One thing that is exciting about crafting a life plan for yourself is the role that it plays in reducing stress and anxiety and increasing the level of success you can achieve in all areas of your life, physical, cognitive, and social-emotional.
If you can evaluate where you are compared to where you want to be, identify steps, and assemble a plan that is realistic in reaching the goals you’ve set for your life, you literally cannot lose. Even if you slightly miss the mark or change your mind as you go – you will still have succeeded.
Self Awareness
Being self-aware allows you to look to yourself, the only person you have any control over, for the changes that are needed to reach the success you desire. For example, if you realise that you are prickly around feedback do you say, “Don’t critique me because I can’t handle it!” Or do you instead teach yourself with the help of books, courses, classes, counsellors or coaches, to learn to handle feedback better? Being able to evaluate where you are and make a choice to improve is part of having a growth mindset, rather than having a fixed mindset.
You’ll Develop a Better Sense of Direction
When you really know who you are, what you want, and how to get what you really want, you’re going to have a much chance of success than the average person. Knowing what you want to get out of life is an important aspect of what helps you set your own course. You also learn not to overwhelm yourself trying to do too much at once because you know that when you set your goals realistically you have a much better chance of achieving them.
You’ll Become More Focused and Effective
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One of the things that you want most from personal development, if you are to become more focused and more effective, is clarity. Understanding your individual needs, your quality world pictures and your perceptions is vital if you are to develop true clarity. Once you have it you can become more and more effective at realising each success, and in taking the correct steps to get you where you want to go. Roadblocks, obstacles, and threats lose their power over you because you know exactly where you are going and you can change course slightly or pivot when necessary.
You’ll be much more Motivated
Motivation can be hard to sustain, but this is generally a problem when you don’t have a clear enough picture of how your goals are going to meet your needs. When you plan your goals with your needs squarely at the forefront of your mind, your successes will be truly motivational.
- Think about how motivated you would feel to continue working on challenging family relationships if you were able to successfully reconnect with an estranged family member.
- Earning money from your first sale in your online business would give you a real boost if your business is linked to meeting your needs. Maybe you are doing it for greater freedom, time with your family, or security. As long as you can understand the link to your needs and where it fits into your plan it will be motivating. If not you could get bound up in thinking it’s not enough, it’s too hard, it’s too slow, and give up too soon.
Creating positive thoughts for yourself whenever an action you took moved you positively towards your goals is incredibly motivating. It’s important however to also remember not to beat yourself up when your actions don’t always go according to plan, or something outside of your control throws up a challenge. Again this is where cultivating a growth mindset is invaluable.
You’ll Become More Resilient
As you begin you really know yourself and where you’re going, something happens along the way. You’ll not only feel good about the things you’re doing, you’ll become a much stronger person. One of the first things you may notice is that you can bounce back faster from setbacks and roadblocks.
When you know how to plan using informed, actionable steps, to get to where you want to go, there seems to be fewer problems, issues, and roadblocks, simply because you know you’re capable and know what to do. You will have tools, crafted from the development of your personal plan, to help you overcome issues that would ordinarily delay your progress. You can’t control anything outside of yourself; however, you will have more control of your habitual responses and learned behaviours.
You’ll be in charge of your Life
One of the things that will gradually become apparent as you work through your personal development plan, is that you have full control over your own actions. The way you feel is a direct result of your behaviour (including your thoughts), and so when you act in accordance with a plan, that has been developed around your needs you will begin to take charge of your life at a very deep level.
The role personal development plays in your level of success in all areas of your life is clear. People who spend time developing themselves tend to experience life more fully, make more money, have better and more fulfilling relationships, and are more satisfied with their place in the world. The reason is that you cannot get to where you want to go without taking small daily actions to get there. Your personal development plan will be the map that guides you to where you want to go.
Resources to Help
Developing a Life Plan reduces stress and anxiety and we have a full course on that just click here to check it out.
If you have any questions or comments I’d love to hear them in the comments section below.
Each great day is a step towards a great life.
Bye for now 🙂
Deb
Thank you for this amazing post!
For someone like myself who personally struggles with severe anxiety, I’ve been practicing more ways to relax and not think too much about what’s stressing me out.
You are right. Self awareness is key. Understanding who we are, makes makes us happy or sad, what makes us tick… The more aware we are the more grounded we become and that is a good thing to practice.
Thank you for a great read!
I will bookmark your site!
Thanks Lorenz and I’m glad that you are relaxing and not focusing too much on what is stressing you out. That is a great short term solution. If you want to effectively deal with the root causes of your stress however you will need to learn what is actually causing it. Check out this short video clip about the underlying causes of stress
I always knew about the importance of setting goals both long term and short term, but never looked at an entire life plan. You are right that it will reduce a lot of stress and anxiety, especially if you can pre-plan your financial life and work out how much you need to save in order to have enough to retire on.
Do you have any suggestions on the best ways to go about creating a life plan and what the best way to get started is?
Hi Michel, thanks for your comment. Yes there are links at the bottom of the post for a full course that includes a life plan and also a smaller free start up course 🙂
wow. Your topic was amazing really love the way you open our eyes in seeing what life planning can do for us.I really love the the part were you talked about self awareness we all really need to be conscious of who we are it will take us to a new leaf of being more focused and effective.
Thank you for the lovely post, actually my wife suffers from severe anxiety and sometimes that can be hard to handle, so I’ll share this post with here, it sounds very useful and might help her. Also, with this isolation and social distancing times, exercises and products like this can help people cope with being at home so much, and having to work at home while dealing with their children and being worried about their finances.
Hi Juan, yes I think sharing this with your wife could be very useful. What is she currently doing to manage her anxiety?
I have read lots of personal development books and find the topic really interesting. I get it on a cerebral level, and always think I am going to put the various suggestions into practice, but then daily life inevitably gets in the way and I find myself reverting to my habitual self. I know that I don’t respond well to criticism, for example, and think it’s something I should work on, but I can never seem to follow through.
Hi Teri
Thanks for responding. Criticism is a disconnecting habit and not particularly useful in building strong relationships or in making change. Criticism is also difficult for people with high power needs or low self esteem. Maybe if you could ask that the “criticism” be re-framed as feedback you would be able to look at it more objectively.
Hi, I really loved your article. It is great to read something that takes you back to basics. I used to be very structured, too much maybe. I was the kind of person that does anything to plan ahead. Then I had to leave my country and start over (there’s no way to have a plan for that) I have a lot of self-awareness but I think that In my case it is not a healthy one. I have an overachiever personality, therefore frustration is something I have to learn how to deal with. I am checking out the resources you have at the end of your article. It seems very helpful. Thank you
Hi Nicole 🙂 I appreciate your response and your thoughtfulness. We would say you have high Power Needs, which is not a bad thing at all it is just something to be aware of and to manage carefully so that your other needs are still met. I would recommend downloading the Needs Profile in the sidebar to understand how to manage your different needs. 🙂
Hello there! Thanks a lot f or this article. This article affects me specially because I’m going through this at the moment. Well, you’re right, Self awareness is key. Understanding who we are, makes makes us happy or sad, what makes us tick… The more aware we are the more grounded we become and that is a good thing to practice. Thanks for this, its really beautiful