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But in that point is exactly where a problem arises.
This, is reason why it’s so hard for you to create a plan and actually stick to it till you succeed.
If you ask a physicist what they think about the “popular science” genre, they’ll tell you they love how everyone is fascinated to understand more about the subject. But they’ll warn you to be careful with it—because a lot of it is watered down to the point where it becomes more misinformation than actual physics. With core areas ignored for the purpose of entertainment.
And it’s the same for personal development. It’s been in our culture for so long—its “full picture” has been watered down. Leaving most of us with only one part of the equation: techniques that focus on work and mentality as it relates to only one area of your life. When really, if we want to achieve our goals, we need techniques that follow a more holistic approach: a total focus on everything that affects your personal and professional life—from your mental health to food, exercise, sleep, and even spirituality.
When you’re able to create a plan that incorporates all this, you’ll easily take control of your life, reach your goals, and achieve that elusive work-life balance you dream of. That’s why we’ve created this guide. To fill in the gaps in your understanding of personal development, while helping you create a plan to change your life for the better.
But before we get into it, we’ll need to answer 2 important questions:
Why should you start with holistic personal development…
And who will holistic personal development work for?
Why start with a holistic approach to personal development? The answer is in the philosophical meaning of the word holistic. It’s the belief that the parts of something—in this case personal development—are intimately connected, and can only truly be understood by referencing the whole. So yes:
Meditation alone can help you learn about mindfulness, gratitude, and enjoying the moment
Time and task management alone can help you become more productive and fulfilled in your personal and professional life.
Science-based exercise and eating alone can give you a healthy body that can help you fight off fatigue and stress
And topics that address positive psychology alone can make you more resilient and decrease your anxiety.
But you won’t truly get all these benefits to stick, long-term, if you don’t put them in context of each other. If you don’t understand how they affect each other. That is why you need a holistic approach to personal development.
Who will holistic personal development work for? This approach to personal development is specifically designed to help those who feel stuck. Who feel like they’re going through the daily motions of their lives in repetitive humdrum. Who have had to place their dreams, goals, and ambitions on back burner because life keeps getting in the way. And most importantly, this approach is made for people who are ready to change.
So what precisely does a holistic approach to personal development look like? In this article, we’ll explore that question in multiple different ways to make sure you get a concrete enough picture to get started.
But in a nutshell, it’s all about reflecting on your overall skills and qualities. And considering what you need to do with them to achieve your goals in life. For example, consider how developing patience, listen skills, physical health, and your ability to stay calm in stressful situations can make you a more confident communicator. Which in turn makes you a much better negotiator, able to navigate potential crises or present your needs in such a way that every party comes out satisfied, be it in your personal or professional life.
This is exactly what holistic personal development is all about—taking the diverse skills that affect every important area of your life, and developing them together so you can truly master them and take control of your life.
This all sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it?
But if you’ve been setting goals and trying to achieve them for any significant amount of time, you’ll know that personal development is never easy. And it makes sense why. Because you’re not only trying to overrule and replace habits that have had years and years to form roots in your mind. But you’re also going to be getting benefits that last a lifetime:
Do you see how these benefits interweave and intertwine with each other? How removing one could weaken the impact of the rest? That’s why you need to focus on holistic personal development—as opposed to the narrower approaches most others teach.
All right. Now it’s time we specified the actual skills you’ll be working on. Much like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, there are 5 different themes of holistic personal development. Each building on the other so that—if one is not accounted for—the others won’t be able to create the kind of impact on your life that they’re capable of.
With that said, here are the different themes of holistic personal development.
This involves exercising your mind to stay mentally fit. It’s all about learning new things. About expanding and deepening your zone of expertise. You “expand” by learning new things outside your specialisation. And you “deepen” by taking the time to improve a particular set of hard skills you’re passionate about. But all that said, there’s one more mental exercise to keep in mind. And it’s likely the most important one: Rest. After all, your mind is a muscle, just like your body.
This theme is not as negotiable as most people think. Because no one ever develops themselves alone. And also because we evolved to be social—so not only do we need connection for our mental health. We also need it to develop important skills like:
Note that spirituality is not about religion. Instead, it is about your values, your morals, and who you actually are deep down. It’s about connecting to your inner self and the world around you—to gain a deeper understanding of how they both affect together. This is important not only because it gives you inner peace, but also because it gives you direction in life. Allowing you to set goals, meet them, and make decisions easily.
This is all about keying into how your emotions affect you, your thoughts, and your actions. And also how your experiences shape those emotions. It’s about looking back to see how you act in certain situations… together with why you act that way. So you can both repeat the emotions that drive you forward and take steps to elimintate the limiting beliefs that hold you back.
What’s your nutrition like? How is your sleep? How much exercise do you do? It’s a known fact that your physical state is tied to your mental and emotional well-being. All of them influencing one another. So if we don’t care for our physical body, our minds and emotions and general goals in life suffer as well.
Rather than try to develop one of them at the expense of all others. Think about what you need to do to develop all of them in sequence with each other.
Having read all that, the question that likely springs into your mind is:
How?
How do you go about improving these key areas of your life in such a way that they improve on one another?
Simple: you need to create a step-by-step plan that you can follow, by habit, to build and master the skills necessary to enhance these areas of your life.
But before you can plan, you need to set goals the right way.
