Personal Development

W1-INTRODUCTION TO PESONAL DEVELOPMENT

 Is the process of improving oneself.
 Discovery and new growth.
Human Development which primarily deals with the physical, mental,
social and as well as emotional development, personal development
involves self-awareness that includes thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
 Self- development, you will acquire qualities, attitudes, and values
that will make you a better person.
 Become a better daughter, son, student, friend, and a better citizen.
 It does not happen overnight.
 Take a risk, toward your full potential.
“Knowledge is power”
develop, acquire, gain, (especially how we get new characteristics
and how we gain individual strengths and weakness.
Weakness
1. Lack of self confidence
2. You stress about deadliness
3. You struggle to say no
(Vulnerable, blind spots, things we need to improve on)
Strengths
1. Quality or state of being strong
2. Toughness
3. Impregnability
Admitting you’ve made mistake is a sign of strength, not weakness.
Knowing oneself
“He knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened”
-Lao Tzu
“Man know thy self”
-Socrates
“Knowing your self is beginning of all wisdom”
-Aristotle
W2- ONE’S HOLISTIC PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
Holistic Development
Holistic development is the social, emotional, physical, mental, and
intellectual growth of a person.
Socrates
Socrates couldn’t put it any better when he said how important it is to
example our life. He told us to know ourselves and know our strengths and
weaknesses. Ask yourself how you came to be who you are today and how
you can improve yourself every single day. Are you aware of your attitude
with yourself, and with the people and environment around you?
It was mentioned in the last lesson that attitude is composed of cognition,
affect and behavior. In this lesson, we shall discuss them in more practical
terms. Cognition will be represented by feelings; and behavior presents
itself.

Holistic Development:
1. Thoughts
-An idea or opinion produced by thinking, or occurring suddenly in
the mind.
2. Feelings
-An emotional state or reaction.
3. Behaviors
-The way in which one acts or conducts oneself, especially
towards others.
Thoughts- What we think
Behavior- What we do
Emotions- What we feel
Cognitive development
-The development of the ability to think and reason.

Sensorimotor (0-2 years)

 The infant explores the world through direct sensory and motor
contact. Object performance and separation anxiety develop during this
stage.

Pre operational (2-6 years)

The child uses symbols (words and images) to represent object but
does not reason logically. The child also has the ability to pretend. During
this stage, the child is ego centric.

Concrete Operational (7-12 years)

The child can think logically about concrete objects and can thus add
and subtract. The child also understands conversation.

Formal Operational (12 years- Adult)

The adolescent can reason abstractly and think in hypothetical terms.

Moral Development
The process where by people form a progressive sense of what is right and
wrong, proper and improper.
Lawrence Kohlberg (Psychologist)
Believed in Piaget’s theory and expanded it further to add complex
comprehension to the matter. He devised levels that have two stages each
rooting from Piaget’s theories.
Level 1- Pre-conventional morality (Begins in 9 years)
In stage one, moral reasoning is based on concepts of punishment. The
child believes that if the consequence for an action was wrong.
Level 2- Conventional morality
The individual strives to support rules that are set forth by others such
as parents, peers, and the government in order to win their approval or to
maintain social order.
Level 3- Post- conventional morality
 The individual moves beyond the perspective of his or her own society.
Socio- emotional development
How children start to understand who they are, what they are feeling
and what to expect when interacting with others.
1. Social, emotional, physical mental, and intellectual growth of a person.
2. An emotional state or reaction.
3. The development of the ability to think and reason.
4-6. Three parts of holistic development
7. Who is the psychologist that believes in PIAGET’s Theory?
8-10. Three levels of Moral Development.
1. Holistic development
2. Feeling/s
3. Cognitive Development
4- 6. Thoughts, feelings, behaviors
7. Lawrence Kohlberg
8-10. Pre-conventional, Conventional, Post- Conventional

W3- Lesson 2 One’s holistic personal development

Socrates advice to examine one’s life. He stressed the need to
understand strengths and weaknesses and strive for daily self-
improvement. Reflect on how you became the person you are today and
how you can continue to grow. This includes being mindful of your
attitude towards yourself, others and the environment.

In a previous lesson, it was explained that attitude consists of cognition

(thoughts), affect (Feelings), and behavior. In this lesson, these
components will be explored in more practical terms, with cognition being
thoughts, affect as feelings, and behavior representing actions.

Thoughts
As we grow up, we often face feelings of inadequacy, influenced by the
expectations of parents, peers, or even ourselves, these thoughts, both
conscious and subconscious, are shaped by what we’ve learned in
healthy and unhealthy ways, concepts like malcognition (Faulty
thinking)the maladaptive mechanisms patterns develop. These patters
often come from irrational beliefs we hold about ourselves or the world.

