Practical Steps to Personal Development:
Personal development is a lifelong process. It is a way for people to assess their skills and qualities, consider their aims in life and set goals in order to realize and maximize their potential.
This page helps you to identify the skills you need to set life goals which can enhance your employability prospects, raise your confidence, and lead to a more fulfilling, higher quality life. Plan to make relevant, positive and effective life choices and decisions for your future to enable personal empowerment.
Although early life development and early formative experiences within the family, at school, etc. can help to shape us as adults, personal development should not stop later in life.
This article contains information and advice that is designed to help you to think about your personal development and ways in which you can work towards goals and your full potential.
There are a number of things that are vital in supporting your personal development, including developing a vision of where you want to be, and planning how you are going to get there.
But alongside these, it is also helpful to take some simple but practical steps to change how you organise your life.
1. Organizing Your Time
If you are considering making changes in your life, finding additional time often poses a problem.
It could be that the changes you are thinking of making are to ensure you have extra time to:
- Spend with your family.
- Spend on things you enjoy doing.
- Devote to your work.
- Devote to your education.
Whatever the reason, looking at how you spend your time will encourage you to think of ways your time could be managed more effectively.
2. Personal Curriculum Vitae (CV) or Resumé
Drawing up a CV or résumé is not only necessary when applying for jobs, it can also be very useful for your own benefit and will help you appraise the skills you have gained through education, training, employment, voluntary work, leisure and other activities.
In turn, a personal CV, will help to highlight skills that you should work on developing.
- Quick guide to preparing your personal CV or resumé:
- Split your document with headings and include Education, Training, Past Experience, Skills etc.
- Use dates to establish when each item on your personal résumé was achieved, i.e. when did you graduate, when did you learn a particular skill.
- Keep your personal CV or résumé concise: the aim is to list your skills and abilities, not write an essay about them.
3. Overcoming Barriers to Learning a New Skill
Learning a new skill will broaden the opportunities open to you, at the same time as empowering you as an individual.
There are many things that prevent people from learning new skills, but these barriers may be overcome with some thought. These might include:
- Lack of Confidence or Self-Esteem:
This is one of the greatest obstacles facing many individuals. However, if this is a problem, ask yourself if there is anyone who would support and help you to take the first steps towards learning a new skill. Often, once the first move is made then the greatest hurdle is overcome. Confidence increases as you develop new skills.
- Economic Situation:
You may see your financial situation as a barrier to developing new skills, but this need not be the case.
The internet has lots of free pages and tools and resources that can help you develop specific skills, browse our pages for a comprehensive guide.
There may be courses offered in local schools, colleges or universities which are free or offered at a reduced rate for people on a low income. Distance-learning courses allow you to study at home, which can help to reduce the cost of learning. There may also be trust funds or charities that offer grants for people developing new skills in your area. It is even possible to learn a new skill with the aid of books from the local library.
Voluntary work can also provide an excellent opportunity for learning and developing new skills, as can being a member of a local group or society.
- Family Commitments:
If you have family commitments that prevent you from having the time to learn a new skill, it may be possible for you to enlist the help of a friend or family member to give you a few free hours each week. Colleges and universities offering vocational training courses may also have free or subsidised crèche places.
- Lack of Time:
See our pages: Time Management and Minimizing Distractions and consider how you could reorganise your time to fit in the development of a new skill.
The first step is often the hardest…
Barriers to personal development are often more in the mind than anywhere else.
The first step — whether it is signing up for a course, getting some books from the library, or finding a website that can help — is often the hardest. As you take that first step, remember that the process is described as ‘lifelong’ for a reason: you are always learning, it is only the level of formality that changes.
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