Personal development is something we all strive to be better at. And one of the best ways to work on your personal development is to set goals! But if you aren’t familiar with how to do this then you should keep reading for how to set personal development goals.
But first let’s chat about why personal development is important?
The importance of Personal Development:
- It betters your existing and skills to help you improve your skills in life.
- Helps push you out of your comfort zone (for ideas on leaving your comfort zone check out this article).
- Makes you more self aware of your actions and decisions and how they impact your life.
- It helps improve your personal and professional relationships.
- Helps you make decisions better and more efficiently so you can avoid decision fatigue.
- Improves your chances of reaching personal and professional goals in all areas of your life.
And so many more reasons! Which is why you also need to know how to set and how to achieve your personal development goals.
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How To Set Personal Development Goals
Step 1: Write down the most important things to you
The first step is to really think about what is the most important things to you in your life.
Once you learn what matters the most to you and what you value the most is when you can really start thinking of what personal development goals you want to work on!
I recommend actually writing down a list of the things that mean the most of you (like family, adventures, career growth, etc). This is because actually seeing the items on paper can help you visualize how you can improve as a person and focus on those things.
So grab your favorite notebook and start this list!
Step 2: Be honest with where you need to improve
The next step require complete honesty!
If you aren’t honest with yourself about what your weaknesses are and where you can develop and improve as a person then you will never improve.
Self improvement and personal development is all about improving yourself and that means improving the areas you aren’t currently as good as you want to be at.
Step 3: Brainstorm all the personal development goals you can think of
The next step is a brainstorm session where you write down every personal development goal you can think of.
Grab your notebook again and start writing down every personal development goal you can think of.
Keep your lists from the first 2 steps in mind but keep writing down every goal that would help you better yourself and start becoming the person you want to be.
It’s better to brainstorm way too many goals and then narrow the list down then being too picky and risk not thinking of a self improvement goal that you may not have thought of before.
Step 4: Prioritize and narrow down your list of goals
Using your massive list of brainstormed self improvement goals you are going to narrow that list down.
I can’t tell you exactly how many personal development goals you should create but I do recommend aiming for 3-5 that are really important to you.
Then within those 3-5 goals I recommend prioritizing them and ranking them from the most important goals to the least important goals. That way when you are implementing them you can focus on the most important ones first.
Step 5: Make an actual and realistic plan for achieving the goals
This is the most obvious step but of course is necessary.
This is the step of actually setting the plan for the goals. Remember- a goal without a plan is just a dream.
So for each personal development goal you set make a step by step plan for what you are going to do to actually achieve the goal.
Then make sure to add a way to measure your progress and a way to tell if you have “completed” the goal. I really recommend sticking to measurable goals at first so you don’t get defeated by vague and non-measurable goals.
Step 6: Add the goals in slowly
Okay, so you have your goals and you have a plan to achieve them.
But you can’t implement a whole bunch of new daily actions and goals all in one day! That’s how you burn out and get overwhelmed and then quit!
So start with one goal and once you feel that you are able to consistently do the actionable steps to achieve that goal you can add in the next goals.
I don’t recommend adding in a goal every week or every month but rather basing it off your progress and how much life adjustments you had to make for the goal before it. It’s much more realistic that way and easier to actually achieve the goals.
Step 7: Re-evaluate as needed
The final step is to make sure you re-evaluate and accept that re-evaluation is totally necessary.
You will absolutely have life changing circumstances at some point in your life that mean that you may be working towards a goal that is no longer applicable or a high priority.
You may find yourself in a circumstance where you need to temporarily pause your goals too and that is totally okay! Don’t burn yourself out by trying to achieve personal development goals that you don’t have time for at that moment.
Accept that re-evaluation will be needed as things change in your life and as you complete goals you will need to re-prioritize and set new goals.
Setting personal development goals so you can improve yourself and improve your life is important! But it can be scary if you don’t know where to start.
So follow these steps and take it slow. Remember, personal development is a life long journey not a destination!
Also, make sure to subscribe to my weekly round up below. Because in the next few weeks I will have a new post out with a huge list of personal development ideas that you can consider adding to your goals list!
Korra-Shay
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If you like this post then you will probably like some of the other self improvement posts on here! Here are some of my favorites:
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