THE SKILLS YOU NEED GUIDE TO

PERSONAL
DEVELOPMENT
THE SKILLS YOU NEED GUIDE TO

PERSONAL
DEVELOPMENT
Skills You Need
This is one of a series of eBooks
by Skills You Need available for sale at:

[Link]
Skills You Need
This is one of a series of eBooks
by Skills You Need available for sale at:
[Link]

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmit-
ted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or
mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial
uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN: 978-1-911084-51-8

Published by Skills You Need Ltd

© 2025 Skills You Need Ltd
This version was published in January 2025
CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 5

1 PRACTICAL STEPS TOWARDS PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT 10

ORGANISING YOUR TIME 11
DEVELOPING YOUR PERSONAL RESILIENCE 18
TOP TIPS FOR PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT 23

2 DEVELOPING A PERSONAL VISION AND GOALS 27

DEFINING SUCCESS 28
REFINING YOUR PERSONAL VISION 33
SETTING PERSONAL GOALS 37

3 PLANNING YOUR PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT 40

THE SWOT PROCESS 45

4 IDENTIFYING SUITABLE LEARNING ACTIVITIES 50

LEARNING SHAPE 51
LEARNING STYLES 52
HABITS AND LEARNING 57
ATTITUDE AND MINDSET 58
NEUROPLASTICITY - CHANGING YOUR MINDSET 60
IDENTIFYING YOUR PREFERENCES 61

THE SKILLS YOU NEED

GUIDE TO PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
5 REVIEWING YOUR PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT 79
INTRODUCING REFLECTIVE PRACTICE 80
DEVELOPING AND USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICE 81
KEEPING A LEARNING JOURNAL 82
THE BENEFITS OF REFLECTIVE PRACTICE 86
EVALUATING YOUR PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT 87
AN ANNUAL REVIEW OF PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT 89
CELEBRATING SUCCESS AND DEALING WITH FAILURE 90
DEALING WITH FAILURE 93
REVIEWING YOUR GOALS 97
MOVING TOWARDS REFLECTIVE PRACTICE 98

6 RECORDING YOUR PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT 99

THE IMPORTANCE OF RECORD KEEPING 100
RECORDING ACHIEVEMENTS 101
RECORDING YOUR SKILLS AND ABILITIES 102
YOUR MEMORY IS NOT INFALLIBLE 103

7 A SPECIAL CASE: CONTINUOUS PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT 104

RECORDING YOUR DEVELOPMENT 108
CONCLUSION 110

THE SKILLS YOU NEED

GUIDE TO PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
 Introduction

Personal development is a lifelong process. It is a way for people

to assess their skills and qualities, consider their aims in life and set
goals in order to realise and maximise their potential.
Early life development and early formative experiences within the
family, and in other settings such as at school, can help to shape us as
adults. Personal development should not, however, stop later in life.
This book is designed to help you to identify the skills you need
to set life goals that can enhance your personal life, employability
prospects, raise your confidence, and lead to a more fulfilling, higher
quality life. It aims to help you plan to make relevant, positive and
effective life choices and decisions for your future, to support personal
empowerment.
It contains information and advice to help you to think about your
personal development and ways in which you can work towards goals
and your full potential.

Using This Book

This eBook can be used to help with thinking about personal
development at any level, from a small change like learning a new
language for a holiday, to major changes like a new career. The
processes and tools described can be used formally or informally, and
also in full or in part.
Where appropriate, the book also signposts you to other relevant
resources, such as other eBooks available from Skills You Need.
The key is to take what you want and find useful at any given time,
and leave the rest.

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GUIDE TO PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT 5
Why Is Personal Development Important?
There are many ideas surrounding personal development, one of which is Abraham
Maslow’s process of self-actualisation. Maslow (1970) suggested that all individuals have
an in-built need for personal development which occurs through a process called self-
actualisation.
The extent to which people are able to develop depends on certain needs being met.
These needs form a hierarchy. Only when one level of need is satisfied can a higher one
be developed (see Figure 1). As change occurs throughout life, however, the level of need
motivating someone’s behaviour at any one time will also change.

