Creating Your Personal Development Plan Pt. 1

What Is Personal Development?

Tree of Life

I like to think of it as Personal Evolution. Constantly evolving in every area of our lives. We all do this in some way and on some level, whether were conscious of it or not. Personal Development puts it into a structured format. It’s a tool if you will to assist us in living the life that we want and not the life that seems to be given to us. It gives us clarity, and that’s very important when finding your passions and your life purpose.

I believe everyone should have a personal development plan. You wouldn’t get into a taxi and say “I don’t know where I want to go or what I want to do, but I want to have fun and get me there as soon as you can please”. You would first assess where your are and what you feel like experiencing at the time. This will give you clarity to come up with several choices that will give you this experience and then you will break it down to one choice. This is what a Personal Development Plan will do for you in your life, metaphorically of course.

When creating a personal development plan your first step and probably the hardest is to assess your current standings in the different areas of your life. This can be difficult because you will have to take a very deep and honest look at yourself, something that a lot of people find very difficult to do. This will give you a clear picture of where you are, so you can better plan the route to get you where you want to go. If you follow the process below it will give you a great sense of clarity, and you will be on your way to living the life you were born to live.

**Please Do Not Skip This Step**

Steps for Creating Your Personal Development Plan

1. Create a Word document and type in the following life categories and information.

Career Are you in your dream job? Ask yourself what would I be doing If everything (bills etc.) where fully paid and I had no other responsibilities? Write a paragraph of how you are doing in your career, and if you’re not in your dream career what you would rather be doing. Then on a scale from 1 – 10 1 being the worst and 10 being the best rate your career.

Finance Write a paragraph of how you are doing financially. Have you achieved your financial goals? What actions are you taking to get you there? Now rate your financial state on a scale from 1-10.

Relationships How are you doing in your intimate relationship? Are you with the person you want to be with the rest of your life? Do you have a spiritual connection with them? Give this area of your life a rating a scale from 1 – 10.

Family Are you close to your family? Have you told your mother you love her? Have you given your child a loving hug today? Rate this area of your life from 1 – 10.

Emotionally are you depressed, have panic attacks or are you generally happy? Write a paragraph about your emotional  state at this time. Rate yourself emotionally.

Spiritual Write a paragraph of how connected or disconnected you feel from you higher self / soul.  Rate you Spiritual life.

Character Write a paragraph about how you feel your character is. Are you a caring person? Are you honest? do you have integrity and honor? Rate you character.

Contribution What have you given back to the community or others? have you run a marathon? donated time or money to a worthy cause? Rate your Contribution.

Fun & Adventure Write about the fun & adventure in your life. Trips you have taken recently, activities and events. Rate your fun and adventure in your life.

Here is an example of what it could look like:

Career 5 Currently I am a Desktop support technician. Although I do enjoy what I do, I don’t have the same fulfillment I once did in my career. I want to be a Website designer. I feel I would be helping small to mid size companies in my local area grow their business. I can use my creative skills and there would be some graphic design which I love doing. Currently I am taking a free online course to help develop my skills needed to get into this field. I’m also looking into courses at my local community college.

And you would continue doing the same thing for each category of your life. Type the name of the category, the rating and a paragraph of how you are doing in each area. It’s very important to be honest with your self here. This will take some time to complete if you need to, leave for a while and come back to it latter. Try to have it done in a couple of days when I will post Pt. 2  if you have any questions please post them in the comments section below.

To be continued in Pt. 2