Overview: This guide provides a comprehensive 7-step process to create a customized personal development plan to help you actualize more of your true potential.

______________

I leaped into the personal development world with a copy of Tony Robbins Personal Power program. You know, the one from those late night infomercials?

I was 18, and this audio program made a measurable difference in my outlook and behavior.

From that moment onward, I was hooked by personal development. I jumped into whatever interested me.

I hopped from seminar to seminar, from book to book. Investing every possible moment I had, I covered a lot of ground in my first five years.

Reflecting almost 25 years on my personal growth journey, I now see I was missing several vital ingredients essential for long-term, healthy development.

In this guide, I will share with you lessons learned and provide a roadmap for crafting a simple yet powerful Personal Development Plan.

When you dont have a vision, a plan, or a goal, where does your attention go?

For most people, attention goes to entertainment and distraction. Sight, sound, and motion captivate our brains.

Television shows, films, video games, and social media hook the primitive parts of our brain.

If youre an overachiever who defines yourself by external accomplishments and status, your attention likely gets fixated on more work, higher productivity, and making more money.

The primary question when creating a Personal Development Plan is: Where am I going to place my attention and awareness?

When entertainment, distraction, and workaholism consume our attention, something doesnt feel right within us. We may not identify it, but parts of us arent happy with this agenda.

We may not identify it, but parts of us arent happy with this agenda.

To have a full and meaningful life requires us to open to more dimensions of ourselves.

And a Personal Development Plan can help us do just that.

But most people dont know whats available. I wasnt aware of the optionswhen I started my journey. Youthful enthusiasm and naivete guided those early years.

Youthful enthusiasm and naivete guided those early years.

If you go to self-growth seminars or read books in this genre, you may only think within the confines of the illustrations these resources provide.

Before we jump in, heres a quick overview of the steps for creating your plan:

Step 1: Learn the Human Potential LandscapeStep 2: Dream and Create Your VisionStep 3: Select your Areas of FocusStep 4: Discover Your PracticesStep 5: Establish Personal Development GoalsStep 6: Set Your ScheduleStep 7: Monitor your progress

Step 1 is whats missing from most peoples approach to personal growth.

So well start our journey with a larger vision for human potential.

One thing I was missing from my personal development journey was a map of the terrain. How can you navigate through your development without a map?

Every good explorer has one. Such a map shines a much-needed light on the diverse areas of our potential.

A reliable map of human potential wasnt readily available in the early 90s.

The fields of transpersonal psychology, developmental psychology, integral theory, and neuroscience, however, were converging on an answer.

Theorist Ken Wilber played a primary role in synthesizing many fields of research into a cohesive whole.

Before we review these findings, lets define what we mean by personal development.

If you examine most people over the course of a decade, youll observe little change in their development and behavior.

Development implies a permanent change in the structure of your being including your body, brain, or consciousness.

Just because you adopt a new habit doesnt mean you have or will grow from it. If this new habit, however, changes you over time, it will facilitate your development.

Its all too easy to believe youre developing when youre not. I know I deluded myself for many years and theres evidence of this throughout personal development communities.

Reading books in this genre, for example, doesnt mean youre developing.

Personal development books might provide a roadmap for development in certain areas, but real development comes through practice and repetition.

Our behavior and the display of skills and aptitudes are where we can observe signs of permanent change.

Also, its far easier for a someone else to assess these changes than to measure them for ourselves.

Self-help implies theres something wrong with us. The self-help industry profits by subconsciously communicating these deficiencies to its unsuspecting audience.

Actual personal development is how humans realize more of their innate potential.

In an ideal environment, this process happens naturally. Because this perfect environment doesnt exist in society, the call for personal development is an individuals choice.

In my experience, Ive found it helps to take an integrated approach to your Personal Development Plan.

That is, know your menu of options so you can select from multiple areas that interest you.

To create a map for our development, we need to know the categories available to us. These classes include:

Lets look at each of these categories in more detail.

While we used to associate intelligence with IQ; we now know there are many forms of intelligence.

One popular model comes from the pioneering work of Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner and his Multiple Intelligence theory.

In Gardners model, there are nine lines of intelligence:

Logical-mathematical intelligence: logic, abstractions, reasoning, numbers and critical thinking. Thisintelligenceis associated to IQ and intellectual aptitude. This line is also referred to as cognitive intelligence as explored in Jean Piagets research.

Linguistic intelligence: words, languages, reading, writing, telling stories and memorizing words.

Intrapersonal intelligence: to know thyself including ones strengths and weaknesses, emotional triggers and motivations. Ones ability to be introspective and self-reflective.

