Self development: Is it a decision or it happens naturally throughout life?
Personal development is a life long process, it’s consciously improving your skills by learning and practicing new activities that will develop your capabilities and inspire you to achieve your highest potential.
Having a potential is a good thing, and telling someone they have a potential is often a compliment.BUT potential ability is only useful when its transformed into actual ability, as I was reading an email from Leon from life hack ,who is the founder of a productivity blog, he said: “potential ability is only useful if it transforms into actual ability ” so to start actually developing yourself to reach that potential, you should go through some steps.
Talking about personal development, is it something that happens throughout life or is it something we actually decide to do, well self development should not stop later in life.
Referring to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which is a theory of motivation with 5 categories of human needs dictates an individuals behavior. To achieve your highest potential as a person you need to fulfill your basic needs.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs states five needs, first three are the lower needs and higher two needs:
Starting off with the lower block:
- Psychological needs, such as food, sleep, rest, shelter and health, the basic human survival needs.
The second block :
- Safety needs, that includes protection from violence, theft, emotional stability, well being and financial security.
The third:
- Love and belonging needs, which is the social needs of a human to interact with family and friends. Also the belonging to society or a group.
These are the lower needs. Which are usually controlled by the environment you were born in.
Moving on to the higher needs,
The fourth block:
- Esteem needs which are ego driven needs. The primary elements of esteem are self respect “ the feeling of being respected and deserving dignity” and self esteem which is valuing your own self and having confidence.
The fifth:
- Self actualization needs is on the top of Maslow’s pyramid. Self actualization also described as self fulfillment needs, includes education, skill development, caring for others and goals such as learning a new language or winning an award.
You actually control the higher need as a person, from your confidence to your education and skills, they are topics you can learn and develop. Which means, for you to fulfill yourself you need to improve your skills and learn new stuff.
Viewing self development from another perspective, is a set of actions that becomes habits when practiced regularly that allows us to improve our everyday life. So basically self development is a chosen decision.
However as life passes by, as you live more experiences, your mindset grows into more deep understanding mindset and you gain wisdom, which for surly affects your day by day decisions.
Self improvement is more a decision, to grow and learn, but even those of us who don’t decide to improve their selves they go through that phase of life naturally. The human beings life is based on development and improvement, but to actually achieve your goals you need to have a personal vision and plan your development and start the process.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs information is taken from :https://www.masterclass.com/articles/a-guide-to-the-5-levels-of-maslows-hierarchy-of-needs#what-is-maslows-hierarchy-of-needs
Picture by Wendy Wei.
