Strategic Personal Development Trumps Experience
Last week I explained why experience alone is not enough. I argued that strategic personal development is necessary if we intend to reach our potentials. Today I discuss strategic personal development in detail.
What then is personal development?
Personal development is the overall development of your work, lifestyle, attitude, physique, and sociability. It is about your thought process and the way in which you are working to transform yourself daily.
Personal development, according to Brian Tracy, is the process of improving oneself through conscious habits and activities. It is the pursuit of personal growth to enhance the quality of life and to achieve one’s dreams and aspirations. It is about investing in yourself so that you can manage yourself more effectively regardless of what life might bring your way.
The greatest achievers in life, Charles Glassman says, know that the key to success is the ability to manage yourself in a variety of situations. And that ability comes through personal development.
Knowing the areas you excel in and which areas need development are very useful in your personal and professional life. Further, knowing your destination in life and identifying areas that you excel in that need further development to get you there, and developing those areas, constitute what I call strategic personal development. Please, read that statement again.
In other words, why should I develop ice hockey skills when my destination in life is the deserts of North Africa?
What should personal development include?
Well, man is a trinity composed of spirit, soul (mind) and body. So those three parts should be covered in your personal development. Jim Rohn outlines the importance of developing these three areas.
Spiritual
Spiritual and ethical values will help build a strong foundation underneath your quest for wealth and happiness. I underscored that character is a critical component of personal development in an earlier blog post.
Physical
The body and mind work together. And for your mind to have the stamina to strive and thrive, your body should be in good shape.
Then there’s physical appearance. Take care of your appearance in the marketplace. It has a lot to do with your acceptance. How you appear to other people—on the job, in the community – plays a great role. There is a saying that “God looks on the inside, and people look on the outside.”
Mental
The third part to personal development is the mind—stretching your mind, developing good thinking habits, good study habits, pursuing ideas, and trying to find ways to apply them to human behaviour and the marketplace. All of that takes exercising and stretching the mind.
Brian Tracy provides additional insights on what should be covered. It includes personal skills, personal growth, personal power, personal improvement, personal empowerment, personal analysis, personal objectives, etc.
Benefits of Personal Development
Carthage Buckley outlines some of the benefits of personal development. They include:
Self-awareness
As it is often said, you cannot develop what you do not know. You get to know who you really are – your values, beliefs, and your purpose. As I mentioned in an earlier post, self-awareness is the first fundamental step in the strategic personal development process.
A sense of Direction
Personal development enables you to clearly define what you want and where you are going in life. It provides a sense of direction.
Improved Focus and Effectiveness
Clarity of purpose that comes from personal development makes it easy for us to prioritize. It becomes easier to identify the activities that are likely to lead to the best results with the available resources. As I asked earlier, why should I spend scarce resources to develop ice hockey skills when my destination in life is the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East?
Increased Motivation
When we know what we want to achieve and the steps that lead there, action becomes easier, even if unpleasant, because we know the benefit.
Greater Resilience and Resourcefulness
We will frequently run into obstacles in our personal development. Rather than turn back we would instead implement options to take us to our destination.
More Purposeful and Fulfilling Relationship
Someone has said that our friends are like elevators; they take us up or down but rarely leave us where they met us. With clarity of purpose that comes from personal development we can easily identify the relationships that help or hinder our pursuit. Thus, it helps us to build relationships very purposefully leading to fulfilment.
So, when is the best time to start your personal development?
Well, as the popular Chinese proverb says, “the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now!”
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