How long has it been since your last personal growth ‘spurt’? In this case, I’m not talking about your height (and we won’t even mention weight). I’m talking about your mental, not physical, growth; your professional development. By personal growth ‘spurt’, I mean an intense intentional acceleration of personal growth or professional development.
One thing that differentiates successful people (those that live the life they truly desire) and those that aren’t (the ones that settle for living the life that circumstances dictate or others allow) is their thinking about personal growth. Successful people are intentional about constantly growing themselves and developing their skills and abilities, while others just don’t think about it.
As I get older, it becomes clearer how valuable continued personal growth and professional development are as differentiators in life. Besides the obvious performance benefits of getting better at what you do, there are also psychological and emotional benefits as well. Personal growth enables the ‘hope for a better future’. It boosts self-confidence and self-esteem. It increases our energy level and generally ‘keeps us young’.
So how much better are you (really) at what you do than you were a year, or even two years, ago? 5%…maybe 10%? Oh sure, we always expect to make more money each year, but what are we doing to actually earn it? Are we significantly better than we were?
James Allen, in his wonderful book As a Man Thinketh, says “People are anxious to change their circumstances, but unwilling to change themselves. Therefore, they remain bound.” In other words, unless we change, we’re ‘stuck’. We’re stuck dealing with the same problems, challenges, and issues day after day, month after month, year after year. (Hint: if your New Year’s resolutions are the same each year, you’re stuck!) Now the article “Ground Hog Day (The Movie) & Personal Growth” covers general personal growth strategies. But here, I want to focus on the ‘growth spurt’ idea.
Beyond what the Ground Hog Day article provides, I want to encourage you to decide to create your own ‘personal growth spurt’. (Like in school, when we all came back from summer break and Johnny had grown 4 inches over the summer.) Well, we as adults can have ‘personal growth’ spurts, too! Over a relatively short time, we can be significantly better than we had been…if we are intentional, put a plan in place, and execute that plan. It is do-able!
So what does it take? Here are 5 steps:
- Be Hungry: Just as with physical growth spurts – that include a lot of eating – mental growth spurts require a lot of ‘feeding’ of the mind. Now that feeding will be different depending upon what type of growth (knowledge, skill, or ability) you’re looking for. But plan to be focused on ‘consumption’. Consume everything you can on the topic you choose. Go after it, pursue it! Feed your mind.
- Be Intentional: All significant growth is intentional. We don’t get significantly better at anything by accident any more than athletes ‘accidently’ break world records. If we want to grow, we need to know what we want to improve and have a (reasonable) plan for that growth.
- Be Focused: Don’t try to grow in too many areas at once. To be most effective, choose only one primary area to focus on to create a true ‘growth spurt’. (Often times there are related areas that also grow, or need to grow, due to that close relationship. For example, as people grow their leadership ability, they often grow their relationship skills as well since leadership is relationship-based.) When you focus your attention on something, it’s amazing how you see all types of opportunities to grow and apply that new knowledge, skill or ability.
- Be Disciplined: Once you’ve picked the area you want to grow in, and created the plan for your growth, execute that plan like your future life depends on it. Because…it does. You can transform your future with a well-executed personal development plan. Don’t allow yourself to get distracted. Stay determined to grow and you’ll be astonished with your results. It will pay off!
- Be Amazed: I love this one! You will be shocked at the results you get when you decide (and take action) to have your own intentional (personal) growth spurt. You will hear people talk about ‘how you’ve changed’ or ‘how much better you are’, as if you lost 35 pounds in 2 months. I often run Leadership Mastermind Groups where 10-15 people focus on developing their leadership abilities over an 8-week program. I constantly get feedback from the participants on how other people say they’ve changed or improved.
So what do you think? How could your life be better, if say 6 months from now, you were significantly better at leadership, or time-management, or teamwork, etc.? Is a life-enriching personal growth spurt in your future?
Questions: What area of your life would you like to be significantly better at in a relatively short period of time? How would this benefit you? How could you make this change?
