How to Change Your Habits for Personal Development!

 Are you running at full power?  Do you feel you can accomplish anything?  Or are there areas in your life that you feel you can improve?   Whether it is to stop smoking, secure a better job, or improve our relationship with family, there is always room for personal development.

 Personal development simply means altering the way you view the world, setting goals, and changing your habits and behavior to achieve those goals.  It means focusing negative energies into positive ones and using positive energy to boost your success. 

 It also means not giving up on a goal and face the guilt of failure.  Rather, personal development requires you to sustain your motivation throughout the steps of your goal.  But how do we do it?  How do we achieve successful personal development when we’ve faced failure in the past and have trouble motivating ourselves?

Replace negative with positive

 To chart your personal development course, you first need to alter your views and values to align them with positive outcomes.  What is it you really want?   Do you want to make more money?   Earn an advanced degree?  Really be the world’s best husband and father?  To achieve these goals, you need to eliminate negative thoughts like, “I’ll never make it past middle management,” or “I just can’t be the husband my wife wants me to be.” 

 Your positive change personal development starts with you forming the positive goals that you want to achieve.  You could start with, “I will be free from the grip of cigarettes” or “I will make my wife smile every day.”

Try it for 21 days

 To develop a new habit, we need to incorporate the new behavior into our bodies and minds.  It takes a conscious effort at first.  Quitting smoking isn’t as easy as just throwing away your last pack.  You need to make a considerable effort to avoid cigarettes and learn to enjoy and reap the benefits of a non-smoking life.  If your new positive personal development goal is to make sure you wife smiles every day, then you need to consciously see to it every day.

Try your new behavior for at least 21 days.  By 21 days, new behaviors start becoming new habits.  You need less effort to continue the new behavior and your positive personal development starts to sustain itself.

Reward yourself

 Be sure to acknowledge your personal development with little rewards.  Each time you successfully not reach for the pack of cigarettes, for example, give yourself a pat on the back in the form of something else you enjoy, like a piece of chocolate or a relaxing afternoon without chores.  Your little rewards help to set your new habits like concrete when you feel the pleasure of successful personal development. 

You can even give yourself a big reward for completing your goal.  Did you finish your Ph.D?  Did you exceed your supervisor’s expectations and secure that promotion?  Buy yourself a nice new clothing ensemble, or take your wife out to a lovely romantic dinner. 

Your personal development relies upon you to put focus and effort into making new habits.  When you know the right steps to help form your new habits, then you have a better chance of success with your new personal development regime. 

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