You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight. Jim Rohn

When talking to people about personal development, I come across tons of misconceptions. So let me clear up a major one right away.

For successful personal development, you need exactly two conditions:

And thats it.

Specifically, you do NOT need to know exactly what you want. Youd be surprised by how many clients come to me for life coaching when they dont know what they want from life they just know that whatever they have at the moment is not it.

(Though if you keep reading on below, you will learn a way to find out what you really want.)

As long as you satisfy the two conditions above, making a personal development plan is for you!

Making a personal development plan comes down to two main things. Helping you figure out:

You could certainly achieve personal development without a plan. A lot of people have.

But a plan vastly increases your chances to move towards a life that you find fulfilling and satisfying every day. Having a plan gives you:

Sounds good? Then read on!

Below, I share the personal development planning method I use with my life coaching clients. Its based on something called The GROW Model and might seem fairly straightforward, but its insanely powerful.

Theres a lot of clear structure underneath the surface, and if you follow the plan step-by-step as outlined, you will blast through any obstacles in your way. You will find a clear vision of what you want from life, as well as a specific action plan on how to get there. Say goodbye, procrastination! Say hello, fulfilling life full of growth and opportunities!

Speaking of action I give you several exercises in the following guide.

Now, you could certainly just read through it and learn a few things. But if you actually grab a pen and paper (or open up your favourite word processor) and go through the exercises as you read, you will benefit far more than if you just passively read this article.

After all, you came here to change your life, and change requires taking action.

Or, in other words, you wouldnt read the ultimate guide to baking a mean cake and then sit around and hope for it to appear, would you? You would go ahead and follow the instructions and make it appear!

One quick note this is a long article. Over 4,000 words. So if you dont have the time or energy to read through all of it right now, bookmark it for later. That way, you can read it when youre able to give it your full attention.

You say youre ready? Alright! Lets do this!

(Go ahead, grab a pen and paper before you continue. I will still be here when you get back.)

This first step of making a personal development plan will help you figure out which parts of your life youre happy with, and which could use some change. Then you can pick an area to work on where theres room for improvement and growth.

Yep, its writing-stuff-down time!

1.1 Make a list of the main areas of your life

First, Id like you to make a list of the main areas of your life which you have been focusing your time and energy on lately. This might include:

And anything else you can think of. I wont give you too many examples, because I want you to think about this for yourself. For example, one of your main areas might end up guitar playing, if its really that important to you that it deserves its own category.

Note that if theres an area of your life you havent been focusing on but would really like to, that belongs on the list as well.

Once you have this list, Id like you to narrow it down to 4-8 of the main areas. You dont want to overwhelm yourself with options before we even begin.

Go ahead, write them down.

1.2 Rate each of those areas from 1-10 based on how satisfied you are with it

Next, Id like you to give it some thought, and rate each of those areas on a scale from 1 to 10, ten being the highest, based on how satisfied you are with your current situation.

Note, its not how good you are, or how successful, but how satisfied you are with the current situation. For example, if you have almost no social life because you spend all your days working, but youre okay with that for the next couple of months because its a very important stage of your business, then you might give yourself a 10 on your social life.

Take a few moments to do this now.

Chances are, some of your areas did better than others. If you scored a 9 or a 10, youre doing fine. An 8 is iffy, and anything from 7 below can definitely be improved.

Id like you to take a good long look at the areas youre not very satisfied with, and pick which one you would like to begin improving first.

Because thats what youll be working with throughout the rest of this article.

Once you have gone through this guide, you can make a full-fledged personal development plan by applying the exercises to the other areas of your life. But for now, we will focus on one main area, because its better if you truly grasp the concepts well with a clear example in mind, instead of mucking things up by focusing on too much at once.

1.3 Figuring out your ideal situation

Have you got an area of your life in mind yet? Because well be working with that now.

Just start daydreaming, and imagine what the ideal situation would be, in the long-term (many years from now).

To give you some clear examples instead of vague generalities, I will show you what I got when I was making my own personal development plan a while ago. Specifically, Ill talk about the area of my life to do with friendships.

At the time, I was studying at university. And my ideal situation with friendships would have been having half a dozen to a dozen closer friends (as well as the usual acquaintances). People who I could call up to hang out in the park when the weather was nice, or to go rock-climbing, or cook up some mean Indian food together with. And meeting up with someone often, nearly every day of the week, to do various fun stuff, or just nothing at all.

Go ahead, daydream about how your chosen part of your life would ideally look, if you could do anything you wanted

Feels exciting?

Now lets pull a bit closer to the present. Pick a medium-term future. Say, somewhere between 3 months and 1 year from now.

Imagine how you would like your ideal situation to be then. In my example, this doesnt really change anything. But if youre focusing on the business side of your life, for example, its a good idea to pull closer to the present with a 1-year dream, and even 3-month dream. This helps you move from vague daydreaming (as pleasant as it is) towards making those dreams a reality.

Go ahead, think about your specific middle-term goal.

Once you have it, start imagining it in great detail. How you would feel when you wake up in the morning. What you would do during the day. The people you would meet. The things you would say to yourself.

Do NOT neglect this step. It might sound small and simple, but its incredibly powerful. Firstly, it gets you excited and motivated, bye the Pain And Pleasure Principle. Secondly, it sets up cognitive dissonance in your mind. Thats where your brain holds two conflicting thoughts, gets uncomfortable, and tries to resolve the conflict by changing one of the thoughts.

