What is Personal Growth and Why Does It Matter?
Two years ago I founded this website for women who are seeking to redefine their personal growth, mindset, happiness, self care, and wellness. But today I realized that I have not yet written an article specifically addressing what is personal growth and why does it matter? So let’s explore what personal growth means and why it’s vitally important to our wellbeing.
Related Article: Why Is Personal Development Important?
What is Personal Growth?
You can find many different definitions for personal growth on the Internet. But if you simply think about growing, maturing, learning, and staying curious about life, I think you’ll have a good idea about the definition of personal growth.
Personal growth means you can handle difficult things with dignity and calm; you can manage your emotions and not let negative feelings interfere with your life. You can filter out the noise and find your peace.
It means you have a desire to improve yourself and become the best person you know how to be. You are willing to use various techniques and strategies to change and improve habits, behaviors, reactions, and actions. You want to live a life of happiness and joy.
You are willing to work toward improving your character, skills, and capabilities. You can even develop a personal growth plan that helps guide you through the process of setting goals and working toward achieving them.
Personal growth involves the growth and enhancement of all aspects of YOU, including the feelings you have about yourself (such as confidence and self-love). In fact, leaning into the self love movement can help you manage your personal growth.
Related Article: How to Carry Yourself with Confidence: 21 Essential Tips
You are willing to take the right steps to grow and improve yourself while also understanding that you should aim for progress not perfection.
So what is personal growth? Personal growth is the act of developing physically, emotionally, mentally, socially, and spiritually to enrich all areas of your life.
For the sake of this article, I am not going to get into the issue of personal growth vs personal development. Some people describe a minute difference, but to be honest, most people (including me:) use the terms interchangeably.
How to Achieve Personal Growth
There are many ways to achieve personal growth. You’ll read about a lot of ways right here in this article. But most importantly you must have the desire to want to grow and learn in life.
You must be a positive person who is willing to try various techniques to reach the end goal of living your happiest and most successful life.
Some of the various ways to achieve personal growth include meditation, visualization, reflection, journaling, reading books, changing habits, learning new things and doing new things. But you might not do any of these things — or you might do them all — because your personal growth journey will be uniquely yours and it’s a very personal matter.
Areas of Personal Growth
There are five areas of personal growth that are important to your wellbeing, happiness, and success. They are:
- Social growth
- Spiritual growth
- Emotional growth
- Physical growth
- Mental growth (some people refer to this as intellectual growth)
These are just some examples of personal growth goals people might consider when looking to improve themselves:
- establish daily routines and schedules
- improve your active listening and communication skills
- make better decisions at home and work
- become the best version of yourself
- take a yoga class and learn to meditate
- develop good habits for a healthy diet
- use free time wisely
- explore your true purpose in life
- develop greater self-confidence
- improve your growth mindset
- read books more frequently to expand your mind
- practice daily journaling for personal growth
Personal growth can help you in all aspects of life. But you are the only person who can define areas that you want to grow and improve in your own personal growth journey.
Why Does Personal Growth Matter?
Personal growth helps you get to know yourself better and become the person you want to be. Through the process of personal growth, you develop self-awareness, resilience, and intention. You learn to be more mindful and present in your everyday life.
You gain new skills and develop new habits that support the person you want to be. You develop improved problem solving skills that help improve personal and personal and professional relationships.
Personal growth should be a lifelong process that helps you move smoothly from one stage of life to the next. It helps you maintain inner peace and balance even during crossroads and challenging times. Personal growth means you are learning more about yourself each step of your journey.
People who actively engaged in their personal growth and development are generally happy and productive people who continually grow, mature, learn, and expand their minds.
They understand their own personality type and how to use their strengths to meet their full potential in life. They generally have a positive mindset in both their personal life and professional life.
People who actively value their personal growth have clarity, purpose, and passion in life. They have positive romantic relationships, professional success, healthy personal relationships, a growth mindset, and other favorable traits and qualities.
