Personal Development Plans and Their Benefits
We have all tried to make a personal development plan in our life – whether it was for losing weight, planning our careers, or learning something new. At Your Realty Leverage, we strive to ensure that all of our staff members discuss personal development and learn from each other on this subject. For example, every Wednesday in our Daily Stand Up meeting the facilitator opens a conversation regarding personal development.
The benefits of a personal development plan is that it gives you the best possible chance for success and maximizes your potential. As stated before, these plans can be used for business or personal growth. You would think it would be easy to create a plan like this for yourself, but the truth is that you are most likely your own worst critic. It can be easy to feel like you are not accomplishing your goals when you’ve set them too high. Let’s discuss some tips for creating an achievable personal development plan that will help you to more easily reach your goals!
Start Now and Challenge Yourself
The biggest step is to just dive in and start. It can be nerve wracking to try something new and to change, but if you don’t start then you will not see the results you want. Do something about your personal development plan today! It’s going to take some time to achieve lasting change, so you need to start now. You can build on what you do today, tomorrow.
Your goals need to be just out of reach. If you reach for an impossible target, you’re setting yourself up for a failure. If you stick to what’s easy, you’re denying yourself the satisfaction of achievement and only minimal change will occur. Find that middle ground with a stretch goal in your personal development plan.
Baby Steps
As stated before, your goals need to be just out of reach. When you are setting your overall goal, remember to break that large goal into its smallest components. Keep the end result in mind as you focus on the smaller bite-sized steps that will help you achieve your main goal.
The smaller goals you create to accomplish the main goal should be SMART:
Specific – stating exactly what you want to achieve or change
Measurable – having a quantifiable goal that is easy to track
Achievable – realistic and attainable; ask yourself if you can complete them in a certain time frame
Relevant – your goals should relate to your overall aims and longer-term ambitions
Time-based – setting realistic timescales to achieve your outcomes; you can split your goals into short-term, medium-term and long-term
Be Intentional and Recognize Your Worth
Whatever you intend becomes your reality. Find your true intention before you resolve to do something, and make sure you really want what you say you want. If your goal and your intention are not aligned, then you’ll think up lots of excuses and all sorts of situations to prevent your progress. Be honest with yourself about your growth and progress. The only way to improve is to recognize your weaknesses and work on them.
When making a personal development plan, it can be easy to criticize yourself and think about the changes you want to see. However, you also need to focus on what you already have. You need to remember what you already bring to the table and realize that you are making this plan to expand on what you have and have already accomplished. Think about how others benefit from what you do. If you improve yourself, those benefits will increase.
Be Accountable
You are responsible for your own progress. You are responsible for what you are today and where you are today. That means it’s your job to initiate the steps involved in your personal development plan. If you don’t bother, no one else will. It also means that you own the result and no one else is to blame. The buck stops here!
Another great way to hold yourself accountable throughout your personal development journey is to have an accountability partner. The idea is that once someone other than yourself knows what you need to do or what you want to achieve, there is a greater incentive to go out and do it to avoid having to explain why you didn’t to another person. Accountability is a great way to keep your motivation high.
Keep Going and NEVER GIVE UP
Setbacks are going to happen, and some weeks you might not be as motivated or maybe just exhausted. That’s okay! Remember to take a step back and focus on the why behind your plan to help remind yourself of the reasons for which you created it in the first place. Life works in cycles and moves to a rhythm. You will have ups and downs. When you hit a slow point or things don’t seem to be moving, don’t give up! Instead, keep going. There is no such thing as continual rapid advancement, and that means your personal development plan needs to be achievable and balanced. Find your rhythm and go with the flow.
Remember that there is no such thing as finished personal development. You can go on learning, changing, and renewing for all of your life.
