Our Personal Development and Self-Esteem impacts all aspects of our life.

Personal development is an ongoing process. In the process, a person learns to identify his or her own skills and strengths by self-reflecting within self. Every person needs to build and develop a healthy self-Esteem and recognise his or her own thoughts and belief system. We need to be able to identify our expectations from ourselves.

The following points are some of the key elements of personal development. 

• Taking full responsibility for your life
• Knowing yourself and loving yourself first.
• Taking your own decisions and honouring them.
• Overcoming perfection and leveling up your self-worth
• Giving up Guilt and to stop listening to your inner critic.
• Stopping running away from your problems.
• Eliminating spending time with the wrong people and creating a positive environment.

Broadly speaking Personal development can be classified into two categories, personal and professional. At the personal level a person’s emotions, conflicts etc. are associated to that individual’s family, friends and relatives. Whereas at a professional level it relates to job satisfaction, job security, conceding with colleagues and compromising our values with that of the management. At both levels a person needs to mitigate the situation in his own unique way. 

In personal development, self-efficacy and self-esteem is crucial. Self-efficacy is a person’s trust and self-belief in his or her ability and competence to accomplish a specific goal or a task. Now Self-efficacy could be high or low depending on each individual. Whereas, Self-Esteem is your overall sense of personal value and self-worth. Again self-esteem could be high or low.

How can you improve your Self-Esteem?

• Eliminate negative self-talk.
• Accept yourself as you are, recognize and work to your strengths.
• Stop comparing yourself to others and level up your self-worth.
• Admit your mistakes and accept rejections with grace. Use criticism as feedback for improvement.

How Can you improve your Self-Efficacy?

• Develop new skills and make it ongoing practice.
• Connecting with a mentor, coach or a guide and asking for specific and constructive feedback and working on development.
• Reinforce your self-belief.
• Be accountable to your actions and use verbal persuasion from a mentor, coach or a guide.

Acceptance of ourselves and of others is an essential aspect of Personal Development. Don’t compare, nobody is better than you, because you are enough. Be a good learner, learning and making the most from experiences. Learn to say no without feeling guilty. Give up dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. Make a difference!