5 Tips for Meeting Your Personal Development Goals

The year 2020 has been a challenging and perplexing one so far. Not much has gone according to plan for most people, and it can feel like things have spiraled out of control and can’t be reigned back in.

The sense of powerlessness that accompanies the feeling of losing control over our own lives can lead to anger, apathy, or giving up on our dreams. This doesn’t have to be the case. Setbacks come in different shapes and sizes, but human beings are creative and adapt to new situations in incredible ways.

You may have had personal development goals set for yourself for the year ahead – getting a new job, buying a new house, losing a few pounds and getting in shape, getting married, seeing the world, learning a new language or finishing a course, and acquiring a new qualification.

Whatever the goals you’d set for yourself, don’t be quick to resign yourself and give up. Probably now more than ever, having and pursuing goals for our continued personal development is a life-giving process that can imbue our lives with meaning and a sense of purpose.

Below are five keys to help you on your personal development journey.

Five Keys to Meeting Your Personal Development Goals

1. Set your goal

The first and most important step is setting the goal. This is probably obvious, but sometimes the obvious bears stating. Many people stumble out the gate by not being clear in their own minds what they want to achieve.

The famous saying that if you aim for nothing, you’ll hit it, comes to mind. If you don’t know where you’re going, you can’t take steps to get there. You must decide for yourself the areas of your life that you want to develop and set your goals accordingly.

Setting goals can be a skill in itself. Your goals should be clear, measurable, and attainable. Wanting to lose twenty pounds in one year would be that kind of goal. Simply saying, “I want to lose weight” without determining some sort of timeframe isn’t helpful because there’s no way to be accountable and keep track of whether you’re going in the right direction.

Another example of a clear, measurable, and attainable goal is if you’re a regular runner and you set yourself a target to run in a marathon next year. You can keep track of your times and general fitness to see if you’d withstand the rigors of a marathon.

For some of us, what we may need may be to reset our goals to account for new unforeseen circumstances. If you’d planned to travel the world in 2020, our current situation makes safely achieving that goal unattainable. It’s okay to go back to the drawing board and rethink your priorities and plans in a new season.

2. Stay focused

When you’re out to implement change in your life, one thing that kills progress is a split focus. Having too much on your plate can be just as bad as having nothing on it. Pulled in too many different directions, it’s difficult to pay attention the way you should in order to implement the changes you want to bring about in your life. If you have too many goals that demand a lot of you, you may end up sabotaging yourself and get nothing done.

You know the limits of your attention as well as your gifts. Being gentle with yourself and prioritizing the important things in your life will help you maintain focus to achieve your goals. Don’t be afraid to let go of some things so you can focus on your goal.

We all know the little wastes of time in our lives that can preoccupy us – whether its procrastination or a bad habit that saps our time and energy. Being focused means deliberately carving time out to go about the business of meeting our goals and investing ourselves in that process.

3. Start small

The “go big or go home” mindset may work in some things, but when it comes to personal development, it can be more of a hindrance than anything. If your goal is in an area in which you have no experience, you should account for that and give yourself the grace to start small and master the learning curve. With goals like fitness, people become discouraged because they set big goals that take time to achieve, and yet they expect results promptly.

If you want to learn a new instrument or language, or you pick up studying after years out of the classroom, it’s important to have realistic expectations. You need to have perspective on what you can achieve within a small timeframe – it helps to consult with someone more senior in that field to find out what is reasonable.

4. Seek accountability

Having a community that keeps you accountable is an invaluable tool for achieving your goals. “Accountability” isn’t a bad word. If you think about it, it’s a gift in life that helps us to meet our full potential. Having someone to ask you how it’s going (and knowing that they’ll ask you!) can spur you on to meet your personal development goals timeously. If we have no one to whom we are accountable, it’s easy to let things slide because no one will ask us about it.

There is value in having someone like a mentor or life coach to walk with you on your journey. This is a person whose role is to help you think through your goals and to keep you accountable. However, your accountability can stem from close friends, colleagues, or another source. That accountability community you form can be a community of one or a larger group.

Having a group of peers with whom you can share challenges, successes and encouragement is an indispensable tool for personal growth. Whether it’s a virtual or physical community, having people (or someone) with whom to share your journey is important in your own journey.

With the digital and virtual tools we have on hand today, it’s never been easier to check in with our community, update them on our progress, get advice on how to overcome obstacles, and get a fire under us to keep going.

5. Perseverance

The final key to meeting your personal development goals, having a persevering mindset, is also quite important. The thing about setting goals is that you’ll inevitably encounter setbacks. These may come from within in the form of negative thoughts or a mindset that seeks to discourage you from pressing on, or they may be external events and factors that are out of your control.

If you want to keep growing, you’ll have to find ways to weather the storms that come your way and overcome those challenges. Speak with encouragement over yourself, and remember that to attain something you’ve never had, you’ll have to push yourself in ways you haven’t before.

If your goal is to lose your temper with your kids less, then when those kids act up and start pushing your buttons you’ve got to stick to what you want to achieve and not be deterred by how hard it gets. Perseverance may mean meeting some of those challenges creatively and in unexpected ways.

Christian Counseling for Personal Development

One of the most important things you can do for yourself and your loved ones is to invest in your personal development. Aiming to be a better person is a great gift you can give to others.

All of us have areas where we have room for growth and taking the time to grow as human beings into well-rounded, healthier, and more compassionate people can truly benefit us and others. Our families, our workspaces, and our world will be a better place if we become fully realized human beings who walk joyfully in our calling as reflections of God’s image and glory.

The path toward that growth is not always an easy one, and so we must prepare ourselves and be equipped to meet the challenges we’ll inevitably face along the way. With clear goal setting, perseverance, and a community that encourages us and keep us accountable, we can become the people God intended us to be.

Feel free to contact one of the counselors in our counselor directory to schedule a counseling appointment.