Looking to level up all parts of your life and become your best self? Creating a personal development plan is the perfect way to start!

A personal development plan goes beyond just setting a few goals for yourself. It’s thinking about every aspect of your life and then being really intentional about your short and long term vision. Where do you want your health to be a month from now? Or a year from now? What about your career, hobbies, and friendships?

Personal growth doesn’t happen overnight. It happens from the small action steps and daily habits you intentionally create for yourself.

Many times, we set goals but don’t achieve them because we weren’t very intentional when we set them in the first place.

Being intentional means you’re putting in a lot of thought, you’re being honest with yourself about what you want in life, and you’re creating action steps that are realistic. And most importantly, your creating action steps that make you feel excited and passionate about your life.

Before we dive into the steps of creating a personal development plan, I want to give you this important reminder that personal development should always start from a place of self love and self acceptance.

When we are striving to become better, it can be easy to start focusing on what we feel we’re lacking, rather than what we already have. For example, if you’re working on getting more fit, make sure to start from a place of body positivity and gratitude. Without accepting yourself as you already are, you run the risk of feeling negative, stressed, or anxious as you try to reach your goals.

Step 1: Determine the categories you want to focus on

What parts of yourself and your life would you like to focus on? Here are a few ideas:

• career
• friendships
• romantic relationships
• education
• hobbies
• self care
• physical health
• mental health
• spiritual health
• emotional health
• creativity
• mindfulness

Choose a few that really resonate with you and start thinking about your short and long term vision. What would you like to change and what do you already love? Start thinking about specific and intentional goals.

Your goals should follow the popular goal setting acronym S.M.A.R.T: For the best results, they should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely.

Step 2: Ask yourself why you want to create a certain goal

Why would you like to achieve a certain goal? Determining exactly why can make your goals so much more powerful. You’ll feel more motivated to achieve it and it’ll feel more empowering once you do! If you’re not sure why you want to achieve a certain goal, then it’s probably not a good goal for you to set. In order to be intentional with you goal setting, you should have a specific reason why you want it.

Step 3: Create a deadline for yourself

When would you like to achieve your goal by? It’s important to be realistic here and not set too many goal deadlines at once since that could be overwhelming.

If you set a goal to read more books for example, you could write “I want to read one book each month for the next 3 months.”

Another goal could be to start your own Youtube channel, for example. For your deadline, you might write “I want to create my first video and publish it 2 weeks from now.” Having a specific time frame will help hold you accountable so you can reach each goal.

Don’t forget to download the free worksheet that goes along with this post at the bottom!

Step 4: Create your action steps

Your action steps are probably the most important part of the whole process. How are you going to take action to reach your goal?

Let’s use the book example again. If your goal is to read one book each month for the next 3 months, some action steps you might take could be:

• Committing to reading 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes at night
• Choosing three books ahead of time that interest you
• Asking a friend if they can check in with how your reading is going (to hold you accountable)
• Join a book club or online forum

Ultimately, your action steps should set you up for success so you can stay motivated and excited to reach your goals!

I really hope this post was helpful so you can create a personal development plan that feels exciting and empowering. Remember to always start from a place of self love and acceptance.