These 100 Super Human Personal Development Goals Actually Change Things

Personal development goals are what transform your disease into longing, and your longing into tangible progress.

When it comes to living life, setting the right personal development goals can make you above average in more ways that you can imagine.

Knowledge and skills compound, and being able to call upon them as you live your life is going to have you seeing more and more success, whether that’s the simple or complicated things in life.

• Imagine knowing just how to deal with difficult people so that you come out on top.
• Think about what it means to have the confidence of an Olympic Athlete.
• What about being able to teach your friends and children those same skills so they become extraordinary as well?

You might not be Super man…but you will be superhuman.

What are personal development goals?

Personal development goals are a combination of the vision you have for your life, and the actions you’ll take to achieve that vision. Normally personal development goals tackle longing and discontent in one of the main areas of human life: Money/Finance/Job, Health/Fitness, Relationships, Confidence, & Achievement/Accomplishment

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Personal development is the process of you creating a bigger and better YOU. Growth is not only necessary for happiness, but integral to the human spirit. All of who and what we are is a tireless process of striving for growth.

• We want to know and be able to do more
• We crave to be better than we were yesterday.
• Humans have a desire to be supremely creative and achieve the most possible

More important than that, is that constantly developing yourself mitigates the possibility of the big bad wolf (life) coming to blow your house down (cause trouble in your personal life).

Personal growth, self improvement, self help and personal development goals arent only about achievement, confidence, self esteem etc…they also mean preparedness, meaning that when life throws you some rotten lemons, you have the skills and mindset necessary to handle them gracefully.

There is also the phenomenon in life called change. Some say it is the only constant. Regardless, Vishen Lakhiani (founder of MINDVALLEY) has an idea he calls “our rate of internal transformation.”

“Let’s celebrate our extraordinary ability to evolve emotionally, mentally, spiritually throughout life, taking on new ideas, thoughts, philosophies, and ways of being and living.”

vishen lakhiani

As humans, we are constantly squeezing as much juice (happiness, thrill, exhilaration, satisfaction) out of life as possible.

But eventually, we grow up. We grow into a new phase of life where our old phase just doesn’t have as much to offer as it once did. Think about anything you’ve ever “grown out of”.

• Do you party as much as you used to?
• Maybe you did a bunch of drugs as a teenager and don’t anymore
• Maybe you used to be involved in a certain activity or follow a path that really isn’t doing it for you anymore.

This is your rate of internal transformation.

The thing is, it never stops…Your internal self NEVER stops growing. It might grow fast, or so slow that it almost looks stationary, but it never truly stops.

The external reality you live in, your life, is the shell that accommodates your internal self, and when your internal transformation outgrows your life, shit hits the fan.

• Life becomes uncomfortable
• There is longing, yearning, disease and discontent
• You might lose friends
• You might lose a job, go through a dark night of the soul situation etc..

All of those things are the effects of your old life breaking down and making way for a new one.

What’s the problem with that? Nothing, on paper, but it can be extremely uncomfortable for you. If you wait too long to make the changes you know you need to make in life, you’ll burst out of your shell like a butterfly from its cocoon.

In reality, more like a shaken up soda bottle. The explosion can be super violent and terrifying if you ignore those changes for too long.

Put it this way – I ignored a change I needed to make in my life for too long once, and one of those eruptions happened to me. What was the result? I didn’t speak to a very close family member of mine for nearly 2 years and almost died in a car accident in a fit of rage. 

Not something you want to go through.

So how can you avoid this? Constantly improve yourself, your life, and be the proverbial captain of your ship. You guide the change, rather than be a victim of it.

You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.

Brian Tracy

That is the foundation of Personal Development Goals, they make you a seafarer instead of a sea drowner…

Benefits of personal development goals

There was once a person who said “I want to change the world, so I’ll change the children.”. As children, we are tremendously programmable.

Your environment is basically your god as a child. In fact, it’s likely that many of our behaviors, thoughts and feelings came from childhood in someway.

The emphasis on changing the world through changing children is an emphasis on controlling their development. In this case study by GMU in the UK teachers are encouraged to start encouraging their young students to engage in personal development as soon as the year starts.

“One of the most effective ways to support children’s learning and development is by actively engaging in PPD (Personal Planned Development) right from the beginning of your teaching career. ” 

If teachers should show their students the purpose and power of personal development at such a young age, how important is it for adults to engage in constant self improvement?

The main benefits of personal development goals are:

1. Knowing yourself well
2. Building your vision
3. A re-inspired life
4. Increased drive to be great
5. Battle ready and hardiness
6. More friends, more enemies & more fun

Knowing yourself

All change comes from awareness. All coaches, therapists, teachers etc…know that progress comes from deep self awareness of one’s own current and desired position in life.

Knowing yourself means self awareness at every level:

• your body
• your mind
• your intelligence
• and whatever metaphysical parts of you that you think exist.

Knowing where you’re at in life allows you to exercise real humility. Some erroneously think that humility means you walk this world meak, with your head down, never looking for trouble and being nice to everyone.

The reality is, true humility means knowing your actual position in life, and behaving according to that position. Real humility means you place yourself precisely where you belong, and you don’t take too much, but also not too little.

If you pretend that you know nothing in the name of being humble

• you risk being lazy,
• embracing fear,
• avoiding responsibility
• and betraying those who could genuinely benefit from your help and expertise.

However, if you pretend to be more qualified than you are you run the risk of promising others results and not being able to deliver. That makes you a cheater and a charlatan.

The key is knowing yourself so well, that you take what respect you deserve, and none that you don’t. 

Let’s pretend for a moment that anything that kills the human spirit is evil, and what helps it flourish is good. 

This means that you must know precisely where you stand and who/what you’re fighting against, so that you can pick a side and fight for it.

For example: I think the most comprehensive evil on planet earth is human ignorance. Every problem on earth is caused by a human being who simply didn’t understand any better. That fundamental belief shapes nearly everything I do.

1. It’s the cause of my love for sitting in libraries
2. My obsession with knowledge
3. The reason why I love reading, taking and selling courses
4. Why I’m heavily into personal growth

Knowing who you are foundationally will allow you to know so many other things about you. It makes life easier when you know who you are and where you stand.

Personal development goals / topics to know about yourself:

• Your values
• Your skills
• Your longing and discontent with life
• Where you habitually avoid pain and suffering
• Which life areas you are most and least satisfied with
• Your “reach for the stars” dreams
• What others think about you
• Where you show the most bias
• Your unique service avenue (some call it a zone of brilliance)
• What life and lifestyle will having you living fully optimized

Building your vision

Once you’ve taken the time to get familiar with yourself, the life you want to live (build) will start to become clear. Suddenly, you won’t confine yourself to living and being the same way you’ve always been. 

Possibilities open up for you – it’s rather exciting actually.

Good things in life come to those who make good decisions, and having a crystal clear vision about the who, what, where, why, and when of your life is going to allow you to make those decisions.

Otherwise, we’re doomed to taking what opportunities are presented to us (even if they’re bad), wasting time, resources and life.

When you consider that life wasted can never be had again, you start to take the decisions you make seriously.

How can you make a good decision for yourself if you don’t know what you want? I mean deep knowledge of self here, not superficial knowledge.

Once you arrive at a clear life vision, you can start to move toward that vision each day, which is commonly known as setting goals.

