12 Ways To Start Your Personal Growth Journey

With so much information online, starting your personal growth journey can seem a little overwhelming. There are so many things that you can do to work on your personal development, so I’m sharing a few easy ways that you can begin your personal growth journey.

What Is Personal Growth?

Personal growth or personal development is simply the act of improving yourself in different areas of your life where you need or would benefit from a change. It can be mental, physical, emotional, or financial, and it’s just about up-leveling your life by up-leveling yourself.

So, there are countless ways that you can get started on your personal growth journey. It’s just about choosing key specific things to work on. You may have tons of things that you want to change but unless you are up for a challenge of a total makeover you will find it easier and less overwhelming if you do one or two things at a time.

How Long Will Take To Complete A Personal Growth Journey?

The length of time you spend on your personal growth will depend on you, what goals you have set, how badly you want to better yourself, and how many things you want to change. Some people reach goals quicker than others then call it quits, but other people are constantly learning and improving.

I’m a firm believer that personal growth should be an evolving and ongoing journey as we are constantly changing, and there are always new things to do or achieve. Once you’ve reached some goals, you may also just naturally find that you have more confidence to set and achieve more goals. Your life will also change as you improve yourself and your journey will reflect that.

Do A SWOT Analysis Of Yourself

An easy (but uncomfortable) first step is to a basic analysis of your strengths and weaknesses, along with all the opportunities and threats you have in relation to where you are now and what you want to change and achieve. It’s not a particularly fun task, and you may want to skip over it, but it will really help you to see what areas you need to work on in order to achieve your goals, which of your strengths you can utilize, and whether you have any dependencies to get what you want. Once you’ve addressed your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and roadblocks in all the areas of you and your life that you want to develop, you can create an action plan that identifies what you need to build on, and how to navigate things that might impact your success. You will also be able to see if you need any additional resources or particular people to achieve your goals.

Set Yourself Goals

To create the life that you would love for yourself you will have to be specific about what you actually want to become — and how you will get there so you need to set goals.

Make a list of all the things you want to do or become, narrow them down so that they are manageable for you, and keep them around you every day so that stay front of your mind.

Create A Vision Board

A fun way to keep your goals in one place is by creating a vision board. A vision board will help you to subconsciously attract everything that is on your vision board because you will always be looking at it and programming the images and phrases into your subconscious. The key is to have the vision board in a highly visible place where you will see it every day.

You can create either a physical or digital vision board and use it alongside planners and to-do lists to keep yourself focused on your goals.

Determine Your Why

To stay focused on what you want to achieve, you also need to get clear on what your why is for working on yourself. To figure this out, ask yourself questions relating to the goals that you are setting yourself — and write those answers down somewhere that you can see them.

Having a strong why for working on yourself and specific goals will just help you to keep going when you get off track as it will remind you why you’re working on it.

Create An Action Plan

Once you have your goals figured out, an action plan will help you to stay on track and give you definitive tasks to complete every day towards your goals.

By breaking down your big goals into bite-sized chunks and small tasks, it will just be way easier to make progress. For every task, you set yourself, map out exactly how you will complete it, and set deadlines.

Do Something Every Day For Your Growth

Taking baby steps every day towards your goals is the best way to achieve them because you are less likely to get stressed or overwhelmed. Hitting your goals head-on will work if you are someone who likes going into tunnel vision to get there but if you are not that kind of person then it's better to start slow and steady and build momentum so that you keep going.

Over time you will find that all of the small steps you are taking every day start leading to big results.

Develop Healthy Habits & Routines

Our daily habits and routines have a big impact on who we are and who we become. They are the things that we do regularly that become habits, and they can either help you grow or keep you stagnant depending on the habits you develop

So anything in our lives can be changed or improved by implementing good daily habits and routines. By adding healthy habits to your daily routine that reflect what you want to become it will help you to achieve your goals.

Work On Your Mindset & Beliefs Everyday

Usually, it’s our mindset and limiting beliefs that stop us from achieving our goals and aspirations so include mindset work in your personal development. It’s really hard, and often very uncomfortable to even acknowledge our thoughts and beliefs but it's really important if you want to grow. Reading blog posts, following coaches who motivate and inspire you on social media, journaling, listening to podcasts, and watching videos like Ted Talks are just a few ways to work on your mindset every day.

Personal Development Books & Podcasts

Knowledge is power, and reading books (or blog posts) and listening to podcasts is a great way to learn. There are books, blogs, and podcasts on literally anything that you want to work on.

Create a list of books to read, bookmark your favourite blogs and create playlists of your favourite podcasts. That way you can just pick something from the list every day/week to read or listen to.

Do An Online Course

Just like there are books, blogs, and podcasts on literally anything, you can also do online courses on anything you can think of as well. Seriously, if you search on Google you will find that there are thousands and thousands of online courses for every topic and skill you could think of.

If you like structured learning and find it easier to learn by taking classes then spend some time looking at courses for anything you want to learn or improve on.

Network With Like-Minded People

The people that you surround yourself with will heavily influence how fast or slow you reach your goals. After all, your network is your net worth (Tim Sanders)

So, as the people in your network have such an impact on you or your life, it’s a smart idea to surround yourself with people who you deem to be successful. You will see their daily habits, how they work towards their goals, and they will probably help you to stay motivated.

If the majority of the people in your life are negative, toxic, not ambitious, have no interest or plans for growth, and have a life that is the polar opposite of what you want you will find it really hard to keep going on your journey. Not only will you have no one who understands your goals, you will also just feel different for wanting to improve yourself.

Get A Coach

Getting a coach could be a great way to start your personal growth journey, especially if you need more help and guidance to get started. Life coaching basically starts with where you are in life right now and focuses on getting you to where you want to be. It can help you to get really clear on the life that you want, as well as what you need to do to get there.

A coach could also be helpful if you know what you want but your planning and implementation skills are not great as they can help you put an action plan together and stay on track with it.

I hope you’ve found this list of options helpful to get started on your personal growth journey. How you approach your personal growth is totally up to you, but hopefully, these tips give you some ideas as to things that you could do. The main thing is just to get started today.

If you have other tips you’d like to share for personal growth, I’d love to hear them.