Why Personal Growth is Essential
Personal growth is significant because it moves you toward your potential. The effort to grow personally offers awareness of where you are and sets a plan to get you where you want to go. Growth is a continual and never-ending lifelong journey. Goals are essential, but they have start and end dates. Personal development has a start date and continues because it takes a lifetime to reach your potential!
Personal growth is essential because it is intentional.
Everyone grows in areas of their life through experiences. You do something new, and you will learn something new. Things like skill sets, language, processes, and procedures are known by living life. Personal growth becomes essential, beneficial, and impactful when it becomes intentional. Personal growth doesn’t just happen; it needs intentionality. Motivation gets you started, and intentional habits keep you going!
I recently started a daily reading program and intentionally read 30-60 minutes daily. That intentional habit has accelerated my growth, and I can see measured results. When I intentionally walk and exercise, I can see measured results in my overall health and energy level. When I deliberately take my wife out on a date, we grow our relationship and see measured results from that decision.
Tips for being intentional
Get a daily planner and schedule time for personal growth. Here are some things to consider.
- Daily prayer/meditation
- Daily exercise
- Daily reading (for growth and fun)
- Daily To-Do list for work and personal tasks
- Daily relationship activities like conversation, meals, and recreational time
- Daily time for reflection and thinking
- Daily time to do something creative
- The daily habit of adding value to someone else (big or small)
- Weekly or monthly counsel from an advisor or mentor.
- Yearly personal growth & leadership conferences
You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.
Jim Rohn
Personal growth is essential because it creates awareness
John Maxwell says, “You have to know yourself to grow yourself.” It would help to consider where you are when you set out to make a personal growth plan. For example, If you decide to read daily, you will realize your current habit, and then you can set a plan to do it more consistently.
Awareness gives you a starting point and helps you to be honest with yourself. It creates positive tension between where you are vs. where you want to be.
Tips on personal awareness
- Awareness of weakness
- Awareness of strengths
- Awareness of opportunities
- Awareness of potential
- Awareness of bad habits
- Awareness of good habits
- Awareness of purpose
- Awareness of personal Growth & capacity to do what is important
- Understanding the ability to add value to people
- Awareness of learning opportunities
- Awareness of the need to change something
- Awareness of attitude
- Awareness of gratitude
Awareness is an understanding of where you want to go. Awareness helps you know the areas of personal growth to focus on the most.
Personal growth is essential because it causes reflection.
Experience is the most excellent teacher, which is not valid. Reflection on experiences is the most outstanding teacher because you take the time to reflect, think, and grow from that experience. Make sure the time for reflection is on your calendar! John Maxwell has a book called Failing Forward and another book, Sometimes Called You Win and Sometimes You Learn. Both books touch on the value of learning from failure. Please don’t waste a loss by not reflecting on and learning from them.
I use a journal to write down thoughts and ideas about success and failure experiences. I think about what I could have done differently or done better. I reflect and then create a new course of action. Reflection right after a mentoring session is also valuable. Take what the mentor, coach, or friend has suggested and think about it. Take the time to think and learn from all experiences. Thought stimulates personal growth and moves you closer to your potential. If you are a person of faith, ask God for wisdom.
Personal growth is significant because it changes the environment.
A personal growth plan will create a new environment that supports growth. Your reading habit may make a space where you have a comfortable chair, a reading light, and a couple of books on the end table. Your prayer time may motivate you to be alone in your favorite outdoor space. Your focus on personal growth may create a new environment of friends and colleagues with whom you spend more time.
If you are focused on better health, you may create an environment where you only have good, nutritious food in your pantry. You may “detox” your smartphone and eliminate apps that waste your time and add no value. You may have a favorite coffee shop that reserves your favorite table once weekly so you can have coffee with a friend.
Focusing on personal growth can improve environments. Your new uplifting and positive communication creates a unique atmosphere when you gather with others. Think of other environments that would change if you focused on personal growth.
Personal growth is essential because it allows for expansion.
Personal growth will expand your capacity to do the essential things better! Primarily if you focus on building your strengths. Restaurants rated on a 1-5 scale, with five being the greatest; which restaurants would you want to eat? You may settle for a four if you were in a hurry, but if you had a choice, you would like to go to a restaurant rated a 5. Why? Because you want the best you can get for your hard-earned money.
Suppose you have areas in your life that are a 1-3 and want to improve in those areas. However, improving your four skills to a five will make an impact.
Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains it’s original dimensions
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Personal growth is essential because it allows for a contribution.
Growing yourself allows you to develop others. Helping others on their growth journey is a worthwhile contribution. When you help others, you are adding value. When you help others who can help others, you are increasing value—pursuing your potential for a lifetime and helping others to make the same changes in your world for the better. You can do this for your family, friends, work, church, and community. Your contribution can change your world.
I would rather have it said “he lived usefully” than “he died rich”
Benjamin Franklin
Motivation gets you going, but intentional habits create consistency. Remember, the more intentional you are with your daily routines, the more disciplined you will be in reaching your potential!
Some of the principles in this post come from John Maxwell’s The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth. Here’s to your success!