Essentially: crafting a vision for your life means to decide what goals you’ll go after, in the short term, and what you hope to accomplish in the grand scheme of your life.

A re-inspired life (Personal development goals)

You would be surprised how effective even the smallest progress is at completely reshaping how we see life.

Progress is integral to human happiness. We can’t go long without growth before we become depressed and resigned from life. That’s a fact.

This progress takes on your own definition, because it’s your life and you grow in ways that make you happy, but the fact remains: without growth, before long, we become antsy.

Progress, progress, progress…is the name of the game in human life.

When you understand what you really want and start taking small steps toward those wants you feel reinvigorated. Like “I’m finally going somewhere…I remember what this feels like.”

This re inspiration will change a few things:

1. It consumes most of your unneeded stress and increase your motivation, effectively making you better in all the ways you can be
2. It will make you a better person. You’ll be nicer, happier, and more generous with others
3. You’ll be human again. Our humanity is our ability to grow, otherwise, we’re merely beasts driven by the law of nature.

Increased drive to be great

Tiny amounts of progress equal tremendous amounts of motivation. Once you start moving in your desired direction, your entire body feels recharged. Your brain, your heart, your muscles, hormones and thoughts, all moving in the direction of these amazing goals you now have for yourself.

Which feels great, especially compared to where we used to be, which is normally a state of dissatisfaction with life that can cause depression, make you cynical, hateful and bitter.

It’s like the difference between being exhausted after a hard day, and just taking your first sip of coffee in the morning. There’s a big difference.

You like the sip of coffee, right? Similarly, we love the feeling of being motivated to pursue a life of our down design, because it feels like living again. It’s a more natural representation of who we are. We’re not meant to remain stagnant – we’re meant to grow, enjoy, and grow more.

There’s no arguing that. If that’s not a more natural state for us, then why do we like it better?

Battle ready and hardy

Personal development, self help, self improvement, and personal growth are all terms for developing the mindset and skills necessary to achieve the results you want in life.

Once you break through the threshold and achieve a certain amount of personal growth, you’ll have accumulated a library of skills and mental techniques that allow you to traverse most of the challenges you experience in life, and endure them internally.

Some call it resilience, I call it battle readiness. I’m not sure if it’s a me thing, or an aries thing, but I see everything in life as warfare.

Case in point: anytime you don’t have the skill set or mindset to get the results you want in life a small piece of you dies. That piece might be a shot to the ego, an internal struggle, losing an argument, a dark night of the soul period or whatever.

If a circumstance arises where a piece of me might die, that is warfare – period. Personal development is the key to handling every situation in life and being successful at it. It’s not about achieving perfection, it’s about achieving a state of mastery.

Mastery is a spectrum, not a position. When you set and achieve your personal development goals you will eventually achieve a state where you are a master at life. You will still make mistakes, you will NOT be perfect, but you will be skilled enough where life is smooth sailin’ not a treacherous climb.

When this happens, you’ll possess a level of battle readiness, and hardiness that is desirable to say the least. 

Once a friend of mine and I got into an argument. I said some less than admirable things to him, and he fired some back at me. Later I felt bad about what I had said and went to apologize. I told him I was sorry for being mean…and he just laughed.

He said, “Mean!?!? I was in the army…bitch I’ve been shot at before HAHA. What does “mean” even mean?!”

That’s where you want to be in life: so skilled and masterful that you can avoid most pitfalls, but ready for the ones you’re forced to embrace.

My friend and I both understood this, had a nice laugh and made up – and that’s the entire point.

More friends, more enemies & more fun

Friends are people who support the journey you take in life. Enemies are those who actively oppose you.

Ideally, especially if you’re on the journey to life mastery, you’ll have many more friends than enemies, but you still want enemies in your life for two reasons: they tell you when you’re doing something right, and they’re fun to have around sometimes.

There’s nothing wrong with a little friendly competition, but there are people in this world who will oppose you no matter what you do:

• Because they’re knuckleheads
• Because they’re just plain stupid
• Or they’re jealous

Too many enemies isn’t a good thing, but the right amount of enemies in your life can add a level of excitement that friends cannot offer. 

Setting the right personal development goals that lead to a profound level of self improvement in your life will change you in a good way. You’ll leave the old and outdated behind, and embrace the new.

Once you embrace the new, you acquire a corresponding group of people who appreciate the new you. Those are your friends. 

This whole process leads to better business relationships, more money, better family relationships, better romantic relationships, and in general, more fun – which means you’re winning the game.

How to set Personal Development Goals

1. Diagnose your Life (before personal development goals)

Don’t be willy nilly or random with your self development goals; use a system. The worst thing would be to target an area that doesn’t need improvement.

Now I know what you’re thinking, all areas could use improvement right? Of course, but I advise that you use a good strategic approach so your life improves according to your priorities.

Ask yourself questions like:

• Do I know which improvements I want? Maybe you came here with a specific idea in mind. 
• What areas of my life are crap and which are awesome? Maybe your finances are shit but your family life is great.
• How would I rank each area of my life? Then you can decide what order to tackle them in.

It sucks to say it, but I don’t have a set formula for you to follow. This will be specific to you.

It would be easy for me to say that you should tackle the crappiest area of your life first, but that might not be the best option for you.

Let say for example: you have a less than ideal relationship with your parents. The area of your life that has the lowest satisfaction score for you is your family life, and you’d like to get that score up one day. Now might not be a good time. Maybe your brother is overseas in the military and your parents just aren’t ready for it yet.

Variables like this are gonna sway your decision, and it’s up to you to decide which area of your life you wish to improve first.

No, I do not recommend doing multiples at a time. The most I recommend is two. 

Also, if you want a suggestion, I would tell you to tackle your health and your money first. Everything in life seems to get easier when your money is enough and your health is good. So try those if you’re having trouble.

How do you score each area of your life? You take the Wheel of Life exercise, which you can find for free anywhere on the internet, or you could get coached by me on how to use it for free here.

2. What is your longing and discontent?

Once you’ve chosen an area to improve upon, take a few minutes to really flesh out what you don’t like about your current situation. Mary Morrissey tells people to focus on their longing and discontent.

What sucks about your current situation and what do you desire instead?

• Sit down
• Make a list
• Describe your situation
• What needs to change? 

3. Decide what you want instead

This is much easier than figuring out why you’re truly dissatisfied with your life. Sometimes it’s even better to start here and reverse engineer back into your dissatisfaction. Use this formula below to figure out what you want instead of what you don’t want.

Rules:

1. You deserve anything you want as long as you’re willing to set the standard of the person who has it. 
2. The formula for success is: Desire = Inspired and Consistent Action x Time x Experimentation (Action everyday, for enough time, drop what does not work, embrace what does)
3. Be practical but don’t cheat yourself. Humans are capable of extraordinary things.

Examples of goals for personal development and self improvement:

• Feeling fat / cant bend over to even tie my shoes > i wanna feel loose, flexible, and full of energy. Just decent looking.
• Feel superior to everyone else > i want to notice my own strengths but also the strengths that others have and be able to get along with them
• I think everyone judges me, hates me, doesn’t like me and wishes i weren’t around > I want to feel more confident in my skills, presence, looks and abilities.

4. Set intention – Make your choice

I had this random thought one day, that no matter what the most powerful force in the universe is (a person, or an impersonal but somehow highly organized set of laws and forces), it doesn’t stop human beings from making disgusting, repulsive and evil choices; nor does it stop us from making impossibly generous, selfless and inspiring choices.

