A personal development plan helps you to grow and achieve. So why do so few people take the time to create one? Two potential reasons are:

• Lack of know how

• Fear of limiting themselves

There are 5 key steps in creating a personal development plan

1. Do a personal stock-take of your strengths and development needs. As well as your own assessment get the input of others. They can often see talents that you are not aware of or are failing to fully utilise.

2. Think about what development will help you most in achieving your professional and personal goals.

3. Decide which methods of delivery will have greatest impact on your learning. We all have different ways of learning so find out what works best for you.

4. Set out a calendar of development events for the next 12 months. This makes it real and more likely to be achieved.

5. Put an accountability structure in place to ensure you follow through. Often the lack of accountability can result in you losing focus.

So what are the benefits of creating a personal development plan?

1. You give a clear message that you take your contribution to business success seriously

2. You can start to work on the areas that are less developed so that you become even more of an asset to your employer

3. If things are not progressing as you would like career wise you can demonstrate to a potential new employer what you can contribute with real impact

4. You take informed choices about the type of roles you pursue rather than leaving it to chance

5. You continue to grow, be motivated and stretch yourself to achieve what you desire

Take the first step towards to realising and exploiting your real professional and earning potential.

Step 1: Set a vision
Get a clear vision of what you want. Ask yourself at the pinnacle of your career: What role do I want? How much do I want to earn? What type of organisation you want to be working for? When do you want to achieve it by? What impact do you want to leave behind at the end of your career?

Step 2: Identify what you are willing to do to achieve your vision
Life is all about choices. By saying yes to career you are saying no to another area. Make a list now of: What you are willing to to achieve your vision What you are not willing to do

Step 3: Identify what it is worth to you to achieve your vision
Get connected to What it will give you What values your will be honouring How it will feel to achieve it? What will be the cost to you if you don't achieve?

Step 4: Identify the help and support you will need along the way
Start to make a list of all of the people and resources that you will need along the way to achieving your vision.

Step 5: Assess your skills
In assessing your skills you need to identify: Skills that you currently have Skills that need to be developed

Step 6: Assess your knowledge
Similar to skills consider areas where you have specific knowledge such as Finance, Marketing, IT and also the knowledge you will need to develop to be a leader.

Step 7: Assess your personal qualities
Read any research or speak to anyone who has reached a leadership role and they will probably tell you that softer skills were the most important attribute. Rigorously assess and review this area.

Step 8: Prepare a personal development plan
Use the results of the steps 5 to 7 to set out your personal development plan for each of the next 5 years. Be specific about what you want to do, the outcome you are seeking, how you will do it and when you will do it by. Consider the accountability you need to say on track.

Step 9: Prepare your career plan
In developing your career plan consider the experience you need to acquire, type of roles you need to do, specific industry experience you want, time in each role, support and help you need.

Step 10: Monitor, evaluate and adapt
If you don't monitor you are likely to go off track. Set up accountability. Set review dates. Be honest about what is working and what is not. Be ready to adapt to reach your final destination. Remember that many people have the potential but fail to realise it. Use this 10 step approach to get you off to a flying start.

I heard lots of people asking almost the same question, perhaps with different paraphrasing and it goes like this. "How can I become wealthy and happy?" The most common answer will be "Work harder so that you can make more money!" Well, I will most probably probe further by asking "What do you work harder on?" I guess you will most probably say "Isn't that obvious? It should be on your job!" Well, it is true if you are contended with a life of mediocrity. If you want to live a life of richness and success, then you ought to learn to work harder on yourself than you do it on your job. That is when personal development makes its grand entrance to your life.

I must admit that working on personal development has been the most challenging task of my life because it is an indefinite process. Once you are in personal development education, it will stay with you lifelong and only stops on the day we die. There is nothing we can refute on. You see the importance of personal development education has on our entire life. That is why we see people die at the age of 21 but only get buried at the age of 65. These are the groups of person without going through proper personal development education.

