A Personal Development Plan can help you do amazing things. Imagine writing a check for $100,000 to your favorite charity. How would it feel to make a significant contribution of time or money to a charity you love and cherish?
Imagine the sense of self-satisfaction, how full your heart would be, to make a major difference! A personal development plan helps you become the person to do great things.
Definition of Personal Development Plan
A personal development plan is a process to develop your potential in all areas of life. A well-developed personal development plan helps you improve where you need to for your health, wealth, and happiness.
“How do you become better tomorrow? By improving yourself daily, the world is made better. Do not be afraid of growing too slowly. Be not afraid of standing still. Forget your mistakes but remember what they taught you. So how do you become better tomorrow? By becoming better today.”
Why A Personal Development Plan Can Create Exciting Results
One small change, using self-evaluation, could give you big success. For example, personal self-evaluation using the success wheel in Balance Life Today tells someone they could do better in the family area. Specifically, they decide to add spending time with the children to their daily to-do list.
Their kids’ life trajectories could be changed dramatically by this small decision.
A personal development plan can create exciting results because it will allow you to follow your goals and dreams.
Exciting dreams are a gold mine for unique goals that you plan for and act on daily. We provide Do It Now Templates later on in this guide to help you get started.
What Are Good Personal Development Goals?
Reasonable personal development goals are goals you set, targeting the most critical areas of your life. Important areas of focus for life usually include family/relationships, work, finances, spiritual, physical/ health, and learning/education.
People who identify and pay attention to the important areas of their life have a base to build their goals.
Personal Development Topics for the Best Return
Work-Life Balance or Life Balance
Work-Life Balance, is a measure of your happiness with your current progress and plan for each area of life.
Work-life Balance means you know what you need to achieve
in each area of life and are acting to improve or maintain progress.
Core Values are your highest principles or ways of thinking as you act daily.
The Boy Scout Law is an excellent example of a robust set of core values. A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.
Live your Mission or Purpose each day.
Discover why you’re here and make daily progress on your mission or purpose in life. This will help you create a foundation for your development plan.
Turn Dreams into Goals backed by Daily Action.
Use Goal Setting to shape your important Dreams into Daily Actions for Results.
Personal development topics covered by Do It Now Templates from DoItNowCoach.com include:
- Balance Life Today – A Work-Life Balance Template
- Values Power Success – Use Core Values for Rocket Fuel
- Live Your Mission Today – Wake Up with A Purpose
- Dream Goal Planner – Use Goal Setting to Make Dreams Come True
How to Sharpen Your Personal Development Skills
Use Do It Now templates on your digital device to work on each of your personal development skills. You can be thinking about and working on important areas of life at any time. Don’t underestimate the power of small, daily effort!
Perhaps you are journaling a beautiful ideal picture for your finances. You can journal with different ideas and at different times to create a powerful image that brings out exciting goals.
Do It Now Templates from Do It Now Coach allows you to create and act on your powerful future dreams using your phone.
Personal Development Plan Examples for Professionals
A Personal development plan for professionals should include topics covered during each employee review. Identify the high payoff activities for your professional position.
Confirm that your life balance, core values, and personal mission support the company’s high payoff activities.
How To Begin Practicing Life Balance NOW!
Download our free “Balance Life Today!” PDF Worksheet Template. This is our portable work-life balance tool you can work with anywhere, anytime. If you decide to purchase the $5.00 upgrade, it adds a 20-page journal and six detailed action plans.
Work-Life Balance Fires Up Your Personal Development Plan
Work-life balance is a fundamental basis of any personal development plan. A person who understands where they are going in the important areas of life is already successful if they are moving forward.
Balancing your life today helps you know where you are now and where you need to improve.
Life Balance Quotes Guide You To Get Started
- “Good, Better, Best. Never let it rest. Until your Good is Better, and your Better is your Best.” – Unknown
- “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” – John F. Kennedy
- “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” – Vince Lombardi
A Work-Life Balance Example
Today’s working women with young children are perfect examples of forced work-life balance. Working moms create income, take care of their children, try to eat and live healthily, and become taxi drivers and attend school activities.
