Pansage

What is Personal Development?

Personal Development is a lifelong process. By this process people can judge their skills and qualities, consider their aims in life and the set goal accordingly as per their maximum potentials. This process always helps you to enhance your confidence, employability prospects, help you to lead a high quality life. Some manners, etiquette, gesture mental growth derives from family, or school as per the upbringing of the child. But as being an adult one can do their personal development for the betterment of their life and that should not stop in later life. So make a relevant plan and make a positive and effective life choices and decisions for your future to enable personal empowerment.
What is the requirement of Personal Development?
In day to day life you may come across some situation which makes you feel why you are not aware about the fact, may your body language could be more positive, why your hands and voice were shivering while speaking with someone? Why you become rude to your colleague? There must be something missing in your CV, why you are not comfortable with table manners? You must have to carry good gestures in front of your guest or some unknown person; you must have to show a controlled behavior. Well these are question would come to your mind when you feel something missing in your personality. Now if you want to judge your skills and qualities and want to set a goal in your life then you must undergo a process called Personal Development.

Personal Development is the only process which makes you to feel where you are standing and where you want to see yourself. Now there are many ideas surrounding personal development. We could elaborate that through Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. According to Maslow all individual has an in-built need of personal development. This follows the process of self actualisation. When people met on certain needs then they are able to develop these needs from hierarchy. When one level of needs is satisfied then people move on to developed another one. And that’s occurs throughout life. However, the level of need motivate someone’s behavior at any one time will also change.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs 
1. Physiological needs: Physiological needs deal with the maintenance of the human body. The bottom part of hierarchy shows the basic psychological needs of food, drink, sleep and shelter the basics for survival. According to Maslow these needs are the most instinctive because others need are secondary until these need are met. For example if we required water it hardly matters to have some other things to drink.

2. Safety needs: Second are the needs for safety and security in both physical and economic sense. These needs are about keeping us safe from harm. We can define these needs as permanent shelter, job security, health security and safe environments. No one can’t attempt the next level of needs until they find these safety needs is filled. These needs are important for survival but not as much as important as the basic psychological needs.

3. Social needs: Third need is social need which is satisfying need for love, belonging, affection, as well for relationship with family. This need is to satisfy our pleasure with relationship with others. Having satisfied with the safety needs and psychological needs people can seek these social needs.

4. Esteemed needs: Esteemed needs become important to an individual after satisfying the basic need. Once any individual have met their need of love and belonging they begin to develop the positive feelings of self esteemed. Esteemed needs are needs that people are looking for higher position within a group or in their work. These needs are like self esteem, respect, confidence, achievement, recognition and accomplishment etc.

5. Self actualization needs: This is the highest level needs of Maslow’s hierarchy. This is like “what a man can be, he must be’ this level of need is concern with what a person’s full potential is and realising that potential. According to Maslow this theory is as the desire to become everything that one is capable of becoming.

Practice Steps to Personal Development

Personal development is a lifelong process. Every individual have its requirement in the different aspects. From your young age to a certain period of time out mentality gets changed and that effects in your every activities. But as days progress you become matured and start to realise what are the mistakes you have done. But you have nothing to do on that period of time, except blaming to yourself. For example as a student you got unorganised in your study, even some casual mistake hampered your result and this didn’t allow you get chance in good college in higher education even it could be possible you may have not got the expected result just because of you were lacking on some area which you need to focus on school days. Then you grow up and start to search for jobs. But soon you realise that you must have to done something good in your study to prepare yourself in job market. At least put some extra effort in grooming and preparation of interviewing skills. While started working you may soon feel you need to be upgrade yourself to be promoted in your work. And to upgrade all life skills you need to take some practical steps.

Make your mind prepare to learn new skills: At a point of time we generally think that everything is over, we have learnt a lot, we have to just utilise the knowledge we have gathered. But if we go in depth we can easily find there is no end of learning. Every day we can come across of such situation which could be new to us and we can face these as a new challenge. Remember learning a new skills will broaden the opportunities open to you, at the same time it empower you as an individual. There is lots of thing which prevent many people from learning new skills. But this barrier can be overcome with some thought. The causes of this barrier might include.