If you think about that deeply enough, a sense of responsibility will come to you. The power of choice is possibly the most powerful thing on earth. We can even choose to disobey the law of gravity and go out into space if we like.

That means you have no reason to ignore the power that you obviously DO possess. Ignoring it would be like burying your head in the sand and being a coward.

In the emails I send out (see them here) I call us all Choicemakers, but you really only have two choices: to do the thing or not. An intention is really nothing but a choice you make. You decide once and for all, with finality, “This is what I intend to do now.”

Set your intention on your piece of paper: I’m choosing to _________________!

• It doesn’t need to be detailed.
• Use the formula in the previous section.

5. Create an Action Plan for your Personal Development Goals

Once your intention is set you’re ready to outline the steps you will take to achieve it. Your intention is broad, but your action plan is specific. Action plans have several components: 

1. A timeline
2. The goal specifically stated
3. Plans for all possible outcomes – Most likely, Best possible, and Worst possible
4. The skills you’ll need – what a person who’s achieved this goal looks like
5. One thing you can do each day to achieve the most results
6. Who what where why and when and how much
7. Monthly and yearly objectives that you transform into daily to do lists
8. A specific daily plan for what time and where you will work on this goal
9. What you will do when you fail or relapse – implementation intentions

In order to simply map out your goal, ask yourself these questions:

1. What is my goal in general?
2. Is my goal broad or detailed? Make your goal specific so that you can measure its progress.
3. Measure your goal. What will you do and how much of it by when?
4. Is this goal even possible? Are you overreaching or underestimating yourself?
5. Is this goal really relevant to you? Will it actually help you attain your goals?
6. How much time are you giving yourself to attain this goal?

Smart goals Example Formula for personal development goals

• [General desire] [General to specific] [I will accomplish this much. A number – lbs, dollars etc..] [I can do this because…] [The reason I’m doing this is because and this goal helps me achieve it because] [It will be finished by “this date this time”]

READ: Examples of smart goals and how they work

6. Add implementation intentions

Implementations intentions are simply what you plan to do when your triggers come up.

Imagine for a moment that your goal is to avoid gas station food. It’s high sugar, high fat, high salt and no nutrition food that you don’t want in your diet anymore.

Your goal is to eliminate that food from your diet, but each morning on your way to work, there is a convenient gas station right before you get there.

• You always have time to stop at the gas station
• They have the energy drinks you want and you’re always tired in the morning
• They have a nice mid morning snack candy bar you like etc…

You’ve been going there each morning for a year and your brain craves all the rewards you get when you stop there…the sugar, the salt, the caffeine etc…

Seeing the gas station itself starts a routine/habit loop in your brain which is what makes you crave things. You’ll crave the caffeine and the sugar, and if you’re not careful you will cave and screw your goal up.

An implementation intention comes in when you understand that. You say to yourself: “When I see the gas station, I’m gonna turn up the radio and keep driving passed” OR “I’m gonna take a sip of some premade coffee I made from home to get my satisfaction”…something like that.

Or you could really be smart and take a bit further and say, “I’m gonna take another route all together and not force myself to use my willpower to avoid that bad habit.”

These are implementation intentions. In a nutshell, they are the actions you choose to do instead when you know your cravings will creep up on you in life. Simply having a plan will increase your chances of achieving your goals for personal development.

7. Consult your journal – Note your progress – Review

Journals keep you honest, both from exaggerating your progress and getting into a rut.

A journal will keep you from lying to yourself. You can’t tell yourself that you’re moving along just fine when you’ve literally missed four out of the last five days of progress and you can see the x’s instead of check marks clearly on the paper.

Tracking your progress will also make days when you’re less than motivated not seem so bad. When you’re really going after something important to you and you come across a day where you’re tired, anxious and uneasy, it’s easy to fall into this depression where life sucked for the last few hours, and it feels like life has always been this way.

My favorite Personal Development goals Journals:

• Moleskine Classic Hardcover Notebook
• Inkwell Success Journal
• Daily Greatness Success Journal

The fact is, you might have had 17 days prior to this one where you were super on, and everything was great. You won’t know that though if you don’t force your mind to look at the raw data.

Keeping track of your progress, timeline and results keeps you honest during your goal pursuit, and allows you to compare your current trajectory with where you thought you would be at the beginning.

8. Be a thermostat. Constantly adjust

You know how when your house gets below a certain temperature your thermostat kicks on? It has a goal (to keep your house at your desired temp) and when it veers off course, it corrects itself. 

Yet, another reason why it’s important to write your entire goal setting process down. Data destroys doubt, instills confidence, and guides you to where you want to go, but data isn’t the only way to turn yourself into a human thermostat.

Being a device that auto corrects itself also means being lenient with your failures. When you screw up or relapse, don’t be a dummy and just toss everything out the window and say “Welp, I had a bad couple of days SO IT’S ALL OVER NOW.”

Anyone who’s ever accomplished anything great would look at you like you’re an ignoramus for doing that. Being a thermostat means you keep going when you get off course.

Adjusting also means experimenting. If you notice that something isn’t working, ditch it. If you see that something is gaining some traction, poor gasoline on it and see what happens!

Effective action + patience + experimentation (ditch bad, embrace good, random ideas) = SUCCESS every. single. time.

9. Rejoice in your new self

After you take action on a dream or a goal for a certain amount of time, it becomes your identity. Which is a good thing, because when something becomes your identity, it becomes easy.

People don’t wake up and go to the gym at 5am everyday because it’s easy. They go because they’re a person who goes to the gym, and because it’s intrinsic to their identity, it’s easy for them to go. 

Your new self is the self you longed to be 6 months ago (or whatever your timeline is). It’s the self you dreamt of being who had the goal accomplished. 

Well, this is you now. Grats 🙂

10. On to the next one

Pretty silly that I gave an entire section to this, but it is important. 

What’s your next goal? Remember how important progress is for your ongoing wellbeing?

Go back to Step 1 and repeat.

Examples Personal Development Goals for Managers

According to coproratefinanceinstitute.com, goals for managers exist in three primary categories:

• Technical skills,
• Human and Interpersonal skills,
• and Conceptual skills. 

Before you go looking at this list, it’s important to understand how to set these goals in the first place. What method of goal setting do you use? Who is involved? Etc…

All of the goals you set to become a better manager will exist in one of these three categories, and most of the time, the goal will represent a skill (hard or soft) that you would like to be more proficient at.

• Planning and Strategy
• Communication
• Delegation
• Decision making
• Problem solving
• Critical thinking
• Empathy and judgement skills
• Motivational skills
• Coaching and Mentoring
• Productivity
• Support
• Retention of staff
• Seeing other’s potential
• Being a better listener
• Constructive feedback
• Facilitating others growth
• Emotional Intelligence
• Leadership skills
• Negotiation skills
• Having effective 1 on 1’s

Planning and Strategy

You might think of strategy as having more in common with chess than being a manager. Similarly, planning just means making a to do list, right? Wrong. Remember what Michael Porter said (professor at Harvard Business School) –

“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”

When it comes to planning and strategy for managers prioritization is just as important as vision, direction and goals. When you think of the results you want, one of your greatest skills is the ability to take any random idea and say “No.”.

Gary McKeown, author of the book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of less, said that 

“You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.”

