Personal growth: two simple words that together lend themselves to multiple interpretations and fields of application. If you are wondering how to start a personal growth journey and what are the benefits that can be obtained with it, in this article I will show you how individual development and improvement can make a difference in your life, not just at work.
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More precisely we will see:
- Why you must invest your energy in personal growth;
- What are the areas of personal development;
- How to start your growth journey;
- How to make an effective personal growth plan;
- What are the tools through which to improve yourself;
- Some examples of personal growth experiences to draw inspiration from;
- How defining your professional goals can lead to a total improvement of your person.
Ready to start your personal growth journey? Let’s find out together how to take the first steps.
What is personal growth
Personal growth is a path of individual development through which we can improve ourselves and our approach to the world around us consciously.
Although starting a path of this type requires a lot of dedication, willpower, and a certain introspective spirit, finding a single human being who wants to get stuck in a condition that doesn’t satisfy him is difficult. The need to improve our status is, in fact, the spark with which to light the fire that we all have inside and that drives us to action.
You can improve multiple aspects of your personality, even distant from each other. This is why, to learn how to move in the field of personal growth, it is necessary to have in mind the main areas into which this is divided and then choose which part of yourself you want to start improving.
Referring to American philosophy, we can distinguish 4 areas of personal growth:
- Personal development – encompasses a wide range of practices and disciplines that facilitate self-discovery and self-improvement. It involves exploring and understanding your inherent aptitudes, untapped potential, and long-term aspirations. Through personal development, you gain the tools and knowledge to refine and articulate these qualities, setting clear objectives and organizing your path to success. Along this transformative journey, you also learn invaluable skills like effective time management and emotional regulation, both of which play a significant role in nurturing self growth.
- Health and well-being – This area explores the benefits deriving from physical activity, a healthy diet, and a correct lifestyle and, being very vast, embraces the study of disciplines such as yoga, and meditation, up to those purely mystical.
- Profession and income – Personal and professional growth are two dimensions that are difficult to separate. The effort we put into increasing our economic status, and our finances, most often comes from the way we do our job. Being successful in the professional field allows you to earn better money and therefore to achieve greater economic security. This area of personal growth concerns the deepening of techniques and disciplines, such as the psychology of money or the psychology of finance, which allow you to improve as a professional and, consequently, to obtain a more remunerative job.
- Relationships with Others – The last major area of individual development involves the relationships between us and others, particularly those with our potential partners. Through the study of various disciplines concerning seduction, the man-woman relationship, the differences that characterize the two sexes, and the ability that men and women have to communicate with each other, we learn how to relate to potential partners, simultaneously carrying out a work on oneself: learning to know oneself better, to like oneself and to be liked by others.
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The stages of personal growth
It would be nice if personal growth developed through institutional paths. If the state school took care of making us better people. Unfortunately, the reality is quite different, as the idea of improvement that one has in traditional systems is essentially of a notional type. It translates into inculcating technical and theoretical notions, whether they are mathematics, chemistry, physics, or accounting, without seeking and bringing out your true potential.
I’ve learned from life and experiencing so much about myself, that a large part of personal growth is actually about getting something out of yourself and others. When I dedicate myself to the personal growth of those who study in our school or those who work there, I always try to bring out that extra something that is inside them. This is true personal development, true personal growth.
Now you may be wondering how do you develop personal growth: what are the first steps to take and how.
In the previous paragraph, I outlined the main areas for improvement. Certainly, it is not possible to manage them all at the same time. Therefore, you need to figure out what the strongest need you feel right now is and start from there. This is your first step.
Specifically, I would suggest that you follow a personal growth plan as, once the need has been identified, without planning, it will be difficult to obtain results and complete your improvement path.
Creating an individual growth plan means planning one’s actions based on previously identified objectives. These goals must be realistic. Remember that any big business is always the result of many small steps.
If we start from the goal, without focusing on the path, we won’t be able to change anything in our condition, and therefore improve ourselves.
The steps to create an effective personal growth plan:
- Look inside yourself and start asking yourself first of all where you are and where you would like to go.
- Set your big goal and find the micro-goals needed to get you closer to it.
- Face reality. Identify your strengths and weaknesses, and identify the opportunities and threats that arise from the outside about your current capabilities. Carrying out this analysis will allow you to have clear ideas about what you are good at and what aspects you need to work on instead. Furthermore, it will allow you to discover which are the opportunities to be exploited to improve yourself and the obstacles which, on the contrary, could prevent you from growing.
- Start with your habits and review your daily routine. Correct, from time to time, all those behaviors that you believe are wrong and in contrast with your goal.
- Learn to manage time and organize your day. It’s the only way you can optimize your actions and not waste resources. Keep track of your improvements and write everything down, for example, in your personal growth notebook. Writing down the results achieved is a good way to keep motivation high.
- Give yourself some space. Nowadays, our lives are increasingly hectic. We even struggle to find the time to question our level of well-being. Stop now and then and ask yourself if everything is going right.
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How to start a self growth journey in 5 steps
Personal Development, to be defined as such, must be constant over time. That’s why we need to work on our daily lives, gradually eliminating bad habits and creating good ones. We don’t need big revolutions, but small progress.
Starting Your Personal Growth Journey: How to Begin and Sustain It:
- Gain awareness of what hinders our growth;
- Be ready for change;
- Correct the limiting factors for our improvement;
- Aiming for continuous growth.
Having said that, I want to tell you what I have done for my personal growth and what I would suggest you do for yours.
1. Read books and watch videos on the subject
When I was about 19, I started devouring a multitude of texts, including several books on personal growth. I read a lot and studied subjects other than those taught at school and university.
