Personal development is a key to success. By reading this blog, you are demonstrating that you are committed to personal growth. Often people realize the importance of personal growth, but don’t do anything deliberate on a daily basis to provide for opportunities to grow. It is important that you commit to doing some form of personal development daily. This will ensure that you are always improving and moving towards your goals. Unfortunately, personal development is often one of the first areas that people let slip when they get busy. That is because it is never urgent, and it appears that it can always wait. While it may not be urgent, it is certainly important and in fact can be one of the most important activities you can pursue.

One way to ensure that you continue to pursue growth is to commit to a daily time of personal development. Many find that 20 minutes a day is an ideal number. It is not a long commitment. You can squeeze in 20 minutes even on a busy day. But 20 minutes is long enough to make a difference; to charge you up, and help you learn something important for your life.

So what do you do with 20 minutes to ensure growth? Here are six ways you can grow each day, and all of them can be valuable in just 20 minutes each day.

1. Read A Book – You should always be reading. Reading opens your mind to new ways of thinking and to new ideas. As you read you’ll be inspired, encouraged, and challenged. Chances are that no matter what goal you are pursuing, or what problem you are facing, that someone has faced a similar issue before and has written about it. By reading from them, you are able to avoid making mistakes that others have already made. If you don’t like to read, then make sure you get audio books. Audio books not only are valuable if you don’t like to read, but allow you to listen while you drive or exercise.

2. Pick a Few Blogs to Follow – There are many wonderful personal development blogs. By picking a few blogs and keeping up with them daily, you can continue to pursue growth with the blog’s author serving as your mentor or coach. Certainly, it is easy to get overwhelmed by trying to follow too many blogs. Eventually your list of unread posts grows and the list just overwhelms you; when that occurs you end up not reading any. By sticking with a few favorites, and subscribing by RSS, you can focus on picking up a few ideas each day.

3. Listen to Audio Trainings or Podcast – Listening to audio presentations can be another inspiring method of personal growth. You can listen to traditional training material from experts such as Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar, or Tony Robbins. There are also dozens of other motivational speakers, trainers, and experts who offer free podcasts for you to download. Another example of the audio presentations available by podcast are sermons. You can listen to top preachers from around the world on a weekly basis.

4. Learn a Language – Learning a new language is a powerful form of personal growth. It helps to increase your creativity as you learn to thinking in a different language. It also prepares you to be more competitive in today’s workforce and business world. Further, it gives you greater flexibility in your ability to travel. You can learn a language at home through programs like the Rosetta Stone, through many other audio training programs or taking a local course.

5. Take a College Course – Another powerful form of personal growth is to take a course at your local college or university. Pick a topic that you would like to learn, whether that is just for your personal pleasure or to learn a new practical skill. After graduating, I have continued to take extra courses including a course in Racket Sports (to improve my tennis and learn a few other sports), a course in preaching, and a history course. All of these were valuable in my personal growth.

6. Hire a personal coach – A final way to ensure consistent personal growth is to hire a personal coach. Personal coaches are equipped to help you set and achieve goals in many areas of life. A good personal coach will help you to set goals, develop a plan, and become more effective as you move towards their achievement. A coach can help you in multiple areas of your life, by becoming a source of accountability as you live out your plan.

You certainly don’t need to do all of these things. Pick the one or two that you are most interested in and that fit best into your lifestyle. Commit to twenty minutes each day and start putting these activities into action.

Now readers it’s your turn. What are your favorite ways of personal development?

The Success Professor – Danny Gamache

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Tags: Goal Setting, Personal Development, Personal Growth, success

This entry was posted on Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 9:35 pm and is filed under Motivation, Productivity, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.