Personal development is the conscious pursuit of self-improvement that focuses on increasing self-awareness, cultivating an overall sense of identity, improving personal skills, and building knowledge.

Simply put, it is putting in the time to work on yourself to bring out the best in you. Personal development is a life-long journey that unlocks your full potential, helps you thrive professionally and the best investment you can make.

You are in control and responsible for the quality of your own life. Conveniently, you can blame others when bad things are happening to you, but it gets you nowhere. Yes, there are scenarios where others will believe you are less than you are, or people who refuse to give you a fair shake after you’ve put in the work.

Now what? Personal Development teaches you to see barriers as opportunities to develop new and uncharted routes to your success. Too often, what happens in our lives is a consequence of our behavior, actions, or a story we believe about ourselves based on past hurt or failure. Personal development helps you assess and grow in these areas so that you are able to take your fate into your own hands.

When you work on yourself, you will grow and be a better person. Personal development will help you reach your goals and fulfill your ambitions. In other words, there is a direct link between you developing as a person and the quality of your life.

In designing your personal development plan, you must focus on the eight areas of personal development, and work on all of them.

The eight areas of personal development are –

1. Spiritual,
2. Emotional,
3. Mental,
4. Social,
5. Physical,
6. Wealth,
7. Career,
8. and Community Development.

The key benefits of personal development, for you are as follows:

• Improve Self-Awareness and Uncover your Personal Identity: Finding out more about who you are and understanding yourself better.

• Realize Your Dreams and Aspirations: Figure out what you want to do and where you want to be. Formulate your goals, pursue your dreams, and gain a path to fulfillment.

• Enhance Your Quality of Life: Improve your health, comfort, and happiness and create and live the life you really want. Have a healthy work-life balance.

• Take Control of Your life: Provide important insights and perspectives to make better decisions. Help you solve problems and overcome obstacles and cope with setbacks.

• Unlock Your Full Potential: Discover and develop your talents, abilities, strengths, and skills. Believe in yourself and be the best version of yourself.

• Facilitate Employability: Demonstrate dedication and the ability to learn. This will help you advance in your career and improve your career prospects.

• Positively Impact Other People: Sometimes confidence is contagious! Your self-confidence, mannerism, tenacity, and being a better human being will make other people feel happy and good about themselves.

As a parent, you have the responsibility and should play a significant role in the personal development of your children. Kids need the opportunities to engage in activities that stimulate their overall personal development, including spiritual, emotional, mental, social, physical, wealth, career, and community development.

Here are some ideas on how parents can help with the personal development of their kids:

Storytelling:
Stories can have a deep and profound impact on your children’s psyche when using characters your children can relate to. Stories teach a lot of virtues and help develop a sense of empathy as your kids put themselves in the position of the story’s central character. Another great advantage of storytelling is that it enhances your children’s vocabulary and listening skills.

Reading:
Reading impacts the personal development of your children in similar ways as storytelling. Depending on the age, you should read to them or they should read regularly. My wife and I have read to our son every night. Once he was able to read on his own, we would allow him to read to us as well throughout the day.  Books open the vast world of knowledge and wisdom to your kids. Nothing can match the impact of a book when it comes to their self-development or personal growth.

Exercising Regularly:
Regular exercising promotes your children’s health, growth, and development. It improves muscle strength, flexibility, and physical fitness. In addition, exercising boosts confidence and self-esteem, while teaching your kids discipline, concentration, patience, dedication, and focus. In fact, according to ScienceDaily.com research indicates “physical activity may increase students’ cognitive control – or ability to pay attention – and also result in better performance on academic achievement tests.”

Exercising is a great way for your kids to socialize and make friends. These benefits continue when your children grow into an adult, since kids who exercise are more likely to keep exercising as adults.

Socializing or Interactive Play:
Kids benefit tremendously when spending time with other kids, learning about others and themselves. Interactive play improves your children’s personal skills, including confidence, social, emotional, self-esteem, cognitive, curiosity, and more. In addition, they start to learn what others expect from them and how to cope with challenging situations.

Practice Creativity:
Encourage your children to be creative since creativity fosters your children’s uniqueness and creative talent. It develops their fine motor skills and help your kids to grow mentally. Your children need opportunities to create something, try out new ideas, solve problems, and think in new ways. Being it, creating art, crafting, writing, building sandcastles, gardening, building blocks, and countless other fun activities will all lead to more creative children.

Solving Puzzles:
Solving puzzles develop hand-eye co-ordination, shape recognition, fine motor skills, concentration, decision-making, goal setting, patience, and a sense of achievement. Parents should encourage their kids to solve jigsaw puzzles, Sudoku, crosswords, logic grid, Rubik’s Cubes, and many more.

Role Playing:
Role play is a crucial part of your children’s personal development and allows the children to explore and experiment while getting into a real or fictional character and act out roles. Using imagination in role play improves your children’s creativity, help to understanding different emotions, and develop problem-solving skills. Besides being a fun activity, it also fosters communication, language development, confidence, and physical development.

Doing Household Chores:
Household chores helps your children to set priorities and improve their planning and time management skills. Furthermore, it helps them to build good habits early.  And do not forget to reward the behavior you want! Whether it is more time outside, their favorite treat or, even a good old-fashioned allowance, show them hard work will be rewarded.

Opportunity to Travel:
The more your children travel, the more educated, adventurous, and curious they become. Although traveling can be costly, even finding ways to explore areas of your community you have never noticed can be a learning opportunity. Kids who travel are more likely to be confident, adaptable, independent, and sensitive. By traveling, kids gain practical knowledge, build positive memories, and broadens their worldview.

Provide Access to Leaning and Mentoring:
Depending on the interest and needs of your children, provide opportunities for them to get training/education online, attend self-improvement workshops, and join clubs/organizations that will positively impact their lives. Corpening Personal Development offers several opportunities that will benefit your kids and will be delighted to play a role in their personal development.