School of Smart Brain
Personal development is a lifelong process. It’s a way for people to assess their skills and qualities, consider their aims in life and set goals in order to realise and maximise their potential.
This page helps you to identify the skills you need to set life goals which can enhance your employability prospects, raise your confidence and lead to a more fulfilling, higher quality life. Plan to make relevant, positive and effective life choices and decisions for your future to enable personal empowerment.
Although early life development and early formative experiences within the family, at school, etc. can help to shape us as adults, personal development should not stop later in life.
This page contains information and advice that is designed to help you to think about your personal development and ways in which you can work towards goals and your full potential.
There are many ideas surrounding personal development, one of which is detailed below - Abraham Maslow's process of Self Actualisation.
Maslow (1970) suggests that all individuals have an in-built need for personal development which occurs through the process called self-actualisation.
The extent to which people are able to develop depends on certain needs being met and these needs form a hierarchy. Only when one level of need is satisfied can a higher one be developed. As change occurs throughout life, however, the level of need motivating someone’s behaviour at any one time will also change.
Maslow (1970, p.383) says that all individuals have the need to see themselves as competent and autonomous, also that every person has limitless room for growth.
Self-actualisation refers to the desire that everybody has ‘to become everything that they are capable of becoming’. In other words, it refers to self-fulfilment and the need to reach full potential as a unique human being.
For Maslow, the path to self-actualisation involves being in touch with your feelings, experiencing life fully and with total concentration.
Maslow, A. H. (1970), Motivation and Personality, (2nd Edition), Harper & Row, New York.
Practical steps can be taken to enhance personal development, including:
If you are considering making changes in your life, finding additional time often poses a problem. It could be that the changes you are thinking of making are to ensure you have extra time to:
Whatever the reason, looking at how you spend your time will encourage you to think of ways your time could be managed more effectively.
Time Management and Minimising Distractions give further information about how you may manage your time more effectively,
For many people their personal development will involve setting goals; these might be to change behaviour - as in looking at their time management - learning new skills or advancing their career.
Many employers are looking for the same sorts of skills. These include good communication skills, the ability to work as part of a team and the ability to learn – these are often termed ‘ Soft Skills ’ and are the sorts of skills that SkillsYouNeed writes about. Beyond that the skills required will depend on the particular job.
Drawing up a CV or résumé is not only necessary when applying for jobs, it can also be very useful for your own benefit and will help you appraise the skills you have gained through education, training, employment, voluntary work, leisure and other activities. In turn it will help to highlight skills that you should work on developing.
There are numerous different ways of setting out and presenting a CV or résumé for the purpose of applying for a job – you should be very careful to include all relevant information and make sure your document is well written and well presented.
However, for the purpose of a personal CV or résumé, for your own reference and as a way to access your skills a simple format is all that is needed.
Quick guide to preparing your personal CV or résumé:
Many skills that you have learnt and developed either through work, education or your personal life can be successfully applied to other areas of your life. For example, good listening skills are important in many aspects of life. Such skills are known as ‘Transferable Skills’ a term which is usually associated with a skill set that can be easily transferred from one job to another.
Analysing your existing skills will help you to identify both skills and personal qualities that could be used in another field. Further examples of transferable skills are IT skills, interpersonal skills, communication (verbal and written), organisational skills, literacy and numeracy, problem-solving and understanding the needs of others or emotional intelligence.
Learning a new skill will broaden the opportunities open to you, at the same time as empowering you as an individual. There are many things that prevent people from learning new skills, these barriers may be overcome with some thought. These might include:
It is often a good idea to keep a record of your personal development. By writing down key developments in your learning and development as and when they occur, you will be able to reflect on your successes at a later date.
This reflection may well help to motivate you to learn more skills in the future. Try keeping a learning log or journal as you develop your skills and knowledge. Reflective Practice for some ideas of how to do this..