In that same book he says that organizations who refuse to be militant with their prioritization eventually fail miserably. So the manager who wants real results is going to understand:

• The vision of their group
• The skills of their team
• How to create action plans
• What moves them forward and what holds them back
• Best, worst, and most likely scenarios, etc…

Communication goals for Personal Development

50% how you look, 40% how you said and 10% what you say – ever heard of it? It’s a statement that may or may not be true literally, but is DEFINITELY true in spirit. What you say is of lesser importance when communicating with others.

What if I say something to you that’s super nasty. Normally that would create some discord between us, but my tone of voice is sarcastic, and you can see that I’m smiling, being goofy, and overall you just feel like I’m not serious at all.

What if I try to convince you of my sincerity but my body and the edge in my voice make you feel like I’m lying?

These are two perfect examples of one thing: communication is not just what comes out of your mouth.

In fact, we’ve known for a while that we rate other humans as being more competent than they are based on their level of confidence. Confidence communicates to us using much more than what we say.

But communication is a broad term, and isn’t just a one-on-one scenario. Communication also means:

• The frequency and timing of communication
• Do others know what they specifically need to
• Do you communicate too much?
• Is your communication concise and to the point?
• What about your customers or clients? Communication is not only internal
• How are you communicating in your marketing?
• How does your non verbal example communicate?

“The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.”

– Peter Drucker

Delegation

Delegation is the act of taking a task and giving it to the appropriate person on your team to complete.

Doesn’t need to get more complicated than that. In my own experience, delegation requires on component: trust. If you don’t trust your team, you’ll be the one doing all the work, because you aren’t confident that anyone else has the skills, desire, motivation and competence to complete the task up to standard.

Delegation implies prioritization. It’s true that you should be willing to scrub the toilets as well as sit in the big seat and make decisions, but neither of those things means you do EVERYTHING. You have team members for a reason, and they have jobs. 

Figure out what you should be doing, and have the confidence to tell others what their jobs are.

Number two, transform into Horace Slughorn. You know, the wizard from Harry Potter? He was a highly skilled wizard who had a knack for collecting other highly skilled magic users for his own team. 

In other words, you won’t feel confident delegating tasks unless you’re confident in your team. They need to be as good as you are, which means you do whatever is necessary to foster their enthusiasm, motivation, and skills, while they put in the effort to do so.

Then you give Benny What’s-his-face a task to complete and you go home for the evening knowing that, tomorrow morning, the thing will be done…right…the first time. Period.

Skills that foster delegation are:

1. Being able to prioritize
2. Motivating your team
3. Emotional intelligence and understanding who can handle what workload
4. Paying attention to your team and know who has what skills
5. Some kind of organizational ability to know who’s responsibility a thing really is

Decision making

Prudence is one of the most influential characteristics of success, and basically means making good decisions.

• What resources will you use?
• Should this be done now? By whom?
• How to approach problems 
• Providing solutions

The most effective decision makers do the right thing almost all of the time. Being able to do the right thing comes from honing your skill to analyze each and every variable available, while making a firm, effective choice to get the results you want based on time, place and circumstance.

Each time you take a general rule and apply it, you run the risk of being wrong if you did not analyze the circumstance properly first. Making a good decision hinges upon variables. That’s why we have conundrums in life like:

• Is killing someone bad? What if it’s an accident? (Murder vs Manslaughter)
• Do adults receive the same punishment under the law as children?
• Is stealing a crime? What if the theft was to feed one’s family with no other alternative?

If you want to be a bad manager, make decisions across the board. If you want to be a good manager, understand that no rule you have in your heart has absolute application, and if you pretend it does, there will be times when you’re wrong…which means you lose the game.

Probably one of the top 5 most important personal development goals right here.

Problem solving – #2 Personal Development Goal

The best problem solvers are solution oriented. Why? Those who focus on problems solve problems just as well as those who focus on solutions, but solution oriented people are faster.

How long does it really take to isolate a problem? The answer is 20% of the total time. The solution gets 80% of the total time devoted. People fall short when they figure out what the issue is, then dwell on it for ages. You’re a manager, not a therapist. 

Understand and get better at the basic problem solving process:

1. Define problem
2. Clarify problem
3. Define goals (what you prefer instead of the problem)
4. Figure out the primary cause of problem in a sea of largely irrelevant details
5. Make action plan
6. Execute Action plan
7. Evaluate your results and Monitor your progress

Notice there was nothing in there about sitting around a bonfire for ages. The process of understanding the problem fundamentally are steps 1 and 2. Figure it out, move past it and get the results you want. 

Critical thinking – #1 Personal Development Goal

Your entire experience is nothing but a process whereby data from the outside world enters your life through your senses, is given a designation by your mind as good for bad, aligned with your intellectual space in the form of ideas, ideals, values and concepts, and then perceived a certain way.

Mouthful right?

Here’s what I mean: your life and perception of reality, your experience in general, exists mostly in your head. 

Critical thinking skills are what allow you to take that raw, unrefined experience, and filter them down into the most accurate perception of reality possible.

All your thoughts, emotions, feelings (and whatever) are not necessarily law, and they exist the same way diamonds and minerals exist in the earth. 

Your thoughts and feelings are not necessarily bad, they are simply unrefined, and when you apply them to life unrefined, then you have problems with others and yourself.

The same goes for when a crystal or gem company digs up the ore and tries to sell that…Nobody wants that, so it must be refined into a nicely cut and set gemstone.

There are eight billion of us on earth. Eight billion completely separate, sovereign and different individual experiences. We will never agree 100%, but we can agree that a cup is a cup, even if that cup takes on a different shade for each of us.

Now imagine applying no form of critical thinking to your experience and thinking that life is stemware instead. 

Knowing how to take your initial experience and refining it into the most accurate version of reality that you can will not only make you a superb quality manager, but an almost super human…human as well, because most people on earth don’t.

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https://www.designorate.com/steps-effective-critical-thinking/

https://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766#:~:text=Critical%20thinking%20is%20the%20intellectually,guide%20to%20belief%20and%20action.

Empathy and judgement skills

Empathy in the workplace simply put, means seeing your employees as individuals and understanding their performance through the experience they’re having.

The CSO of Business Solver found that 90% of low and high ranking employees (including CEO’s) believe that empathy in the workplace was a crucial component of workplace performance.

Not only that, but a study showed that employees themselves believe that performance in general can increase radically when the organization cares for their mental health proactively: productivity (48%) and motivation (42%), reduce turnover (39%) and create a sense of belonging in the organization (36%). (Rae Shanahan via Forbes)

Motivational skills

Being able to motivate your team means being able to invoke positive emotions in them. We do our best when we feel good, no matter what. 

Whether the odds are against you, it’s snowy and raining outside, or the asteroid is about to wipe out life on earth as we know it, when your team feels outstanding, they’re gonna do outstanding things.

Positive feelings and Positive energy are basically the same thing in this context, so here are some ways to instill positive energy in your team. Not a head-in-the-clouds atmosphere but one that has confidence, purpose, support and understanding at it’s foundation.

• Instill a sense of purpose in yourself and others. Focus your energy on something important, challenging and exciting
• Make progress towards that goal each day
• Frequently reset your body and mind and clear out anything stale. Diet, and mental health are key here.
• Notice the things that are done well. 
• Decide that you’re gonna feel good no matter the circumstance

Coaching and Mentoring

Coaching and mentoring your team/employees makes them feel more valuable because you are taking the time to help them become better and enhancing their skills and abilities. When they become better they become more confident in themselves.

