I have been DM’d a lot on my social media profiles about my plan for personal growth. I have been asked how I incorporated it into my life. Instead of messaging everyone back individually. I figured I would just make a blog post for everyone to refer back to.
Let’s create your very own system to help you in your personal growth journey. So grab your pens, pencils, or markers. Go download the printable worksheet that goes along with this post. So we can create a personal growth plan. You can work on all or some of this worksheet. This does not need to be done all at once. It is your system that works for you to keep you on track.
Figure out your areas
When first started putting a system in place for my personal growth journey. I needed to decide what areas I would want to work on. On the worksheet I created, I listed 8 different areas that I wanted to work on. This could be different for you. The point is not to overwhelm yourself but to have a clear map of what you will work on. Then come up with a system to incorporate those into your life.
The 8 categories I chose to create a personal growth plan are as follows:
1. Mental & Emotional Health
2. Physical Health
3. Financial Health
4. Educational
5. Hobbies & Fun
6. Relationships
7. Career
8. Environmental
These are not things you would work on at the same time. For me, there are certain areas I work on every day. Others I assign to a week and that is all I work on. Each category is getting its own rotation time. Get your own printable worksheet.
Choose what to work on in each area
Now that we have picked our categories. Choose 1-3 things you would like to improve on in those areas. When you finally figure out your areas to work on list your “why”. This is your motivation to continue doing what you are doing.
Let me share my Examples:
Mental & Emotional Health
For this category, I chose 3 things to work on. I want to make sure I am taking time for myself and not constantly thinking of others. Having a clear mind is always on my list. So I made sure I put meditation and the big one I put on here is doing shadow work. What that means is working on the skeletons in my closet. Removing the negative self-talk, and negative thoughts. Went through all of my dark past, abuse, relationships anything, and everything that bothers me in the back of my mind.
Why: Having PCOS sometimes puts me in a depressed mood. I end up overthinking everything. Which ends with me causing myself to be mentally and emotionally exhausted. Then I have a panic attack and question everything and everyone in my life.
Physical Health
As I have mentioned numerous times before I have PCOS and it is a struggle to lose weight. I don’t want to put so much pressure on myself. So I chose only to pick 2 things to focus on when creating my plan. The important things for me to work on are choosing healthier options and to exercise every day.
Why: This extra weight has got to go, I need to get my PCOS symptoms in check. Most importantly you want to have a baby. You need to lose weight to help with that.
Financial Health
My car died the day before my birthday in August. Slowly we are saving up the money to get it fixed. I never want to be put in this position again. We need to have an emergency fund of 1000 dollars (for now). Keep saving money to fix our car, and get a head on our bills by at least a month.
Why: I don’t want to worry about money when it comes to things we need. Ease my mind about bills, groceries, rent, and especially emergencies.
Educational
I always want to be learning. Being on a personal growth journey is always about learning. You want to be better to do better, not only for yourself but for others. My goal for the future is to write a book. How do you think I am able to write about these topics on the blog. I research and research information and apply it to my life. So I can tell you if this works or if it doesn’t. If it is something I can stick to everybody could. I want to stop looking at a screen so much and get my head in books.
Why: I want to feel/be smarter and learn new skills that could benefit me in the long run. Have these skills when it comes to my personal and professional life. You have been wanting to write a book for years now. No time like the present.
Relationships
Going through my personal growth journey, I have realized a lot of things. One of them is that I have been reaching out to the wrong people. I recently remove people that I felt I was not close to anymore. I am now looking for some new friends and becoming closer to other family members. Mike and I have stopped going on weekly date nights and I miss it.
Why: I want to have more meaningful relationships with people who actually want me in their life. Date night is key to having a healthy relationship. Just because we have been in a relationship for 8 years doesn’t mean we stop getting to know each other.
Career
I tend to keep to myself when it comes to my career. To me, I feel like I am bragging and showing off to others. I want to network/become friends with more bloggers so we can help each other out. There is no need to have all my eggs in one basket. We need to create more than one stream of income. Right now I am writing weekly. Getting ahead of the game is crucial. So if something happens I still have a post coming out.
Why: I believe in having friends who are also bloggers. We can help each other because we are both going through the same things. We could also bounce ideas off of each other. As I said in the financial portion, I never want to worry about our bills or emergencies. Getting ahead of the game means that I would not be so rushed getting a blog post out each Friday. Sometimes it’s overwhelming.
Hobbies & Fun
For some reason, I always end up putting this one on the back burner. If I am not at my computer working on this blog, I am cleaning my house. I need to take a break to do something I enjoy doing. Since the car is out of commission I chose things I could do around the house. Things that I enjoy but don’t do enough. I need to be creative in some way, doing a DIY of some sort. Play video games with Mike, or bake my savory loaves of bread that I have been thinking of.
Why: I need to have an activity that doesn’t involve using my brain too much. My brain is ALWAYS thinking. Doing something that makes me happy relieves stress.
Environmental
This is a big one in my plan. I feel that if my house is cluttered with “stuff” my brain is cluttered. Anxiety takes over when I think about my house not being clean. I feel so overwhelmed and horrible about myself when things are not organized and in their place. Every month I want to get rid of things I see we are not using. Then every 6 months do a big declutter in case I missed anything. If new things come in, old things have to go out.
Why: I don’t want my house cluttered with stuff we use once and never touch again. It is a waste of money. SAVE THAT MONEY TO FIX YOUR CAR AND BUILD YOUR EMERGENCY FUND.
How will you create a personal growth plan?
