Find your true potential
Now that you’re getting a bit older do you look back to see what you’ve done with your life so far and what you still want to do? If you are not investing in your own personal development, you may be limiting your true potential. Personal development affects your entire life, not just your work life or your personal life but every aspect of it.
It’s amazing how many people go through life and don’t ever try to improve themselves or there situation. These are the same people that wonder why they are not getting anywhere with their lives. As you get into your 50’s and sometimes even older it often becomes a time for reflecting on your life. life has a way of automatically changing gears whether you want it or not, you need to be ready to move with it.
Here are some guidelines to help you:
How do you want to shape the rest of your life?
Use your imagination and picture the life you’d like to lead. Without a vision, you won’t be able to determine the kind of life you want to live. You need a healthy balance in life, so what kinds of changes do you need and want personally and professionally? If you’re still working then you’ll be aware of how much the two will ultimately overlap.
How do you imagine yourself? Is it as an entrepreneur, owning your own business, or retiring, spending more time with family and friends. Maybe you see yourself being more helpful to others, this trait will become part of both personal and professional aspects of your life.
What makes you happy?
Are you happy in your present career life? What about your relationships are they healthy and thriving? There may be certain aspects of your self development that you believe are specific to your personal life but they may easily carry over to improve your professional life.
Have you been thinking about increasing your skills in a specific area? This is one example of where having more skills available to you could easily be beneficial to your personal and professional life. Imagine if you are doing something that satisfies your needs, it will likely make you a happier person and therefore maybe more pleasant to be around, another plus is a possible increase in income and therefore lifestyle. The key is to identify and imagine what this new skill or even career is going to look like.
Examine Your Current Life
Just like taking a trip you need to know where you are starting from and where you’re going. Before you make any changes in your life, determine where you stand with your life as it currently exists. Determine what’s working and what isn’t to help you create a plan to make the changes necessary to create a better life.
Set realistic and relevant goals
Once you know what works well and you want to keep as a part of your life and what you want to let go of or change it’s time to set a series of steps on how you’re going to do it. Create some goals and vow to complete them. Each goal will have its own action steps to complete. Give them each a time frame, and set specific milestones with firm dates so that you can see how far you’ve come.
Be more flexible and open
Sometimes even with our best intentions things don’t go the way we want them to. There’s are very valid reasons why certain goals can’t be met. Some things you have no control over, so don’t quit as often there’s another option or opportunity that may even be better than the original one. Obstacles are a given with any plan so rather than abandoning your entire plan, come up with alternatives. This is not the place to give up on your dream!
Keep track of your progress
When you reach a milestone, see if you are on track with your action steps. This is important to help keep you motivated, stay realistic and truthful.
Don’t just go for pithy goals that have little or no real value just to make it easy on you, at the same time don’t go after unobtainable goals as you are just setting yourself up to fail. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to push yourself a bit more. Go after something of real value to you. Just remember be realistic about your own capabilities.
In the words of Jim Rohn:
When you know what you want,
And you want it bad enough,
You’ll find a way to get it
