Personal Improvement

Often when people become interested in personal improvement or self help, they have difficulty coming up with a plan that’s right for them. After all there is so much content on the market, how do you know which products and courses to invest in and how to fit them all together into your own personal development plan?

Here are some simple, effective tips to help you come up with a winning personal development plan that will lead to the fulfillment of all your goals and a higher quality of life in all areas.

First of all, I want to emphasize: Be open to a wide range of material!

Don’t limit yourself to just one niche or author. You’ll derive the most benefit by exposing yourself to numerous perspectives and systems and then making up your own mind on the exact nature of your personal program. Your goal may be to lose weight, but you’ll still benefit immensely from the personal mastery tactics found in many business books. Or you may be looking primarily for marketing advice, but spiritual growth courses will provide you with a ton of applicable wisdom for enhancing your promotions. Keep an open mind and absorb content from a number of quality sources.

And it’s critical that you take your time to honestly evaluate and follow the insights you receive. Don’t dismiss anything as ineffective without putting a serious effort into the application.

With that said, here are your 3 initial steps for building an ideal personal development plan.

Step One: Take A Good Honest Look At Yourself And Your Goals

Before you can make real progress you must fully understand what you have to work with and where you want to go. Be crystal clear not only about your specific goals, but also about the exact nature of your needs, your current strengths and weaknesses, and your actual level of commitment toward change.

Take the time to evaluate yourself, paying special attention to any problem areas where you know improvement is needed. Be as objective as possible and make some notes about your core weaknesses and flaws. Also jot down your main strengths and talents. For best results get feedback from someone else, preferably a person who knows you but isn’t afraid to give you some candid input.

Next spend some time looking at the precise nature of your initial goals. Exactly what is it you want to achieve?

Are there multiple levels and layers to your objectives? Can your main goal be broken down into the ultimate, long-term target and a few mid-range and short term goals? Obviously this can all be changed later once you learn more about effective goal setting, and about what you really want; what matters is that you put a good effort into following through with your concept of personal growth and development.

Step Two: Accept Responsibility And Commit Totally!

Once you know where you are in terms of current capability and condition and you know where you’d like to go, it’s time to step up and take charge. Understand and accept fully that if you are to be successful it’s up to you!

Certainly you’ll need some help along the way, but it’s on you in most cases to ask for it, and to decide which advice to take and which input to leave for someone else. The old saying “If it’s to be it’s up to me” is absolutely accurate!

Furthermore, you must reach deep down within yourself and commit 100% to the fulfillment of your personal development plan. If you commit only partially you will almost certainly fail.

THINK BIG and rise to the occasion by setting aside the time to really charge yourself up over your new direction. Write yourself a few powerful positive affirmations and create one or more motivational rituals to generate the absolute, unwavering confidence you need to say “Yes! I absolutely will do this no matter what the cost and regardless of the obstacles I encounter!”

Lack of proper commitment is one of the biggest reasons for failure in any endeavor. When things begin to get a bit difficult, most folks bail out and fall back on their excuses.

Know for a fact things may get difficult. Understand you’ll probably even fall on your butt once or twice.

It’s quite normal to struggle between the moment you decide on a goal and the moment you celebrate your victory. While true success is often effortless and fluid, it usually takes a few bumps and dings to reach the realization that aligns you with this effortlessness.

As long as you have a strong commitment to keep going no matter what you will reach your finish line. And at that point it’s important to engage the third step in this article…

Step Three: Think Process Rather Than Event

It’s a serious rush when you meet your goal. In fact your body actually releases endorphins to create a sort of “high” whenever you attain something after setting your mind and working hard for it.

However if you don’t have another goal lined up, you may soon find yourself adrift in a strange state of apathy and confusion. This is definitely not what you want to experience after seeing your commitment through to completion. So the real key to a winning personal development plan is to understand that growth and improvement of self is a lifelong process, and not a one-time event!

