Create a Personal
Development Plan

and choose the life you want to live

Why Create a Personal Development Plan?

Well, have you ever wondered if you had the CHOICE to
consciously create your life?

Personal Development is a commitment to live consciously and develop a sense of self-awareness, with the ultimate (and rather grand) objectives of discovering inner peace and creating an outer life of your choosing.

This article is designed to introduce you to the key benefits of personal development, and inspire you to create a personal development plan yourself.

Living more consciously has had a tremendous impact on my life (and the lives of millions of others), and as you are a fabulous and intelligent person it is likely that some of these ideas about self-growth will resonate nicely with you.

If you give some of these ideas a try, I think you’ll be astonished at the increases in happiness, wealth and peace of mind that are available to you.

Why Create a Personal Development Plan?

Personal development is all about exploring your deepest desires, dreams and fears – and then consciously creating a life that you truly want to live – regardless of how many people tell you you’re mad to do so.

I truly believe that we capable of using our thoughts and emotions to create a life of our choosing, no matter what cards fate dealt us at birth. Practicing techniques from personal development can help you to overcome limiting beliefs and start to live to your potential, which feels rather nice and fulfilling to say the least!

Two years ago I used to suffer from manic depression and was on the verge of a nervous breakdown – now I’m utterly happy, I run my own businesses and I have a peace of mind that before I would’ve discounted as being utterly unattainable.

If you’ve ever wondered if there is more to life than participating in the rat race; if you’ve ever dreamed big dreams and then discounted them as being “unrealistic”; if you’ve ever wondered what the point of all the struggle in life is, personal development could truly provide you with some of the answers you are looking for.

Results to Expect if You
Create a Personal Development Plan?

If you create a personal development plan - or indeed simply widen your reading to incorporate some of the key personal development principles - you should expect improvements in several areas.

(Please note, my dear friend, that personal development is NOT a “get rich quick” scheme, nor will it immediately cure you of all your woes. In fact, success with personal development is down to continued application of the principles, which comes with time, effort – and plenty of trial and error. What works for one dude / dudette may very well be useless to the next. All I promise is that if you commit yourself to trying out some of the ideas I endorse, you WILL see improvements across many areas of your life. Try to see it like walking – you didn’t wake up one day as a baby suddenly able to shoot across the room unaided. You learnt it bit by bit... like any new skill. The same is true for personal development – hence, why it’s a good idea to create a personal development plan to stick to!)

Legal disclaimer aside, here’s the sort of results you can expect from personal development in 5 key areas:

Purpose

One of the primary objectives of a personal development plan is to develop a deeper sense of self-awareness, and to really discover what drives you in life and what is most important to you. There are a number of great books to read and exercises to complete that will help you to uncover your purpose – and to go about living it.

Naturally, people who follow their true raison d’etre are happier, more fulfilled and live exciting, fulfilling lives. Imagine if you lived a life of your own design and spent your time doing only what felt right to you – it’s a pretty nice feeling (I’m only halfway there and it’s a dramatic improvement from participating in the horrific rat race!)

If you’ve ever had a dream to really achieve something in your life, but haven’t quite been able to put it in words, get yourself doing some personal values development and goal setting activities – they could honestly change your life.

Happiness

Simply put, personal development helps you to be happier. Not in a false “I’m so happy all the time” kind of way, but in terms of developing a sense of gratitude for what you have, learning ways to control negative emotions, and (as mentioned above), when you are doing what you are meant to be doing, you just feel awesome.

This magnificent state of being is available to anyone who wants it. It takes a bit of work, but so does feeling miserable all the time :-)

Self Belief

Arguably one of the best reasons to create a personal development plan is because of the impact it will have on your own opinion of yourself.

Somehow, the society we live in tends to produce insecure and scared folk who are content to work jobs they hate for awful remuneration – and be miserable doing it. This dissatisfaction permeates through to all areas of our lives – relationships, family, social and more. Could this be because we think so little of ourselves that we feel we don’t deserve more?

