Setting goals for self-education and self-development, planning a certain result is the key to success on the path to personal improvement. But the question is how to set the task correctly so as not to leave the race halfway, what means to use to achieve the goal of self-development? Let's take a closer look at what self-development goals might be and ways to achieve them.
Self-development goals
The goal of self-development is the result that a person wants to achieve in the process of working on himself. What does everyone strive for? The clear answer is to be happy. Only the concept of happiness is different for everyone:
- love and harmony in the family;
- material well-being;
- health;
- beautiful appearance and slim body;
- brilliant career;
- constant self-improvement and realization of one’s resources;
- helping others, etc.
Thus, we can conclude that the goal of personal self-development is to achieve happiness through the implementation of personally significant priorities. Therefore, each person has his own goal of self-development, for example:
- improved health;
- harmony within yourself and with others;
- improving your consciousness;
- high level of personality development;
- success, etc.
In accordance with the assigned tasks, it is necessary to select tools for their implementation.
The process of choosing personally significant goals for self-development
The choice of personally significant goals for self-development is called goal setting, that is, formulating the final result. Experts in the field of psychology, pedagogy, etc. argue that this stage is very important in the process of self-education. This is due to the fact that the correct definition of the goal is reflected in the effectiveness of all work on oneself.
A global and significant goal can radically change the course of life, but it will not be possible to achieve it instantly. Life goals and prospects should be realized through the achievement of daily work tasks in a short time.
For example, in the process of professional self-development several stages can be distinguished:
- learn to organize the work process productively;
- develop interest in work;
- improve communication skills, etc.
In each area of life, certain goals can be identified that depend on the motives for self-development.
Wheel of Life Balance
How to determine goals for self-development and choose a list of the best? Each person is individual and each person’s main areas of life are not the same, but it is important that they coexist harmoniously with each other. To identify “holes”, it is effective to use a simple tool - the wheel of life balance.
The essence of this technique is to visually represent all areas of life in the form of a lined diagram, from which you can see in which direction you should move and work on yourself. With the help of the Wheel, you can give a correct assessment of each area of your life, determine priorities, and, accordingly, goals for self-development. In addition, a person clearly sees his strengths and qualities that require additional development.
According to the teachings of J. Meyer, the model of human life balance is displayed graphically in the form of a circle divided into 8 sectors, each of which corresponds to one of the areas of life:
- Family.
- Career, money.
- Self-education.
- Rest.
- Health.
- Friends, communication.
- Living conditions.
- Self-development, personal growth.
Benefits of using a model to work on yourself:
- sectors are formed and adjusted at the discretion of the user;
- ease of operation, no special knowledge and skills required, no additional training required;
- objective assessment, because the data is only for yourself, the main thing is to answer honestly;
- reflects the positive and negative aspects of all spheres of life, disharmony.
Based on the data obtained, goals for self-development and personal growth are formed. Read more about working with the model in the article “The Wheel of Life Balance”.
Personal growth goals
Find out more
It is not difficult to be knowledgeable in today's information age with so many resources available.
Develop an interest in seeking knowledge and find value in learning more. Learning helps us grow and succeed in life.
Be a great listener
Good listeners usually create great relationships. They are also able to communicate more effectively. If you listen in a caring and trusting way, other people will appreciate this quality.
Wake up early
If you want to be healthy, rich and wise, get into the habit of getting up early. You will have more time for yourself. And you can start acting when everyone else is sleeping. This kind of productivity will help you achieve your personal goals.
Let go of the past
When we are haunted by the past, we cannot focus on the present. And as a result, we may miss out on some really big opportunities.
If you're having trouble letting go of the past, it might be a good idea to talk to a professional counselor. Or look for groups and forums on this topic on the Internet.
Be more creative.
Creative people can enjoy life more. Because their creations bring a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. Find your creative outlet and ignite your curiosity.
Travel whenever you can
Personal growth suffers when we are constantly in the same place, surrounded by the same people. Every person needs change.
Travel to find more opportunities and joy in life.
If possible, go on vacation. There we all become completely different. The benefits of traveling are that it improves your life!
Take care of your health
Staying fit and healthy should be your number one personal growth goal. A healthy mind and body lead to an energetic and fulfilling life.
Practice compassion
Compassion brings happiness and a sense of fulfillment in life. Be compassionate whenever you can. It helps you find peace in life. And helps good relationships in the family and with other people. You need to understand that every person has their own difficulties.
Practice persistence
If you want to achieve something important in life, there is no better ally than persistence.
She supports us no matter the circumstances.
Self-development goals for the year
Based on the resulting “Wheel of Life” model, the goals of self-education and self-development can be formulated. Each of them may have different periods of implementation, for example, it will take several months to restore health, and years to be appointed to the position of director. Therefore, it is important to plan your work correctly: set a close goal for self-development in the near future and create a list of goals in the long term, for a year, for 5 years...
To get started, it’s enough to make a list of 5-10 tasks in each area of life, for example:
5 health goals:
- Eliminate harmful foods from your diet.