Productivity

If you think productivity means getting more things done – you’re wrong. Productivity, essentially, is a word that describes the human condition better than any other, because it means progress. Progress is a concept integral to each of our lives, and we don’t make progress for no reason.

We make progress in order to experience new challenges and accomplishments, as well as to facilitate our addiction (for better or worse) to growth.

Productivity is not getting more things done, it’s getting more of the important things done, more of the time.

The essence of productivity is not to accomplish more, but to ask the question, “How do I use my time wisely?”

When you frame the question that way, a few ways to become more productive are to:

• Ask yourself which tasks are MOST important
• Manage your energy and focus more so than your time
• Use methods and systems that allow you to prioritize effectively.

Support

In the world of business, there are more bosses than leaders. Leaders possess qualities that most of us only dream of having, and bosses just…boss. Nobody likes a person who simply barks out orders, but somehow, we all love a good leader, even though leaders are just bosses with, well, a whole bunch extra.

Ever heard that nobody want’s to be sold to but everyone loves to buy? The difference between a boss and a leader are the qualities that good leaders possess, and to be a good leader you must be able to support your team.

How to support your team as a manager:

1. Being confident
2. Making strong decisions
3. Having a sense of empathy for them
4. Pushing them when they need it
5. Guiding them toward the standard and then above it
6. Refusing to accept their laziness – they’re better than that
7. Helping them build on their strengths
8. Making sure they feel like people – not mules.
9. Listening to them when they speak, for real.
10. Being optimistic

Retention of staff

Why are warehouses, distribution centers and fast food joints always hiring? Everyone knows that they can go to one of those places and get a job tomorrow. 

Why?

Is it because those jobs suck?

No it’s not, even though you might think that.

I’ve worked both of those jobs, and the jobs themselves don’t suck.  People love making food for others (even though it might not be the healthiest) and driving a pallet jack and forklift around these huge warehouses was probably one of the most fun jobs I’ve ever had.

I even love the smell of pallets and concrete mixed together in one building.

So why do these jobs constantly have to deal with the “revolving door”?

It’s the environment. These places are notorious for over working, and under appreciating their customers. Not only that, but the perceived value of a person who works that type of job is low.

Retention of staff is not only good on paper, it’s efficient. Staff members who’ve been on your time are more committed, better at what they do, more invested in the organization and more like a friend than an employee.

The secret to increasing the amount of people who stay on the payroll cannot be simplified in only two terms, but you could try “job satisfaction” and  “commitment” to start.

Seeing other’s potential

Do you believe that people are who they are, and they’ll never be anything more? Being able to look past a person’s shortcomings, their present and see into their future is a skill few have.

Sure, overcoming our shortcomings is difficult, and unfortunately, most never do, but adopting an attitude where you help your team become better than who they are currently is something that they’ll remember you dearly for.

Progress makes people happy, and if you make others feel like you’re supporting their growth, they’ll do more for you.

Being a better listener

You will fail as a manager without seriously effective communication skills, and a huge part of communicating is listening.

According to Skillsyouneed.com, “Many successful leaders and entrepreneurs credit their success to effective listening skills. Richard Branson frequently quotes listening as one of the main factors behind the success of Virgin.”

Constructive feedback

Criticism is a destructive force. Feedback is a creative force. Neither are good or bad, they are different and should be used relative to the circumstance. As a manager, it’s your job to decide whether or not something within the organization requires criticism or feedback.

Something like an employee not performing well may require feedback, whereas something like racism would definitely require criticism.

That’s really the only decision that needs to be made: are you trying to create or destroy?

Feedback	Criticism
creates	destroys
Solution based	Problem based
Future potential	Past failure
Inspire them (strengths)	Deflate them (Weaknesses)

You can tell whether or not you’re criticising someone or giving them good feedback by noticing where your mind is at.

Facilitating others growth

If you were to sit down with former Forbes.com author, Victor Lipman, and talk about a manager’s responsibility to help their team grow, he would say the following things (I think):

• Employees care about you when they feel you care about them
• When your employees care about you, they are loyal to you
• When they’re loyal to you their productivity increases
• When this happens they become seriously committed
• Committed employees naturally desire advancement
• You should support this advancement if you’re smart

The main point here is that human beings will not feel stuck for long before they revolt. Progress is integral to our happiness, and we will not tolerate stagnation for long. 

If you’re a smart manager, you’ll make a sincere effort to always facilitate your team when they feel the need to grow. That doesn’t mean giving an unqualified person more responsibility than they need. It means when someone has obviously outgrown their current status, you teach them more, give them more and expect more.

Go back down to the Leadership Section.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence for managers is a thing that has sprung up in the last decade. It became popular since the year 2000 but the term itself was created in 1990 by John Mayer and Peter Salovey. 

In a nutshell, emotional intelligence is how skilled you are at knowing and dealing with yourself, as well as knowing and dealing with others, combining the two to create highly productive, rewarding and profitable relationships.

The skills you want when fostering serious Emotional Intelligence (EQ) are:

1. Knowing yourself
2. Managing yourself
3. Understanding others
4. Managing others

Leadership skills

About 10 years ago, I was a “picker” in a warehouse. It was an entry level job that basically required zero skills other than counting to do. Two weeks after I got hired, the manager for my wing left for a better job.

We won’t talk about him. He left because he was looking for a better job, with more responsibility, with better pay, and I will NEVER blame someone for that. Check the facilitate others growth section if you wanna know what I mean.

Since I was the most hardworking and responsible selector there…and lets qualify that statement….

I loved warehouse jobs. I don’t know if it’s a me thing, or an aries thing, but I loved working with my body and getting a good day’s work in. So I worked, and when I was done working, I worked other peoples work – and my managers saw that.

They saw me doing my job, and then other people’s jobs, and then 10% of another person’s job and then clocking out and going home. I got a REAL QUICK raise.

My performance was part me, part my leadership. My manager at this warehouse was the best manager I ever had, and it showed. I loved my manager. I loved what he did. I loved myself, and how we worked together, and I believed in what we were doing. 

We were just selling kegs to nearby restaurants, but he believed it was important, and showed me that it was important, so I performed accordingly.

End of story. Compare that to any of the shitty bosses you’ve ever had in your life.

Being hired on as a boss and being a REAL leader are not the same thing. However, if you put the effort into being a good leader, you will automatically be better than 80% of the “managers” out there.

Negotiation skills

According to Cleverism.com, “Negotiation skills help build relationships, provide quality solutions and help avoid future conflicts because their aim is to foster good will leaving both parties equally satisfied.”

Negotiation skills are used not just business to business but between you and your team. 

You might find that someone on your team needs certain concessions in order to perform at a high level, or maybe you live in a small town where everyone wants to see the football game on Friday, so you negotiate them either working harder Thursday or coming in for a few hours on Saturday.

Negotiation skills will help you easily pass over roadblocks and reach goals while only making minor concessions.

Having effective 1 on 1’s

A 1 on 1 is a get-to-know-you and progress update between a superior and a team member. This could be boss to manager, manager to employee/worker, coach to client, teacher to student etc…

The point of a 1 on 1 is to sit down and discuss everything that is pertinent within the two parties’ experience of one another.

A good manager is going to have frequent sit downs with the individuals on their team and discuss: goals, performance, attitude, future professional goals, engagement and more.

