Here is a quote from Peter Senge, that is perfect for this topic:

“Real learning gets to the heart of what it means to be human. Through learning we re-create ourselves. Through learning we become able to do something we never were able to do. Through learning we re-perceive the world and our relationship to it. Through learning we extend our capacity to create, to be part of the generative process of life. There is within each of us a deep hunger for this type of learning.”

Becoming Aware of “Self”

Personal growth is the process of an individual becoming aware of the ‘self’, followed by taking steps to address the behaviour, attitudes, values, actions, and habits that they wish to change. This process starts first with ‘self-awareness’ –  which is something I teach all the time, as I ask my clients to stop and think about their symptoms, and why they feel the way they do.  To stop accepting them as “aging, allergies, genetics” and instead ask what this symptom is trying to tell me.  That creates deeper self awareness.

Self awareness allows you to see yourself honestly – and can lead to you making changes that deliver positive outcomes in your life.  When I guide clients through my Health Kickstart + Detox Program, the results that make me the happiest are not the fact they have less inflammation, less aches & pains, better sleep, some weight loss, and feel better – but rather when clients tell me that they have much more awareness around the connection between the food they put in their body and how they feel.  And just about every client report this. I love hearing this, because it tells me that they have developed the skills to continue listening to their body, using their self awareness to guide them for the rest of their lives, and when we listen to our body we won’t be led astray!

Personal Growth: It’s a Lifelong Journey of Learning

Personal growth is a process that can be simple or complex, depending on the needs and wants of the individual. The pursuit of personal growth is for many a lifelong project of self-betterment, but for some could be targeted only at a specific thing they wish to improve.  For me, it’s a lifelong journey, although I didn’t always have that mindset!  In fact, it was as recently as December 2017, when I was at a conference, and the speaker said, “I believe we were all put on this Earth, to find our purpose, be of service to humanity and never stop learning.”  That really resonated with me, I was already on a personal growth journey and had been for a few years – ever since I was let go from my 24-year career back in 2015 and started re-inventing myself and my career.  Until that conference I believed at some point I’d get to the end of my learning and re-inventing of myself.   Yet, in that moment my life changed and for the better, because I realized there is no end.  There is unlimited knowledge in the world, I can’t ever begin to know it all, but I can always be in pursuit of learning more about myself and my passions. I can show up as my best self every day, better than I was just the day before, because each day I learn something new, from books, from webinars, from courses, from my clients, from my loved ones! As long as I stay open to learning, I can continue to learn. I choose to stay in a state of curiosity and ask “why?”!

I read recently in Atomic Habits by James Clear, that curiosity is better than being smart, as when we are curious it motivates us to take action and keep learning.  When we are smart, we can get stuck in our tunnel vision thinking “I already know that” and miss out on new knowledge!

I could go back and read atomic habits a year from now, and I would get different learnings from it. I learned when I read it this time, what I was ready to learn. As I continue to grow over the course of the next year, I will be ready to learn new things that I will pick up out of that book next time that I didn’t capture this time. The same thing can happen from any source of learning. Sometimes you must hear things three or four times before they sink in and resonate enough for you to be able to take action. We must stay open all the time, to hear what’s coming in. We will learn what we need to learn in that moment. We may not learn every single thing, but if we were to go back and revisit it a month from now, or a year from now, we will learn something different.

Personal Growth: Guidance From A Mentor or Self-Taught

Personal growth or development is often guided or complimented by a mentor. They could be your coach, your counsellor, your physical therapist, your dietician, your doctor, your boss, a business connection, lecturer, personal trainer, parent, friend – or anyone whose opinion you value enough to act on.  But it doesn’t have to be, you can also be guided by books, as long as you take action on what you are reading, rather than just reading the book, and getting to the end but never putting any of the lessons into practice.   These books very often have action steps for you to be taking and implementing. As long as you put those lessons into practice, then you are using the book as it should be for your personal growth. There are many books available today in the personal growth arena, and I’ve read some great ones, but I’ve only just started touching the surface.  If you’d like a recommendation from me, feel free to email me at Melissa@yourguidedhealthjourney.com and I’d be happy to share.