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GUIDE TO PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT 6
The levels are:
• At the bottom of the hierarchy are the basic physiological needs for food, drink, sex and
sleep, i.e., the basics for survival.
• Second are the needs for safety and security in both the physical and economic sense.
• Thirdly, progression can be made to satisfying the need for love and belonging.
• The fourth level refers to meeting the need for self-esteem and self-worth. This is the
level most closely related to ‘self-empowerment’.
• The fifth level relates to the need to understand. This level includes more abstract ideas
such as curiosity and the search for meaning or purpose and a deeper understanding.
• The sixth relates to aesthetic needs for beauty, symmetry and order.
• Finally, at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy is the need for self-actualisation.
Maslow suggested that all individuals need to see themselves as competent and
autonomous, and that everyone has limitless room for growth. Self-actualisation is the
desire that everybody has ‘to become everything that they are capable of becoming’. In
other words, it refers to self-fulfilment and the need to reach full potential as a unique
human being.
Maslow believed that the path to self-actualisation involved being in touch with your
feelings, experiencing life fully and with total concentration.

Managing Your Personal Development

There are a number of steps to take in managing your personal development, and these are
covered by the chapters of this book. The steps are:
1. Practical Steps Towards Personal Development
It is easy to make excuses for not getting started on personal development.
Most of us are busy and have any number of other things to do. Chapter 1 explains
how you can clear away some of these excuses and get ready to start your personal
development.

2. Developing a Personal Vision

Personal development does not have to be for work purposes. It can be for fun, or just
because you want to do it. Most of us, however, find it easier to motivate ourselves to learn
and improve if we can articulate why we want to do it, whether for work or not. You may,
for example, want to develop your writing skills to get a better or different job, learn a
musical instrument so that you can play in a band, or learn a foreign language so you can
manage better when you go on holiday.
Developing your personal vision—a clear idea of where you want to be in a few months or
years, and why—is a crucial part of developing this purpose, and Chapter 2 explains how
to start this process.

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GUIDE TO PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT 7
3. Planning Your Personal Development
Once you are clear about where you want to be, you can start planning how to get there.
Drawing up a personal development plan is not essential, and you may feel that it is a step
too far for casual development like learning a foreign language or how to play bridge in an
evening class.
Having at least some kind of written plan may, however, make it easier to get started, and
to see whether you are making progress. Chapter 3 suggests how you might go about
this process.

4. Starting the Improvement Process

There are a number of different ways in which you can learn and develop, and Chapter 4
explains how you might go about finding suitable opportunities.
It explores some of the theories about learning, and suggests why different types of
learning may be more effective for different subjects or different people. This chapter may
be particularly helpful if you are thinking about how to learn a new skill, but none of the
options that you have identified really appeals. It may help you to identify new options that
you had not previously considered.

5. Reviewing Your Personal Development

For effective learning and development, it is important to reflect on your experience, and
consider what you have learnt from it. Chapter 5 explains that regular review of what you
have been doing will help with your learning.
This may sound excessive for casual development activities like evening classes or online
language learning. However, getting into habits of reflection and review will help to ensure
that you keep learning from your experiences, whether planned development activity or
random events. For more formal learning, or long-term development goals, reviewing your
development will also ensure that your activities continue to move you towards your goals,
and that your goals or vision remain relevant to you.

6. Recording Your Personal Development

It is often a good idea to keep a record of your personal development, particularly for
formal learning. Chapter 6 gives some ideas about how you might do this.
By writing down key developments in your learning and development as and when they
occur, you will be able to reflect on your successes at a later date. This reflection may also
help to motivate you to learn more skills in the future.

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GUIDE TO PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT 8
The Journey and the Destination
The process of personal development can sometimes seem challenging, and even a
chore.
It is, however, important to remember that the journey matters as much, if not more, than
the destination.
• If you are not enjoying the process of personal development, it is hard to remain
motivated even if you concentrate on its end point, your goal.
• If you do not enjoy the journey, you may not like the destination very much, either. For
example, if you do not like having to play a musical instrument during practice, why
would you enjoy playing it in a band?
Personal development is just that: personal and individual. Nobody else can tell you what
to do, or whether you will enjoy it. Only you can take responsibility for it, and ensure that it
takes you where you want to go.

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GUIDE TO PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT 9
The full eBook
is available at
[Link]

THE SKILLS YOU NEED

GUIDE TO PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT