When was the last time you assessed your goals and values? Can’t remember? Then how do you know if you’re living up to your potential?
Personal development is a lifelong pursuit to better yourself through new experiences, education, and more. Enhancing various skills enables you to create strategic and tactical plans for personal and professional growth towards your goals.
Whether you want to achieve personal goals, advance in your career, improve your strengths, or simply continue to better yourself, personal development is a great thing to invest your time and energy in.
If you’re ready for personal growth, here are some ideas to get you started.
Develop Interpersonal Skills
Personal development covers a vast range of skills, and depending on your goals, the skills you need to develop will differ from person to person.
Developing communication and interpersonal skills is one area of personal development that most of us can benefit from.
Our ability to speak, write, and listen all relate to communication skills. The way we communicate is how we understand what others are saying and feeling and how we convey our ideas and feelings. A lot goes into how we communicate, for example, our tone and ability to speak clearly and confidently.
Interpersonal skills are verbal and nonverbal behaviors and reactions we express when we are interacting with other people. These skills are also known as ‘people skills’ and measure one’s ability to build relationships and make impressions on others in social situations.
Some examples of interpersonal skills include:
Active listening
Teamwork
Responsibility
Dependability
Leadership
Motivation
Flexibility
Patience
Empathy
How we communicate has a significant impact on our interpersonal relationships. Ready to learn more about your interpersonal skills?
The following self-assessment questionnaire is designed to examine your listening skills, verbal communication, emotional intelligence, and ability to work in groups and teams.
Check it out at https://bit.ly/3o3brWx.
Improve Your Problem-Solving Skills
Think back to the last issue you encountered,and consider what steps you took to approach the problem and find a solution. During that process, what kind of hurdles did you face? What steps did you take to overcome those challenges?
Thinking through how you’ve problem-solved in the past can help you gain an understanding of how successful you are as a problem-solver overall.
Why does this matter?
In the workplace, problem-solving skills refer to the ability to handle difficult or unexpected situations and complex business challenges. Therefore, problem-solving skills are traits that enable you to assess situations and calmly identify solutions. Such skills are also highly useful in other areas of life like relationship building and day-to-day decision-making.
Let’s take a look at a few essential skills problem-solvers possess.
1. Research As a problem solver, the ability to identify the cause of an issue is essential. This is accomplished by gathering information by brainstorming with other team members, consulting more experienced colleagues, or acquiring knowledge through research.
2. Analysis Analytical skills will help you understand problems and effectively develop solutions.
3. Communication The way you listen to others and your ability to share aspects of a problem will help reduce any confusion and make implementing a solution easier.
Creative problem-solving goes beyond conventional approaches to find solutions. This approach identifies unique solutions to issues through a process of problem identification and resolution planning.
You can improve your creative problem-solving skills by practicing the following techniques:
Use a strategic framework
Practice empathy
Get a hobby
Relax your assumptions
Practice persistence
Question standard practices
Consider your past experiences
Become an expert in your field
Practice creative problem-solving
Ask for help
Build Your Self-Confidence
Self-confidence is the belief in your abilities, actions, and decisions.
How's your self-confidence?
Those who have confidence are more likely to pursue ambitious goals, try new things, and believe they can succeed.
Whether going into an interview, making new friends, or tackling a new project, your level of confidence has a significant impact on the outcome of your endeavors.
To get a better picture of your current level of confidence, check out this self-esteem test: https://bit.ly/3nWtIox.
There are numerous techniques for improving your confidence level.
1. One particularly fun technique is to do something challenging every day. Facing the unknown is a great way to give yourself a boost. If you tend to be a shy person, make a point to strike up a conversation with a stranger. If you fear public speaking, sign yourself up for an activity or project that forces you to present ideas to a group.
2. Another useful technique for building confidence is to rethink rejection. When you change your perspective on rejection to view it as something out of your control rather than not being good enough, you’ll feel more confident taking risks. Understand that rejection is not necessarily a reflection of your character.
3. Self-care is another useful tool when building confidence. Mental, physical, and social health are essential aspects in confidence-boosting. Be sure to nurture all aspects of yourself in order to improve your sense of worth.
Ashley Allen