Personal Growth Journey

A personal growth journey is a unique process for each individual and could be made up of an endless variety of topics!

I would love to invite you to join my membership community. There’s a link at the bottom of this article, and for only $19.99 a month, you get access to all my content. There’s a lot of information, as well as weekly calls where you can come and get your health questions answered. It’s truly priceless. I’d love to see you join the community, check out the link at the bottom of this article.

Personal Growth: For Everyone!

Everyone should care about personal growth, and everyone can of course benefit from becoming a better person!  Think of all the people in your life that can also benefit from you becoming a better person. In many cases it is a life event that puts someone on the path of personal growth, for me it was being let go after 24 years in 1 career, and knowing I wanted to do something completely different, but didn’t yet know what that was going to be, and because I didn’t know what that was, I didn’t know who I wanted to become.

I started reading and exploring and opening up to the new possibilities that were presenting themselves to me. I absolutely loved that process, and honestly, if I hadn’t been open to that process, I would have never ended up in health and wellness because it simply wasn’t on my radar. I had to go through the learning to realize what I didn’t know, in order to then find my place of interest where I wanted to learn more. So, I started reading and exploring and opening up to new possibilities that were presenting themselves to me, and I’ve loved this process.

Personal Growth: Other Ways to Grow

Sometimes though people may feel inspired and motivated to pursue personal growth by something they encounter in another person, movie or book they’ve read, that triggers the start of their journey. It doesn’t matter what the trigger is. It really just matters that you start and the process of looking inward and making honest assessments about yourself and where you’re at. It can be uncomfortable, painful, cause a little bit of fear to well up inside of you, and that is where the support of a coach or a mentor is important because they will hold you accountable to taking those steps, while also seeing you for the person you’re becoming even if you can’t see that for yourself yet.

Theodore Roosevelt said it well: “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty…I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.

How Do I Figure Out My Personal Development Goals?

There are several questions that are useful to ask yourself to help determine your personal development goals. These should include, but are not limited to:

• What values are important to me? (honesty, temperance, courage, etc.)
• What do I want to start doing?
• What do I want to stop doing?
• How do I want this process to benefit others in my life?
• What do I want to get out of this process personally?
• What kind of person, or character traits would I like to have?
• Why do I want to go through it?
• What is it I want to learn?
• How do I,  as a person want to develop?
• What kind of person or character traits would I like to have?

Take time to think about those questions and start tapping into your personal growth journey.

Need Help Deciding What Courses to Take?

When it comes to your health, I can recommend courses that I’ve done, where people inspired me with more sources of learning that I still tap into every day.

Honestly, from the moment that I stepped into my first health coaching course; I knew I had landed exactly where I wanted to be! I absolutely loved the learning; I realized how much I didn’t know. In fact, I was shocked at how much I didn’t know about my own body and how it functions etc. So much of what I did know had been taught to me by big pharma or I was soaking up that “knowledge” through ads on TV and everything else. When I learned there was a whole other way, I was excited to keep learning. I had literally found my passion; I couldn’t get enough of it. I wanted to keep learning. I didn’t only do my health coaching courses; I was doing other online courses alongside that to support that learning. I literally realized how much I didn’t know. I wanted to know more about how my body functioned, so that I could set myself up for a life of vibrant longevity, and not end up another statistic with another diagnosis of chronic illness.

What’s Your Passion?

Where do you want to learn and if it’s in the realm of health, just for learning for yourself, again, feel free to reach out to me because the courses that I did may help you in your day-to-day life. I believe that if every single person on the planet just did the very first health coaching course that I did, we wouldn’t have the chronic illness that we have in the world today. You don’t have to make a career out of it. You can just do these courses to benefit your health and your family’s health.

In my next article I will be sharing the top 10 reasons personal growth is important, no matter what your age is!

Health Is Your True Wealth!

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