Working mothers perform at top levels in the important areas of life balance because of a clear expectation of results. Every working mother you talk to could describe a very clear picture of their results earning money, making sure their kids got the school and were supported, and how many of their kids sporting events they witnessed.
Use a Life Balance Program Template for Exciting Results.
Here is a tutorial walking you through Balance Life Today and how to create a Master To-Do List for Life Balance.
How to create a Master To-Do List for Life Balance
From page eight of Life Balance Today:
How Do I Use A Life Balance Template?
This tutorial video shows steps to set up a Master To-Do List for Life Balance
Work-Life Balance – Journal Clear Pictures For best results, journal clear, beautiful pictures that motivate you to achieve your goal
Step 1. Choose YOUR six areas for Work-Life Balance
Step 2. Journal Clear Pictures for your Areas of Focus
Work-Life Balance – Journal Clear Pictures For best results, journal clear, beautiful pictures that motivate you to achieve your goal.
Life Balance Wheel PDF
Step 3. Complete Your Personal Success Wheel Self Evaluation
How To Take Action Using A Balance Plan for Daily Action
Step 4. Set up Keys to Success and Focused Actions where needed.
Step 5. Look at your Keys and Focused Actions daily.
Balance Life Today Upgrade (includes 6 Detailed Action Plans)
6 Plan of Actions add detailed planning to each Area of Focus
Find out How to Journal to be Happy, Healthy, and Wealthy HERE!
Balance Life Today Upgrade (includes 20 pane Journal)
A 20-page journal on your smartphone could change your life!
Values Are the SECRET Ingredient for Successful Life Balance
Values can make you wealthy, healthy, and happy.
A Personal Development Plan’s success requires you to pick appropriate supporting values. Pick Core Values that BEST support your goals.
Passion as a core value creates wealth. Every self-made millionaire has a passion for something. Bill Gates will tell you he loves improving the customer experience.
Bill Gates is a multibillionaire because he has continually strived for and improved the computer user experience.
Gates is not always successful; however, his passion is backed by persistence.
Persistence is another core value seen among healthy people as well as your local billionaire. Healthy people are persistent, and they practice the same habits over and over. Examples might include sleeping, eating, and exercise habits.
Values Definition: Values Are Your Guiding Beliefs and Attitudes Passion and persistence are the two core values common among successful people. Values are sometimes called guiding values and core values. Call them values, guiding values, or core values. Use the value term that feels the most powerful and intentional for you.
This video gives you steps to pick ideal Core Values supporting your goals.
How to Use Core Values to Make You Rich in ALL Areas of Life
Study healthy, wealthy, and happy people. Observe the values that are indicated by their actions. When you notice a healthy person displaying a value such as persistence, you may want to apply that value personally.
If you observe passion-guided wealthy people and want to reproduce their success, passion may be a guiding value important to you.
Examples of Values
Examples of self-made millionaires’ values are:
- Passion
- Persistence
- Focus
- Work Ethic
- Learning
- Patience
Examples of values seen in healthy people:
- Responsibility
- Connected
- Perseverance
- Impervious
- Positive
Importance of Values
Values are essential to guide your dream-achieving actions. Powerful dreams require strong values behind the actions to create a reality. Pick the values that are important to your dreams.
Types of Values
Individual Values
Shared or company values are those core values of the organization or company you support.
Use this 173 value list for more ideas HERE.
Values Leadership
Values leadership is shown by the person who leads and inspires others. A great example is Honest Abe Lincoln. Obviously, honesty was a hallmark guiding value for Lincoln.
Follow through and other powerful values are seen in leaders who get things done. True leaders follow through on anything they say they are going to do.
Leaders show you their Personal Development Plan when you notice how they conduct business. Observe leaders practicing Follow-through as a value.
The leader either choose the value or was exposed enough growing up and adapted the Value. Learn from Values you see exhibited in winners.
