Today, I'm going to talk about personal development plans, and the reason I want to talk about this is because development plans tend to be something that I've seen very negatively, especially in the workplace. If you are put on a performance development plan or a performance improvement plan, it means that your role at work is at risk. But having a personal development plan is something that you should have anyway. And so I want to talk about some ways of how you can go about building your own.

It's a process that you will work on for your entire life, but it will help you assess skills and qualities that will help you build the lifestyle and the career that you want and that you will make you happy and give you a high quality of life. A personal development plan can help you with all aspects of your life and help you become more self aware not only at home, but at work. So a well-designed personal development plan will address your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and roadblocks, just like a SWOT analysis.

And so the idea is identifying your strengths so you can improve on them your weaknesses so that you can make up for them in some way, shape or form, whether that be learning or doing something else, also explore new opportunities so that you realize when a door window is open and you can go ahead and explore something else, as well as noting any roadblocks, threats that are in along the way. Now, this is something that you should actually do on a regular basis.

And then the other thing, or one of the really great things about creating and the purpose of having a personal development plan is to recognize those development areas. So once you've performed your SWOT in each area of your life, you'll discover internal and external things that are blocking your success. And these can be things like you might have a belief that you hold on to own insecurity, and so it could be something like you might hold the belief that you will never have enough money to save for the future.

And because of that, when you do get, like extra unexpected money, you tend to blow it right away on things that you feel you've missed out on before or just spend it. Now, this is a somewhat limiting belief about money. And a lot of people have it because most people think that money is a finite source. And, you know, you do have the opportunity to make more in various ways. So that's something to think about when you are creating a personal development plan.

The other great thing is it helps you identify your resources. So when you are creating a personal development plan, you might do some work that helps you look at the resources that you have available to a specific task. For example, if you decide you want to start a coaching business, what resources do you have where you can start straight away or and what things do you need? What things can you live without? One, a nice house. What are deal breakers?

What can you do for yourself and what does somebody else need to do? And this works in almost every single aspect of your life. You may realize you already have the skills to do exactly what you wanted to do. However, you might also realize that you need to pay for additional brainpower, i.e. resources of other people or a course or workbook or something of that nature. But identifying the resources you have and what you need to get where you want to be is crucial in developing a plan that will work for you.

Also, doing a personal development plan will help you create better relationships. And this is because you then have a clearer idea of what you need to move forward. And so when you're managing your relationships, it helps you realize, OK, well, I'll need this for the future or this might be useful for right now. And just becoming self aware enough that not everyone likes what you say or do and you need to treat people differently is super helpful.

Now, whatever you want to work on and however you want to build up your career, what you're doing can be done by using a personal development plan. Whether you want to lose weight, start a business, change jobs, go back to school or anything else. The goal doesn't matter as much as developing the plan that you need to get where you want to go. Your plan will not be the same as anyone else's because it's unique to you, because you are different.

And that's why it's so unique and important that you create your personal development plan. Thank you for listening. This is Janice@thecareerintrovert.com. If you have any questions, please email me at janice@thecareerintrovert.com. Anything you want me to say on the show. Apart from that, have a great rest of your week.