You’ve heard the saying before, “If you don’t plan, you are planning to fail.” However, even understanding that comment, we forget about it in our personal lives. Most of the time, we apply that type of rational thought to our work life. We sadly forget that planning our personal development is also an essential part of achieving everything out of life that we desire. In addition, personal development does include career development.

That includes all your audacious goals and dreams developed minutes before falling to sleep each night that is gone when you wake up. When you wake up life intrudes and diverts your attention with all measure of bright shiny lights, sounds, and distractions. 

By creating a personal development plan, you devise a plan that enables you to avoid distractions and instead act each day with intent, knowing it’s going to lead you to the future you want. When you create a personal development plan, you’re primarily asking yourself to identify where and how you are going to focus your actions that will ultimately lead you to succeed in reaching your goals allowing you to live a life with purpose.

Benefits of Creating & Implementing a Personal Development Plan

There are numerous benefits to creating and implementing a personal development plan. It doesn’t matter who you are, you can get a lot out of a personal development plan. Let’s look at some of these benefits. Keep in mind that you may experience even more positivity due to implementing this in your life.

• Discover Your Purpose – If you’re not sure exactly what you are supposed to be doing with your life seeking help by working on your personal development is a sure-fire way to find your purpose. You cannot find it by doing the same old thing every day. You may not have even tried the thing you’re meant to do in life. 

• More Self-Awareness – When you have more self-awareness, it merely means that you are super honest with yourself about who you are. You know your strengths and weaknesses, and you’re sure of your ideas, beliefs, emotions, and you know what motivates you and why.

• Better Sense of Direction – Nothing ensures you get where you want to go than knowing the path it takes to get there. This is the main reason for having a plan. You cannot reach goals intentionally without a plan.

• Improved Effectiveness – When you do things that are planned out so that you’ve thought of potential roadblocks, problems, and risks before you embark on the journey you are more likely to be successful in your endeavors.  

• Better Focus – It’s easier to stay focused when you have experienced some success. When you realize that following a plan and implementing the plan truly ensures you experience more success, it’s easier to focus on that because you know it works.

• More Motivation – Obviously, you’re going to be more motivated to succeed when you have those successful experiences. When you set a plan in motion and start experiencing success, you’ll be even more motivated to act than if you did not have a plan. 

• Greater Resilience – When you are sure of yourself, setbacks don’t set you back as far as they would if you did not have a plan. You can look to your plan and adjust in a way that doesn’t cause you to stop moving forward.

• Stronger Relationships – When you understand yourself, it’s a lot easier to understand and relate to others. It’s easier for you to put yourself in their shoes, to explain how you feel about things, and to be more proactive in keeping relationships healthy. 

• Greater Success – The fact of the matter is simple, when you create a plan, and follow it, you’re going to be more successful. It’s just true. Take one small thing, such as learning a new language. If you learn one new word each day by the end of a year, you’ll have at least 365 new words. 

• Higher Sense of Confidence – Success breeds confidence. Because you are doing your plan, you are experiencing more success. When you have more success, you become much more confident in your decision-making abilities. 

• Enhanced Goal Setting – Just the act of creating a personal development plan means that you need to understand how to set the right goals. Usually, the right intentions are SMART goals, meaning that they need to be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. 

• Overall Happier Life – When you plan for happiness, you will achieve it. You really cannot help it because living a life of purpose and direction is a lot easier to do than leading a volatile life where you just hang on for the ride and have no idea what you’ll do next. 

For every person who creates a personal development plan, it will be different. The benefits you experience are going to be personalized to you. For example, if during the development of this plan, you determine you really want to live a completely different life than you thought you did, you can now do that. 

You don’t have to accept life as it is. You have the power to change yourself, your actions, and your feelings. Having the power to take control is so exciting, and it can be a little scary, until you get accustomed to being in charge. Once you realize you have it, nothing is impossible.