Top Nine News: 5 Powerful Foundations to Accelerate Your Personal Development

*This is a post by Mike Slavin, who?s a part of The Feel Good Team and helps me behind-the-scenes make this website better everyday.*

A little over a year ago, I got REALLY into personal development.

My bookshelf is stuffed with pages of positive psychology, health, fitness, and productivity goodness. My bookmarks are overflowing with inspirational blogs that I read regularly.

Personal development is a serious passion of mine, bordering on the line of obsession.

In fact, I had been teetering on that line for a bit too long, and a few weeks ago I hit a breaking point. I didn?t feel like I was making progress. I head read so many books and articles but where were the REAL results?

Sure I had racked up some accomplishments over the year, but was I a better person? Was I happier?

I wasn?t so sure.

So for a few weeks I stopped caring about personal growth, and I felt a huge load lifted off of my shoulders. The absence of the pressure my ambitions placed on me left me feeling relieved. But that feeling didn?t last.

I started feeling unsatisfied. I started wanting more out of myself, like I did when I first started this personal development journey.

Just a few weeks earlier, these feelings had left me defeated. Why was I reverting back to them? I was confused.

I felt like I was floating in a sea of questions. Appealing to hedonistic desires didn?t satisfy me. Appealing to unrestrained ambition didn?t satisfy me. What would?

After a lot of introspection (and some conversations with Phil) I realized I needed to revisit the fundamentals.?I had been devouring so much information that I was losing what I had learnt as I travelled down the rabbit hole. I had to turn around and climb back up.

This article is for anyone who, like me, has felt or is feeling disengaged with personal development. It?s also for someone just starting down the road of self-improvement.

It contains techniques I wish someone had really stressed on me as I began this journey.

I hope you can benefit from the lessons I learned through my mistakes and oversights.

1.????Get Clear on the Purpose of All This

What is the driving force behind the urge to become better? Why make the effort? It is the idea that through actualizing our potential we will live a more fulfilled and?happy?life.

This is as basic as it gets, yet it is so easy to lose sight of.

While I was playing Lumosity on a regular basis, sometimesf I would get angry if I couldn?t beat previous scores. But what was the point to begin with?

I wanted to improve my cognitive functioning so that I may more fully experience the world. A richer experience and higher performance would translate into happiness.

My advice is, avoid getting angry at something you introduced into your life to increase your levels of happiness, because setbacks happen.?Take this picture for example:

Do your best to reframe your expectations to accept the inevitability of setbacks. If you understand they are part of the process, you can limit their effects on your happiness when you experience them.

Understand this is where it all begins. If we are talking about the foundation, this is the dirt that everything else is built on. Keep it in mind as you keep building.

2.????Set Your SMART Goals

Goals, missions, objectives, whatever you call them, are the?planning?portion of personal development.?It?s envisioning where you want to be and deciding on the best way to get there.?Self-improvement 101.

It?s so simple and so basic, yet I hadn?t set concrete goals in a while. It?s no wonder I couldn?t tell if I was making progress? I didn?t even have a compass!

I set time aside and thought hard about what I wanted to do. This is the process I used.

First, I split my goals into two categories?doing and being.

Doing goals are action oriented, what would typically be called SMART Goals.

S.M.A.R.T Goals

Specific ? am I clear about what I want to do?
Measurable ? can I track my progress? How?
Attainable ? how can I reach this?
Relevant ? does it matter?
Timely ? did I set a time frame?

After these questions were answered to my satisfaction, I broke down week by week what I needed to do for the designated time frame.

Being goals are much less process oriented. They are simply how you want to show up in the world. A few questions to narrow these down are:

How do I want to feel?
How do I want to interact with the world around me?
What kind of impact do I want my presence to have on others?

Currently, my being goals are to be enthusiastic, compassionate, and grateful.

3.????Use a Calendar

In the past, I?ve had the tendency to take on too much. I had to quit an internship because I didn?t have the time and I did pretty poorly in some leadership positions because I was too busy with other things.

It never feels good to let someone down or do a bad job. It sucks. Have you ever felt this way? Do you feel like you?ve been biting off a bit more than you can chew?

If so, I?ve got a solution that will help you good-up on your commitments. It?s this simple: use a calendar.

I thought it was best to go electronic. It allows me to look at monthly, weekly, and daily views while making it easy to add recurring events and to make changes. I use Google Calendar, personally.

I blocked out time for all of my current commitments: work, commute, class, meetings, exercise, etc.

If you filled out a calendar right now (hint: you should) do you think you?d find you are overcommitting in some areas?

Now throw your doing goals in the mix. You know where you want to be and you know what it will take each week to get there. Do you have the time?

Will you still be able relax or is a burnout on its way? If it?s the latter then you?re defying step 1. Loosen things up a bit and give yourself room to breathe.

4.????Do Your Weekly Review

The first step is about your mindset. The second two are related to planning. These last two are about holding yourself accountable and executing your plan to do and be what you want.

Decide on a day of the week to sit down and review the happenings of that week.

I?ve just started doing this and it?s really keeping me focused. I respond to this prompt and write the answers in Evernote:

Doing Goals

What did I commit to doing this week?
What did I do this week?
Explain any variation between 1 and 2.
What am I committed to doing next week?

(The week by week breakdown of your doing goals will really help in this process.)

Being Goals

I am? ?enthusiastic, compassionate, and grateful.?
Write about moments when you felt you were embodying these goals.

The answers to these questions keep me in touch with my goals and keep me focused while also serving as course correction when I mess up.

I also recommend taking notes on what you read during the week. I write down the things that resonate with me and during the review I try to find ways that I can integrate their concepts into my goals.?This way the ideas don?t just sit on the web or in my head, they break through to reality.

5.????Practice Daily Embodiment

This is a simple and short one. Full credit goes to Phil for letting me in on this technique:

When you wake up in the morning, sit up and visualize best version of yourself going through the day. With your goals in mind, how would you act? What would you say? How would you handle your problems and opportunities?

Aligning myself with this vision at the start of each day makes me feel great and also allows me to take the steps toward each goal with less resistance.

Your Turn

Don?t make this another article to be forgotten in the history of your browser. I know how easy it is to be swallowed up in the abundance of personal development material out there.

Take a few minutes and stop tumbling down the rabbit hole.

How can you apply these steps to?your life?right now??With this foundation, how big will you build?

Let me know in the comments section below!

Cheers,
Mike

PS.?Do you feel like you need an extra push? Like you want to make big things happen but this isn?t enough to get you there? Check out Phil?s?Peak Performance Experience, a coaching program designed to transform you into the best version of yourself,?get you to take massive action, and accelerate your success.

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