- Undergo a full medical examination.
- Workout.
- Do 10-12 massage sessions.
- Get your daily routine and nutrition in order.
5 goals for personal growth:
- Read a self-development book.
- Learn or improve English.
- Learn to draw.
- Improve your writing skill: write a few articles.
- Get into the habit of organizing things using time management rules.
5 goals in relationships and family:
- Get rid of the habit of controlling everything.
- Read the book “The Language of Man-Woman Relationships” by Allan and Barabar Pease.
- Arrange a surprise for your loved one.
- Show concern for your loved one more often.
- Study a course on the topic “Psychology of Relationships.”
Goals can be divided into periods, or specific deadlines can be set so that the stage does not turn into infinity. For example, plan to read a book in a week and learn a foreign language in 5 months.
Barriers to self-development and the reasons for their appearance
On the way to a goal aimed at self-development, barriers may arise that can stop progress or even negate all achievements. Conventionally, the causes of obstacles are divided into two categories:
- External and internal barriers.
- Objective and subjective barriers.
In accordance with this gradation, the following groups of barriers are formed that prevent the achievement of self-development goals:
| EXTERNAL | INTERNAL | ||
| OBJECTIVE | SUBJECTIVE | OBJECTIVE | SUBJECTIVE |
|
|
|
|
Yes, sometimes desire alone is not enough to engage in self-development. Lack of free time, inability to organize the process of working on oneself, a negative attitude towards the desire to improve on the part of loved ones can nullify all attempts to change one’s life.
Personal life goals
Increase your willpower
Strong willpower helps us achieve our goals in life. You can increase your willpower by creating strong habits.
Get rid of stress and its causes
Stress can be a major hindrance to growth because it drains us. And we begin to put off making decisions and doing things.
Remove your restrictions
Never let the limitations in your life hinder your progress. The reasons for restrictions may be different. Your friends may discourage you from achieving your goal. You may think that you don't have enough time or energy.
Don't look for excuses and stop listening to depressed friends!
Remove your restrictions! And know that personal goals are always achievable!
Evaluate your life from time to time.
Evaluate your successes and failures and reflect on what you learned from them. There is no need to be upset by failures.
Draw conclusions and try not to make past mistakes. Without them there is no forward movement.
Gain knowledge
Read books, watch tutorials and meet new people. This will allow you to learn more and become better.
Set high standards
To improve your quality of life, you need to set higher standards. Big plans motivate big victories. You don't want to get caught up in the petty fuss, do you?
Strive for financial stability
Money cannot buy happiness and peace in life. But financial stability is a key component of confidence and satisfaction.
Have a reliable circle of friends
Friends are an important part of life. And having a small but reliable circle of friends helps us vent our problems and get sincere advice.
Keep in touch with relatives
We often don't find time for distant relatives. As a result, these relationships break down over time.
Don't let this happen.
Ways and means of achieving the goal of self-development
How to achieve your life goals and step-by-step self-development tasks? To do this, just use a simple algorithm of actions:
- Decide on your desires. The key word is “their own”, not imposed by society, parents, a loved one, etc. Most people have a really hard time figuring out what they really want. At the first stage, it is enough to highlight one goal in each area of life.
- Imagine the end result. Visualization and a clear understanding of what should happen in the end allow you to believe that the goal will be achieved!
- Divide the path to achieving the goal into several stages, developing a strategic plan for the process itself. It is difficult to dream of career growth without imagining the entire career path to the position of director of Romashka LLC.
- Act based on your own inner beliefs. The goal and methods of achieving it should not be contrary to the beliefs of the individual.
- Look for sources of motivation. Only understanding and awareness of what and why this is needed will allow you to move forward towards the goal of self-development.
- Be prepared for obstacles and setbacks. The process does not always proceed exactly according to plan; obstacles arise. Overcoming these difficulties and being able to mobilize your resources in the event of a small setback is a big step forward towards your goal.
- Plan your self-development! It is difficult to predict the entire process with 100% accuracy, but it is much easier to plan the stages along the way to the goal. A good habit of planning your day in the evening, it allows you to effectively start work in the morning, without wasting time and energy thinking about a plan of action.
- Summarize. Analyzing which items were completed during the day and which were not will allow you to feel satisfaction that everything is going according to plan. This is an additional incentive to move on and, in case of failure, to work on the mistakes further.
- Shape and change your environment. It is important to consider two aspects here. There should be people nearby who support your endeavors and those who are able to share their experience and knowledge on the path to each specific goal.
- Relax!
Happiness and inner harmony are a worthy goal for every person, but everyone comes to them differently. Therefore, it is impossible to clearly identify the means on the path to the goal of self-development; everyone has their own. Some people come to inner balance through love for their neighbors, others through material well-being, etc.
The goals of self-development and self-education must be divided into long-term and short-term perspectives. You can formulate tasks using the “Wheel of Life Balance” model. Anyone can cope without any special knowledge and skills. Having analyzed all areas of life, it is easy to determine which of them need adjustment, and how to set self-development goals in accordance with them.
