Personal Development Planning (The Stuff That’s Not Talked About)

personal development planningPersonal Development Planning

Personal development planning can be a hassle to really wrap your head around if you’re not sure where to start.

Most people don’t create a personal development plan probably because it seems like a lot of work with very little payoff.

I’ll share with you the number one skill you can obtain which will give you THE biggest pay off of any skill you can learn these days but first a few things…

Since you’re reading this I’m guessing you’re not afraid to do the work.

  • Personal development planning requires heart
  • Personal development planning requires insight
  • Personal development planning requires diligence
  • Personal development planning requires a passion for growth
  • Personal development planning requires a commitment to contribution

The price of doing the work to create a personal development plan far outweighed the cost of what my life was demonstrating at the time I decided to follow through on one.

That means my life was kinda shitty and I was over it.

In my opinion we all need to have a self development plan but personal development planning is critical for many reasons. When you have a personal development plan in place:

  • You have much more clarity around who you are, what you stand for and where you’re headed.
  • You become clear on your own values
  • You understand your personality and what drives you
  • You become clear on what your natural mental talents are and what they aren’t
  • You become much more aware of your body and in tune with how you fuel it
  • You’re clear on your ethics and what behaviors are in alignment with them and which ones aren’t

A personal development plan is about creating behavior change so you can create improved results in your life and make a bigger and better impact.

The problem I’ve found over the years is there has been a lot of emphasis put on just the surface level stuff such as:

  • Think Positive Thoughts
  • Say your positive affirmations daily
  • Be careful of your associations

All this stuff is good to do of course, but much of it is delivered in a way that doesn’t truly provide you with the why and how of how it can contribute to your change. Lots of this is just putting lipstick on a pig in business and in life if you ask me. It’s like programs laid on tope of old programs that are still running. It causes lots of confusion.

Most information, rather than helping you to learn as a whole person, just merely tells you to do it and if you don’t change you must not want it badly enough.

I say bollox and bullshit.

Remember earlier when I said there is one skill that’s most critical to learn above all others?

It’s called learning how to learn.

Learn how you learn things such as:

  • How you learn skills
  • How you learn about yourself
  • How you learn about other people
This can be a huge topic for you to engage in this year. It’s one I plan on sharing more about.

This site has been mostly about developing yourself, gaining clarity around your direction in life, self discovery and how you can apply these discoveries to your business. This way we can show up in our lives present and ready to confront whatever may come our way without flinching from it. (Without it confronting you and you flinching)

My intention here has been to support you in moving forward in life on your own terms, with your own purpose, push and clarity so you wake up every morning with that push behind you which you’ve discovered. When you discover the reason why, you own it and will defend it.

In a sense I’ve been sharing with you how you can learn, how to learn.

When you discover what drives you and and actually participate in the solution of its discovery, you own it and are much more likely to use it to fuel your daily choices and actions.

Personal development planning can be the difference between growing and shrinking.

There’s no in between. You’re either doing one or the other. (Yes that’s my opinion and I stand by it.)

Personal Development Planning Insights

If you’ve read much here, I’ve posted alot of resources around mental and even emotional clarity. I’ve shared alot of mental exercises here as well as in the Self Discovery Starter Pack that I provide to all new subscribers of the community.

However, in all of my studies and experience, I’ve come to realize that approaching an optimal life for you and I goes beyond just trying to figure out what’s going on upstairs in our head. To help accelerate our mental & emotional clarity we really need to free up our total energy through alleviating the work load and stress that’s been put on our bodies through everyday life.

This includes the foods we fuel our bodies with and the rest or relaxation we nurture ourselves with.

The cost of not acknowledging this can be huge. Not only have I encountered the stress of worry (about future stuff) and resentments (the past) but I realize just how much holding onto that stuff costs me in the now.

I’m not able to be fully present!

Have you ever felt that way?

For the past few months in particular and really over the past year, I’ve really changed my diet big time. I’m eating probably 85% raw food and also juicing. The rest of the time I’m eating things such as whole grain bread sandwiches with avocado, lettuce, tomatoes and hummus.

Yup. Simple, fast, single guy kinda stuff 😉

The mental clarity and energy, for the most part, that I’ve discovered has been astounding. I still eat my occasional cheat meal and I have a special infinity for dark chocolate almond spread but over all my energy has staid up.

I truly can’t believe the mental haze that still lingered around me for the past year. Oh and I also dropped the vast majority of any caffeine as well. I drink maybe a 1/4th of a cup every morning and that’s it. (The goal is to drop it completely)

If I get the need to have a comfy warm cup after that still, I boil some water and continue to have caffeine free tea.

Personal Development  Plan (deeper secrets)

The fact is you can do all the planning you like but if you don’t know what you value most in your life, your planning will be for nothing.

Oh sure, you’ll begin to work on your goals & plans with the best of intentions however you’ll find ways to distract yourself and probably blame it on something outside of yourself. Later on you’ll confabulate about it and justify it in your own mind.

Lots of people begin making plans based on what sounds good to them or by what they think they want to accomplish but have no idea what they’re really doing is injecting the values of others into their own based on holding that person in a higher esteem than themselves.

You have to know what you value most so that your personal development plans are in alignment with what you truly value (or change your story around your values)

Our values determine our destiny. I’d say even above and beyond that would be the more conscious you are of what you really value the better you’ll be able to determine your destiny. 

  • Personal development planning is about first, taking an inventory of what you value most
  • Personal development planning is about getting clear on a cause you can create or be a part of that aligns with your highest values
  • Personal development planning is about putting together a plan of action to move that cause forward
  • Personal development planning is about having a strategy in place to follow through on your plan of action
  • Personal development planning is about knowing ahead of time how to identify and measure when you’re making progress
  • Personal development planning is about putting it all in place and throwing yourself into the process of making it happen.
These are just my thoughts and insights around the topic. I could (and am) write a whole book around this subject of personal development planning so that you’re quickly off to a good start. It’s an on going process but I can assure you the price of doing it beats the cost of not.

Leave your comments or questions in the comments section below.

What are your thoughts, insights or questions around personal development planning?

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