Personal development is becoming better. Its making one change at a time until you can look back three-to-six months from now and think: “wow I’ve grown.”
Personal development is developing you as a person. Often this means developing your personality.
And “developing” means change. Most people are afraid of change. But not you! Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this.
Personal development is realizing there is a gap between who you are and who you want to be.
Actually, that’s just awareness. Awareness is a really really really important step in personal development. Its the first step. Without awareness, you cannot go on.
Most people don’t even hit this first step so give yourself a pat on the back and smile real big knowing you’re on the right path.
What personal development really is, is the work to close said gap between where you are and where you want to be.
Most people don’t like work. But not you! Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this. You know this work is worth it.
And to be honest, it isn’t really “work”.
Its thinking and questioning. Answering and discovering. Its accepting and tweaking.
The result?
The payoff is you get to look back months from now and think to yourself: “Wow I’ve grown. I’ve changed in a good way. That was worth it.” And the best part… “I want more.”
One of the best things in life is you get to choose who you become. Take that power. Embrace it, and act on it till the day you die.
How?
I’m so glad you asked, let me explain. (And I’ve got a personal development worksheet for you, too.)
The Pillars of Personal Development
Personal Development is often seen as a big scary thing of abstract ideas and feel-good-but-vague quotes, so let me break it down for you.
The pillars of personal development are:
- Awareness
- Choice
- Action
- Perspective
- Love
- Again
I’ll break them down in the next few sections. And look, the acronym spells “alpaca” backwards. Isn’t that neat?
Awareness
You may have heard it before, that Awareness is “step one” and “half the battle”. Yes, it’s definitely step one, and it’s definitely a super super important part of the battle, but not quite half.
What is awareness anyway?
Awareness is simply knowing you want to change something. Its understanding there is a gap between you and where you want to be. It’s realizing that you act a certain way, and that that certain way of acting is only one out of infinitely other ways of acting.
Awareness in personal development is observing yourself from an external perspective.
Its when a friend tells you: “Andre you’re so sarcastic all the time”, and instead of robotically responding, you stop for a second and think, then realize that compared to your friends, you actually ARE the sarcastic one.
Awareness is necessary, but nothing will change unless you choose to change.
Choice
One of the biggest powers we have as humans is our power to choose. In personal development, we are choosing who we want to be, then taking action to create and become that person.
You get to choose if you’d like to remain sarcastic or forge deeper connections with friends. You can choose if you’d like to be the type of person who works in an office or who works from beach villas in Bali. You get to choose if you’d rather be a leader or a follower.
Imagine your ideal self in your ideal life. Does it feel like an impossible vision? One that feels nice but really you feel you’ll never get there. That’s bullshit! You CAN get there if you simply choose to.
No, it won’t happen overnight, but you can build yourself up piece by piece to become that person if you so choose. But you have to choose. If you haven’t chosen, then you’ve chosen not to choose.
See, you can’t get away from choice.
Choosing is the fun part, its like window shopping. You see all the nice things and lock on the one you want. Now you’ve got to go in and hand your money over.
Action
“Action”…what a scary word!
Everywhere you look there’s motivational quotes and posters telling you to “take action” and “stop wishing start doing.” It can be overwhelming.
These always spur the same question in my head. Maybe you’ve had it, too: HOW DO I TAKE ACTION???
The thing with taking action is its different for every person and every situation. No one else can or will take action for you so at the end of the day its really up to you to figure out. Not only that but there are two parts to taking action.
- Figuring out the right next action to take.
- Actually taking the action. Doing the thing.
Figuring out what to do can be daunting since there is no handbook to life. In my
Then, executing and actually taking the action can be scary! Its work and its change and you might feel silly for doing it or are worried about what people will think about you. Its not as bad as your mind is making it out to be. You’ll see after you take your first real action.
Once you start taking action, you’ll gain new Perspectives on yourself which will fuel your growth even more.
Perspective
Everything is a spectrum, and you gain perspective when you can see where you are in that spectrum. This is one of my favorite parts.
As you start taking action, you may find just how close-minded you really are. You may not like what you find.
Recently I read a book that gave a pretty good definition of what being “entitled” means. And I thought “damn, apparently I’ve felt pretty entitled for most of my life!” BOOM! A new awareness I can choose to act on.
Perspective comes when you hear or see an idea that explains something about how you are, or how other people are, and it makes you realize you’ve automatically been acting, thinking, or reacting a certain way.
For example, let’s say you read the following in some book:
- People who think X, Y, and Z are entitled.
- Successful people think A, B, and C about money.
The first might make you think: “Man, I think those things…I must think I’m entitled.” The second could make you think: “Wow, my beliefs are the complete opposite of that.” Both cases are a good new perspective on where you are in the spectrum for that thing.
You now have more Awareness and can Choose to Act on it 🙂
But no matter where you are in whatever spectrum of what is it you want to improve, always remember to love yourself.
Love
Some of my biggest personal development “issues” were solved when I finally felt that I loved myself. Love is an interesting thing. Its an interesting feeling or emotion or whatever you want to call it.
Its powerful. Love is acceptance.
Love is “I’m great just the way I am.” And “I don’t need to change, but I want to improve.”
What’s interesting is, love, at the end of the day, is a choice. You can choose to feel love because of what’s happening to you, and you can choose to feel love despite what’s happening to you.
That’s just a little side nugget to think about, but understanding that love is a choice gives you one very important choice to make.
Do you love yourself?
Please choose yes. Always.
Again
Once you feel the power in creating your personality, your person, your life, the way you want to, even if its only in some small way, you’ll want to do it again…and again, and again.
Its exciting to one day think to yourself, “You know, I’d like more fulfillment in my life” then doing some work on it and actually feeling the difference!
Improvement is a never ending game. Its not a destination, it is inherently a journey. There is no destination.
Its very similar to how Mark Manson describes happiness in The Subtle Art Of Not Giving a F*ck,
“Happiness is therefore a form of action; it’s an activity.”
Personal Development is an activity, and once you’ve improved one thing, move on to the next 🙂
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