Personal development


Personal development or self-improvement consists of activities that develops a person's capabilities and potential, enhance quality of life, and facilitate the realization of dreams and aspirations. Personal development may take place over the course of an individual's entire lifespan and is not limited to one stage of a person's life. It is not restricted to self-help and can include official and informal actions for developing others in roles such as a teacher, guide, counselor, manager, coach, or mentor. When personal development takes place in the context of institutions, it refers to the methods, programs, tools, techniques, and assessment systems offered to support positive adult development at the individual level in organizations. More recently, it is recognised that workplaces should be more proactive in providing personal development. Bob Aubrey contends "that human development should be integral to policies and practices in the workplace".

Overview

Among other things, personal development may include the following activities:
A distinction can be made between personal development and personal growth. Although similar, both concepts portray different ideas. Personal development specifies the focus of the "what" that is evolving, while personal growth entails a much more holistic view of broader concepts including morals and values being developed.
Recent scholarship has noted parallels between personal-development frameworks and structured therapeutic models used in psychology, which also emphasize goal setting, staged progress, and feedback systems to support sustained change.
Personal development can also include developing other people's skills and personalities. This can happen through roles such as those of a teacher or mentor, either through a personal competency or through a professional service.
Beyond improving oneself and developing others, "personal development" labels a field of practice and research:
  • As a field of practice, personal development includes personal-development methods, learning programs, assessment systems, tools, and techniques.
  • As a field of research, personal-development topics appear in psychology journals, education research, management journals and books, and human-development economics.
Any sort of development—whether economic, political, biological, organizational or personal—requires a framework if one wishes to know whether a change has actually occurred. In the case of personal development, an individual often functions as the primary judge of improvement or of regression, but the validation of objective improvement requires assessment using standard criteria.
Personal-Development frameworks may include:
  • Goals or benchmarks that define the end-points
  • Strategies or plans for reaching goals
  • Measurement and assessment of progress, levels or stages that define milestones along a development path
  • A feedback system to provide information on changes

    As an industry

Personal development as an industry has several business-relationship formats of operating. The main ways are business-to-consumer and business-to-business. However, there have been two new ways emerge: consumer-to-business and consumer-to-consumer. The personal development market had a global market size of 38.28 billion dollars in 2019.

Business-to-consumer market

A wide array of personal development products are available to individuals. Examples include self-help books; education technology, neuroenhancement, and experiential learning.
Some consulting firms such as DDI and FranklinCovey specialize in personal development, but generalist firms operating in the fields of human resources, recruitment and organizational strategy—such as Hewitt, Watson Wyatt Worldwide, Hay Group, McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, and Korn/Ferry—have entered what they perceive as a growing market, not to mention smaller firms and self-employed professionals who provide consulting, training and coaching.

Origins

Major religions—such as the age-old Abrahamic and Indian religions—as well as 20th-century New Age philosophies have variously used practices such as prayer, music, dance, singing, chanting, poetry, writing, sports and martial arts.
Michel Foucault describes in Care of the Self the techniques of epimelia used in ancient Greece and Rome, which included dieting, exercise, sexual abstinence, contemplation, prayer, and confession—some of which also became practices within different branches of Christianity.
Wushu and tai chi utilize traditional Chinese techniques, including breathing and qi exercises, meditation, martial arts, as well as practices linked to traditional Chinese medicine, such as dieting, massage, and acupuncture.
Two individual ancient philosophical traditions: those of Aristotle and Confucius stand out and contribute to the worldwide view of "personal development" in the 21st century. Elsewhere anonymous or named founders of schools of self-development appear endemic—note the traditions of the Indian sub-continent in this regard.

South Asian traditions

Some ancient Indians aspired to "beingness, wisdom and happiness".
Paul Oliver suggests that the popularity of Indian traditions for a personal developer may lie in their relative lack of prescriptive doctrine.

Islamic personal development

Khurram Murad describes that personal development in Islam is to work towards eternal life in Jannuh. There are many avenues in the journey to paradise, such as devoted practicing of the laws of the Quran and Sunnah, such as optimized service towards the self and others. Sincere worship of Allah is the foundation for self-discovery and self-development. Allah has provided ways to help those striving towards eternal life, including staying away from things of the world. These worldly things can distract those away from the path to paradise. It does not mean worldly success is inherently disruptive but can become so when spiritual beliefs do not align with the Sunnah. In the end, paradise will bring satisfaction to those working on their personal development because of the pleasure that comes from Allah.

Aristotle and the Western tradition

The Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote Nicomachean Ethics, in which he defined personal development as a category of phronesis or practical wisdom, where the practice of virtues leads to eudaimonia, commonly translated as "happiness" but more accurately understood as "human flourishing" or "living well". Aristotle continues to influence the Western concept of personal development, particularly in the economics of human development and in positive psychology.

Confucius and the East Asian tradition

In Chinese tradition, Confucius founded an ongoing philosophy. His ideas continue to influence family values, education and personnel management in China and East Asia. In his Great Learning Confucius wrote:
In contemporary China, personal development remain a salient priority in social life, and is shaped by diverse traditions, including Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, as well as modern influences such as communist ideas of citizenship and capitalist conceptions of human capital. Young adults in particular must navigate different social roles and values as they seek to become socioeconomically competent citizens.

Contexts

Psychology

became linked to personal development in the early 20th century starting with the research efforts of Alfred Adler and Carl Jung.
Adler refused to limit psychology to analysis alone. He made the important point that aspirations focus on looking forward and do not limit themselves to unconscious drives or to childhood experiences. He also originated the concepts of lifestyle and of self-image, as a concept that influenced management under the heading of work-life balance, also known as the equilibrium between a person's career and personal life.
Carl Gustav Jung made contributions to personal development with his concept of individuation, which he saw as the drive of the individual to achieve the wholeness and balance of the Self.
Daniel Levinson developed Jung's early concept of "life stages" and included a sociological perspective. Levinson proposed that personal development comes under the influence—throughout life—of aspirations, which he called "the Dream":
Research on success in reaching goals, as undertaken by Albert Bandura, suggested that self-efficacy best explains why people with the same level of knowledge and skills get very different results. Having self-efficacy leads to an increased likelihood of success. According to Bandura self-confidence functions as a powerful predictor of success because:
  1. It causes you to expect to succeed
  2. It allows you take risks and set challenging goals
  3. It helps you keep trying if at first you do not succeed
  4. It helps you control emotions and fears when life may throw more difficult things your way
In 1998 Martin Seligman won election to a one-year term as President of the American Psychological Association and proposed a new focus: on healthy individuals rather than on pathology
Carl Rogers proposed a theory about humanistic psychology called . This concept consisted of two ideas of the self. The first idea is the ideal self which describes the person we want to be. The second one is the real self which is the objective view of one self and who we really are. Rogers emphasized that healthy development is when the real self and the ideal self are accurate. Incongruence is what Rogers described to be when the real self and the ideal self are not accurate in their viewings. The ideal self is not lowered in order to compensate for the real self, but the real self is lifted by the ideal self in order to achieve healthy development.
It is important to note that real lasting personal development is only achieved through meaningful and lasting accomplishments. Viktor Frankl emphasized this by stating "Genuine and lasting well-being is the result of a "life well-lived". In an article written by Ugur, H., Constantinescu, P.M., & Stevens, M.J. they described that society has taught us to create positive illusions that give the appearance of positive development but are only effective in the short term. Additionally, they give two examples of personal development. The first is hedonic well-being which is the pursuit of pleasurable experiences that lead to increased personal happiness. The second is eudaimonic well-being which is living life by making choices that are congruent with authentic being.