Now that we have our areas, the things we want to work on, and our why. We need to come up with ways to work on them. What are we going to do to make sure we do the work. You can see from my sheet that I have some simple ways to incorporate all of these into my daily, weekly, or monthly routines.
Some of these even combined together. Like taking time for myself I put go for a walk, which is also part of my physical health. Killing 2 birds with one stone. I could relax in the bath and read my book. By looking at this list now I can see what things I want to do daily, weekly, or monthly. If at any point I feel overwhelmed I can just stop a certain category till I get into a routine.
The plan can always be changed
If you find any of these categories or areas you decided you wanted to work on are just not working. You don’t create a personal growth plan once and that’s it. No, this list can be redone over and over to fit your needs tills you find something that works for you.
I always recommend that you journal to track your progress. It doesn’t have to be full-blown paragraphs (unless you are into that). It could just be a few sentences to keep your mind on the tasks at hand. No one else is going to keep you focused so you must work to do it for yourself. Make conscious decisions every day to be better and to do better for yourself.
Don’t forget to print out your worksheet.
I do hope this answers anyone’s questions about how to make a plan for your personal growth . If you are unsure about anything please leave me a comment below or find me on Instagram and shoot me a message so I can answer you quickly.
Until next time, Have a great day!
I think making a personal plan is really important and can put you in a positive mindset. It’s also a good idea to not put too much pressure on yourself and focus on a couple of things at a time, as you’ve pointed out
There should be no pressure. You do what you can with what you got. Even if you just make this plan, but only work on one thing for the next 6 months you are doing better than you were before.
Everything is perfect in my life including my relation, career and health. The problem is finances, I’m great at saving and I don’t use the money unless it’s necessary, the problem is family problems never end, it’s eating up my money.
I don’t know your situation, but it sounds like you may need to set some boundaries when it comes to your money and family problems.
I have so many things in mind. Some were not accomplished and others remain just a plan. I think I need this one.
Don’t do too many things. You don’t want to overwhelm yourself. If you must choose 1 or 2 things to work on for the next 6 months. It’s better than not trying at all.
So, why do I love this so much? This is such a great idea! Definitely printing it out and following this journey with you!
Yay! Thank you, Jasmine. If you have any questions let me know.
me more of a grab the opportunity guy,,,maybe I’m a bit late for this….but definitely gonna recommend it with my son and daughter
You can be a “grab the opportunity” guy, but still have a plan for yourself to learn, build better relationships, or work on your mental, emotional, physical wellbeing.
I liked how in-depth your post is. Just a few days ago I made a personal plan for me. I must say it works for me so well.
It has been a game-changer since I have made this plan for myself. It makes you more aware of the things you need to do vs the things you want to do. Hold yourself accountable.
Personal growth plan is something we do all need now. You give a great advise and useful help if needed
Thank you Lyosha. I try to be very clear and concise with my information. I do agree everyone needs to work on their personal growth.
I actually tried this after reading your post, let’s see if it work out and bring sort of growth in my life.. thanks 😀
Let me know how it goes for you, Vinny.
This is Amazing. I would love to follow up with you with this plan. I know it kinda gets difficult to personally grow. Thank you for sharing it!
Fransic, let’s follow up with each other and see if we can get you where you wanna be!
This is great, I like how well you organized everything! Thanks for sharing this.
I like to be very organized. Especially when I am working on myself. I want to keep track to see my progress.
Pesonal growth plan is very important. I believe in growth plans strongly, it does work
I agree, Lyosha. Having a plan means you are going somewhere. When you don’t you are just stuck driving around the block.
This is something I need this year. I will give it a try. Thank you for sharing!
Let me know how it goes!
You have provided great information for free in this post. Other bloggers want to charge for things like this. Your approach will bring many positive outcomes for people.
Thank you so much! I am just here to spread the information that is helping me.
we do a lot of similar personal development discussions at work and it’s so important to invest in one’s growth plan.
Absolutely Anosa!
Throughout the years, I have learned that breaking my goal into small goals helps. Unfortunately, last year, everything went downhill. Now I have to reset everything.
Now is the time to evaluate, calculate, and execute. Setbacks happen sometimes but make sure you bounce back with a vengeance.
Your ways are really good. Personal development enables you to have a personal vision of the future, which gives you a clear idea as to what or where you will be in the next few months or years. Knowing your target and destination in life makes it easy to draw up a plan on how you will achieve your goals.
Make a plan if not you will be stuck doing things you think are helping you, but are actually keeping you “busy”, not growing.
I’ve never made a personal growth plan before. The aspects inside I have done as well as journaling frequently. However, not all as a whole like you have organized here. Cool idea!
That’s just me. I try to be very organized when it comes to my growth.
I LOVE THIS!! You know Michele since we love writing out bucket lists, we are always excited when people tackle their dreams. But what I love about your Personal Growth “bucket list” plan is how you broke it down! You separated them into workable and easy to tackle categories with different subcategories. But you also added a WHY which is so important. I wish you all the luck in tackling this great list to grow, learn, and develop yourself!
Thank you so much, Eric! I really appreciate that. I know from personal experience if I didn’t break it up or put my why I would easily get overwhelmed and frustrated.
What an interesting approach that I’ll consider trying out for myself. I personally think im doing good so dar, but more structure seems to be a good idea haha
If you need any help let me know!
What a great idea! I find it very empowering to be so intentional about life.
Being intentional these past 2 years have really changed my life.
Man this is such an important and inspiring article. I have a lot if things that I also need to work on as well but it’s good to see these are realistic things
Let me know if you need any help, Rochelle.