Identify Core Values Using Values Power Success Template
This blog tutorial shows you how to select your core values using the Values Power Success template.
Values Power Success gives you a process to identify and use values to meet your goals. Discover your core values using journaling, brainstorming, and scheduled reviews.
How To Make Core Values Power Your Success
Pick the core values that make you a better family person, healthier, and wealthier.
Journal Your Ideal Beautiful Pictures
Use Ideal Beautiful Pictures to Identify your Core Values Values
Extract Your Values from Beautiful Pictures
Extract your values from the beautiful ideal pictures you have described. Use the 173 value list HERE to prompt you with ideas.
Create Beautiful Pictures that motivate and call for Powerful Core Values
Journal the WHY That Powers Each Value
Describe how and why each value powers your success in a given area. Give yourself a rating for how well you think you are applying that value and the date.
Journal the Why and How for EACH Value, make your case!
Schedule ‘Values Review’ Dates Every Six Months
Identify 4 to 10 powerful values, review progress, and achieve goals.
Schedule Core Values Reviews to keep your Values effective.
Put Your Values Behind Your Mission/Purpose
The values you place behind your Beautiful Ideal Pictures should support your eventual Mission Statement.
How-To Write Your Mission Statement and Live It
You can write a mission statement that empowers you to do great things.
Walt Disney’s mission was “to make people happy.”
History has proven his mission was powerful, and he did great things.
Why Is A Mission or Purpose Important
A mission or purpose gives you direction, and the right direction can lead you to powerful results.
A powerful mission or purpose keeps you working on the highest payoff activities.
Read this Tutorial on how to write a mission statement in 5 steps.
Personal Mission Statement Definition
Your personal mission statement describes how you want to live your life. A great personal mission statement will tell how you lived after you are gone.
Your Mission Statement should be the foundation of your Personal Development Plan.
What Are The Benefits of A Powerful Mission Statement
You Work With Greater Passion.
You Work On The Correct High Payoff Activities.
High Payoff Activities are those activities closely following your Mission Statement supported by your personal goals.
Mission Statement Examples
Personal Mission Statements
- “To bring beauty into the world through my art.”
- “Inspiring others to live the life of their dreams.”
- “To treat anyone with love and compassion.
- “To support and elevate EVERYONE around me.”
- “To bring happiness to everyone.”
- “To help as many people as possible.”
- “Helping others achieve goals.”
Business Mission Statements
- MICROSOFT: To help people around the world realize their full potential.
- CVS: We will be the easiest pharmacy retailer for customers to use.
- UBER: Make transportation as reliable as running water, everywhere, for everyone.
- ZAPPOS: To provide the best customer service possible. Deliver “WOW” through service.
Mission Statement Definition for Business
A business mission statement describes the big picture of a company’s services.
Put People Behind the Mission
Purpose-driven companies desire employee buy-in to the company’s mission and core values. Employees with their purpose or mission can provide fantastic support to the company’s mission and values.
Purpose Driven Mission gives employees helps employees to build their own Personal Development Plan.
Use a purpose-driven mission template ($5 per employee with email or $25 for corporate copies.)
Our template helps employees discover their personal purpose or mission in life.
Write their personal purpose or mission statement. They identify or confirm their personal values. The template exercises help employees tie personal mission/purpose and values to the company mission and core values.
How to Write A Mission Statement
To write a great mission statement that drives excellence, plan a compelling future. With a captivating future planned, a great mission or purpose will be required. Great dreams require strong missions!
Use THIS Process to Identify and Live Your Mission Today
Journal to Understand How You Got Here
Use your personal journal, or better yet, make sure you have your own Live Your Mission Today Worksheet PDF Template $5 HERE. HERE is a free video tutorial to show you the steps.
Journal to understand how you got here and your learning so far.
Journal Your Vision for YOUR Future
Journaling a compelling future is key to creating a passion-driven Mission or Purpose. Describe your future in the important areas of your life. Describe a future you want to chase every day.
