Ultimate Basic Guide to Starting Personal Development (you need this!)

We’re going to go back to the basics.

Whether you are in Day One, Day 365, or Year 2 of your personal development journey, it”s still always good to go back to the basics and refresh yourself on what you really need.

That’s why this blog post is all about going back to the basics of starting our personal development journey. Even if we’re already a long way into our journey, there is still a benefit in reviewing those concepts and reapply them to our own life.

The inspiration for this blog post actually came from one of my favourite books, Girl Stop Apologizing by Rachel Hollis, and I absolutely love her book, along with Girl, Wash Your Face!

Her book actually had really good concepts to apply for everything, including my blog post on setting a foundation for your productivity

This blog post is going to be your ultimate basic guide to starting personal development… whether you started the journey or not!

It’s quite simple, it’s only three steps, but they are essential and important when trying to be 1% better every day.

We’ll go through them briefly, before we go to them in depth.

First we need to remove excuses. Because what are the things that hold us back? Excuses and limiting beliefs. When it comes to starting anything, there are always going to be excuses that pop up that tell us that it’s not a good idea. That’s what that first step will be about.

The next one is improving habits. Now, what drives our life? Our habits. Whether we like it or not, it is our habits that actually determine whether we accomplish or succeed in our goals. I mean think about where our eating habits will lead us? Or our work habits? Those habits are going to lead to an eventual outcome… that’s why they are so important! When in comes to personal development, having good habits and breaking the bad ones are key.

Then, we have building skills. We will go in depth on how they are different to building habits. Building skills are important because of how they can benefit us. I mean, what would you do without any sorts of skills?

Now, we’ll go through each of these in depth. You’ll see how important they really are, and why they are actually key when starting personal development.

#1 – Removing Excuses

The first thing we need to do when it comes to anything in general (not just personal development) is to remove excuses.

Excuses can come and go in many ways. Excuses can be something that people believe wholeheartedly and stick with it for life. However, what some people don’t realise, is that those excuses may be the very thing that are holding them back of their potential.

That’s why, this step is all about removing the excuses. It’s all about having no justifications for why you can’t do something. It’s about removing all those things that tell you that you shouldn’t do something.

Now, what are some excuses that we may make when it comes to personal development? To be honest, the list is endless, but let’s go through some of the common ones.

Believing that we are not good enough

I believed this excuse with all of my heart. We’ve probably heard of this excuse before, that can come in many statements. These statements include “that’s just the way I am” or “I was meant to be this way”. But no matter what statement, it’s an excuse that is holding us back from making those changes in our lives.

This is a common excuse especially when it comes to starting something new… and this is not just personal development. I know that this is the excuse I made when I first started developing my blog and all my other projects.

However, we have to remember, that at the end of the day, we’re the only ones that are saying that we are not good enough. No one else, is saying that we are not good enough… but us.

Yes, maybe there may be people that say that we are not good enough, and say it in front of our faces or behind our backs, but it’s still going to be our choice to decide if we are good enough for something.

So pretty much, we are the only ones that can overcome this excuse. We are the only ones that can make the first step to decide that we are enough and good enough for the things that we want in our lives. If we want to make changes to our life, we are good enough. If we want to go and pursue that very new thing…. we are good enough. The first person that should say that you are good enough is YOU.

Saying that you don’t have time

Thinking about it, a lack of time management is often a hurdle to many goals, if not all goals. I mean, a big reason why people don’t keep doing their side hustle is because of the lack of time. The reason why passions are not pursued is because of a lack of time. The reason why goals aren’t achieved, is because of a lack of time. Lack of time is a common obstacle to achieving anything.

I’m sure that every person that is reading this blog has a lot on their plate. I’m sure that you probably have told people that you are busy at least once a week minimum. Maybe you have a full-time job, or you study full-time and work part-time, or maybe you are juggling parenting with work.

However, this may not surprise you, we still have control over managing our time, and most importantly making the time for the other things that we want in life.

Especially when it comes to personal development and working on our personal growth, it’s going to require consistent effort and daily action. Personal growth does not have a one-off action that magically gives you that perfect growth (if you know of a one-off action, please tell me). Since it requires consistent action, it means that you definitely have to find the time for it.

That’s why saying that you lack the time is an excuse that you need to overcome. Instead of making it an excuse, find ways to improve your time management. Life does get really busy, but it’s going to be hard to get on top of the things that are important to us, if we lack that time management.

I definitely recommend that you read my blog post on time management tips to help you with this. One important first step when it comes to managing your time is:

• Actually know what your priorities are
• Compare it to how you’re actually using your time now.