A lot of people have goals and dreams of what they are going to get and they plan and strategise working towards their goals. In fact, we have failed to realise one thing which is the most important in personal development education. It is not about what we are getting but rather what we are becoming to is far more important. The reason being so is simple. When you become the person you want to be, getting what you want usually comes along with it. They compliment each other. Just like a successful businessman earns millions or billions in his business. The money come naturally when you become a successful businessman.

Why does every successful businessman make money? Have you heard of any successful business who does not make money? Does making money equate success to you? What do I mean by all these questions? In fact, I am highlighting the importance of personal development which has a knitted impact in finance management. Personal development encompasses a wide area and finance literacy and management is just a certain part of it. Without proper training in financial management, that explains why people who strike billions of dollars in lottery claimed they were not the least happy after which or declares bankrupt faster than anyone would have thought of. Therefore, personal development is where you should focus most in your life otherwise you might just have to contend with mediocrity.

I believe learning is an indefinite process which stops only when one dies. No matter how educated a person is, there is always room to acquire new knowledge. We need to constantly improve and upgrade ourselves and personal development is an essential and vital long chapter which follows us throughout our life. How great would it be if there is a program which provides personal development education while allowing us to earn money marketing personal development products or courses?

Personal growth and development is a wide area that encompasses topic in relationship, health, finance, love, family, religion and many more. Some of the top personal development classic such as Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, How to win and influence friends by Dale Carnegie and many personal development trainers and speakers, to name a few like Anthony Robbin, Robert Kiyosaki Brian Tracy, Les Brown and Zig Zigler have helped many attain success in their life, career, relationship and finance.

I have always been hoping there will be an online personal development education available for everyone around the world. It has to be a collection of training courses, seminars and talks from top personal development trainers and speakers which can be easily accessed by anyone in any corner of the world. Of course, it will be perfect to have a share in this 64 billion industry pie in promoting personal development education. After a long search, I found an unprecedented Earn and Learn Opportunity which provides me with life long personal development education and at the same time, allows me to earn money marketing personal development products and courses online.

Remember, success does not discriminate one from another. Anyone can attain success as long as they desire for it and work towards it diligently and consistently. Some may achieve success much faster than the other but do not fret for the slower one, you just have to put in more effort to see your results. To achieve success faster, you have to seek continual learning.

Hi! I come to you today wanting to talk about personal development. And introduce you to a beautiful, talented, loving, caring women I have come to know and love today. ME!

I strongly believe in the principle “Model someone who’s already reached a goal I want to achieve”.

Living by this principle I’m privileged to have grown in my personal development in life. I can remember my dad; William A. Grieves, as I was growing up telling me I can always be what I want to be, and achieve what I wished to achieve. As most of us do in life it took me awhile to live life on life’s terms to realize what he meant by that statement.

If I may I’d like to share a fundamental truth I believe. Marketing “theories” and “concepts” aren’t enough. Especially in Personal Development.

I’ve had to analyze, understand, and model real people that are already personally thriving. I had to become privy to their most powerful assets, techniques, and secrets.

I have learned in my short 51 years of life and experiences that it’s important for me to have a balance of business sense, common sense, and coming from the heart when I interact with others.

For so long I looked to align personal values, passion and purpose with a bigger vision of life, my goals, and choices. I lacked confidence in the direction of where my life was taking me. In other words I wondered, “What Is My Path?”

Through coaching, and personal development, and following the principle belief of modeling someone who’s already reached a goal I want to achieve I have learned what makes me unique. I have stepped outside what I thought was my comfort zone. That dungeon that incased me in what I thought was a unpenetrateable wall of fear. I walk through the where, when, what, who, and how I can use my gifts and talents to serve others.

I was an editor of the North East Washington Area Narcotics Anonymous Newsletter for one and a half years, I have 17 years of sobriety and clean time. I have the freedom of bondage from drug addiction and alcoholism today. I have walked through grief issues from the loss of family friends, relationships, and job losses to name a few. I am a poet, artist, an excellent listener, and a home business owner that provides support for other home business owners.