Journal and Describe your Future to Identify what is needed in your Personal Development Plan
Journal a Vision for your future. What are your results going to be?
Identify Values That Support Your Vision
Extract or identify the values that look compelling to you.
How do YOU provide Value in EACH of your Important Areas of Life?
What are the Core Values you must practice to deliver your Beautiful Future?
Identify the values that will help you make that future reality. When you know your values and beautiful ideal pictures for your future, you are ready to write your mission statement.
Values are the part of your Personal Development Plan that apply the energy to Achieve Goals
How To Write A Mission Statement
Review Your Ideal & Beautiful Pictures for Mission/Purpose Ideas
Review the Ideal Beautiful Pictures you created. Make sure each picture is exciting and motivates you to action.
Use The Mission Statement Generator to Write A Mission Statement
Create the mission statement for the person and achievements you describe in Your Ideal Pictures. With your values and future in mind, brainstorm your mission statement ideas using the mission statement generator.
Pick a powerful mission using your brainstorming.
Discover Your Values Powered Mission in Life
A mission statement requires a set of core values to be truly effective. Make sure your core values are a powerful motivation for you to carry out your purpose or mission.
Download a fillable Template to Identy Values HERE
How To Write A Mission Statement
Brainstorm Your Mission Statement Using Our Mission Statement Generator
Use your Beautiful Ideal Pictures and values to write your mission statement. The mission statement generator prompts you to answer what you do, who you do it for, and why.
Do the work, the thinking, and journaling to produce beautiful ideal pictures that you are truly excited about.
Your Beautiful Ideal Pictures indicate strong core values.
Do the recommended Journaling, and write your Mission Statement using the Mission statement Generator. Use Balance Life Today and Identify your Values. After writing your Mission Statement, make sure your Values all fit with your Mission or Purpose.
Your Personal Development plan is the combination of your Values, Mission and Daily Action.
Does your mission check the boxes?
Check the boxes to the 5 Mission Statement questions to know if you have a mission or purpose that is yours.
Visualize to Actualize Your Mission
Use Visualization to set up Mission-directed actions Write in your journal or use a Do It Now Template.
Describe your vision of you living your mission and achieving exciting goals in all focus areas or life. Your descriptions should give you ideas about your goals for each area.
Use our Dream Goal Planner Template HERE to identify goals, daily actions needed, and act! Either way, the idea is to think about and write your description of your vision of exciting future results.
Make A Mission Directed To-Do List Every Day
Making a mission-directed to-do list is simple if you start with your mission or purpose at the beginning.
Your To-Do list is like putting the key in your ignition or the password to unlock the power of your Personal Development Plan.
Make a Mission-directed To-Do List every day. Ask yourself “What Good” at each day’s end.
Ivey Lee Method
Ivey Lee was paid $25000 for this To-Do List tip . . . over 100 years ago! The Ivey Lee Method involves these steps:
- Make a daily to-do list
- Number your items by priority
- Complete #1 item before moving to #2.
- Carry over undone items to the next day’s list.
Use Ben Franklin’s “What Good?” Questions Daily
Ben Franklin detailed his daily plans in his autobiography before 1690! Franklin started and ended each day with a set of “What good” questions.
Before the day begins, he would ask: “What good shall I do this day?”
As the day ends, he would ask: “What good have I done today?”
Accelerate your results and learning using the “What good” questions to plan and evaluate your progress.
5 Questions to Know Your Mission is Powerful
- Am I passionately inspired by my mission statement?
- Can I stay motivated and enthusiastic about my mission without letting my current conditions or obstacles discourage me?
- Does my mission motivate me to help others and provide increased value for those I work for, serve, and support?
- Does my mission motivate me to grow myself to new levels personally and professionally?
- Is my mission big enough (to me) so that I will do big in its accomplishment?
Use A Mission Directed To-Do List
Make daily progress on your Mission with a To-Do List!
Goal Setting Template – Build Your Steps & Climb to Dreams & Goals Achieved!
