Personal Development

Personal development is a broad concept that encompasses a variety of approaches to improving oneself. The concepts include personal productivity, self-help, personal motivation, personal growth, career planning, and mentoring. Personal development therefore includes activities that build a person's abilities and potential, facilitate the development of personal assets and talents, improve employability, and improve quality of life after leaving home and entering the workforce. Personal development can occur over the course of a person's whole lifetime. It can also begin at any time in life.

At whatever stage of personal development a person might be in, he must still try to identify, clarify, and evaluate his strengths and weaknesses. In fact, personal development should be viewed as a lifelong process. The key is identifying one's strengths - those innate and positive capabilities that are the result of the accumulation of human capital - and weaknesses - those negative traits that stem from previous limitations in one's abilities or from having been conditioned by society or the external forces that surround him. One can draw up a personal development plan for himself or for the development of the business school, he will eventually enter.

But the more important part of personal development is to determine what these goals are. A person may have latent entrepreneurial skills; he may have skills that can be applied to the business world in some way. But in order to achieve his business goals, he will need to identify his goals. And this will involve taking the necessary steps to pursue them through a process of self-evaluation, exploration, assessment, analysis, selection, and prioritization.

There are many ways to pursue personal development goals. Some of these include self-help groups, professional counseling, personal development programs conducted by organizations such as the United States Conference of Mayors, business reading programs, skill enhancement classes, and home study programs. There are also many activities, both in the corporate world and in the personal world, which aim to develop self-help skills, develop good decision making skills, enhance confidence, increase self-respect, enhance self-esteem, develop creative thinking, and so on. The list is practically endless. All these are geared toward achieving personal development.

One important component of self-help in the personal development arena is self-awareness. Self-awareness is the first step toward improving one's personal skills. Without self-awareness, there is no way to know where to start or how to go about improving one's skills. It is like trying to build a house without a blueprint. You won't know where to put the walls and how to square them without having an idea of how they will affect the other aspects of the house. Likewise, without having a mentor to guide and support you along the way, you will not be able to see the final results because you do not know what to look for.

Another important element of personal development is motivation. Without a proper drive to succeed, nothing will happen. In business school, there are countless instances where students come in with the best intentions but have absolutely no motivation to do well in the class. If they had good professors and a strong support system, they would most likely excel. But since they lack direction, they give up before the end of the semester even if they had done well on a test or quiz. This is a prime illustration of needing a mentor in the personal development arena.

The third component is a growth mindset. Maintaining a positive growth mindset is crucial to personal development because it ensures that you continue to focus on your long-term goals and improve on your short-term goals along the way. People with a growth mindset believe that success does not happen overnight but is a gradual process that requires conscious effort and persistence.

And finally, a personal development plan is vital to attaining your goals. It includes both short-term goals and long-term ones, but must be organized in such a way that the student knows exactly what he or she needs to do in order to achieve those goals. A plan will help the student to focus on his or her goals and attain them. Also, it will allow for motivation, as well as provide the student with a blueprint for success.