Personal development is a conscious effort by an individual to improve his circumstances in life. That is a person has to be dissatisfied with his lot or reach an epiphany that he has more to offer to life then he takes concerted effort to enforce changes for the better. At the level of the individual, personal development includes goals, plans or actions oriented towards one or more of the following aims:
• improving self-awareness
• improving self-knowledge
• building or renewing identity
• developing strengths or talents
• identifying or improving potential
• building employability or human capital
• enhancing lifestyle or the quality of life
• fulfilling aspirations
• defining and executing personal development plans
The concept covers a wider field than self-development or self-help: personal development also includes developing others. This may take place through roles such as those of a teacher or mentor, either through a personal competency (such as the skill of certain managers in developing the potential of employees) or a professional service (such as providing training, assessment or coaching).
Any sort of development — whether economic, political, biological, organizational or personal — requires a framework if one wishes to know whether change has actually occurred. In the case of personal development, an individual often functions as the primary judge of improvement, but validation of objective improvement requires assessment using standard criteria. Personal development frameworks may include goals or benchmarks that define the end-points, strategies or plans for reaching goals, measurement and assessment of progress, levels or stages that define milestones along a development path, and a feedback system to provide information on changes.
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Shunombaba