Overall, people who value personal growth have healthy habits that support a productive and happy lifestyle. They are able to deal with even difficult life experiences in a positive manner.
As you can see, personal growth is vitally important and the benefits of personal growth are immeasurable.
Examples of Personal Growth Activities
Personal growth is a very individual matter. Your personal growth will look quite different than the person at the next desk because you have different goals, different personalities, and different priorities in life.
Personal growth activities and opportunities are endless. You can work on your personal growth as much or as little as you like, as long as growth is your goal and you are happy with your progress.
These are some examples of activities that can support your growth across all five areas of personal growth:
- step outside your comfort zone and do something you’ve never done before
- develop new skills by learning a new hobby
- take online courses to expand your knowledge-base
- work with a life coach to explore your inner child
- volunteer in your community, make a positive impact, and meet new people
- listen to Podcasts and TED Talks about a variety of topics to expand your mind
- read personal growth books to better understand all the aspects of personal growth
- establish daily mindfulness practices that help you live a more peaceful life
- keep an open mind about change, growth, and challenges
- practice creative visualization to help meet your goals
- set short-term and long-term personal goals to give you purpose and clarity moving forward
- discuss with your doctors a plan for your physical health and
How to Develop a Personal Growth Plan
Now that you have a pretty solid idea what personal growth is all about, and you understand why it’s important, you may want to develop a personal growth plan. Some people like to have a concrete plan with measurable goals, while others are less formal about their personal growth.
A personal growth plan involves creating an action plan based on self-awareness, values, reflection, goal-setting, and planning for self-improvement.
For those who want to develop a personal growth plan, let’s explore how to get started. First, you will want to reflect on the 5 areas of personal growth as well as your personal strengths and weaknesses.
These are some broad areas of personal growth that you may want to consider:
- communication and interpersonal skills
- problem-solving and conflict resolution
- flexible thinking, compromise, and adaptability
- self-compassion, self-care, and self-reflection
- navigating change, transitions, and uncertainty
- organizational skills
- improved physical health
- community engagement and volunteerism
- mindfulness, gratitude, and mindset
- teamwork and collaboration skills
- self-awareness
- stress management
- decision-making skills
- time management
- marriage and relationships
Now you’ll want to identify specific areas in your life where you want to make improvements.
Then you’ll want to establish short- and long-term goals.
And finally, you’ll need to decide if you want to work with a life coach or an accountability partner. Sometimes it’s nice to have someone to talk to about your progress — plus it might help keep you honest:)
At this point, have you answers the questions what is personal growth and why does it matter? Personal growth is pretty important to all of us, isn’t it?
Final Thoughts About Personal Growth
You’ve probably already figured out some important factors that you want to consider for your own personal growth. You may have already considered a specific goal or two, or even informally taken that first step toward making growth.
You probably also understand that personal growth is an ongoing process that requires some time and consideration. Sometimes it’s not easy, but it’s always well worth your time and effort.
All successful people ditch their bad habits (most of them anyway:) and develop best practices for personal growth. Remember, if you want to be your best self … personal growth is the only way to get there.
But before you go, let me share just one more thing…
Personal Growth Questions to Ask Yourself
These are a some questions that are useful to think about as you are considering your personal growth:
- What values are important to you? (honesty, temperance, courage, etc)
- What do you enjoy in life and what do you prefer to avoid?
- What do you want to start doing?
- What do you want to stop doing?
- How do you want this personal growth process to benefit others in you life?
- What do you hope to get out of the personal growth process?
- What kind of person, or character traits would you like to have?
- What areas of your life do you want to change?
- How are you going to make changes happen in your life?
- How will your friends and family react to your personal growth process?
I hope you’ve developed an understanding of personal growth and know why it’s so important. Thank you for visiting! I’m glad you’re here!
Love to ALL! ~ Susan
What is Personal Growth — Do You Think It’s Important?
Please share your thoughts in the comment section below:)
