Every so often, we all have those moments where we strive to do better, to be better. Maybe it’s something as small as becoming more punctual, or something that takes more time and effort, such as changing a troublesome behavior. But that journey often feels like a dead end, like nothing is improving. Sometimes it makes you ask yourself why you’re even trying. This article aims to explain the purpose of self development and hopefully encourage you to keep pursuing this route to a better version of yourself.
What Is Self Development?
As mentioned above, personal development is a process. In general, it involves identifying skills and qualities, setting goals, and creating a path to improvement through skills you have or those you wish to develop[1]. Personal development is a process we all engage in, whether it’s conscious or unconscious. When you make it conscious by creating specific goals and planning how to reach them, you’re able to keep an eye on how you develop over time, making it more likely you’ll become the person you hope to be.
Why Self Development Should Be on Your Goals List
Making self development a conscious goal in itself will help point you in a positive direction and get you motivated toward achieving the other goals on your list. Here are 8 reasons why you should start working on it today.
It Will Help You Find a Purpose
Self development forces you to take a look at what you want from life and what your values and beliefs are. From my own journey, it has shaped what I want to do with my life and has made me more passionate about my beliefs. Many people lack a sense of self-awareness that will allow them to create a mission statement for their life. By focusing on self development, you engage with who are you and who you want to become, laying out exactly what you hope your life will look like. This naturally steers you toward a purpose you can work for.
It Can Stimulate Your Motivation
Once you have figured out your goals and mission statement, you are able to pick and choose how you want to develop yourself to achieve these goals. This will give you motivation, as it will give you a starting point. For example, if you would like to help people, empathy and patience may be good skills to start working on. It will also give you more motivation to undertake the personal development journey as you will be able to see a clear end-goal. Once you have a path in sight, it’s easier to start walking it.
You Will Have More Appreciation for Yourself
By understanding yourself, you will be able to appreciate yourself more. You can learn about overcoming your weaknesses and feel proud of your strengths. You will realize that weaknesses aren’t a bad thing; rather, they show you self-awareness. You will learn to find happiness on this journey by looking back at how much you’ve achieved in a short time, and how much you have changed.
It Will Create More Opportunities
When you start to develop yourself, you will be able to see all your potential, and this will open the doors to numerous opportunities. When you strive to be better, you are more likely to push yourself out of your comfort zone and seek out opportunities that would usually scare you. Furthermore, self development often involves the development of specific skills and talents. By working on these, you will automatically open new doors and find new things to be interested in.
You Will Be More Resilient
Self development will unfortunately not stop obstacles or undesirable things from happening. However, it will allow you to build resilience and deal with whatever life throws at you[2]. It will give you the strength to power through. By identifying your strengths and weaknesses, you will learn to be mindful of where you are at a given time and understand that you will be able to grow from any challenge. This will make it easier to overcome obstacles in the future.
Change Won’t Seem So Scary
Similar to the point above, personal development will allow you to build the skills and qualities to overcome hurdles and difficulties. Before I started trying to develop myself, any small change in my life would create an impending sense of doom and dread. Now, I have come to realize that change is inevitable and that I can work through it using self development. When you know that change is an opportunity for self development, you will feel more optimistic about hard times in general.
It Will Give You Confidence
As you aim to improve your personal limitations you will become more confident in the person you are becoming, along with how much you’ve changed. If you set a goal to improve your ability to listen and you find a year later that you are absorbing more and more details during conversations, you will begin to feel more confident in your ability to improve in other areas. Any time you get better at something, it will stimulate the knowledge that you are capable human being.
You Will Have Better Relationships
Self-improvement can improve how you build relationships with people and will also allow current relationships to thrive. Being more self-aware will allow you to be more open with people. You will feel much more confident in yourself and be able to let people see you for who you are. During self development, you can acknowledge your weaknesses and plan to improve them. Instead of letting them hold you back from sharing who you are, you will develop the ability to accept yourself and allow others to accept you in the process. This will naturally create a stronger relationship between you and your friends and family.
Final Thoughts
Personal development will allow you to learn about yourself and what you want from life. When you’ve invested in personal development, you will want to keep going. Personal development in itself will change the way you live your life – you will always be strving to be better. It will allow you to flourish and live in the moment. It will give you the feeling of wellbeing and happiness and will help you to succeed and reach your full potential. If you feel like self development is too challenging, try to understand that you’ve already been doing it. Since the day you were born, you’ve been developing and improving skills and talents. Now is simply the time to make the process more conscious and devote energy toward the things you hope you improve.
More Tips on Self Development
42 Practical Ways To Improve Yourself 25 Best Self Improvement Books to Read No Matter How Old You Are 12 Learning Goals For Personal Growth And Self Development
Featured photo credit: Fa Barboza via unsplash.com