If you want to know how good managers have seriously effective 1 on 1’s read these two posts:

1. One on One Meeting Checklist
2. 1 on 1’s for engaged employees: How Good Managers Run them

Examples Personal Development Goals for Leaders

The best leaders are creators. The only reason leaders exist in the first place is because of our intrinsic need to grow. Therefore, the best leaders are those who take everything in their domain and help it grow. 

• Provide solid guidance for your team
• Encourage creativity – humans are creators
• Become a better motivator
• Communicate concisely, clearly and with confidence
• Instill the right values
• Resolve conflict and correct behavior with skill and finesse
• Learn how to delegate and prioritize
• Develop a clear vision and never stray from it
• Create a mission statement
• Create a vision statement
• Always be quizzing your team. How aware are they?
• Courage. Throw everything away that’s not needed.
• Influence others in a nice and friendly way
• Become more organized
• Listen more
• Take full ownership and accountability
• Be more open minded

If you want to become an expert leader, think about what it means to be an expert gardener.

GARDENER	LEADER
Soil analysis	Constantly monitoring the atmosphere and work environment for success components
Composting	Taking materials from operations and recycling them (literally) or using them for other operations
Sun Exposure Charting	What time of day, year and week is your group most productive. High priority activities and groups go in this area
Seed Germination	New people, projects and technologies need fool proof master plans so they grow into something hardy
Planter Building	Creating successful environments for seed germination to take place
Pest control	Eliminating or working with all problems and toxic elements
Pollination	The successful transfer of ideas from department, group, or system to another
Tool care and Maintenance	Taking care of, revitalizing, repairing and replacing your tools and systems
Pick the fruit when it’s ripe	Learn when your result is accomplished and move on. Leaving the fruit on the vine for too long invites insects, birds and rot.

Communication

Communication for leaders means articulating the needs or your organization and your ideas to your managers and employees. It also means listening to them and their needs, not just dictating their activities.

Communication skills for leaders include:

• Adapting your speaking style to your audience or the individual
• Clarity
• Confidence
• Active listening
• Transparency
• & asking open ended questions

According to Harvard Business School, body language and taking feedback seriously are also forms of communication because you unconsciously affirm your words, and show that you listened and actually cared about what was being said.

Motivation / Discipline

Leaders know the balance between compassion and tough love. To be a good leader you’ll want to inspire and motivate your team when necessary but also tell them to suck it up and work when discipline needs to take over. 

You’re not doing anybody a favor by coddling them. Pushing people out of their comfort zone is not only what makes them great, it’s what shows them that growth wasn’t that scary in the first place.

Prioritization / Delegation

There is no value at getting good at the wrong thing, and there is no success in accomplishing everything. Almost nothing matters. Very few things need to be done, in a world full of a million options for you to accomplish what you desire.

Read these two books below (the one thing / essentialism) to learn how to prioritize the very few steps that will get you staggering results and eliminate all the trash opportunities that will consume your time and cause you to lag behind.

In general, most leaders recommend the Eisenhower Decision Matrix, which is a simple device that allows you to extract only what is necessary from your to do list and accomplish serious results.

Growth Mindset / Positivity

Positive and negative mindset are future beliefs, being a realist is a present tense term. A good leader is going to know how to instill a positive mindset in their team while keeping them from thinking that no present effort is required.

Both you and your team are capable of growth. All of us can learn, acquire new skills and mature. Keep yourself from thinking “so and so will never learn”. That might be true, but it will DEFINITELY be true if you treat them that way.

Invest in the constant growth of your team and push them to embody a higher standard while enabling them to have faith in a beautiful future, rather than a dismal one.

Feedback / Commentary / Expectations

Good leaders macro manage, meaning they offer feedback that is constructive without setting up cameras in their employee’s office to make sure they hit enough keystrokes per minute. Trust them, and have confidence that when they make mistakes they will take your feedback and growth with it.

When they prove that they can’t handle that, then termination or a more aggressive approach might be necessary, but don’t start there. Nobody likes that.

According to thebalancecareers.com, the key to successful feedback is clarity and empathy.

Accountability & Extreme Ownership of results

As a leader, everything is your fault. Ideally, everyone on your team feels that same way. When everyone on the team takes full responsibility for the success and failure of the group, that’s when the unstoppable force and immovable object become the same thing.

“You must own everything in your world, there is no one else to blame.”

Jocko Willink

Read this: No more excuses!: The Five Accountabilities of Personal and Organizational Growth

Read this too: Extreme Ownership – How U.S. Lead and Win

Examples of Personal Development Goals for Work

Setting personal development goals for work is what will set you apart from everyone else. Everyone in the back of their heads notices when someone is just 20% ahead of the curve.

Even taking your professional development slightly more seriously than others will make you stand out in peoples minds. Youll gain their respect confidence and be the first to come to mind when that promotion is available.

• Become thick skinned
• Create a personal development plan
• Learn someone else’s job
• Start reading books on your field or position
• Get a professional certificate or degree
• Get an unprofessional certificate or degree
• Learn how to stand out
• Create a vision statement
• Create a mission statement
• Learn how to use a new technology
• Become an effective communicator
• Become more productive
• Sell your skills independently

Become thick skinned

Not literally. Becoming thick skinned figuratively means to mitigate our tendency to take offense, not handle criticism well, and to take everything personally.

Imagine living a life where you ruminate constantly on what your boss thinks of you, experience anxiety in meetings and feel like everyone is silently judging you.

Then, when someone has some genuine advice to give you, you lash out in anger, become overly defensive, pass the blame, or something other unattractive thing that really makes people around you feel like you’re immature. 

It’s possible that right now you’re so sensitive that even the nicest person on earth could take you out to dinner, wash you over with compliments, then say one negative thing about you and you’d hurl into a depression.

…but it’s more likely that you work in a place where someone just loves to criticize everyone around them.

The fact is, highly skilled managers and leaders are expert in giving feedback in a way that inspires us. If someone is truly overly critical, assume their not in control of their life, or hurting in some way. Something is occuring in their life that is causing them to feel out of control, because that’s the only reason human beings desire to hurt others.

Don’t make assumptions. You honestly never know why something happened the way it did.

Not everything is about you. Sometimes (most of the time) it’s about them.

Practice relationship judo. It’s cathartic to get revenge or be passive aggressive, but you win more in the long run if you take their over the top criticism and find one ounce of truth in it that can help you improve.

Create a personal development plan

HOW TO CREATE A PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN FOR YOUR WORK RELATED GOALS	1
Decide on your big goals. Example: Saving for a new home
Divide into the most important mini goals. Example: Set aside 10% of my income each month
Decide on your timeline. Example: I want this goal to be accomplished by the end of next year (24 months)
Make your mini goals and timeline congruent. Example: This much needs to be saved to get the house. That means this much per month. Which equates to 10% of my total income per month. Goal is congruent.
(Implementation intention) Name your obstacles. Example: The urge to spend my extra money on restaurants.
(Implementation intention) Name your opportunities. Example: Automatically depositing money to a locked account via phone app.
Support. Example: Finance blogs or bloggers. Friends and family who’ve successfully completed this goal or will keep me accountable.

Learn someone else’s job

Switch in and out of another department, trade with someone for a week, or learn another work skill on the side.

Start reading books on your field or position

It’s easy. Google your work, field, and job or find books on amazon.