In the case of imagining your ideal situation, your brain will start looking for opportunities to start moving towards it. And trust me, those opportunities are all around you. You just havent been noticing them until now.

To clarify, imagine youre at a cocktail party, engrossed in an interesting conversation. Now imagine, that in one conversation out of many, 3 metres (10 feet) away, somebody mentions your name. What do you think are the chances that you will notice?

Very, very good! Theres a region in your brain called the amygdala which is responsible for filtering all the hundreds of sensory inputs you get every second, and choosing which select few to let through to your conscious mind, because they might be important to you. So despite the general noise and several other conversations you and the one where your name was mentioned, you will notice.

Similarly, once you start visualising your ideal situation, your amygdala will catch on that this is important to you and start filtering for opportunities that might move your closer to your goal.

So take your time to imagine it, in full detail. This little time investment of 5 minutes is extremely worth it.

1.4 Get very specific about what you want

One big difference between a dream and a goal is being specific about what you want.

A dream is a vague fuzzy thing you like to think about to make yourself happy. A goal is a specific prospect, and by gosh, youre going to make it happen!

One word of warning for now, dont worry about how you will achieve your goal. That will come in steps 3 Generating options, and 4 Goalsetting. For now, we simply figure out what it is you want! (Theres a reason this solid structure works. Trust me.)

For now, just eliminate any vagueness and make it specific. Exactly when is your middle-term goal? How will you know when you have achieved it? Also eliminate any vague words.

In my case of friendships, I decided to set my middle-term goal 6 months away. I wanted to have at least 6 close friends, with whom I would hang out weekly, and I wanted to do fun stuff five days of the week. Whether its going out swing dancing or tossing a frisbee in a park, or anything else.

Recap your goal, and make sure to get rid of any vagueness. You can even talk to a friend about it, and let them help you, if you want. (It always helps to get an outsiders perspective.)

Go ahead. Think about it. Then write it down.

Okay, by now you should have:

If you missed out any of those steps, go back now and do the exercises before reading on. This guide will still be here when you get back.

Now that you know what your ideal situation would be, its time to compare it to your present situation.

That way, youll know how big a chasm stands between your reality and your dream situation, which will later help you build just the right bridge to cross that chasm.

After that well have a good hard look at everything you already possess that will help you move towards your ideal situation!

2.1 How does your current situation compare to the ideal?

For this section, I will mainly just ask you a bunch of questions. And Id like you to take your time and answer them thoroughly.

I wont be telling you how to change your life for the better, because you know best what works for your particular situation. Hey, its your personal development plan, not mine!

Make a list of the biggest categories you spend your time on, like work, sleep, commute, cooking, watching TV, social, and anything else you want to ad. And figure out how much time you spend on each of them, during a typical week.

And now, with the chosen area of your life in mind:

(Take the time to answer those questions.)

2.2 What resources do you already have?

For this second part, we will find out what assets you currently have that could help you move towards your ideal goal. Take a few moments to answer the questions below:

(I highlighted the third question because its very, very important. Take the time to think it through.)

And to give you a real-life example, when I answered the above questions about my chosen area of life, friendships

I found out that I already had plenty of acquaintances. I also had two or three good friends, but wasnt really spending much time with them. (Ah, ha!). I found out I had the relevant social skills needed to meet people, as well as several interests (chess, swing dancing, juggling) that could help me meet others if I didnt discover enough people I really clicked with in my existing circle of acquaintances.

This section might take a bit of time to answer, but its well worth it. Yes, it might take you some 10-15 minutes, or even longer just to answer those questions properly. That can seem like one hell of a long time while youre reading an article online.

But its just 15 minutes. Just a drop in the lake of your life. But like a drop of an indicator in a bucket of hydroxide, a single drop is enough to turn the whole lot pink.

(Okay, Im not sure where I was going with that analogy)

By the time youre done with Step 2, you should have:

You now have an area of your life in mind, and you know what your ideal situation would be and what needs to happen to bridge the gap between the ideal and your current situation.

In this step, you will come up with tons of actions you could take that will help you move towards your ideal goal.

Please note: It is crucial to separate this step, Generating options, from the next one Goalsetting. Because even though they deal with the exact same thing the actions that will help you move from where you are to where you want to be they are fundamentally different.

This step is all about getting creative, broadening your thinking and coming up with plans of action you might have never considered before. The next (and last) step is all about focusing, narrowing down your options, and setting clear deadlines for the actions you plan to take soon.

And you cannot be both creative and focused at the same time, because the two states of mind are directly contradictory. In fact, they are caused by contradictory brain chemicals, so you physically cannot be really focused and creative at the same time.

One of the biggest causes of overwhelm and getting stuck is when you try to do both steps at the same time. And its also one of the reasons why this method of personal development planning is so damn effective for helping you get unstuck and starting to move towards the life you want!

3.1 Its brainstorming time!

Its time to pick up your pen again.

Now, you can do this part in two ways (or any other way, really, if it works for you):

Neither is right with the other being wrong. They are just different approaches, and either of them might be better for you. I like to use either of them, depending on the situation.

Just note one thing its important to drill down until you get to specific actionable steps.

To give you a different example, when I was applying this to my life coaching find out more about how to get life coaching clients isnt an actionable step. Its a wish.

The rest is here:
How to make a personal development plan the ultimate guide