He had the dream, he set the goal, he tracked his progress daily. A great Personal development Plan has goals backed by Values, Mission, and of course daily action. The young man’s name was Terry Fox.
The charity he inspired has raised over $750,000,000 to fight cancer. Read about Terry Fox HERE.
Why Goal Setting is Important
Goal setting is important because exciting goals require great action. Our billionaire friends started their careers with a commitment to a daily sale.
IF a person’s goal is to become a billionaire, they will need more goals and objectives across all areas of life to support their dreams.
Goals Setting is the tip of the iceberg of your Personal Development Plan. Your goals should be powered by a Mission, Values, and your Daily Productivity.
Use our Do It Now templates, Dream Goal Planner $5 HERE that includes a journal and action plans.
Benefits of Goal Setting
The benefits of goal setting are simple: goal setting is a proven technique to make you happier, healthier, and wealthier.
You will be happier as you set goals and work on them to grow all areas of your life.
Some form of goal setting is almost always involved when someone improves their health. Thousands of times, people set daily goals to lose weight. ( and yes a percentage of those people actually succeed!)
A small percentage of people who make new year’s resolutions to improve healthy habits, do follow through on that goal.
This Video is a Goal Setting Workshop if you do the work.
Setting goals to build wealth works! The evidence is ALL around you. Wealth building starts with smaller goals revolving around your finances.
Small steps taken daily can make you wealthy when it comes to reducing debt and building cash flow.
Goal Setting Definition
Goal setting happens when you put a deadline on a dream. Wishes and hopes are wonderful but to achieve goals, put a deadline on that dream and add action steps on how you’re going to get there.
Here is a tutorial blog walking you through Dream Goal Planner and a goal-setting workshop.
Goal Setting Quotes
- Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. – Napoleon Hill
- It is never too late to be what you might have been. – George Eliot
- Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. – Henry David Thoreau
- It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop. – Confucius
- Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be. – Grandma Moses
- Every strike brings me closer to the next home run. – Babe Ruth
- The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. – Amelia Earhart
Types of Goals – Your Beautiful Ideal Pictures!
The types of goals you will set will depend on your Beautiful Ideal Pictures.
Your Beautiful Ideal pictures will give you guide you into your Personal Development Plan.
Beautiful ideal pictures are your vision for your future and different areas of life. When you create Beautiful Ideal Pictures in a Do It Now template, you are describing your future dreams to set goals, and how you can take action to achieve them.
Beautiful Ideal Pictures point you to the Goals, Plans, and Actions needed.
Your Steps to Achieve Goals Start with Your Dreams
Start with a massive dream list. A Dream Goal Planner helps you brainstorm many dreams to pick your goals from.
Use the areas of life that you identified in Balance Life Today to brainstorm a large dream list. Come up with at least 10 dreams for every area of life you identified. Write down any crazy dream.
Make a big list of dreams to identify goals that are important to you. If you are using the Dream Goal Planner template, you can brainstorm your dreams anywhere.
Turn your smartphone into a dream building machine when you have Do It Now templates from DoItNowCoach.com installed.
Brainstorm as MANY Dreams as possible, write anything and refine your Goals later.
Identify Your Goals From Your 100 Dream List
As you scan your big dream list, place check marks by the potential goals you see. If you have a big dream list brainstormed, great!
Narrow down the Dreams list to identify goals for your Personal Development Plan.
Now you have enough dreams to pick out goals you are truly excited about. Create a Master Goal List by narrowing down the dreams you want to become goals.
If you have already checked off dreams you think could be goals, good start! You can choose the goals that are powerful to you by giving them numerical ratings.
Identify and plan to work on your Important Goals.
Turn Goals Into Daily Action and Dreams Achieved
Turn goals into daily action using the Plan of Action pages and a to-do list. Goals with the action achieve dreams! Use these types of action plans to break down goals into manageable pieces.
How To Set Up An Action Plan For A Big Goal Or Project
Separate The Project Into Manageable Steps
Follow SMART goal rules for each section for step: specific, measurable, attainable, relative, and time-bound.
