People usually associate self-care with relaxation, not deliberative action. Still, one of the best things you can do to take care of yourself is creating a personal growth plan that will direct your future. Read this article to learn the things that you should consider when creating your own.
One thing we need to realize about self-care is that it isn’t simply about making ourselves feel good at the moment. If anything, we take the time to sleep properly, clarify our minds, and set good habits because when we take care of ourselves right now, we set ourselves up for a better and more stable future.
With this in mind, one of the best ways to take care of our current and future selves is to have a personal growth plan.
What is a Personal Growth Plan?
Going by its standard definition, a personal growth plan is “the process of creating an action plan based on awareness, values, reflection, goal-setting and planning for personal development within the context of a career, education, relationship or for self-improvement.”
In simple terms, it is a blueprint for your life. With it, you identify your goals, values, and intentions, and lay out what you need to do to fulfill them.
Now, if you’re a free spirit, you may argue that you just want to go with the flow of your life. Still, you may want to note that in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, self-actualization comes out on top, and it is defined as “the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.” This means that inasmuch as there is a certain joy in being spontaneous, there is still value to be found in pondering what it means to be the best version of yourself.
5 Areas of Personal Growth
There are five aspects of our lives that we must consider when creating our personal growth plan.
Intellectual
Intellectual growth means that you take the time to enhance your knowledge and awareness. Now, we’re not just talking about information that you can acquire through encyclopedias. When you develop the intellectual aspect of your life, you also learn to grow in street smarts and emotional intelligence.
Professional
The professional aspect of your life has to do with your career, academics, and finances. In the world that we live in today, it would be difficult to thrive, or even just survive, without having the background or skills that would be considered valuable to society. This is because these non-monetary assets usually equate to money, and no matter how free-spirited you may be, there is no denying that you still need money to take care of yourself.
Social
As social beings, having a social life is critical to our well-being. For some people, this means hanging out with friends every weekend, while for others, it’s once a month. Either way, having relationships with people who love you and care for you will contribute to the betterment of your well-being.
Physical
Taking care of the physical aspect of your life by exercising and eating healthy is necessary to your self-care journey. If you’re not able to keep your body in good condition, you can’t really do much of anything else.
Individual
Your individual growth has to do with your emotions, mental health, and the spiritual aspects of your life. By leaning into who you are as an individual, you enable yourself to live a life that is authentic and fulfilled.
How to Create a Personal Growth Plan
Establish your values and intentions.
The foundation for your personal growth plan lies in the values and intentions that you have. Therefore, before anything else, you must ask yourself the following questions:
- What is your “why”?
- What are your values?
- What motivates and inspires you?
- What are you passionate about?
- What kind of person do you want to be?
- What are you working towards?
Identify where you’re at in your journey.
After you lay out your principles, begin to assess whether or not you’re currently aligned to your said intentions. Also, take the time to examine the particular aspects of your life that you need to work on and improve.
Here are a few questions that could get you started in your assessment:
- Intellectual:some text
- When was the last time you learned something new?
- How often do you read books?
- Professionalsome text
- Do you feel fulfilled when you do your work?
- Are you working towards financial independence?
- Socialsome text
- Do you have people that you can trust and count on?
- How often do you spend time with your friends and family?
- Physical: some text
- How often do you exercise?
- Is your diet balanced and healthy?
- Individualsome text
- Do you spend time on hobbies and recreation?
- Would you consider yourself self-aware?
An excellent way to measure this data is by spending maybe a week or two just identifying and tracking the practices you need to work on. Perhaps, you can download apps like Tally, which can help you understand your current patterns. You can also employ bullet journals, excel sheets, and anything else that would assist you in your exploration.
What’s important is that you get an idea of the specific aspects that you need to focus on to properly identify the steps you need to take.
Start with one area.
Working on all the areas for personal growth can end up hindering your plan instead of furthering it. This is because doing everything at the same time will only burn you out. As such, just choose one area to start with, preferably the area that needs the most work and improvement. As you power through one section, you’ll find it easier to move on to the next. Before you even know it, you’ll be done with your entire workload in a bit.
Be specific with your goals.
To make this practical, you would want your goals to be SMART, that is:
Specific
Measurable
Assignable
Realistic
Time-related
So you can get an idea of how this works, here are a few examples:
- Lose 3 kg within the next month
- Save $1,000 by the end of the year
- Read one non-fiction book every week
If that’s too much for you, you can also break these down into smaller goals, like:
- Run 20 minutes every weekday
- Save $50 every week
- Read five pages every day
To ensure that you are able to stay in line with these, write them down in your journal, planner, or calendar. You can also have them listed down on to-do lists with a corresponding due date so that you can tick them off once you’ve achieved them. It’s like a bucket list, except for personal growth.
But if you feel like having them written down somewhere will cause you to forget them eventually, you may opt to download apps like Do, which allow you to set repeatable reminders. By making sure that an alert comes up every day or every week, you keep yourself set on your personal growth plan.
Track your progress.
Having a personal growth plan would be pointless if you don’t actually follow through with it. As such, make sure that you are keeping track of your progress.
If you set big goals that are measured after intervals, just check in every once and a while and measure your progress. For example, if you want to lose 3 kg by the end of next month, then get on a scale once a week and see if you’re on track to reach your goal. If not, then you may have to make some adjustments. By the next week, you can check again and see if these changes have been effective.
Meanwhile, if you opt to set smaller goals, you can consider checking in daily. One way to do this is to print out templates or buy checklists so that you can log in if you successfully made progress that day. If you’d rather have everything digitized, you can use habit-tracking apps like Done, which will automatically show your streaks, frequency, and trends.
Having a personal growth plan may sometimes feel like it takes too much effort to be counted as a self-care practice. But once some time has passed, you will realize that the delayed gratification it gives you is unparalleled. Further, it adds value to your life in a way that also helps you take care of your future self. If this is so, then it may be the best self-care method you will ever employ.
