4 Things You Need To Know Before Making Your Personal Growth Plan

You may have read somewhere or have been taught by someone how important it is for you as an individual to have a Personal Growth Plan for your personal growth journey. And you have made up your mind to get started on designing a plan for yourself.

Just as you were about to put pen to paper, an alarm hits off in your head and you are wondering whether you are on the right track. In some other places, I have written extensively on how to design an Effective Personal Growth Plan. In this post, I would like to share with you 4 important things you need to know before sitting down to design your personal growth plan.

Why?

Believe me when I say this, most of the things individuals have as personal growth plans do not in any way qualify to be regarded as one. This is because many of those who do set a plan do it without first understanding these 4 important things to know before designing a Personal Growth Plan.

A list of Personal Growth Goals does not equal a Personal Growth Plan

Some years back when I was first introduced to the idea of setting plans for my life, I remember how I would sit myself down and write down a list of results I would love to see (goals) and smile to myself how I have set a plan to work with.

Did I ever get to achieve all of those goals? I will leave you to guess the answer for yourself.

I know you have made up your mind on that next big level you want to hit in your personal growth journey and you are so excited and fired up about it that you just can’t wait to hit it as soon as possible, so you have written it down and you smile to yourself that you now have a plan on how to achieve it.

Well, sorry to be the one to break this news to you, you do not have a plan. One thing that I always achieved during those years was frustration and lack of satisfaction and I believe that is not what you want to achieve for yourself.

Don’t blame me or feel sorry for me, no one told me that there was a difference between goals and a plan and that though different both need each other. Think of it more like Siamese twins. Thank God that today I know better and I do not only set a plan for each of my goals I also teach others how they can do the same.

So I want you to understand that before you get down to setting your Personal Growth Plan, your list of ‘would-like to see results’ is not the same as a plan. See a detailed guide on how to set a plan for your goals.

Your Personal Growth goals will not change you

There is also one attitude I have noticed among people when it comes to setting a personal growth goal or plan, especially young people. Setting goals and hoping that they will suddenly change because of their goals. I remember how in 2013, at the beginning of the year, I had set a goal to finish a book every two weeks and I set a plan to read a chapter each day.

Each day I will read my goal in order to affirm it and to get the required motivation but by the end of each of those days, I would still not have completed a chapter. I lacked the discipline needed to achieve the goal I set out for myself and that is one factor many individuals often neglect in their personal growth journey.

That you set the goal will not make you automatically start doing it, you will have to change and adjust yourself in line with the goal you have set. If when you set your goal, nothing changes in your lifestyle, then rest assured that at the end of the day, nothing will be achieved by you.

In order to better maximize your next personal growth plan, take note of this important thing, it is the number or quality of goals that you have set that make the difference but the decisions you take coupled with your discipline towards achieving the goals that will make the difference for you in the long run.

So before you set your goals understand that you will not suddenly change because you have set goals to change. You will change because you have decided to change and because you disciplined yourself enough for the changes you hoped for.

Check out this post on how to stop growing backwards as an individual.

Your Personal Growth Plan will not achieve itself

Having a plan is not all there is; to execute or achieve what you have set out in your plan will require you to dedicate yourself to doing what will make the plans materialize. Oftentimes, what I see individuals do is that they make plans and they shove the plans away without as much as working on the plans they have set out for themselves. This is why I always teach that no plan is worthy to be called a plan without a clear-cut strategy on how to achieve the goals set out. When there is no clear-cut strategy in place, what you have is simply a wish book.

In 2020, I organised a special session on Personal Growth Plan to help individuals in designing their Plans, one of the participants made a submission of what she hoped to achieve by the end of the year, to grow her income to millions of naira. I was shocked at her audacity and when I asked her about her strategies, she told me she did not know but that she had faith that will be her story at the end of the year.

You may be like this friend of mine, probably you are a Christian who believes that “what God cannot do does not exist”, I would like you to understand that when the Holy Book advised that “faith without work is dead” this is what was being referred to. For better understanding, below is an excerpt from James chapter 2, verses 17 to 18 that talked about faith and work:

Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.

So, before you even get started setting out goals for yourself and making a plan to achieve them, make peace with the fact that your plans will not achieve themselves. Your plan needs you to put in the required work for it to materialize.

Your Personal Growth Plan is a living thing, treat it as such 

Your plan need not be rigid. In fact, your plan should be flexible enough to allow you to make changes to it when necessary. I always advise people to be ready to make changes because when you make your plan there are chances that you did not take into consideration all there is to be taken into consideration in your plan. You may want to assume that you have certain factors under control but what of the factors not within your control such as government policies, weather conditions, actions and actions of others and many other factors.

In addition, as every living thing, your plan also has a lifespan and this lifespan must be clear to you from the onset so you don’t set out a lifetime to work on something that only needs six months.

Conclusion

So, there you have them. The 4 things you need to know before designing your Personal Growth Plan. Just as I pointed out in the post when I got started in designing a Personal Growth Plan for myself, I did not really care much about any of the above and for years, I paid the price of my ignorance. Just like Grace Awaeze who wrote on her personal growth journey, you now have the information to make a better plan for yourself.