Personal Development and Career Success

To most people, career development means job skill education and training. They think personal development is different and only happens outside work through motivational books and courses, hobbies, travel, spiritual exploration, and other nonwork activities.

But career development and personal development go hand-in-hand. Job skill education and training can only get you so far. You also need to develop attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that lead to success.

Benefits of Personal Development

There are many good reasons to invest in your personal development. The top reasons are:

• More opportunities for challenging work assignments
  and responsibility.


• A clearer path to career advancement.


• Less stress – on you and other people.

There are also many ways to develop yourself. Below are several of the best suggestions:

Personal Development Strategies

1. Identify Your values : People with fuzzy values have fuzzy lives. If you don't know what's truly important to you, everything looks like a worthwhile opportunity. Usually, however, you end up traveling down rabbit holes that ultimately lead to nowhere.
   
   The only way to get clear on what matters to you is to find out what your values are. You can do some easy exercises that are very enlightening. Suddenly you see yourself. Just you. Not the "you" that your family, friends, and coworkers think you should be.
   
   Your values are the only personal qualities that will sustain you if you want to go after big things in life.



2. Set concrete goals: Most people have abstract, nonspecific goals. They say, "I want to have an exciting job" or "I want to earn a lot of money." But few people accomplish much with these goals because they're too vague.
   
   Only tangible, measurable goals help you set your sights on more specific results. See how the picture changes when you have tangible goals like: "I will employ 10 people and gross 1 million dollars per year at the end of 5 years" or "I will earn 6 figures by the time I'm 30."
   
   Goals crafted this way state the specific results you want by a specific date. They provide a clear target to shoot for.
   
   Companies are looking for employees who know how to produce results. You can't get great results if you don't have concrete goals and the ability to take action to accomplish them.
   
   If you've had a lifetime of being vague about your goals, this is an area of personal development you'll want to focus on.



3. Prioritize: Priorities and goals are related. Your priorities are the things you do to reach your goals.
   
   Everything can't be a priority. Some things are more important than others. You need to figure that out.
   
   Author Stephen Covey suggests spending most of your time on what's important but not urgent. This includes clarifying your values (see #1 above), planning and preparing, building relationships, and doing true re-creation.
   
   Others recommend using the ABC system to prioritize your lists. "A" items are high priority. You want to accomplish them every day and fill in with "Bs" and "Cs" when you can.