There will always be new challenges and there is always room for even more improvement!

If this sounds like hard work to you, it’s likely that you’re not cut out for serious personal development. On the other hand, if you get excited about the idea of always learning, growing, and expanding into the next better version of yourself, congratulations!

The truth is, most of us who take our personal development seriously started out with just one or two goals. But once we got really involved we soon found ourselves healthily addicted to the idea of being the best person possible.

Once you start with a well-laid personal development plan you’ll probably never want to stop. You’ll come up with new objectives and new strategies and you’ll spend your days setting a positive example for the young people who follow behind you.

This article is of course only one perspective on how to formulate a positive, effective formula for lasting personal development. I hope you’ll give this insight a try in your own life and let me know how it works for you, but always remember to add your own dose of creativity to whatever you’re doing.

I personally enjoy mixing and matching tactics from various experts and then throwing one or more of my own ideas into the mix. It’s a lot of fun and it allows me try a full range of concepts until I nail the perfect solution to a given challenge.

For a variety of reasons it’s difficult for most people to imagine themselves enjoying spectacular success. The majority of individuals tend to assume that amazing stories of personal success are reserved for other people.

This is pretty bizarre and unreasonable when you think about it. We’re all “other people” from someone’s perspective, right?

A great technique for shifting your perspective is to put yourself in the center of your favorite success stories. Imagine how it would feel to make your first million dollars, win a bodybuilding competition, become a best-selling author, or attain whatever victory meets your ideal of true success.

The reality is you are every bit as capable of great success as any other person on the planet. You might need additional training, education, or experience to get from where you are now to where you’d rather be, but these are all things you can acquire with a small amount of time and commitment.

In my late teens and early twenties I had the privilege of training with a world-class martial arts master; the assistant instructor was also a national champion. Everything about the school and the system vibrated excellence. Both of my instructors had a saying for putting their incredible talents into perspective: “I’ve got two arms and two legs just like you.”

The implication is pretty simple. It’s much like the old cliché that even our heroes “put their pants on one leg at a time”. Individuals who exhibit extraordinary success in any field are human beings; they don’t have any magical powers and they’re not blessed with supernatural abilities.

It’s important to recognize and accept this fact. Resist the urge to make excuses and point out how the successful people you read about all have some kind of unfair advantage over you; i.e. better genetics, a wealthy family, a better childhood, or whatever.

The time-honored tradition of defending mediocrity with excuses about such advantages goes back at least to ancient Greece. In those days the heroes from the culture’s favorite stories were all the children of Zeus or some other deity, the idea being that no mere mortals could be capable of such bravery and skill.

Modern-day excuses are less elaborate but every bit as far-fetched.

While some athletes may be blessed with genetic talents, disciplined training will always overcome natural ability. Many champion competitors, including the great Michael Jordan, were not gifted at an early age with their winning capabilities.

And the overwhelming majority of wealthy entrepreneurs do not come from old money, or wealthy families. Far and away more business superstars come from middle class and even poor homes.

When you open your eyes and take an honest look at the folks who are living the success you crave you’ll find they are very much like you. By this token there is absolutely no good reason whatsoever to deny yourself the thrill and triumph of excelling in your chosen field.

While there are numerous strategies for personal development and a wide range of tactics to help you succeed in specific areas of your life, there is in fact one key ingredient you’ll need before anything else will help:

You MUST have or develop some degree of self discipline before you can success in anything!

In today’s fast food culture it’s hard for people to accept this. Everyone wants a quick fix that involves no effort, and that’s precisely why most people live in mediocrity and failure.

The following article by Goal Setting and Self Discipline expert Brian Tracy puts the subject of self-discipline into perfect perspective:

Self-Discipline for Success
By: Brian Tracy

There is one special quality that you can develop that will guarantee you greater success, accomplishment and happiness in life. Of a thousand principles for success developed over the ages, this one quality or practice will do more to assure that you accomplish wonderful things with your life than anything else. This quality is so important that, if you don’t develop it to a high degree, it is impossible for you to ever achieve what you are truly capable of achieving.