Planning a 20 step project with Do It Now Templates
- Use a To-Do List template upgrade for a big project. Using a to-do list template upgrade you can plan and execute a 20 step project.
- Plan a project by listing the steps on the front page and create detailed action plans in the linked Plan Of Action templates.
- Dream Goal Planner template has a 10 step planner, 6 Step Planner, and 10 Plan Of Action templates for your dreams, goals, and project planning.
Goal Setting Examples
Three common areas for goal setting include wealth, health, and habits.
Use SMART goals rules when setting goals for each of these areas.
- Wealth Building – When setting a wealth goal, define what wealth means to you specifically. Set goals for your liquid net worth, eliminate debt and build cash flow.
- Health Goals – Use specific numbers when setting these goals. For example: state your weight and the date. If you state your goal weight and your daily calorie intake and calorie burning activities (you could use a pedometer and count your steps). You should be able to set a goal date for your new weight when you have your daily weight management activities in place.
- Habits – Use a habit tracking strategy to multiply your good habits and reduce your bad habits. Track It Success template is a simple system to track those things you want to improve or eliminate. Tracking activity puts that activity in focus. It is natural to improve those things you are focusing on. Example: If you want to increase your effective hours working each day, track each day and give yourself a self-evaluation at the end of the day. If you’re tracking 4 effective hours and you want to move it to 5, track each day with your five-hour goal in mind. You will find yourself moving to 5 hours or you’ll be looking for a way to do it based on daily evaluations.
Use a personal development plan to achieve your dreams:
- Balance your goals in important areas of life
- Identify and use values to specifically power your goals
- Live your mission each day in your actions and interactions
- Live your dreams with a powerful Goal Setting Process!
- Definition of Personal Development Plan
- Why A Personal Development Plan Can Create Exciting Results
- What Are Good Personal Development Goals?
- Personal Development Topics for the Best Return
- How to Sharpen Your Personal Development Skills
- Personal Development Plan Examples for Professionals
- How To Begin Practicing Life Balance NOW!
- Work-Life Balance Fires Up Your Personal Development Plan
- Life Balance Quotes Guide You To Get Started
- A Work-Life Balance Example
- How Do I Use A Life Balance Template?
- Values Are the SECRET Ingredient for Successful Life Balance
- Types of Values
- Values Leadership
- How To Make Core Values Power Your Success
- Pick the core values that make you a better family person, healthier, and wealthier.
- Journal Your Ideal Beautiful Pictures
- Extract Your Values from Beautiful Pictures
- Create Beautiful Pictures that motivate and call for Powerful Core Values
- Schedule ‘Values Review’ Dates Every Six Months
- Identify 4 to 10 powerful values, review progress, and achieve goals.
- Put Your Values Behind Your Mission/Purpose
- How-To Write Your Mission Statement and Live It
- Put People Behind the Mission
- How to Write A Mission Statement
- Use THIS Process to Identify and Live Your Mission Today
- Journal to Understand How You Got Here
- Journal Your Vision for YOUR Future
- Identify Values That Support Your Vision
- What are the Core Values you must practice to deliver your Beautiful Future?
- How To Write A Mission Statement
- Discover Your Values Powered Mission in Life
- How To Write A Mission Statement
- Visualize to Actualize Your Mission
- Make A Mission Directed To-Do List Every Day
- Ivey Lee Method
- Use Ben Franklin’s “What Good?” Questions Daily
- Use A Mission Directed To-Do List
- Goal Setting Template – Build Your Steps & Climb to Dreams & Goals Achieved!
- Why Goal Setting is Important
- Benefits of Goal Setting
- Goal Setting Definition
- Goal Setting Quotes
- Types of Goals – Your Beautiful Ideal Pictures!
- Your Steps to Achieve Goals Start with Your Dreams
- Turn Goals Into Daily Action and Dreams Achieved
- How To Set Up An Action Plan For A Big Goal Or Project
- Planning a 20 step project with Do It Now Templates
- Goal Setting Examples