Personal growth and development goals
Only a few people strive for development; all other members of the consumer society are busy with consumption and entertainment. However, there were always those who believed that there was some purpose in life, some high meaning and a worthy task, and were ready to develop themselves, transforming themselves from an organism into a person. However, it is not enough to direct yourself towards development; it is equally important to determine its direction.
There is more than one path to development; there are many paths to personal growth and development. Where to grow? In what direction should you develop yourself? One of the first choices is the choice between inner harmony and service to something external. A personality built for harmony, both internal and external. - harmoniously developed personality. We can say that here the personality, its harmonious existence is an end in itself and an intrinsic value. Another option is a person fulfilling his tasks before something Higher for him (family, society, or at least business, in a religiously oriented approach - before God). Here the personality is rather an instrument and a means; here the personality is built hierarchically, guided not by a sense of internal harmony, but by the quality of serving an external goal.
This does not at all exclude cases when the path of service for someone is completely internally harmonious. This may be, it may not be, it’s just not important in ministry. A hierarchically developed personality is built not according to its own convenience, but to achieve one or another goal.
What could be such an external goal? For a Christian and a Jew, the goal is to become like divine purity, the image and likeness of God, and the pinnacle of personal development here is holiness.
In Soviet culture, the comprehensive and harmonious development of the individual was considered a worthy goal. This model meant the development of all the abilities of the individual, the development of body and spirit, morality and practicality, knowledge and skills, technical and humanitarian thinking, the ability for both physical labor and intellectual search. Harmony did not mean the subjective experience of one’s own harmony, and certainly not just a feeling of internal well-being, but an objective balance of all developed abilities. According to the plan, this was supposed to be a combination of harmonic and hierarchical structure. The path to this is self-improvement.
The psychological community actively promotes the values of self-actualization, however, the unclear boundaries of this concept and the lack of technologies for moving along this path (it seems that two-year psychotherapy cannot be recognized as such a technology) prevents the widespread dissemination of this path of personal growth and development. It is also necessary to take into account the fact that often behind the desire for self-actualization and passion for personal growth there is often an elementary unsettled personal life, an inability to adapt to life’s demands. Many girls are passionate about personal growth training, but after finding love and happily getting married, they begin to become more interested in cooking rather than training. For what?
Today in Russia, in fact, there is no goal of personal development supported by the state or a significant part of society. The family cannot cope with its educational role, the school has withdrawn itself, and today business has unexpectedly begun to claim the role of educator of the individual. Indeed, most programs aimed at personal growth and development are determined by business requirements. For successful sales and effective negotiations, employees need to develop the ability to accurately sense the state of their interlocutor, understand his motives, take into account his goals and competently negotiate using both logic and emotions. By training leaders and managers, promising young people are taught proactivity, the habit of a positive worldview, an attitude of cooperation and the skill of personal responsibility. These skills are universal, they are in demand not only in business, but are extremely important in the personal life of every person, but business teaches this , because it is necessary for business. Employees undergo advanced training courses, trainings, coaching and other types of educational activities not because a person needs it for his internal harmony, but because effective business requires it. Business needs quality people - business does not find such people in Russia - business begins to educate quality people.
Perhaps it is worth thinking about the question: how far do you need to go along the path of personal self-improvement? People striving for personal harmony decide it more than arbitrarily: some (usually men) are ready to go to the very top, others (usually women) pursue their harmony insofar as they do not overexert themselves unnecessarily. If a person views the growth and development of his personality as a way and means to achieve one or another external goal, then the business approach can provide useful tips here. If you look at personality as a tool, and not as a value in itself, then achieving the heights of personal development is a controversial task. The housewife's knives should be sharpened sufficiently, not perfectly. Excessive enthusiasm for developing one's personality often makes a person less attractive socially. He needs to go to the dacha, help his parents - and he has another training session on self-improvement...
Perhaps, passion for the tasks of personal growth and development sometimes turns out to be just an element of fashion, distracting from more important life needs. It seems controversial to strive completely upward when basic problems have not been solved. Someone who is not completely healthy should not rush to the stadium, and it is not appropriate to set the task of enlightenment to someone who needs the help of a psychotherapist. If a person does not have basic psychological culture, he needs to engage in educational education, and not high spiritual quests. Probably, the path to great development should begin with simpler tasks. More mundane, and perhaps more understandable tasks of personal growth and development are the path of business success and the path of harmony with loved ones. The path of harmony with loved ones is more of a feminine value, while business projects and business success, as values, are closer to the masculine gender. It is good and reasonable if a man becomes a strong leader, a loving husband and a caring father, and a woman becomes a joy for her husband and a wise mother for her children. Can everyone do this? If not, then this is what you should do.
Teaching yourself the basic psychological skills that give you a pass to a larger and more rewarding life is a worthy task.
Peaks of development and people of the future
There are a lot of searching people in the world who are building themselves and the lives around them, trying to build a better future. What has actually been built, where and how do these people live? Cm.
