Discover Your Personal Development Goals

When I work with individuals who contact me about improving self, performance, a relationship, their health, etc I see their “personal development goals” a construct distinct from how typical coaches view personal development plans or goals. What do I mean by this? Let’s start with some implicit yet strong assumptions that typically “hang out” with this phrase:

• I can be whatever I want to be
  
  
• Motivation, accountability and clear goals are all I need
  
  
• Being a better person is something you “do”
  
  
• Changing behavior is a rational process

All these sound good, right? Well, they all have insidious half-truths in them that you need to consider when defining what a personal development goal really means.  As a behavior change expert, given the recent research in behavioral economics and neuroscience, I would say the true definition of a personal development goal is a behavior change plan that balances a personal intention to grow with the inherent biases of the brain that mislead you while you pursue transformation.  And so, to me, personal development is both changing and not changing in the right balance. Or said another way by the great CS Lewis when asked what transformation is in a marriage, he said it is the ability to look your partner in the eye and say “I love you just as you are and so much so to not have you stay that way.”

Personal development goals are significant in general becomes movement and change are essential in life. Most mental illness (especially neuroses which is most common) is about a persistent or stuck way of viewing something while reality is indicating something new needs to be entertained. A personal development goal is the bridge between the incomplete or “expired” worldview of self with what would make the self most aligned with an optimal reality and/or one that is currently being asked of you to step into.

In career issues, this is also quite important for we see now more than ever a growing and ever-connected virtual work of ‘work” which demands information at ever increasing speeds. The pressure on the brain to handle such stress does lead many people to wonder about what changes personally they may need to make to be happy and content while living in the modern life of “work”.  With little boundaries between work and life these days, personal development goals will rise in significance if not for health reasons for happiness reasons.

In addition to the critical notions mentioned above that most people forget about, I would say other important factors are:

• Stage of change/readiness
  
  
• Understanding of trade offs around what it means to change (many times people want to change without an understanding of what they will have to let go of that they equally desire or sometimes want unconsciously more)
  
  
• Knowing what is irrational (everyone liking me) and what is rational inside your goal. That is, is it an irrational wish or a realistic goal?
  
  
• If this is fear-based or not — if it’s reactive in any way, chances of truly “sticking” are low
  
  
• Are you really wanting to change or is someone telling you you should? And just “intellectually agreeing with them” doesn’t mean your heart does.

In order to pursue personal development goals, get real with yourself.  Find out the secrets and lies that you are avoiding that may hold more truth than “changing something” or developing something because you think you have to. Sometimes personal development goals serve as a mask for doing what is actually harder–accepting something you can’t change about yourself.

To create a measuring criteria to track your progress in your personal development goals, combine a “heart” measure (for some development of self goals are spiritual or character based and not measurable by “behavior” but rather the orientation or intention within) with some objective measure. I like using a 360 measurement so we get to utilize not only self-changes but other-changes — that is, how others perceive the pre and post change.