Dear Tristan,

I’m a bit confused about what personal development means and what it entails. How is personal development different from self-help, self-improvement, human potential, or personal growth? Can you help me clarify this?

Thanks,

Jeanette merlow

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Hi Jeanette,

I agree with you. There is quite a bit of confusion in the field about what exactly personal development is and what it is not. I will do my best to clarify what personal development is for you.

What is personal development?

Personal development is the improvement of specific life skills that are necessary to facilitate happiness and success in personal life. These life skills are the basic building blocks that make up all the successes or failures you have in life. Personal development skills become the foundation from which all your achievements in life flow and have a direct relationship to victory and success in life.

A key distinction between personal development skills and other skills you may possess is that personal development skills are used 24 hours a day, whereas you may only use your programming skills eight hours a day at your capacity. job. When you talk to someone, you are using personal development skills. What you decide to eat is personal development. When you investigate your feelings, that is personal development. Even controlling your sleeping habits belongs to personal development.

Personal development skills are life skills that must be respected in order to reap the benefits of a life worth living. The investment of time in personal development leads to a top performing individual who lives a more satisfying life than those who do not choose to develop.

What is not personal development

Personal development does not involve diagnosing or treating illness or injury. There seems to be general confusion in the field of personal development regarding what is and what is not, and since there are so many books in bookstores and libraries that they misclassify books on mental illness in the self-improvement section of the store, let me clarify that point. A key characteristic of someone who wants to practice personal development is that they are generally healthy and normal people who can and are willing to move forward in their lives. In other words, they want to become top performing individuals.

On the other hand, a person who is unable or unwilling to move forward in his life and seek happiness and success in life due to past illnesses, trauma or injuries that prevent him from doing so, needs treatment or therapy to help him in his life. . Recovery. These are people who are not performing normally and their goal is to do so at normal capacity. In other words, they want to recover.

The many other faces of personal development

In the realm of my own coaching practice, I see personal development, self-improvement, and personal growth as the same. I see self-help as something different from personal development in that self-help topics tend to be less focused on personal growth and more on remedying a certain condition, therefore, that is why there are many books in the self-help sections of the bookstores. and libraries that focus on treating problems, rather than creating peak performance.

The ten components of personal development

The definition of personal development will vary from person to person, but through my experience as a personal development coach and a former police officer, I have found that there are, in fact, ten key areas that include an individual’s peak performance. These areas of focus are:

1. Purpose of life: Having a purpose in life gives meaning to all the activities and goals you set for your entire life. We all know how to spend the time we have in life, but unless we make sense of the activities that occupy our time, our lives will be completely meaningless.

Life purpose subsections include:

• Legacy
• Values
• Passions
• Talents
• Spirituality

1. Goal setting: Goals are the stepping stones that allow you to achieve your legacy in life. Any successful person knows that to achieve personal success in life, you must challenge yourself and strive for more than your status quo. Goal setting is a powerful skill for success that allows you to win at the game of life.

Goal setting subsections include:

• Display
• Strategic planning

1. Productivity: The problem many people do when setting goals is that they start to take shortcuts to get what they want and end up bitter and discouraged in the end because achieving goals doesn’t work that way. It’s like someone who wants to get on the podium and receive a gold medal at the Olympics without spending time training. While we can’t take shortcuts to reaching our goal, we can shorten the time it takes to reach those goals by being more productive. Successful people are masters of productivity and it is no mistake that they are able to accomplish more in less time than most people. Learning to be productive and making the most of your time is an important part of personal development.

Productivity subsections include:

• Time management
• Organization
• Prioritizing
• Delegate
• Solving things

1. Motivation: If goals are the path to personal success, then motivation is the fuel to achieve it. Motivation is a necessary aspect of personal development because most of us know that a lack of motivation considerably hinders our process of achieving goals. Learning to master your motivation can help you achieve success faster than you ever thought possible.

Subsections of motivation include:

• Inspiration
• Role models
• Liability partners
• Pain-pleasure principles

1. Self-awareness: Emotions can enhance or hinder our performance. Emotions act as a thermometer that tells us the quality of the experience we are living. Therefore, it is necessary not only to understand our emotions, but also to learn to use them effectively. Self-awareness involves intrapersonal communication, which is the ability to actually communicate with yourself and identify your inner wants and needs.

The subsections of self-awareness include:

• Emotional intelligence
• Responsibility
• Anger control
• Unconditional love
• Intuition

1. Marketing: It doesn’t matter how good you are at a certain skill or how much you want to contribute to others, nothing will matter if people don’t know about it. All the enormously successful people throughout history knew how to promote themselves and it is crucial to everyday life. If you are married or want to be married one day, that means promoting yourself. If you’ve ever been through a job interview, then you were using marketing skills. Those who know how to market themselves or their products simply have more luxuries than those who don’t know how to market them, regardless of actual competition or skill levels simply because people know about them.

Marketing subsections include:

• Marketing YOU
• Marketing services or products
• Networking

1. Physical Health: Your body is the vehicle that carries your thoughts and intentions into the real world. So you want to have a vehicle that is well maintained and runs smoothly. Keeping your body working optimally includes eating right, exercising, and managing your stress levels.

Optimal health subsections include:

• Physical aptitude
• Diet
• To sleep
• Stress

1. Relations: The definition of synergy is the joining of two or more entities for the purpose of creating more together than any one of them could have created by itself. All the higher relationships in your life should involve synergy and creating synergy with other people involves the skills of empathy and communication. Success in life is never a one-man project. It involves many people and involves synergy.

The subsections of the relationships include:

• Empathy
• Communication skills
• Negotiation
• Conflict resolution
• Interpret body language

1. Leadership: Every successful person who has ever lived has been a leader in their respective fields. A leader is one who paves the way for others to follow and has the courage to stand out from the pack. A leader is an agent of change and is flexible enough to deal with unexpected events that come their way. They show others the way when that way is not clear.

The leadership subsections include:

• Courage
• Decision making
• Problem resolution
• Responsibility

1. Money Management: For personal success to happen, you must achieve financial freedom, which is the point where you earn enough money that you don’t have to worry about money. Money is energy and you need to learn how to manage that energy for optimal personal development.

Money management subsections include:

• Entrepreneurship
• Delivery value
• To invest
• Money Management

I hope it clarifies personal development for you.

For passion and purpose,

Tristan

Copyright © 2007 Tristan Loo. All rights reserved.