Seven Practical Personal Development Strategies

“The question is not whether we will die, but how we will live.” - Joan Borysenko

To keep moving forward in life, we need to have solid footing underneath us. The goal to create the life we want takes a measure of risk and it does take courage. Sometimes building a solid foundation when we make the decision to walk away from our comfort zones gives us the firm footing we need to go forward – to explore and to live what’s next in our lives.

The following seven strategies provide a blueprint for creating this foundation. These strategies are not in any specific or chronological order. Even though each strategy is independent of one another, your personal development journey is enhanced and maximized when all seven become integrated into your conscious design of the life you are creating and deserve to live.

Strategy One: Keep Your Balance
This strategy will remind you how important a balanced life really is. Keeping your life in balance provides you the ability to see a world full of possibilities for yourself. But, when you are knocked off balance, it’s your personal responsibility, your choice, to get back on track or not.

So, how can we learn to keep our balance? What are the necessary skills or techniques to make this happen? First you must open your mind and heart to the reality that not everything in your life will always be stable or steady; and it never will, but it is up to you how you choose to experience and deal with these periods of balance and imbalance alike.

The best bet to experience a more balanced life is to think about what you really want in your life. Don’t worry about the how, detail-by-detail. The how will be revealed to you in due time. Instead, stay focused on what it would look like to have a better job, to improve a relationship, or to explore an interest (like traveling) or a hobby.

Staying more in-touch with the want than the how will provide you with a more positive state of mind, attitude and, indeed, a better sense of balance. Each day you should focus for a few minutes on how it would feel to begin to achieve the things you desire for your life.

Strategy Two: Change Your Point of View
The way you look at your life is called your Point of View. You tend to look at life through a prescribed set of lens you acquired at a very age, which may keep you from experiencing the world in the way it actually exists.

A Common Point of View is characterized by logical and rational interpretations. The challenge is to shift to an Uncommon Point of View. This will allow you to step back and ask if what you are experiencing is effective and working for you in your life.

Strategy Three: Move Outside of Your Comfort Zone
True growth happens on the other side of your comfort zone. Fear fills the gap between your comfort zone and growth. Taking the first step and walking through the fear is a fundamental step to creating the life you want.

We all have a defined comfort zone based on particular events or circumstances that have happened in our lives. Staying inside an established comfort zone can look like continuing in a job or relationship too long because the fear of changing, or moving on, can be very paralyzing. Simply put, we can get comfortable with things that are cause us anxiety, depression and sometimes misery because the alternative, which is doing something different, is, at times, just too terrifying.

In order to understand how one might take that first step into the fear, it’s important to understand how these comfort zones are developed in the first place. One’s particular comfort zone can be based on a life experience, or a series of life experiences, that occur over time. These episodes are as defining to our personality and to our sense of self as our height and color of eyes are defining to our physical characteristics.

What is it costing your to remain in your comfort zone? In order to take that first step out of your comfort zone, you must identify what you want in life. The journey from fear to growth is a gradual one. It begins by taking the first step.

Strategy Four: Erase the Old Tapes Playing in Your Head
The central message found on these old tapes playing in your head is based on the “lie.” The “lie” tells you are not enough and that you can’t do or have what you want. Replacing the “lie” with the truth is the mechanism to erase these old tapes. The truth tells you that you are indeed enough. The key is to become a person of choice and choose the truth, not the lie.

Strategy Five: Leave Your Bag of Garbage at the Garbage Pit
The garbage we carry with us is as heavy to our hearts and souls as any physical weight. Oftentimes it’s difficult to throw out this garbage because it has shaped and defined us for far too long.

To begin the process of throwing out your garbage, you must first name it and begin to realize what it’s costing you. Perhaps you may feel a void in your life with the trash gone. Fill this space with blessings and grace for yourself and others.

Strategy Six: Recognize Triggers and Spins
A trigger is cause by a specific stimulus that is usually associated with a bad memory or experience. Spins are the catastrophic misinterpretations that follow. To stop the spinning, you need to “lift the lid” and confront the memories by sorting the past from the present.

Think of a washing machine during its spin cycle. If you were to lift the lid during the spin cycle, you would not see any specific clothing item. Instead, you would see the entire load of clothes entangled on the sides of the washer. You wouldn’t be able to distinguish a sock from a t-shirt.

Likewise, the underwear would be entwined with the towels making the underwear hard to recognize, and so forth. However, once the washing machine stops spinning the clothes drop to the bottom of the washer and you are now able to recognize everything for what it really is. You can now see the socks as socks and the towels now certainly look like towels. This washing machine metaphor is a good way to think about the trigger and spins in your life.

Lifting the lid allows you to confront the memories that started the spinning in the first place. By taking a full step back and recognizing the fact that you are indeed spinning isn’t easy and it takes a great deal of practice and experience.

Strategy Seven: Putting it All Together
Before you step forward, it’s also important you don’t analyze where you have been in the past, or even analyze where you might be going. To live and to experience the moment, the here-and-now, can be challenging. But it’s essential you tune into your feelings and you sit with those feelings to get a realistic handle on what it is that you really do want to have.

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