How well do you get yourself acquainted with personal development? Is it what you do regularly or you are wondering what I’m talking about? Whether you fall into this category or not, this article will either help you step up your personal growth or help you begin your development journey.
Let’s begin with what personal development is. It’s a very broad subject. The Business Dictionary defines it as, “The process of improving oneself through such activities as enhancing employment skills, increasing consciousness, and building wealth.”
Furthermore, personal development can be anything that makes you go after your best self. There are many topics within the personal development world, but they all seem to fall under five major categories.
The categories are mental, social, spiritual, emotional, and physical. Today we are going over each of these categories. Stay close to learn how to add personal development into your life, no matter how busy your day is.
5 Areas of Personal Development
1. Mental
The first of the five areas of personal development is all about growing and developing your mind. You can engage in several mental personal development activities. Some examples include taking a class, reading a book, or watching an informational YouTube video to improve and upgrade your skills. By creating some time each day, or each week, you can see growth in your work, career, increased productivity, and much more.
For some, their favourite activities to do in this personal development category are reading books on their industry, for me it taking courses online. What about you?
2. Social
This category is about improving your communication. This category is the most overlooked and underrated. However, social personal development is an essential activity to practice. Learning new languages, consistent practice of your public speaking skills and commitment to more active listening are all activities that can help with social personal development.
When was the last time you did any of these activities? Has it been a while? If yes then I want to challenge you to pick at least one activity to do this week.
3 Spiritual
Spiritual personal development can give a different meaning to each person. The ideal way I know how to explain it is anything that brings you peace and helps you connect to your true or inner self. The activities that are in this category can be spending time in prayer and reading your Bible, taking a nature walk, meditating, etc.
Permit me to share with you that during my spiritual personal development time, I love to engage in a Bible study or stay connected with the people from my church. Discussing the message from the sermon on Sunday gladdens my heart unlike anything else can.
So let me ask you what activities do you enjoy doing for your spiritual life?
4. Emotional
Emotional personal development is all about emotions. Because of this, it can be very easy to brush it off. Doing this, I have realized that it wasn’t a healthy behaviour. The truth is holding in your emotions, and brushing them off, only makes it worse when they finally do come out. Some examples of what to do here are journaling, tracking your mood, talking to a friend, or even a counsellor.
Henceforth, will you start partaking in any of these activities?
5. Physical
Physical personal development is more than just exercise. You will also want to consider eating and sleeping habits, amongst many others, to understand the full details of this category. Some examples include working out, getting 7-9 hours of sleep each night, meal prepping, and going to regular check-ups at your doctor’s office. By having a sound exercise, healthy eating, and sleep you will be your best physical self.
How To Include Development Into Your Day
Now that you are aware of what personal d elopement is, and what it entails, you want to know how to fit it into your day?
These are two ideas to incorporate personal growth into your day, although there are still more. I would propose listing out any activities you can think of for each of the categories and then bring out which ones can fit into your day/week. Explore and enjoy it.
Weekly Schedule:
If you feel like trying these categories all at once can be exhausting then try separating them into themed days.
For example:
–> Monday: physical
–> Tuesday: emotional
–> Wednesday: Your choice
–> Thursday: social
–> Friday: mental
–> Saturday: Your choice
–> Sunday: Spiritual
If you have a busy day and you have no idea how to include personal development into your schedule, try the tips given below. Each of these takes time or can be done while doing something you already planned.
- Mental: Listen to a podcast on your commute to work, it could be full of short, but motivational and informational discussions.
- Social: Instead of going on the low on your lunch break, you can ask a colleague or friend to join you? During lunch lunchtime ice active listening. Positive Psychology contains some great tips that you can use.
- Spiritual: start your day with a devotional or five minutes of meditation before getting prepared for work.
- Emotional: you can end your day by journaling. You can reflect or think on your day or use a journal prompt. Whatever crossed my mind is a good place to start.
- Physical: A common misconception is that working out has to take a long while to be effective. Sometimes long workouts can be a good thing. However, it is impossible to do when you have a busy day. Don’t relent or completely skip your workout because of this. Instead, you can find a short workout routine or incorporate exercise throughout your day.
Conclusions
By now I hope you can see that personal development, done right, is about the entire self. We are not only focusing on one aspect of you here. That will be important to take note of when it comes to the time to choose your development activities.
As you have seen exactly what personal development involves, and how to make it fit into your life, how can you incorporate it into your life?