My purpose in life naturally unfolds as I continually link my strengths, passions, values, and life story.

It’s no wonder I have the experiences I do. Its as though I was being sculpted by the Great Potter’s hand to live out the purpose I came to fulfill.

It took planning, assessing risk and reality, developing relationships, and following through. This was a process that took focus over time. Following this process you can even build a bridge and consciously create your life’s work and purpose.

The Barriers to Personal Growth and Development are caused by six reasons that people do not take action on the things they want to experience in life. The six reasons are lack of personal growth, uneducated about personal development, do not set goals, they feel the fear and do not do it anyway, negative feedback from people, and many growth barriers that was acquired while growing up as an adult in life.

So, why is it that many people around the world have a lot of barriers to personal growth and development in their lives today? I often asked myself the same questions about me, and many other people that I have learned from over the years in life. Through the many people I have interviewed over the past year personal growth and development have been a big part of their life.

The first reason that people do not take action in their lives is due to a lack of personal growth. Most people simply will not take any action to improve on their personal growth to improve their lives greatly by experiencing something new in their life.

Second, they are uneducated about personal development being apart of their life. Most people do not understand what personal development is all about, so they are uneducated about how to improve their own life as well as other people in their environment.

The third reason is because people do not set goals to achieve the things they want in life. How many times have you heard a person say I just set a new goal today that’s going to be completed by the end of the week? Not many I bet unless they hung around many like minded individuals that set goals on regular bases in their lives.

Fourth, they feel the fear and do not do it anyway. Most people feel the fear when they are doing things that make them uncomfortable and yet do not go through with it anyway to see results in their experiences.

The fifth reason is negative feedback from people that even do not understand their own life to the degree of giving someone else advise about certain issues in life. I use to hear many times how people are influenced form negative feedback that they got from other people in their life that hinders them from improving their own.

The six reasons are many growth barriers that were acquired while growing up as an adult in life. Most people walk around their entire time on this planet holding on to a lot of garbage that happen in the past to them while growing up as an adult. They keep those same ideas, thinking and feelings so long in their lives to that in itself becomes a habitual way of being in this world today. The best advice that I could give to another human being is this in two words personal development. Apply personal development in your life and you will be amazed at the many new things you will begin to experience in your life today.

To be truly successful in your life, your career, your community or in any area, you need to develop the qualities of a leader. First and foremost, you will need to be able lead yourself to success. Furthermore, true success often requires you to lead other people as well. Here are 7 personal development tips – the qualities of successful leaders.

There are 7 important qualities of a leader that you should know about, assimilate and practice every day in your life. You may already recognise some of them in your self – that’s a good start. Be assured, we all have the makings of a leader in us. You just need to build on that base to incorporate more of the qualities of a leader a bit at a time.

As you get closer to the qualities of a true leader you will find that you begin to act like a leader and people behave as if you are leader. Leaders are the people who have the greatest rewards in all walks of life. Whether in business, or in society or in the community.

Seven qualities of a leader

Integrity. Integrity means that you are true to yourself and your ideas. You are someone you can trust and someone other people can trust. This is possibly the most important quality. You should always strive to do things that you are proud to explain to anyone.

Understand the area you want to be a leader in. You simply won’t have a thorough grasp of the area you are trying to be a leader in. This applies to any walk of life – business, community, spiritual… All leaders have a good grasp of the basics and the key details.

This is not to say that you have to know everything there is to know – that is the job of the specialist, but you need to be able to talk to specialists and contribute some guidance to their work.

Consistency. When you are trying to lead people, you will rapidly loose the trust of your followers if you constantly change your mind and your direction. They will feel uncertain about their future and eventually you will loose them. This applies to yourself as well. If you are constantly changing direction, you will end up running round in circles and going nowhere.

Ability to admit your mistakes. One of the greatest cause of failure is not being willing to admit your mistakes. If you lie to yourself, you are fooling no one but yourself. You must be able to face up to your mistakes otherwise you will miss tremendous opportunities to learn from your mistakes and accelerate your success.