a. Lack of confidence or self- esteem: This is one of the greatest obstacles faces by many individuals. Confidence is something which is required in any time in any situation or even in any places to an individual. If you have confidence you can make things done in your favor. For instance if you are giving a lesson to a student if you are not enough confident about the subject, you can’t elaborate the subject to your students. Or if you are giving a presentation you must be confident on the speech you are going give on stage, here you need to be confident on how you present yourself on stage. We can set another example when you are cooking something until unless you are confident about the spices you need to put for a particular recipe, your recipe will not give you a mouth watering feeling. So in every sector of life you need to be confident to execute things properly. Even if you are crossing a road you must cross it confidently. So you need to overcome your lack of confidence. So here, if this is a problem to you then ask yourself if there is anyone who would support and help you to take the first steps towards learning a new skill. Often, once the first move is made then the greatest hurdle is overcome. Confidence increases as you develop new skills. You need to work for your personal empowerment to overcome your lack of confidence and win any work properly.

b. Family commitments: Sometimes family commitments prevent you to learn a new skill. Sometimes you get so occupy by your family duties that you can’t get time to enhance your skills. But you must feel that to sustain yourself in real world you have to improve your personal aspect. If possible take help of a friend or a family member who can tell your positive or negative traits by which you can brush up your skills. Or even you can join some vocational training courses to enhance your required skills.

c. Lack of time: Due to you day to day hectic schedule, sometimes you become unable to find your fault and can’t brush up the same, you need to manage your time and fit yourself in developing new skills.

d. Economic situation: You may see your financial situation as a barrier to developing new skills. But in this technical era you can easily take help from the internet. The internet has lots of pages and tools that can help you to develop your specific skills. Distance learning courses can help you to study at home which reduces the cost of learning. There are some organisation which helps those who are financially backyard, these organisation help them to learn a new skills through different campaign. It is also possible to learn a new skill with the aid of books from a library. Also, voluntary work can provide an excellent opportunity for learning and developing new skills as can being a member of a local group or society.
Look at your transferable skills: Many skills that you have learnt and develop from your work, education or even from personal life can be successfully applied to other areas of your life. For example you have good listening skills which are a very good aspect of life or you have a good confidence that is also good for your life. These types of skills are known as ‘Transferable Skills’ this set of skill can be easily transferred from one job to another. You need to analyse your existing skills, and analysing your skills and personal qualities will help you to use this skills in another field. Few transferable skills examples are interpersonal skills, communication skills (verbal and written skills) problem solving skills, emotional intelligence etc.

Improve your soft skills: When you think about the skills enhancement it is obvious to improve soft skills. In any stage of life it is important to groom yourself, make yourself prepare to handle any situation. Improving your soft skills will help your presentability; improve your confidence level, your attitude, and your communication skills. So whenever you are trying to develop your skills take a look to improve your soft skills.
Work on your looks: While working on personal development, not only you need to enhance your skills, you also need to work on your looks. Remember if you look polished you gain confidence and that is directly related with your personal enhancement. If you look good you will feel good and that can make you a good personality. Everyone doesn’t have a dashing, beautiful look in born. But few personal cares can make changes on anyone’s personality. To gain confidence in your look you must have to work on choosing your dresses chose a dress which suits you most, take care of your hairs, nourish it properly and have a right haircut for you. Trim your nails properly, make yourself neat and tidy. Take care of your skin, eat proper food, have an adequate sleep, maintain a good hygiene. Try to experiments with different clothes that suit you, and enhance your looks. Try to overcome your mental barrier and come up with a confident personality.
Organised your time: When you are thinking to change your life, you must have to be sure to have extra time in your hand to upgrade your skills. Remember having a time problem can make you face this trouble to unorganised work or unnecessary hazard in life. And no extra skills can’t be acquire by a person who is having a bad time management. So to learn new skills you must have to organise your time. Ensure that you must have time for your family, spend time on things you enjoy to do, devote time to your work, devote time for your education. Whatever the reason, looking at how you spend your time will encourage you to think of ways your time could be managed more effectively. For example:
• Learn to say ‘NO’ for the job request that you feel is not your responsibility.
• Make to do list of task you need to do each day/week.

• Learn the art of work delegation for reducing pressure from yourself.
• Give up things that you don’t really want or need to do.
• Identify your most efficient time when you can get the best output from you, as every person have feel sometime when he feels energetic, so utilise these time to get your work done quickly.
Record your Personal Development: It is often a good idea to keep a record of your personal development. You can write down your key developments of your learning and when the development occurs. And that reflect on your success. This reflection may help you to motivate you to learn more skills in future. As you develop your skills try to put it on journal. Remember if you are improving your skills you are increasing your knowledge. So keep a record of your Personal Development.