Personal development gradually increases your sense of self belief, until you reach the point where you have an utter and unshakable belief that you will achieve your audacious goals, and you bounce around the globe with a mixture of poise and swagger and a big fat smile on your face.

I quit a high paying job in the media during a recession to set up a business on my own – against all “advice” from friends, family and colleagues - and now I earn more than twice as much money working 3 days a week than I did before working 50+ hours. Do you think I would have taken this (frankly ludicrous!) risk had I not had an iron-clad sense of belief that I could make it work?

Imagine what you would do with your life if you genuinely believed you would succeed, no matter what? Does the thought of living this life excite you? Well, why aren’t you doing it then?

Overcome Fear

Ah, fear. Developed as an automatic response to protect us from big bad animals in our caveman / cavewoman days, we have foolishly developed our sense of fear to incorporate fear of talking in public, fear of talking to the opposite sex, fear of asking for a pay rise, fear of doing what you want to do, fear of... well, just about anything.

If you create a personal development plan, you will gradually claw back your sense of power from the utterly phantom-like ghost of fear. I still have fears – irrational fears – but I’m eradicating them day by day. Personal development will give you the confidence you need to address your fears, and help you to start living to your potential.

Money

Finally, personal development will help you to make more money. In my opinion, making money is far from the most important thing you can focus on, however I appreciate the freedom and experiences that an abundance of money can bring.

Personal development will introduce you to a whole new way of thinking about money, so that you may learn to attract it, generate more of it, and create it out of thin air... and more.

Again, this is no “get rich quick” scheme, but I can promise that you can easily earn more that you are earning now with the continued application of some key principles. It may sound too good to be true, but I have doubled my income in 6 months while working three days a week – so I’m convinced. What will it take for you to give financial prosperity a try?

How do I Create a Personal Development Plan?

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I trust the examples above have convinced you to give personal development a try.

If you have a browse through all the articles on this site you will find loads of information which will help you to create a personal development plan. You should also download my Free Goal Setting Workbook NOW, which will help you to get started.

Here’s some of the things I’d keep an eye out for when creating a personal development plan:

Goals and Values. Start here – work out your values (what drives you most in life and what is most important to you) and then set goals from there. Make sure your goals compliment your values, and dream big – the bigger your goals, the more inspired you will be to achieve them!

Visualisation. The essence of visualisation is simple: imagine your dream life in VIVID detail until you feel the feelings of success NOW. Then watch as the people, circumstances and coincidences you need come into your life to make your vision a reality. I can’t explain it without delving into spiritual and meta-physical ramblings, but whatever I visualise tends to come true. Try it and you will see for yourself just how freaky the universe can be.

Meditation & Spirituality. Ah, I’m sure you’ll like this aspect too. Make sure to develop your spiritual side, to keep it in balance with the goals and dreams of your ego / mind. Meditate, be present, take deep breaths... and appreciate what you have. If you can learn to love your life now, you’ll get more good stuff. I think the universe has a warped sense of humour in that regard! Don’t worry if you’re an alpha male – you’ll still see awesome results, and you don’t have to tell your mates just yet...

Master your emotions. There are some good tricks from techniques like NLP which help you to gain control of your feelings and emotions. Imagine being able to feel AMAZING on your way into work within ten seconds... it is possible, believe me...

Money. Set some goals for money and learn to “think rich”. Even if you’re not particularly bothered about having loads of cash, it’s always nice to be able to pay the bills and have enough to save some, go on a trip or buy yourself a cheeky treat.

That’s it from me for now. I hope I’ve inspired you to give personal development a try and create a personal development plan yourself – it really could be the greatest decision of your life.

PS - If you're sold on the benefits of taking responsibility for your life and want to create a personal development plan, Subscribe to Personal Development Planet Now and join people from 50 countries on the personal development journey. It won't cost you a thing.