Fueling Your Success Begins With Personal Development

Fueling Your Success begins with you and your commitment to personal development.

Did you know that at 211 degrees, you find that water is hot? At 212 degrees, water will boil. Boiling water becomes steam, and with steam, you can power up a train. 

You don’t need the right conditions in life to succeed; you need the right fuel. The right fuel is to keep learning. Learning is what fuels your success.

However, most people think that once you graduate high school or college, the learning ends. No more exams, no more reading, no more studying.

Imagine you are starting a new job. Like learning anything new, you go through an awkward stage where things feel uncomfortable. With more practice and experience, you become more confident and you don’t even think about what you are doing. Your job becomes second nature.

That’s all very well if your job doesn’t change. If the market doesn’t change. If the world doesn’t change. If you don’t keep pace with change, you will be left behind.

The Importance of Personal Development

When embarking on a personal development journey, it refers to engaging in those activities that develop your potential and unleashes your talents, employability and achieve your life’s goals.

Everyone lives in their own unique model of the world. If you take an average American or Britain, their childhood experiences would be completely different from a child brought up in the slums of a third-world country. Even if you take two children with the same parents, same education and same upbringing, they too will develop different views of the world.

Because of what we are exposed to in our formative years, we develop mental filters that color our world. As we take in the information around us, we either delete, distort or generalize according to our view of the world.

• Beliefs: we form opinions of what we believe to be true.
• Values: We develop values that are important to us.
• Memories: Our memories shape our view of the world both positively and negatively
• Thinking Patterns: Patterns of Thinking form the way we think
• Emotional State: These experiences trigger an internal state linked back to our model of the world.

Personal Development Expands Your Horizons

Personal development expands your horizons and gives you permission to challenge your model of the world that opens up new possibilities. The process of personal development alone takes you from the comfort zone, through the fear zone, into the learning zone which in turn lands you in the growth zone.

What is Personal Development?

Personal development is also known as self-improvement or self-help and focuses on building self-awareness, knowledge, and other skills. Typical applications could include anything from developing hidden talents or learning new skills. This can be accomplished by taking courses online, attending seminars, tuning into live webinars, taking up a new hobby or going to community college.

What is Professional Development?

Professional development has similar attributes to personal development with a major difference. It refers to the learning or and developing professional credentials such as new certifications and experience on the job. This can be achieved independently or funded within the workplace.

Here are some amazing benefits of engaging in personal development activities and learning new skills.

8 Huge Benefits of Personal Development

1. You Become More Interesting

You don’t have to become the world’s greatest at everything, just the world’s greatest at becoming more interesting. don’t have to be successful yourself. You just have to be interesting.

When you reach outside your comfort zone and learn something new, it naturally feels awkward at first. It takes time to master a new skill. As you expand your horizons through personal development activities, you then become more interesting. This allows you then talk to others across a wide range of topics. It instantly increases your likeability as you can then communicate with others on their wavelength.

2. It Opens Doors

When you stay the same, nothing changes. No new opportunities will open up for you.

“When opportunity doesn’t knock. It’s time to build a door.”

If you were to learn a new language for instance, suddenly doors open to work in different organizations that require those who speak more than one language. Suddenly you become more marketable globally.

If you were to learn how to write blogs, create websites, or even graphic design, you expand your opportunities. Freelancing in your spare time is a great way to add additional income.

On a professional level, personal development activities manifest a desire to raise the stakes, climb the corporate ladder, get a new job,  or even start a new business. Personal development gives clarity to your personal vision for the future.

3. You Build Stronger Relationships

Building strong relationships and connections is the bedrock of all success. 

To build relationships, you need to be able to communicate effectively and relate to others.  The more well-rounded you are, the greater your chances of being able to connect with others. The more connections you have, the more possibilities open up for you. For instance, 80% of all jobs are filled through connections, not through job boards.

The more connections you have, it helps you become more influential and persuasive. 

Let’s say you developed your leadership skills with a focus on empathy. Empathy is at the core of successful marketing campaigns. Whether you are in a sales or marketing role or not, we are all selling something. Whether it’s getting a date, landing a promotion, convincing your boss to give you a raise, or diffusing a conflict, you are selling something.