And you start by asking yourself the two questions:
What do I want from these 5 core areas of my life? And what’s holding me back from getting them?
Yes, it’s obvious. But the most obvious strategies are almost always the most powerful ones. Most people don’t achieve their goals, not because they’re lazy or demotivated or have bad plans, but because they don’t clarify what the specific obstacles in their way are. And they don’t build their plans around addressing those obstacles.
So take out a notebook and list out what you want and what’s holding you back from getting them. Once you’ve done that, you’re ready for the next stage.
Alan Lakein—a time management expert and bestselling author whose seminal book How to get control of your time and your life was quoted by Bill Clinton to have influenced the direction of his life—once said: “Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.”
In other words, a plan is a map to your dream future. It’s one of the personal growth quotes Bill lived by. It’s something you can visit again and again to always know the exact paths to take to achieve your goals. That said, here’s exactly how to go about it.
There are different ways to go about making a personal development plan. But if you look at the core of all those methods, they all have key things in common:
But the major thing to take out of all this, which you might have noticed, is that a good personal development plan is never one-and-done. It’s fluid and constantly changing.
You’ve set your goals. You’ve laid out your obstacles. You’ve created a simple step-by-step plan that takes you to where you want to go while helping you deal with the walls in your way.
But to make sure you continue to follow and optimize your personal development plan, there are a few psychological tools you can leverage to ensure your success.
Aside from psychological tools, there are also practical tools you can use to keep yourself on the personal development grind and give yourself a near-infinite source of motivation. Find the personal development example that works best for your situation below.
Try this: rather than go for your phone or computer or TV during your morning routine, try reading something motivational or educational instead. It’ll give you a good start to the day because you’ll be expanding your knowledge while filling your mind with the kind of stuff that can help you live the life you want to live.
Another thing you can do in the morning as you wake up, or at night right before you sleep, is to write down your thoughts. It could be on paper or a note app on your phone (though we recommend paper—as you don’t want the first or last thing you’re with a day to be your device.) This will help you clear your mind. See patterns in your thinking. And generate new ideas you can use to skyrocket your rate of personal development. At the very least, you can just write down the things you’re grateful for and proud of—to maintain a positive frame of mind at the beginning or end of the day.
This is something you should do daily. Remind yourself of what you’re trying to do and why you’re trying to do it. This allows you to keep what you care about top of mind—so it stays with you throughout the day, every day.
Your words, metaphors, and the way you describe things influence your emotions and how you see the world around you. Think about the difference between saying “I’m caught between a rock and a hard place” and “I’m dealing with an interesting riddle I have to solve.” Do you see how one metaphor makes you feel trapped… like you have no way out but to choose between two unpleasant options? And how the other keeps you sharp, active, and solution-driven—while gamifying the problem for you and encouraging you to think creatively? That’s what the right word choice can do.
This is another way to keep yourself sharp, active, and solution-driven. Get out of your comfort zone as regularly as you can, and do something new for the first time. It works certain parts of your brain you usually wouldn’t—and it boosts your mood and creativity while you’re at it.
All that said, there is one particular tool that, in our opinion, stands above the rest. Because it skyrockets all the benefits of the tools we listed above—plus gives you extra accountability. What we’re talking about is…
Get started with personal development training. It’s the best way to get the fundamental basics you need for holistic personal development. It’s also a perfect way to kickstart your journey to achieving your personal development goals. And this is especially so for high-performance professionals.
Training gives you new, simple techniques you can use to work more effectively and happily—on both your professional and personal life. (Because we all know if one of those fails—everything else falls apart.)
Training can involve reading books or taking courses on the 5 core themes of holistic personal development. So you can improve those areas of your life in tandem with each other—creating more long-lasting transformations in the process.
But this can be a lot to do on your own. Picking the information and strategies that are right for you. Monitoring the different necessary areas of your professional and personal development. Trying to keep track of and be consistent with everything.
The good news is:
This is where coaching comes in.
A coach is your personal development partner. They help you perform at your personal best. And they help you produce the kind of results you want to see in your personal and professional life.
And because of the fact that coaching is hands-on… with your coach taking the time to guide you step by step through your journey… you’ll also have someone to be accountable to. Someone who’ll push you to do what you need to do again and again—until you achieve the transformation you desire.
And here’s something else. A special type of coaching for high-powered professionals that you can try out. It’s called an Intervision group. In a nutshell, this is all about “peer coaching” where a small group of professionals who have similar challenges or related careers come together to help one another.
It’s like having accountability partners, but better. Because in this kind of group coaching, everyone is learning from each other—as well as an actual expert coach on whatever goals the group is trying to achieve.
So to sum it all up, personal development is the way to go about creating lasting change in your life and career. You can go at it alone and get success. But you can also get hands-on help from experts who have solved the problem you face for tens, hundreds, if not thousands of people like you.
Whatever the case, we want you to know that it’s still up to you to take action to transform your life into what you want it to be.
Who are we?
We Go Hundred is a group of like-minded professionals from all over Europe who want to remove stress from their lives, skyrocket their energy levels, and become resilient. So they can transform their work and life for the better!
We Go Hundred’s leadership training program is all about holistic personal development. We focus on vitality, and on keeping you strong, active, and constantly motivated. This is the backbone of personal growth.
Our 3-month leadership program uses a hybrid approach. We help you using:
If you’re interested, you can talk to one of our experts today.