By: David Lowbridge - Transcending Waves
Are you looking to improve your life? Do you want to reach new heights and grow as a person? Then you’ve probably set yourself some personal growth goals. That’s a great first step in your individual development, but it shouldn’t stop there.
How Can You Achieve Personal Growth Goals?
Growing as a person is not easy. We all get comfortable when there is little wrong with our lives but stagnation is not useful either. It can be just as damaging.
Therefore, instead of just assigning personal growth goals, you need to plan how to achieve them. This can be the challenging aspect. Knowing what you want is different from knowing how to achieve it. This is why you need this list of tips for achieving your self-development goals.
1. Create A Plan Of Action
Words are ineffective when you want to improve; actions are more important. But how are you going to act without knowing what to do? Creating a plan of action is the first step to any self-improvement plan.
A plan of action should include actions such as what you need to do and when, what order things need to be done in, and other such steps that will support your goals. It’s always best to have a written plan of action as not writing one down can lead to forgetting important tasks.
Part of your action plan should include milestones. These are important indicators to demonstrate you’re moving forwards and not working hard for nothing. Milestones can be really big, but you might be better off starting with smaller milestones.
For example, if you’re trying to lose weight, have your first goal as 2 lbs, your next one losing 6 lbs and the next one losing even more.
2. Reward Yourself For Milestones
When you’re trying to improve, nothing fills you with optimism more than realizing you’re making progress. There are several steps to this. This first is to set milestones that are realistic. The next is to reward yourself whenever you achieve a milestone.
Rewards don’t have to be very elaborate or expensive. They could be as simple as allowing yourself to watch a favorite program or treating yourself to a favorite take-out meal. Whatever you choose, ensure that it’s a positive experience.
You might even want to try to grow the reward as you move through your milestones. For your first milestone, you could have half an hour of watching your favorite comedy, and by your fifth or sixth milestone, you can offer yourself a trip to the cinema.
3. Schedule In Time Every Day To Do Something
Improving yourself is not an easy task. It can’t be done overnight. Nor can you do a lot of work one day and expect to take a few days off. Doing this will often lead to you abandoning your goals.
So, you need to put time aside every day to improve yourself. Put it in your journal; schedule at least 10 minutes every day for this. Doing it regularly will allow you to ensure you don’t lose concentration and you make progress all the time. Also, the more you do it, the more of a habit it will become, and thus become easier.
4. Keep A Good Record
We all have bad days, and when you’re trying to achieve things, these bad days can seem like improvement goals are worthless. What you need at these times is perspective. There’s nothing that can achieve this as well as your own words.
That’s why you need to consider keeping a written or verbal record of your progress. Every day, as part of your development time, ensure you’re writing down what you’ve done, what the results were, and how it made you feel.
Ensure you’re putting as much focus on the emotional results as the physical results. Then, when you’ve had a bad day, you can look back at your past and see the progress you’ve made. It will improve your mood and keep you going.
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RESEARCH PROVES THAT THE MOST SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE IN THE WORLD WRITE DOWN THEIR GOALS
A study conducted at Harvard Business School surveyed Harvard MBA students to find out how many of them had clear goals and wrote down exactly what they wanted to accomplish in the future. The results from the survey showed that only 3% of the students had specific goals and wrote them down. The researchers conducting the study followed up with all of the students 10 years later and found that the 3% of the class that had both written goals and a plan, went on to earn 10X as much as the rest of the 97% of the class put together.
5. Share Your Experiences With Others
There are lots of reasons why you might want to share your experiences with others. One of the best reasons is that a supportive group will help you achieve your goals more swiftly.
Support groups are likely to offer you tips and guidance to help you achieve your goals as well.
There are numerous support groups out there. Some of these are well known for common afflictions like drinking. Other groups are a little less well-known or not utilized as they could (and should) be.
Book clubs, for instance, could be an excellent resource of support for aspiring authors. They might be set up for reading, but many of those who are reading are also looking to write a book. They’re also your target audience. So, you can use them as a sounding board to direct your efforts to a better end result.
If you’re unsure of the potential networks in your area, try using Meetup.com.
6. Accept Transgressions
Can you honestly say that every day will go well? If you said “yes” then you’re being unrealistic and this point was written specifically for you.
There will be days where you might feel you’ve gone backward or not progressed at all. These will happen, no matter what effort you’ve put in. Sometimes fate is just against your plans.
Don’t be angry. This is toxic to your personal growth goals. Instead, you need to accept that mistakes will happen and learn why they did. Then you need to spot where warning signs might have come from. Using your records or writing down the experiences can help with this.
Finally, you can set into motion a series of ideas and plans to prevent the mistake from happening again. Remember that without mistakes, we cannot learn and even very successful people can make mistakes and learn from them. Join them in the exclusive club and you, too, can succeed.
Will You Achieve Your Personal Growth Goals?
Your personal growth goals are important. They determine the direction you want to take your life in, but achieving them can be challenging without the right mindset or tools at your disposal. Use our top 6 tips above to develop a plan of action and succeed in your personal development. You’ll be glad when you’ve crossed that finishing line. Good luck!