Kinesthetic intelligence: ones ability to control ones body and ones skill in using it. Also called body intelligence or body-mind connection.

Musical intelligence: sensitivity to sounds, pitch, rhythms, tones, meter, melody, and so on.

Visual-spatial intelligence: spatial judgment and the ability to visualize and imagine with the minds eye.

Interpersonal intelligence: sensitivity to others moods, feelings, temperaments, motivations, and their ability to cooperate with others. Psychologist Daniel Goleman popularized this as Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence.

Naturalistic intelligence: sensitivity to ones environment; the ability to recognize flora and fauna; nurturing and relating to ones natural surroundings.

Existential intelligence: sometimes called spiritual intelligence; relates to ones understanding of themselves in relation to reality or the cosmos.

Other developmental researchers have studied the stages of growth in morals, values, worldviews, emotions, contemplation, spirituality, needs, and psycho-sexual development.

Do you see the diverse range of our potential?

InIntegral Life Practice, Ken Wilber, et al. group these streams of development into four categories:

We each have a different base level of development in each line of intelligence and an innate potential we can realize through practice.

Our environment often thwarts this potential in early childhood. As adults, our responsibility is to resume this upward march.

Skill development is a broad category that includes areas where you can show ability. You can develop skills for personal or professional reasons.

There are skills in communicating, creative problem-solving, collaborating, computer programming, bookkeeping, analyzing, persuading, negotiating, learning, presenting, goal setting, listening, managing, planning, reasoning, predicting, to name only a few.

All skills are associated with at least one line of intelligence (above). With sufficient practice and the right methods, individuals can develop any skill.

One way to get more clarity on your natural skills is to take the free VIA Character Strength survey. Your natural strengths often translate to specific skills.

In your pursuit of personal development, you may have come across the Wheel of Life.

The Wheel of Life is a tool acoach uses to illustrate the various categories of ones life, measure how an individual is doing in each area, and set goals to improve in those areas.

Your wheel might include physical health, relationships, social, financial, professional, personal growth, spiritual, creativity, fun, and emotional.

The message behind the Wheel of Life is that development occurs through conscious effort and being intentional about how you grow within these areas.

Who doesnt have behaviors they would like to change?

We all have set patterns of behavior that get entrenched by unconscious repetition.

Changing these habits requires repatterning the brain.

For lasting change to occur, we repeat the new habit or behavior over time under various circumstances.

The time necessary to install a new habit varies; research suggests it takes 66 days on average.

Why do most personal development programs fail to produce long-term results? Because these programs are one size fits all.

Research shows there is a range of psychological types. In the Enneagram system, there are nine primary types and nine levels of development within each one.

Each type has varying propensities, habitual patterns, strengths and weakness, fears and potentials.

If you want to create an effective Personal Development Plan, be sure youre aware of your psychological type. Each type has a different pathway to higher development.

As a business coachto high-performing entrepreneurs for the last two decades, Ive taken and used most (if not all) the personality tests on the market, including popular ones like DISC and Myers-Briggs.

In my opinion, the Enneagram is far more efficacious, robust, and useful.

You can take a free Enneagram test here. If you wish to take a scientifically-validated version of the test, go to the Enneagram Institute website ($12).

After you get your results, read more about your type and see if it resonates. Then, look for ways to develop your type. (On the Enneagram Institute website, they offer Personal Growth Recommendations for each type.)

If youre interested in pursuing this further, I recommend Riso and Hudsons books, The Wisdom of the Enneagram and Personality Types.

By now your mind is reeling with possibilities.

Consider what the above information means about your potential: Developing any line of intelligence gives you greater sensitivity about the world around you.

You can now process information in new and deeper ways.

Every time we grow in a line of intelligence, we perceive the world differently. (See also: The Four Stages of Learning Anything.)

We are more awake than before. We have greater sensitivity to the world around us. Our possibilities are remarkable to ponder.

Now, its time to cast your vision for your future self.

Nietzsche believed it was our destiny to be Ubermensch or Superman.

An Ubermensch is an integrated or whole human being accessing his full potential.

Numerous researchers in developmental psychology have come to a similar conclusion, calling the final stage of development Integrated.

Maslow called this stage of development self-actualization and self-transcendence.

Your vision (and personal development goals) will inspire you if it is true to who you are.

Sometimes we create a vision based on what weshould want or what we hope will gain approval from others (our parents, significant others, colleagues, friends).

Such a vision will lack inspiration and will feel meaningless.

So before you cast your vision for your development, find your center and enter a state of mastery first.

More here:
Personal Development Plan: A Definitive Step-by-Step Process