START WITH THESE: Best books to make you a work place dynamo

• Meeting Suck by Cameron Herald
• Hug your Haters by Jim Baer
• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less Greg Mckeown
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
• Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
• Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
• Ask by Ryan Levesque

Get a professional certificate or degree

Check to see if your organization will pay for you to receive higher training. Another alternative is to see what type of degree or certificate would be the most useful for your current position and your future goals, and then pursue that on your own either at a community college or an online institution.

You could also find online courses taught my respected people in your field.

For example: Gary Keller and Grant Cardone might be acceptable choices for training in real estate and you might be able to convince your boss to pay for them. 

Get an unprofessional certificate or degree

There are plenty of places where you can get increased training and knowledge on what you do for a living.

Try these unofficial hubs for great courses and trainings:

• Skillshare
• Alison.com
• Lynda.com
• Udemy – up to 50% off

Learn how to stand out

Standing out means doing everything your peers aren’t willing to do. You want to be the person who asks questions, presents ideas and volunteers in meetings.

You want to make a habit of making yourself look impressive but not necessarily needing praise for it. In other words, develop a respectable reputation for yourself.

Create a vision statement and mission statement

A vision statement is an idea you hold in your being about how the world could be. Your mission is a plan designed to achieve that vision. 

Learn how to start with a vision statement here OR a mission statement here.

Learn how to use a new technology

I’m not even talking about learning a hard skill either. If you didn’t have the hard skills you need you most likely wouldn’t have the job you have. In fact, 92% of executives last october said that soft skills were far more important than hard skills.

So which technologies then? The regular ones. I know you have tech support, but if you need another human being to fix your wifi for you, learn how to fix your own wifi…

Become an effective communicator

Ineffective communication is the easiest way to start conflict in the workplace. Most of the time, our attempts at communicating with others are stifled by out of control emotion, lack of focus, in consistent body language and outright negative body language.

Actually, poor communication can end up causing most of the stress we experience when at work making it a power candidate for your first personal development goal.

Become more productive

Most people are extremely unproductive, which is more like death in this world than most things when you really think about it.

The best way to take full advantage of your life is to use your time wisely. Productivity means knowing what you’re after by having a crystal clear vision, and having the courage to avoid everything that doesn’t get you there.

“You could solve almost all of this country’s problems by making everyone twice as productive.”

Tai Lopez

Becoming more productive will save your life by giving you more of it to live. Not to mention you might end up impressing your boss and getting paid more!

Learn how to be more productive from brian tracy here.

Sell your skills independently

You might have gone to college, gotten a degree or a certificate and had the hard skills your employer found useful, but working 40 hours a week for money only makes you a finite amount.

Finding a way to sell those skills online, whatever they might be, has the potential to bring in income while you sleep.

How to turn skills you already have into online income 9 Foundational Steps to Start an Online Business that stands out!

Samples of personal development goals for employees

How exactly are you going to stand out as an employee? I’ll tell you one thing, nobody is ever impressed by someone who shows up every day and does their job, they want above and beyond type individuals.

Doing your job properly will get you hired, but it won’t get you a raise or a promotion, so don’t ever think that you should be rewarded simply for tenure. That’s not how it works. 

If you want to be special in the eyes of your boss, try developing any of these employee strengths below.

• Emotional intelligence
• Mindfulness
• Work ethic and productivity
• Work towards a promotion
• Offer to learn something new
• Sign up for training
• Ask for feedback and take it seriously

Emotional intelligence: understanding your own emotional content and the emotions of others. It gives you a more well rounded understanding of how we behave in the workplace. Being able to tiptoe around others feelings isn’t always the best thing to do, but if you show you’re capable, your boss will see that you have a soft skill that helps you manage others well. 

Mindfulness: ever heard that haste makes waste? It’s a lie. Haste does indeed make waste, but many of us don’t understand what haste is. Hint: it doesn’t mean getting faster. Haste means you increase your speed without increasing your focus. When you go so fast but aren’t paying attention, you end up making waste. Be mindful of what you’re doing so you make less mistakes and appear reliable. 

Work ethic and productivity: Don’t be afraid of work. You’re not lazy or unmotivated, you’re just uninspired sometimes. The best thing you could do for yourself is find a way to get motivated. Why do you do what you do? What service does your group or organization provide? What does your job afford you in your life?

Work towards a promotion: Think about it this way – someone has to fill that spot, might as well be you. 

Offer to learn something new: Express your desire to acquire a new skill at your job. Most of the time you’ll need a good record for your superiors to agree, but if you fit the bill you could end up being the guy who knows everything about your work environment. Employers love people who can do everything. 

Sign up for training: Most places of employment will have periods where they offer training for people who are interested. Take them up on their offer and become better at what you do, especially if it’s a paid training offsite. 

Ask for feedback and take it seriously: When you get a chance, ask to have a meeting, or just inquire in passing about your performance and how you’re doing. You might get a stupid answer like “OK”. In that case, get specific and ask them about how productive you are at certain tasks that you know matter. 

Bring up some tidbit of information like “I heard that in order to be better at [insert activity] it helps to [insert tidbit of knowledge]” to show them you were interested before the conversation even occurred.

It might not go any further than that, but know you’re in their mind as someone who genuinely wants to be good at their job, which goes a long way.

Emotional intelligence

If your boss or teammates are good, they’re probably high in emotional intelligence. In a nutshell, EQ (emotional intelligence) is simply being more aware and well practiced at understanding the emotional landscape of yourself and others.

The 5 Aspects of Emotional intelligence (EQ):

1. Self regulation
2. Motivation
3. Empathy
4. Social skills
5. Self awareness

High Eq will help you collaborate better with co workers and create a nicer atmosphere to work in, because you’ll understand your own self better, and the actions of others more accurately. 

Basically, emotional intelligence increases empathy, or your sense of “I understand where they’re coming from”.

Mindfulness

The 3 main components of mindfulness are:

1. Intention: the decision to be mindful
2. Attention: being aware of oneself and surroundings
3. Attitude: the decision to be non judgemental, to analyze, and to respond carefully according to one’s desired results.

Mindfulness is a process that keeps you from getting caught up in the emotional, intellectual spiral that comes with experience. Instead of having one experience, like a coworker saying something rude, we process the experience as it happens while remaining aware of what is currently happening.

“Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.”

 – Jon Kabat Zinn

This is different than having that experience and ruminating on it for hours, letting your emotions grow stronger and stronger until you’ve spent so much time thinking about what you could’ve said, why they were wrong, etc…and then realizing you’ve made a mistake doing your work.

Imagine someone running a table saw losing their focus on the present moment. The results in your own life have the potential to be just as disastrous.

How to create a personal development plan for work

Creating a personal development plan (PDP) is one of the best ways to excel at work. Why? It allows you to use your strengths to develop new skills that will ultimately make you more valued and more impressive at your job. Not to mention, give you a sense of constant progress that makes life and work more pleasurable.

How to create a Personal development plan:

1. Decide your goal or desired outcome
2. What strengths do you currently have that will allow you to get there?
3. Which area do you need to develop in order to achieve your goals? In other words, if you want a promotion, what needs to happen to make you an attractive choice?
4. Create a future self model. What does the person who has achieved your goal look like? What skills and knowledge will you need to attain to succeed?
5. Create a starting point and add a timeline to it. What is the first step and how long will this take?
6. Create chunked objectives. Decide what your benchmarks are and when they must be reached.
7. Bonus: Give yourself something small to do right now in order to get the process rolling.

