your time to it.

1: Become a better version of yourself

We are all responsible for our own actions and the people we are. Only you can take the leap and decide to strive to be the best you can be.

To become the best version of yourself, you need to put yourself out there. Learn more, throw yourself at new experiences, meet new people and live your life to the fullest. You’ll notice a difference in your happiness and the affect you have on others around you

2: Make yourself more confident

Confidence is key in many aspects of our lives, and growing it is no easy feat. On your path to personal development, each time you hit a milestone or do something you never thought you’d be able to do, your overall confidence will grow. This will make it easier to tackle new, ‘scarier’ experiences.

3: Improve your career

Personal development and career growth directly correlate with each other. When you are doing better in one, you will generally improve in the other.

Push yourself to take on more challenges at work, ask for more responsibilities and make suggestions about how you could do your job better.

4: Increase your self-awareness

Many people go through life without an ounce of care about the affect their actions have on other people and the world around them. Personal development forces you to look at yourself, and where you could be doing better. This will help you to explore and better understand your morals, life goals and what you stand for.

5: Appreciation

Self-awareness gained by personal development will help you to appreciate the important factors of your life. You will quickly learn to be thankful for your situation, the people around you and the opportunities you can take advantage of.

Author bio: Nick is NCC's resident blog author and covers a range of subjects, including teaching and health & social care. NCC is an international learning provider with over 20 years’ experience offering learning solutions. To date, NCC has engaged with over 20,000 employers, and delivered quality training to over half a million learners.