How to Use a Plan for Personal Growth

Personal development isn't something you do once and check off. It's daily work, the kind that shapes who you become across every part of your life. Done well, it moves you toward the goals you care about and keeps you flexible when life shifts under you, which it always does. The simplest way to stay on track is to build yourself a guide. A plan removes the guesswork, so instead of wondering what to do next, you already know, and you get to learn things along the way rather than stall out trying to figure out where to begin.

Start with the foundation, and the foundation is your goals. You need something concrete to aim at, and that means both the near and the far. Think of your short-term goals as landmarks on a map: a string of smaller targets that each point toward the big one. Working this way lets you concentrate on a single step at a time, which keeps the whole thing from feeling like too much.

When you sit down to map it out, begin at the end. Pin down the ultimate long-term goal first, because everything else depends on it; the short-term goals only make sense once you know where they're leading. Don't rush this. Look at the different areas of your life (career, relationships, lifestyle, whatever it is) and pick the one that needs the most attention. Set your big goal there, then break it into smaller milestones that carry you toward it over time.

Once the goals are down on paper, the plan stops being an idea and becomes something you act on. You start moving toward that first short-term target. There are five things to hold onto as you go, and it helps to actually write them down so they stay with you through every goal.

First: you are turning your dreams into your reality. Your goals are dreams in another form, and reminding yourself of that keeps the motivation alive, particularly when something goes sideways. Try writing your goals out as dreams. It gives them more pull.

Second: this is your journey, and nobody else's. You're doing this for you, which means giving yourself the room and the time to reach each small goal without rushing. A little selfishness here is allowed. It's part of the deal.

Third: expect change, and a lot of it. The whole process runs on change, and the people who struggle most are usually the ones braced against it. Learn to welcome it instead. Seeing change as a good thing makes the bigger transitions far easier to move through.

Fourth: plan carefully. Reaching the goals you've set takes real planning, and the small details matter more than they look. Skip them and you'll feel it later. Cover them and the process goes smoother.

Fifth: stay open and honest with yourself. Growth tends to push you past the edge of what feels comfortable, and the reflex is to throw up a wall against it. That wall only slows you down. When something uncomfortable shows up, keep your mind open and look at it from another angle.

The approaches in a guide like this aren't guesses. They rest on strategies that work, the same ones large companies and organizations lean on to build leadership in their people. So give each method genuine attention as you work through it. The more you put into learning and growing at each stage, the better your odds of getting where you set out to go.

- Rosemary Kitchen

Reference: Pilon, B. (2012). Dedicated but Balanced. Retrieved on March 10, 2015 from zenhabits.net.