Examples of Career & Professional Personal Development Goals

Do you want to be stuck in the same career position, go through the motions and then retire when you’re 65? Boring. Setting goals is the much needed spice and variety that makes whatever you do for a living fun again. 

• Increased pay
• Join a mastermind
• Different position in your organization
• Change your career entirely
• Become better at your job internal, better performance
• Increase your knowledge about your industry or position
• Master prioritizing
• Acquire some type of leadership position
• Get trained to replace your superior on their days off
• Help your employees set their own goals
• Learn how to give effective presentations
• Give yourself one less hour to accomplish all your responsibilities
• Start living below your means so your career provides more safety and security
• Pick an aspect of your job, organization or field and decide to become an expert at it
• Develop a good reputation at work
• Build your network
• Increase the productivity of your employees
• Get a mentorship from someone 10 or 20 years ahead of you 

Remember, only 50% of people are satisfied with their jobs, so when setting meaningful goals for your career come from the perspective of adding more challenge, service attitude and skill into your work.

Personal Development Goals for Students

School debt, puberty, and boring homework that does not stimulate the mind or instill a love of learning that your teachers wish to give to you – that’s basically what school is today right? Well there are ways to make learning a satisfying part of your life. Which is super important, because you’ll never get anywhere in life without a love of learning.

• Increase your grades
• Identify your best subject
• Identify your best class
• Discover your learning strengths
• Read non fiction books other than your required material
• Take an extra class
• Figure out your purpose in life
• Identify your passions
• Isolate a career field that will challenge you and serve others
• Make a plan for paying off school debt
• Become excellent at an extracurricular activity
• Meet with a study group frequently
• Aim to get into a better school than you think you can
• Do your homework at the same time every day
• Sharpen your critical thinking skills
• Start each day with an understanding of the value of learning
• Find a way to make learning fun

Some of the main issues students deal with are expressing themselves, developing a learning style and schedule that fits them, and social pressure, so when coming up with personal development goals for you as a student, it might help to try and mitigate those tradeoffs.

Read: 9 Examples of SMART Goals for Students who want an Edge

Examples of Personal Development Skills to Develop

Human beings cannot remain stagnant for too long. If we do, that stagnation turns into boredom and disease, then longing, discontent and finally a depression that can destroy our lives. It’s fascinating how a person who’s entire world is falling apart can remedy most problems in their life simply by setting a meaningful goal and taking the first step.

“They must often change who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.” 

– Confucius

When you get to the point where personal development is a topic you think about often, try this list of personal development skills and goals below.

• Confidence
• Making more money
• Subconscious mind programming
• Motivation procrastination and getting started
• Problem solving
• Prudence
• Work ethic
• Productivity
• Relationships, family and friends
• Personality disorder detection and management
• Detecting manipulation
• Having a pleasing personality
• Reading more books, absorbing relevant information and loving to learn
• Increased memorization skills
• Manifesting and the law of attraction
• Integrity
• Leadership
• Create a life vision
• Goal setting
• Growth mindset

Strength and Personal Development areas

• Physical and biological needs
• Safety needs
• Love and relationships
• Self esteem
• Knowledge and understanding
• Creativity
• Your life’s fullest potential

Physical and biological needs: the things you do to keep your health and body maintained. Being concerned about the next meal is a biological need.

Safety needs: Being safe means having all your ducks in a row and making sure they’re not in danger. Having a sturdy place to put your head each night is a safety need.

Love and relationships: when you are concerned about your connections with others and want them to flourish

Self esteem: feeling good about yourself and how you live your life

Knowledge and understanding: wanting to expand your understanding of yourself, others and the world

Creativity: feeling the potential to build great things that inspire you and others

Your life’s fullest potential: finally developing a sense of purpose in life that has the potential to get you into a flow state

https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/improve-your-personal-development-skills

https://www.pertemps.co.uk/candidates/career-advice/preparation/how-to-improve-your-personal-development-skills/#:~:text=Essentially%20personal%20development%20skills%20are,to%20reach%20your%20personal%20goals.

https://www.skillsyouneed.com/ps/personal-development.html

https://www.skillsyouneed.com/personal-skills.html

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/click-here-happiness/202006/personal-development-9-skills-tips-and-examples

Three Big Steps in Achieving Personal Development Goals

1. Becoming teachable and being ready for change
2. Making the decision to improve
3. Creating an action plan (Personal development plan)

Step one: Readiness

Readiness is probably one of the most powerful phases of life you can be in. It is a teachable moment where you long for more, are discontent enough to pursue that “more” and are willing to learn how.

 Life, in general, is a never ending process of being content, being discontent, being uncomfortable, being extremely dissatisfied, then being ready for change, and looping back around to being content once again.

“When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can’t make them change if they don’t want to, just like when they do want to, you can’t stop them.”

Andy Warhol

Have you ever tried to teach someone something, or show them what you know for a fact is a better, nicer, healthier way of living and being but, instead of appreciating your help, they felt bothered instead?

Here’s another quote that I like (Tai Lopez got this quote from somewhere) – “Never try and teach a pig to fly, because pigs can’t fly and you just end up pissing off the pig.”

Readiness is a phase of life where your internal landscape has outgrown your external reality. For us to be happy with our lives, both must match up.

Your internal landscape is a never ending clock. You grow 24 hours a day. Once you grow to a certain point, your external clothes (your life) start to become too tight. Eventually, the two are in such discord that who you are internally no longer resembles your external reality even slightly.

This is when you are ready for personal growth.

Step two: Setting an intention

An intention is really just a decision. I’ve often said that, whatever the most powerful force in the universe is, it doesn’t stop any of us from making the choices we desire to make. When you really think about the implications of that, a deep sense of responsibility and power washes over you.

Set the intention to make the changes you want to make, even if you aren’t clear on what they are.

Step three: your plan of attack

Nothing good ever happens randomly. If you really want something to be successful, you need a master plan. This is the point where you’re ready to figure out what changes need to be made in your life and create your personal development plan.

Examples of Smart Goals for Personal Development

S.M.A.R.T. goals are Specific goals that you can Measure while traveling along a Reachable Timeline and are both Achievable and Applicable to the vision you have for yourself and your future.

9 Examples of Smart goals (stop praying for results!)

15 examples of smart goals for reliable results

Purpose related SMART personal development goals example

Finding 5 career options related to your mission of helping underrepresented groups find jobs. The goal must be finished in 60 days time and is both achievable and applicable because it relates to your newly created personal vision and mission statements. 

Action related SMART personal development goals example

Lose 50lbs and gain 10 lbs of muscle by doing cross fit training and regular resistance training 5 times a week. Goal must be finished in 8 months and is perfectly achievable because the timeline was created by a personal trainer and I am willing to do it.

Mindset related SMART personal development goals example

Make 20 youtube videos on taming lions for circuses (a goal that increases confidence on camera) in the next 60 days. Achievable because you already have all the equipment.

Summary (Personal Development Goals)

Regardless of your specific personal development circumstance, you’ll want to create a solid personal development plan. You can do so for free below. Also, below are some extra resources that will aid you when you first start so check those out as well.

Resources you’ll want to have

Slay your Goals Planner (Better for personal use)

Maximum Achievement Goals Planner (Better for Professionals)

Kain Ramsay’s Simple Action Plan (Free Download)

The Goals Quickstart Masterclass