“In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety.” ~Abraham Maslow
Have you ever wondered what true personal development requires? What it truly takes to change your life?
I have, and it’s a question I have been asking myself for years.
As someone who was on a journey that could better be described as personal decline than personal development, I felt stuck living a life I hated.
Around two years later, after having improved or completely changed every aspect of myself that I didn’t like, I can honestly say I am a totally different person.
My confidence went from not being able to go to my local supermarket to speaking to hundreds of people every day.
My self-belief went from thinking I’d never leave the job I hated to believing and striving for financial freedom.
My discipline went from being unable to stick to any exercise routines and diets to being in the best shape of my life.
I don’t share all this to brag—I share it to inspire anyone who feels stuck to finally become the person they know, deep down, they can be.
It’s not only from personal experience that this obsession of mine has grown but also from seeing people around me who are always attempting to change for the better but just can’t seem to make it last.
From my own experience and observations of others, I’ve learned that certain qualities are essential for lasting change.
Having all five will not guarantee you’ll be successful, but not having all of them guarantees won’t succeed.
Without further delay, here are five things you’ll need to finally become the person you want to be.
1. Responsibility
Without the ability to take responsibility, all other principles are useless.
By not taking responsibility for your situation, you give all your power to the external factors or people that you blame, leaving yourself helpless.
If you can’t take responsibility for something, you can’t change it.
Taking responsibility isn’t blaming yourself; it’s taking accountability for whatever situation you find yourself in now, regardless of how you got there.
I used to blame my childhood for who I was, but how does this help me in any way? It didn’t. Instead, it kept me the same—a person I wasn’t proud of.
I didn’t blame myself for it, but I took responsibility for how I was going to deal with it moving forward. This allowed me to finally take action, and my life improved greatly as a result.
2. Self-belief
If you don’t believe you can change, are you even going to try?
That’s why, to grow, you must first believe you’re capable of it, and to do this, you have to take action.
If you’re anything like I used to be, doubting your ability to break free from your situation and tired of endlessly repeating affirmations to yourself in the mirror, it’s time to get some evidence.
This teaches the brain that really you are capable of achieving the goals you set. Without evidence, you’ll never truly believe that anything has changed, because without it, what makes this time any different from the last?
But how do we get that evidence?
This is all about starting small. It’s setting smaller goals or challenges, ones that you may even doubt you can achieve, and then working diligently until you succeed.
This could be anything from waking up an hour earlier every day to taking daily cold showers. Whatever it may be, do it until you’ve gained irrefutable evidence that you’ve succeeded at something you didn’t think you could do.
From here, you set slightly bigger goals, achieve them, and repeat.
Eventually, you’ll prove yourself wrong so many times, you’ll have no choice but to believe you can do anything.
3. Discipline
Personal development is hard, and if you quit when things get hard, you’ll never succeed.
As I said, my levels of discipline used to let me down constantly. Whenever something got difficult, I’d let the uncomfortable feelings overwhelm me until I’d quit altogether.
Anything worth pursuing will get hard at some point. That’s inevitable. Therefore, being successful with personal development requires the ability to feel uncomfortable but keep going anyway.
Discipline allows you to do just that; it frees you from the prison of discomfort.
Just like self-belief, you can build discipline by starting small and working your way up.
Choose something difficult, something uncomfortable, and do it anyway.
You can kill two birds with one stone here by using something like a daily cold plunge or exercise to grow your self-belief and build discipline simultaneously.
Discipline is like a muscle; it can grow, and the bigger it gets, the more it can handle.
4. Consistency
Without consistency, your chances of creating meaningful results are slim.
I used to expect results instantly. I wanted results the moment I began something. This was not only unrealistic but often impossible.
It was the lack of discipline and the inability to remain consistent that contributed to most of my quitting.
Over time, I realized it wasn’t the luckiest, smartest, or even most talented people who were the successful ones. The people who showed up every single day and refused to quit were the ones with all the success.
One single water drop hitting a rock does absolutely nothing, but eventually, it carves and shapes the rock. The same can be said for going to the gym or anything else in life; it’s the consistent effort over time that gets you in shape.
And so, I applied it to my own life and finally started seeing the results I desired.
If you want change, you have to trust the process and show up every single day. Once you see the results that consistency gets you, you’ll no longer be relying on faith but on concrete evidence, making it much easier to show up when you least feel like it.
5. Focus
In today’s world, it has become extremely difficult to avoid all the noise. With a pocket full of distractions, remaining focused has never been so hard.
With social media, endless notifications, and more content than we could ever possibly consume, it’s enough to derail even the most focused among us. This is why it’s essential to ensure your thoughts and actions align with your goals.
If you’re easily distracted, you’ll find yourself buying into new shiny opportunities over and over again, keeping yourself at the starting line.
You’ll either be too distracted watching useless content or too easily influenced to stick to one thing at a time—and both will keep you from succeeding.
The longer I spent doing just that, the more I realized that every path is hard, and for every path come hundreds of differing opinions on which way is best. Only when I stuck to one thing and focused on doing it well did I finally see results.
So, if you want to finally become the best version of yourself and achieve your goals, you’ll need to limit distractions, stay committed to your journey, and focus on mastering one thing at a time.
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So there you have it, the five fundamentals of personal development. It’s time to go take action and become your best self, one small step at a time.