The more rounded you become you will have an easier time relating to others. You become a person others want to get to know as you draw people to you. The quality of your life improves as you develop more interesting and in-depth relationships.

4. You Adapt to Change Quicker

Many people struggle when faced with change. It might be a restructure at work, or a new CEO comes in and everything changes. This is where new skills come in handy and the ability to adapt to change quickly.

When you learn something new, naturally your perceptions change. This makes it easier to adapt to the inevitable changes that happen with or without your permission.

As you expand your horizons the more varied your life experiences become and the easier you will adapt to change. 

5. Your Brain Chemistry Changes

Inside the white matter of your brain is something called myelin. Myelin sheaths protect your nerve cells and act as a conduit between the neurons in your brain. They are little like the insulation wrapped around an electrical wire. 

When you learn something new, the myelin sheath is very thin because you haven’t yet mastered the skill. As you practice a new skill, the myelin sheath builds up and becomes stronger. As the myelin sheath becomes stronger, it means the nerve signals are sent and received more quickly. This is the point where a skill then becomes a habit. You’re able to perform the skill with ease without thinking about it.

Stimulating the neurons in the brain, allows you to learn things faster. As you learn new things, you create new neural pathways. The more neural pathways that are formed allows the more electrical impulses to travel faster, therefore, enabling you to process information more quickly.

6. You Make Stronger Connections Between Skill Areas

Personal development expands your skill sets by building on previous skills sets and your knowledge base.

Learning a new skill means you can then connect that skill to information and skills you’ve already developed. Tapping into this prior knowledge helps you build on existing knowledge, which makes it easier to learn more advanced skills.

7. Builds Your Confidence and Drives Motivation

Personal development skills drive personal effectiveness. As you develop personal effectiveness and become more skilled, you naturally develop more self-confidence.

If you take a line through what you do in the workplace, as a business owner or employee, personal development plans motivate you. This is especially important for employees. If personal development and professional development plans aren’t in place, they are more likely to look elsewhere for employers who will invest in their growth.

Personal development empowers employees to strive to greater heights and improves their productivity. By investing in the personal development of employees, naturally reduces staff turnover.

8. Helps You Work Through Fears

Everyone has fears.

Some fears are more developed than others and some are false evidence appearing real (FEAR). Personal development helps you work through your fears and uncover self-limiting beliefs. With the help of an executive coach, business coach or life coach, you can also uncover your blind spots and identify the habits that are holding you back.

Personal development is, without doubt, a roadmap to success by identifying your unique talents, developing positive self-esteem and confidence levels.

What is a Personal Development Plan?

Many make plans to die. They leave a will and in some cases even lay out their funeral plans. But what about making a plan to live? How many people have a “Life Plan?”

A personal development plan (PDP) begins with a vision for the future supported by identifying your core values. Once you know where you’re headed, you can then develop plans and goals to move you towards your vision. Without a plan, you could end up anywhere.

A PDP presents you with a visual plan of action of your vision for the future and all the goals you need to achieve to get there. It also identifies your strengths and what you need to learn to achieve your vision. 

Identifying Your Pathway to Success

A PDP also identifies the skills gap you need to overcome to the challenges you will face along the way. 

Think of this as a training needs analysis. Use a coach, mentor, or advisor to uncover what skills and training do you need to accomplish your goals? For instance, if your vision was to start your own business, then perhaps you need training in business development, sales, and marketing or finances to ensure the longevity and success of the business.

If you are a business owner, or new manager looking to develop leadership skills, you may need to learn how to manage performance, how to run meetings, how to delegate, recruiting and interviewing along with other managerial and leadership skills.

On a final note, think of personal development, professional development, and business development plans as a process of bettering yourself and your current circumstances. When you know where you are headed with a life plan, then you easily identify the skills you need to improve your life and circumstances.

An investment in yourself is the best investment you can ever make where you Learn to Thrive Not Just Survive!

Not sure where to start? Why not book a FREE 30-minute Discovery Call here -where we help you gain clarity about your future direction.

In the meantime, pick up some personal development books and put these on your must-read list and get your journey started now.