The quality that I am talking about is the quality of self-discipline. It is a habit, a practice, a philosophy and a way of living. All successful men and women are highly disciplined in the important work that they do. All unsuccessful men and women are undisciplined and unable to control their behaviors and their appetites. And when you develop the same levels of high, personal discipline possessed by the most successful people in our society, you will very soon begin to achieve the same results that they do.

All great success in life is preceded by long, sustained periods of focused effort on a single goal, the most important goal, with the determination to stay with it until it is complete. Throughout history, we find that every man or woman who achieved anything lasting and worthwhile, had engaged in long, often unappreciated hours, weeks, months and even years of concentrated, disciplined work, in a particular direction.

Fortunately the quality of self-discipline is something that you can learn by continuous practice, over and over, until you master it. Once you have mastered the ability to delay gratification, the ability to discipline yourself to keep your attention focused on the most important task in front of you, there is virtually no goal that you cannot accomplish and no task that you cannot complete.

Successful people engage in activities that are goal-achieving. Unsuccessful people engage in activities that are tension-reliving. Successful people discipline themselves to have dinner before dessert. Unsuccessful people prefer to have dessert most of the time.

Successful people plan their work, and work their plan. They take the time to think through their responsibilities before they begin. They make clear decisions which they then implement immediately. They get a lot more done in a shorter period of time than the average person. And it all has to do with their disciplines.

Perhaps the most important benefit of self-discipline is the personal benefit that you receive. Every act of self-discipline increases your self-esteem. It gives you a feeling of personal power and accomplishment. Each time you discipline yourself to persist in the face of distractions, diversions, and disappointments, you feel better about yourself. As you continue to discipline yourself, you achieve more and more in life. As you achieve more things, you feel more like a winner. Your self-confidence goes up. You feel happier about yourself. You get more done and you have more energy. You earn the respect and esteem of the people around you. You get more rapid promotions and are paid more money. You live in a nicer house, drive a nicer car, and wear nicer clothes. You get a natural high from the thrill of achievement. And the more things that you achieve as the result of employing your personal habits of effectiveness and productivity, the more eager you are to achieve even higher and better tasks. Your life gets onto an upward spiral of success and happiness. You feel great about yourself most of the time.

Every act of self-discipline strengthens every other discipline in your life. Every weakness of self-discipline weakens your other disciplines as well. When you make a habit of disciplining yourself in little things, like flossing your teeth every night, you’ll soon become able to discipline yourself to accomplish even larger things, like working long, long hours to bring a major task to completion.

Your entire life is an on-going battle between the forces of doing what is right and necessary on the one hand and doing what is fun and easy on the other hand. It is a battle between the forces of discipline and the forces of ease or expediency. And when you develop the strength of character that gives you complete self-mastery, self-control and self-discipline, you feel wonderful about yourself. You develop a deep inner sense of strength and confidence. You replace positive thinking with positive knowing. You reach the point inside where you absolutely know that you can do whatever it takes to achieve any goal that you can set for yourself.

Self-discipline is its own reward. Not only does it pay off in terms of greater self-esteem and a more positive mental attitude, but it pays off throughout your life in terms of the goals that you achieve and the success that you attain in everything you do.

Self-discipline is a skill and a habit that can be learned by practice. Every time you practice a little self-discipline, you become stronger and stronger. Bit by bit, you become more capable of even greater disciplines. As you become a totally self-disciplined individual, your entire future opens up in front of you like a broad highway. Everything becomes possible for you and your future becomes unlimited.

Please click the image below to discover the tools for creating unlimited self-discipline and enjoying the rewards that follow:

This information will help bring all other aspects of personal improvement into focus. Once you have the drive and discipline to use your time wisely you’ll be able to put the many things you learn from various sources into actual practice!