Among the many books on personal growth, here are some that you could read to start your journey of self-development and improvement:
- “How to Get the best out of Yourself and Others: the manual of Success in Life and Work” by Tony Robbins;
- “No excuses. Life begins where the comfort zone ends” by Brian Tracy;
- Stephen R. Covey’s “The 7 Rules of Success”;
- Robin Sharma’s “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari”;
- “How to stop jerking off and enjoy life” by Giulio Cesare Giacobbe;
- Angela Duckworth’s “Grit”;
- Richard Koch’s “The 80/20 Principle”;
- “Hagakure. Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s The Secret Book of the Samurai;
- “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson.
Although I believe a book is still a valid tool for developing alternative knowledge, today’s young people have new and effective tools available to draw from to work on their personal development such as YouTube.
There are many videos available on the web and, in this sense, YouTube appears to be, in my opinion, the preferred vehicle, because it is full of information from mentors who, on their channels, talk about personal development, going beyond the written and giving you their experience.
Through the videos, it is possible to understand whether what the speaker is saying really comes from his experience or if it is simply a set of notions learned, copied somewhere, and then reported.
Based on what has been said, for your improvement, I suggest you take advantage of the video courses on personal growth on YouTube. At present, the video course is a more complete learning tool than the book, because it highlights the difference between those who just write and those who experience the things they transfer to you.
On the net, you can find trainers like me, who don’t just tell you something, but who with decision and empathy undertake to transfer their knowledge and experience to you.
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2. Take personal growth courses
Another suggestion I’d like to give you is to attend courses on personal growth, even online, and a better life. When I started earning a little more myself, I attended various courses on the subject, both in Italy and abroad, which allowed me to work concretely on my person.
Taking a personal growth course is undoubtedly an intelligent and advantageous choice from several points of view:
- It guarantees greater physical, mental, and spiritual involvement;
- It lets you join a community of people who, like you, are committed to improving themselves;
- It requires a higher level of engagement and higher questioning than what would happen if you simply read a book comfortably.
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3. Make experience the engine of your growth
We can consider experience as great baggage capable of containing our experience or, better to say, all those episodes of life which, for better or for worse, we treasure and which guide us in the present. If I reflect on my path, to date, most of my choices are nothing more than the result of past experiences.
Experiences are our main learning tool, the most powerful since it is about living something directly and putting it into practice. There are no good or bad ones, each of them can become a means from which to learn and improve.
Even an experience that put you in crisis, or that ended badly, has certainly taught you something: in the worst-case scenario, what not to do. It’s an episode that has shaped you anyway, that made you understand which is the wrong road, the one not to take anymore, and where to better direct your energies.
In practice, what experiences can you have that will help you improve?
4. The journey as a path of professional growth
Traveling is certainly an important growth experience. Since I was a boy I have traveled a lot. Much of the money I earned through small jobs, I used to travel the world. I have visited places that are culturally very distant if compared to ours, such as Asia, America, and Africa, in search of my dimension.
This is to tell you how important it is to experience different realities, especially between the ages of 20 and 30, to gradually understand which path is most suitable for you. Never stop at one situation.
5. Challenge yourself and surpass yourself
In addition to travel, what you could do for your personal growth is try difficult experiences to test yourself. In my case, I have participated more than once in so-called adventure training. They are experiential paths characterized by often impervious itineraries, which require a certain type of physical and mental preparation.
Years ago, for example, I went to Malaysia where I took part in a twenty-day expedition in the middle of the equatorial jungle, far from any comfort. It was an exceptional learning experience, the strongest I’ve had in my life.
You don’t need to play the Indiana Jones of the situation, pushing yourself into situations like that. The basic concept that I want to convey to you is to commit yourself to step out of your comfort zone, throwing yourself into experiences capable of putting you in crisis and therefore capable of making you go beyond your limits.
You could do a charity project, a volunteer project, or a professional project, the important thing is that they are unconventional and diversified experiences, especially if you are between 20 and 35 years old. This is because, the more varied the experiences you engage in, the more, automatically, you grow.
In summary, experience, despite requiring more time, money, and energy than reading a book or watching a video, is the most performing vehicle for your personal growth. Do not neglect to enrich your luggage.
Individual growth and professional goals
The last point I want to focus on is professional goals. It’s something I only started working on from the age of 25-26 onwards, yet it’s an incredible area for personal growth.
Often, especially in a country like Italy, one does not have the opportunity to take care of this area of personal growth before the age of 25-26, because of our education system, and our culture, up to that age he sees himself engaged in attending lectures at some university.
After the latter, we can finally take back our role as protagonists and focus on the professional growth that comes not so much from the work we do, which remains an independent factor, but from our ability to set ourselves ambitious and challenging goals: for example “I want to become the best Digital Marketing Manager in the tourism sector”.
Choosing a professional goal that is bigger than you and with which to measure yourself becomes an important incentive to go beyond your standards. At some point, after experiencing so many different situations in your life, your growth will stabilize. At that moment, to continue growing, you will feel the need to focus on a single job and on the professional goal you have set for yourself.
This objective will leverage your improvement and force you to:
- Knowing yourself better, consequently, will also help you make the right choices for your profession and your future;
- Bringing out every ounce of your current resources, helping you discover skills you didn’t know you had;
- Improve yourself in relationships with people;
- Take care of your well-being and balance. To make a successful journey you must be physically, mentally, and emotionally well.
In essence, the professional goal is the primary driver for improving all the aspects we have previously talked about and which make up the 4 areas of personal growth.
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I direct Digital Coach®, the professional training school, leader in training all professionals who work in the Digital Marketing & Sales field.
As a trainer, I have trained over 35,000 business professionals from over 300 large multinational companies and over 5,000 Italian SMEs.
I devised the “Digital Strategy Framework®” method, thanks to which since 2014 I have been helping companies to define and improve over time a digital strategy that maximizes the generation of turnover and online sales.
