It’s about that time again when many people would make elaborate new year’s resolutions. Eating healthy, going to the gym, learning new skills, etc., are common goals we all hope to achieve in the new year. Unfortunately, very few people will still be on track to achieve their goals by the end of January.
This is a common occurrence, but I told you that you could keep yourself accountable and stay true to your goal, and it begins with a personal growth plan.
What is a Personal Growth Plan?
A selfgrowthplan is a map of what you want to improve and how to go about it. With this map, you can’t help but stay true to your goals. The personal growth plan doesn’t just outline goals; it helps you put measures in place that’ll aid you in meeting those goals.
If you’re passionate about improving yourself, look at this 8-step guide we curated.
8-Step Guide To Creating Your Self Growth Plan
Define and Understand Your Vision
This step calls you to define what you want at the end of this journey. What do you hope to achieve at the end of your self growth journey? Think of it as your mission statement. Please take a while to think about this and make it as concise and clear as possible.
Set Your Goals
Next up, set your goals. Keep your goals achievable, simple, clear, and measurable and include a time frame. If your goal is too complicated to attain, you will likely not complete the journey. You’ll be too confused at some point, or your goals will seem too unattainable that you won’t even try. Including a time frame in which you hope to achieve these goals makes you more committed, especially when you can measure milestones as time passes.
Understand Your Present
Being honest about your present is crucial to hitting your goals at the end of the set time. It helps you gauge who you have to be to achieve your goals. For example, your goal is to lose weight and become healthy. Perhaps you want to weigh 70kg. For your goal to be practical and have a timeline, think of where you are. What’s your current weight? How healthy are your habits, or better still, how unhealthy? How much food are you eating currently?
Be as honest as possible with yourself so you can set an achievable timeline based on how much improvement you need to become the person that will achieve the goals you’ve set.
Define Milestones
Milestones are events or metrics that show an improvement or achievement in a project — using the example of weight loss. You can set certain weights as milestones for measuring your progress and success. If you hit these milestones, you know you’re on the right track towards achieving your goal.
Other milestones could be doing activities you couldn’t do before, like running a few miles or lifting weights. Just like when you were fixing goals, let your milestones be achievable within a reasonable time frame. Remember that your milestone is not there to judge you but to keep you on track to complete your project.
Develop Good Habits
Personal growth cannot occur in the presence of bad habits. Earlier, I mentioned growing into the version of yourself that can achieve your goal — developing good habits is how to grow and improve yourself. If your physical activity levels were non-existent, add a walk to your day. Develop good habits that encourage the success of your project.
Make A List of Don’ts
The best book about procrastination teaches us that restrictions and limits are essential to overcome procrastination, especially for the first couple of months when adjustment to the new you is still challenging.
Design A Positive Reinforcement Cycle
Of course, you won’t be able to stick to the new habit. You’ll likely go back again and again during the adjustment period, which is the time before a new habit is formed. To help you stick to the plan, design a positive reinforcement cycle.
What it simply means is to set up a reward-punishment reinforcement cycle. Your positive reinforcement cycle should have a cue, a routine/action, and a reward. Assign events to each category and follow through.
Review and Evaluate Your Plan
You’re almost there! At this point, your growth plan is complete, and you must have started implementing it already. The last step in creating your self-growth plan is evaluation. How well is it going? Does your plan need some adjustments, additions, or subtractions? Whatever it is, make the adjustments.
Conclusion
Your goals are only a personal self growth plan away. If you follow this step-by-step guide to create your self growth plan, you’re halfway to your goals already. Good luck on your growth journey.