Willingness to listen. You can never know all the answers, you must be able to deal with contradictions and leverage the vast pool of knowledge that is around you.

Decisiveness. Great leaders make decisions and they make them quickly. Even if they are wrong, you’ll learn more by taking action than by not taking the decision. You can always make another decision based on your learning.

Self Belief. If you don’t believe in your self… no one will! You will face a lot of setbacks and obstacles. You need to believe in yourself and your ability to solve the problems and achieve your dreams. If you believe in yourself you will display an burning passion for your idea that will motivate others to follow you.

When it comes to starting a work at home online business there are some specific key points that are a must for online success. It's important to know internet marketing, but it is more important to know how to be a successful personality. It is my belief that success in internet marketing is just like anything else in life. It takes certain actions to become successful and I will do my best to explain them.

The major points I want to discuss are:

*Taking consistent and focused action
*Personal belief in yourself
*Writing down goals
*having Vision of the future
*Paying the price
*Never ever quit

Taking consistent and focused action in my eyes is the most important aspect of anything you want out of life. Having a clear focus of what outcome you are looking to pursue, and taking consistent action towards that goal will always produce success. I believe that the only way not to be successful is to not try or quit. Think about it, if I was to consistently speed in my car the chances of me getting booked are high right? If I was to consistently workout in the gym and eat right, would I get some change in body composition? Of course I would! This is why it is essential to take action every day. Create an action plan and stick to it every day. Just make sure that the action you do take is focused. What I mean by this is to set some basic time management skills, create an action plan and stick to it every day. Do a little bit more every week, every month, and every day!

Believe in yourself. Believe in what you are doing. Believe that it is going to make you successful and put everything you have into it. There are always going to be people who don't believe in you, and unfortunately these people are often those that are close to you. Adversity will always be a factor in any thing we do but you have to brush it off and just do it. If you really do truly believe in what you are doing you will make yourself successful no matter what. It’s no accident that a vast majority of successful people have an extremely high level of self belief and just go for it no matter what. Always maintain a positive attitude.

I use goal setting every day. Every day I write down what I want to achieve with an action plan and then as I complete the tasks I get to put a line through them. It is like a small victory every time I complete a task. I give myself a pat on the back and move on to the next task. It is also important to have future goals written down also. When writing your goals, write in the present tense. For example if one of my goals was to be living on the beach in a mansion I would write that "I am sitting in my mansion, looking through my window overlooking the ocean with the sea breeze in my hair". This puts you in the moment and if you spend a little time each day reading your goals you are more likely to achieve them. This is also your vision for the future. Put yourself in the moment and the universe will do everything possible to bring it too you. If you dream enough it will happen, every time.

There is no such thing as a free lunch! The harder we work the more thing are going to come our way. The harder we work the more our conscious believes we should succeed. We cause success, No one was ever successful from not working hard, and no matter how gifted you are. The best mens 100m sprinters didn't just wake up one morning and run 9 seconds. He had to work hard to achieve this. Just like you, the harder you work the more likely you are to achieve what you are striving for. Set your sights on that goal and work as hard as possible to achieve that goal, don't stop until you succeed.

This leads into my last point which is never quit. Put simply if you never quit how can you fail? You will always have some sort of success if you never quit. No one knows when that lucky break might be but if we quit then we will never make it. It doesn't matter if you make mistakes or fail at specific tasks, learn and move on, don't lose sight of your goals and never quit, ever. Commit to the job and get it done.

Everyone should spend some time on personal development everyday. Personally I like to feed the mind something positive every day, with out fail. It could be a book, a conference, seminar, article, recorded trainings, whatever it might be feed your mind positive material everyday. I also like to take positive business building action every single day. With positive action comes positive results and even if it’s something small like write an article, post on forums, edit your Google campaign, tell your friend about your business, just do some type of income producing activity every day. You are bound to succeed by your sub conscious thoughts, and you will if you apply these principles.