You need to be self-aware of what you’re doing with the time that you have now, in order to make those changes.

Waiting for a “Perfect Time” OR wanting things to be perfect

Okay here’s a pill that even I had to swallow (and sometimes I still have to swallow that pill many times).

We can never be perfect and there is never a perfect time.

It sounds harsh even as I wrote it, but it is very true. Let’s break down those two respectively.

First, we are human, we can never be perfect, and yet we still strive for perfection and beat ourselves up when we are not perfect (I’m raising my hands here).

One of the reasons why my personal development journey became a lot harder than it should be was because I was always striving for perfection. I beat myself up when I didn’t do my habits 100%, or if I missed a day of my new habits of journalling or reading. I would even beat myself up for not staying “positive” the whole day.

But the truth is, those imperfections are okay, and we shouldn’t expect to be perfect. Progress is what we are aiming for, even if it’s just 1% progress each day. When we let go of the idea that everything needs to be perfect, it becomes a lot easier to stay kind to ourselves, and actually improve on our personal development.

The same goes for waiting for a perfect time. The truth is, there is never a perfect time. There’s always going to be something that gets in a way. We can’t always wait for the next day, the next Monday, the next month…. the next year! The best time to start (especially with growing yourself!) is NOW.

#2 -Improving Your Habits

If we know anything about habits, we know that habits are very automated… meaning that we do them without having to think about them. It doesn’t feel like a choice, because we do them without second thought.

For example, with the habit of brushing your teeth, no matter how our day went, or even how tired we are, we do the habit without a second thought.

That’s why, with our habits, we want to build the good habits that benefit us, and break the habits that are not doing us any favors.

My blog post how to level up your habits can really help you level up your habits, and I’ll briefly mention those steps… but I definitely recommend that you read that entire blog post so that you can get the full detailed steps on it!

Become Self-Aware of Your Habits

The first important step you want to do when it comes to improving your habits is to actually become self-aware of them. You want to list your current habits. Then with your list of current habits, you want to note down the ones that are not good habits.

It’s so important to be self-aware of the habits that you have. When we’re so used to doing certain things, it’s hard to figure out which habits are not doing us any good.

Figure Out Replacement Habits for Bad Habits

Then, whatever bad habits you have, you want to figure out a replacement habit. You want to really reflect why you do that bad habit… is it because of the habit itself? Or is it the feeling you get from doing that habit? Most times (in my experience), it’s the latter.

List New Habits You Want to Build and HABIT STACK them

Once you figured out your replacement habits, list the habits that you also want to build. With those new good habits, find a way to implement them into your life by stacking them with the current habits you have.

Make Life Easy for Yourself

This is the most important part with habits! Whether you’re breaking them or building them. You want to make life easy for yourself!

With your bad habits, you want to get rid of the temptations… so you’re not tempted. With the good habits, it’s the opposite. So you’re tempted to do them, you want to see them as much as possible.

It’s actually quite simple when you think about it! We just need to make those steps!

Consistency for automation

It’s not a new thing to hear that building and breaking habits takes time. We can’t expect for a habit to be automated after doing it for a few days, and it’s the same with breaking a bad habit.

We need to be consistent no matter what. Each day we need to show up and do that good habit we want to build. The same with the habit, each day we need to avoid that habit we want to break. It’s going to take time and patience for it to be fully part of our lives.

I definitely recommend you read the blog post on how to level your habits for the expansion!

#3 – Build These Skills

Now, you may think that building skills is the same as building habits… and yeah it kind of is.

From my perspective and experience, the difference between building skills and habits is that building skills require a lot of extra effort. A lot of extra focus, time, and hard work. Let me paint you a picture (kind of)…

For example, say you have a certain body transformation goal. The habits that you build are your eating habits, your exercise habits, and your sleep habits. The skills that you build include cooking (for your eating habits), workout skills (for your exercise habits), and time management skills (for your sleep habits… and pretty much everything else).

Those skills require extra time, focus, and hard work to improve. You actually need the extra time to improve your cooking skills, master your workout skills, and your time management skills.

In terms of personal development, you first want to build effective and beneficial daily habits, just like what we went through in Step 2. With the skills, here are a few skills that you can build in your personal development journey:

Planning

Here’s why planning is more of an skill than a habit…

Planning requires a lot more focus, time (obviously), and hard work. I mean, think about it. When you plan your schedule, you need to focus because you have to really think about what you need to do and what your priorities are. Unlike habits, you can’t just do it without thinking of it.

Also, obviously, planning your time takes… time. I mean, planning your time helps you save time, so that’s why you need to take the time to effectively plan it (count how many times I’ve said time in this sentence).

