Personal development is about improving areas of your life.
Knowing what those areas are is important to remain on track and do what is truly important for you. They allow you to see at a high level where you are going with your life. Without specific areas to improve, low level goals become meaningless, and you always have the impression that you are going anywhere.
I consider areas of improvement to be at the same level of values, with the difference that their purpose is to define actions instead of principles.
To find what your areas of improvement are, you can use two methods.
The first method is to look at your core values and ask yourself [em]What can I do to get more of this?[em]. An area of improvement is simply a practical reflection of a value. For example if you care about love, then friendship is probably an area of improvement for you, but also relationships is a good candidate. For each value you should have at least two or three areas of improvement to choose, depending on the situation.
The second approach is to take a list of common areas to improve, and then select those which truly align with your values.
The following is an example of common areas of improvement: health, relaxation, creative thinking, finance, relationships, friendships, family, fun, communication, public speaking, writing, listening, popularity, experience, managing, planning, negotiation, respect, influence, goal setting, awareness, time management. Take the time to research your own list and don’t just try to improve in every area. Work on your strengths instead.
When you have defined your own list using one of the methods above, you have to create specific categories for each one. For example if one of your areas is health, you might want to create sub-categories for diet, body building and stretching/agility. Write down your goals for each of them.
When you are done, it’s time to start working on it. Remember that those areas are the ones which will make a huge difference for yourself, so be sure to work on them each day. It’s also important to constantly look at them every day, so that you’ll be constantly feeding your mind with positive informations on what you want to become.
Posted on July 03 2009
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Oscar, the idea of aligning your goals with your values is extremely important. Some people decide to go about improving or changing something in a way that aligns with some external source of values (society, family, etc.). That is a recipe for disaster.
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Stephen, unfortunately I used to be that way, but as I wrote in the article, I always had the sensation that I wasn’t going anywhere. Sure, I accomplished some goals, but they was of low value compared to my values.
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Hey Oscar,
I realised i hadn’t subscribed yet but see you’ve added the feature to your site.
Just subscribed:)
One of the biggest problems to people improving themselves is that they do not know what they want to or should improve on.
That is the first and biggest step, finding an area that you need to improve on and then part two is making a plan of action and sticking to it:)
Keep well!
Diggy
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Hey Diggy,
I’m glad you subscribed to my blog, I hope you find the content interesting.
Oscar
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I wrote a similar article on my blog about this too, titled “Getting Stuck in Negative Patterns” where I gave advice very similar to yours. Basically, each entity you want to improve upon, whether it be losing weight or giving up an old habit, you have to break down into smaller sub-categories and start at it from there.
Upon accomplishing each sub-category, you’ll notice that your main goal sort of achieves itself. Of course, this takes some hard work and for that reason is a major turn off for a lot of people, yet it’s one of the best ways to not only accomplish your goals, but to turn transform them into life-long habits.
By the way, your English is great — I know you mentioned in one of your first posts how that was one of your goals for this blog: to improve upon that, and it’s definitely noticeable.
-Travis
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Thank you Travis.
It’s hard to keep working on you goals, but the rewards are worth trying and once you get that first step, it’s easier to keep going.
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I agree 100% with this. Writing things down and breaking a goal into subcategories also helps goals seem less overwhelming, I find. If I have a big undefined blob of a goal, it can be frightening. Once I break it down, it makes it seem more achievable.
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Yes because you automatically see that it is achievable and you write down exactly
-at least in theory- how to do it.reply to this comment
[…] to find a response to this question, you only need to look at those people who ignore their core areas of development and see how they looks and […]
It seems crazy but some people hate to talk about what they need to improve. They think that talking about it makes them weak because they are admitting they have weaknesses. They want to be perfect.
I think admitting your weaknesses and areas that need improvement are one of the key steps to success.
Thanks for the great post!
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Thanks for your comment. I totally buy your point of view. Admitting to be wrong is the first step towards fixing it. And it’s the same with fear.
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