These irrational beliefs, like “I’m not good enough,” can become
internal dialogues that shape our attitudes and behaviors. Over time,
they affect how we approach challenges, relationships, and opportunities.
Recognizing these harmful thoughts is essential to creating healthier
thinking patterns and improving our outlook on life.

Feelings
 Emotions impact our lives, often in ways we aren’t fully
aware of. Whie we may consciously feel emotions like anger
or happiness, these can stem from deeper, subconscious
feelings such as rejection, emptiness, or guilt. The
complexity of emotions makes them difficult to generalize,
as they are closely tied to our thoughts. Emotions act as a
filter, influencing how we experience and express our
thoughts.
 Emotions influence our behavior, acting as a way to express
what we feel. Negative emotions can be redirected into
socially acceptable actions through methods like
sublimation, where we turn that energy into something
 constructive, or transmutation, where we shift one emotion
into another. Recognizing how thoughts, emotions and
behaviors are connected is important for managing and
expressing our feelings in healthier ways.
Behavior
 Behavior is the primary expression of our attitudes and, in
turn, influences our thoughts and feelings, creating a cycle
that leads back to attitude. Behavior can be categorized as
overt or covert. Overt behavior is consciously expressed,
such as responding to a friend or participating in class, while
covert behavior occurs outside of our awareness, including
mannerisms, body language, and personal habits. Our
feelings and behavior are interconnected; we may act based
on how we feel, or we may experience emotions after taking
action. By evaluating our feelings and behaviors, we can
learn when to express certain emotions appropriately.
PHYSICAL AND NEUROBIOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT
The first twelve years of life are marked by significant physical and
neurological development. During this period, children grow from infancy
into maturity, with both their physical growth and brain development
influenced by genetics. As their head-to-body ratio balances, children learn
to walk and experience improvements in perception, language acquisition,
and memory.
Puberty is a crucial stage of maturation, characterized by the
development of sexual characteristics and the emergence of new
sensations, emotions, and thoughts driven by sex hormones. Neurologically,
the brain undergoes rapid growth, but its maturation is slower. This involves
building and refining neural connections, strengthening frequently used
ones while discarding less relevant ones. This rewiring process highlights
the importance of early experiences, as skills learned at a young age can
shape cognitive abilities and emotional responses later in life.
COGNITIVE AND MORAL DEVELOPMENT COGNITIVE AND MORAL
DEVELOPMENT
Several theories explain cognitive and moral development, including
Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development and Lawrence Kohlberg’s
stages of moral development. Piaget's theory divides cognitive development
into four stages: sensorimotor (birth to age 2), pre-operational (ages 2-7),
concrete operational (ages 7-11), and formal operational (age 12 and
beyond).
In the sensorimotor stage, infants learn through interacting with their
environment and develop object permanence, understanding that objects
exist even when unseen. The pre-operational stage involves symbolic play
and imitation, but children still struggle with logic and empathy, remaining
egocentric in their thinking.

MORAL DEVELOPMENT
Lawrence Kohlberg believed in Piaget's theory and expanded it further
to add complex comprehension to the matter. He devised levels that have
two stages each rooting from Piaget's theories.
Level 1 — Pre-conventional Morality
• According to Piaget, it is during age 7-11 years that a child will start
to think more logically and learn how to be empathetic, Kohlberg theorized
that pre-conventional morality begins around the age of 9 years in the
average.
1.) Obedience and punishment orientation
2.) Individualism and exchange
Level 2 — Conventional Morality
• The second level, according to Kohlberg, individuals begin to
internalize the learned moral standards they have with their valued adult
role models. Reasoning is derived from the norms of a particular group in
which the individual belongs.
1.) Good interpersonal relationships
• Morality — According to Kohlberg, is the individual's capacity fo know
what is right from whag is weong and applying this in personal or social
situations.
2.) Maintaining social order
• Moral — Is defined as 'the perceived sense of right that either comes
from societal, group, or personal preferences'
 Level 3 — Post-conventional Morality
• An individual's basis of his or her morality rests on self-chosen
principles.
1.) Social contract and individual rights
2.) Universal Principles

SOCIO-EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
The beauty of development is that it is not limited to oneself, but it
branches out to the outside—to other people, specially. In Freudian terms,
the ages 7-11 years is aligned with the Latency Phase wherein it was said,
the sexual urges were latent yet it is also where the individual learns to
socialize and extend outward.