Then, of course planning takes hard work, especially when you’re working on the skill overtime. Let me say that there are moments when my planning skills are going really well, and then a life change happens and then I have to readjust again.

And that’s okay! Truthfully, we cannot improve our planning skills to a 100% level, because there are always going to be changed circumstances in our life along the way, that’s going to require us to adjust. For instance, you may have really good planning skills while you were in university, but then once you graduated and got into a job, you had to adjust your planning skills to a new schedule.

At the end of the day, we always have control over how we react and adjust, that’s why we should always strive to improve our planning skills. When you think about it, it’s those sorts of things that help us in our personal development journey. Our personal development journey isn’t always about the books we read and the podcasts we listen to. Most of the time, our personal development journey is about how we get through the different situations in our life.

Leading Yourself

Here’s why leading yourself is more of a skill than a habit…

It requires A LOT more extra work, time, and effort to build & improve.

What exactly is leading yourself anyway? Leading yourself is similar to self-discipline, almost the same thing. Leading yourself is all about following through on what you say that you’re going to do, and meeting the standards for yourself.

Think about an actual leader… like a project leader. This leader obviously leads the people in their group to make sure that they are doing what they are supposed to do, and hopefully supports them every step of the way.

Now we’re going to become this really good leader, and the one that we are leading is ourselves. When it comes to building new skills, habits, or starting new projects, the only one who can do it is you. No one else is going to do it for you… but you. And if you have no one to be accountable to, you’re the only one that can make sure that they follow through.

That’s why some have personal trainers or accountability buddies with their habits… it’s because they would never let anybody down. That’s why they follow through on the things that they say that they are going to do.

But what about ourselves? Why do we not follow through on the things we say that we are going to do? Accountability buddies are great, and I’ve seen a great power in my life by having people that I am accountable to. However, I still need to lead myself to do the things that I say that I am going to do. Although an accountability partner may be a bit of a driver, you’re still going to be leading yourself.

So how exactly do you build the skill of leading yourself?

Self-discipline and Self-talk.

Those are the two key things that help you lead yourself. You need self-discipline to push through on your habits (especially the hard ones!) and all your other commitments that you need to do. You need self-discipline to do the things you have to do EVEN when you don’t feel like it.

Then, you need self-talk to encourage you, motivate you, and push you (in a way that they are not beating you up). Our self-talk either works for us or against us. Our self-talk works against us if it is always negative, putting us down, and not making us feel good. Our self-talk works for us if it’s a way to encourage us and uplift us. Obviously we want the positive self-talk.

Those are the two things we need to lead ourselves best. Of course, it takes time, practice, and effort… that’s why leading yourself is a skill!

Believing in Yourself

The most important skill to build is to believe in yourself!

If there was one thing that have really held me back for writing & creating content, it was my worry that no one could benefit from what I had to say.

But I have learned overtime, that it turns out, that it’s doesn’t actually matter.

Because I could write thousands of blog posts, create thousands of Instagram posts, and share content on my stories… but none of it will be helpful unless YOU believe in yourself.

While I do see the page views on this blog, I don’t see who goes on my blog (that’s 100% a good thing! I like the mystery of that!). But I can assume that every person that reads my blog has different situations and circumstances in their life.

I have no idea what is going on in your life. While I do hope that my blog posts or any content I put out there does add value to you in any way, my content won’t actually be helpful unless you believe in yourself, and you believe that you can change.

That’s why we mentioned to let go of those excuses to stop believing that you are not enough for change, or that you need to wait for a perfect time. We need to let those things go so that they don’t hold us back from living to our best potential.

You have nothing to lose by striving to improve yourself

I mean… right? I have never met anyone who said that improving yourself is risky. It’s absolutely not! I mean why would it be?

I mean, the only way for it to be risky is that you may drift away from other people who don’t align with the new improved you… but other than that, you have nothing to lose!

Maybe the excuses that were mentioned you needed to remove were a bit too intimidating… but think about how good it will feel once you let them go and don’t let them takeover your life!

Maybe the habits that you currently have are too comfortable and you don’t want to let them go… but think about the long term results that you have!

Maybe the skills that you want to build takes too much time and effort… but think about how much it would be worth it in the end.

In the moment, you may need to sacrifice the things that bring you comfort so you can work on improving on those things, but what you get out of it would make that sacrifice worth it. I guess, you do lose momentary comfort, but one year, two years, or three years down the track, when you realise that you haven’t made any changes to your life, was that momentary comfort worth it?

Have a think about that :))

Lauren 😊

Book(s) this post was inspired by:

(not sponsored in any way!)

• Girl, Stop Apoligizing! – Rachel Hollis

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