Personal development or self-improvement consists of activities that develops a person's capabilities and potential, enhance quality of life, and facilitate the realization of dreams and aspirations. Personal development may take place over the course of an individual's entire lifespan and is not limited to one stage of a person's life. It is not restricted to self-help and can include official and informal actions for developing others in roles such as a teacher, guide, counselor, manager, coach, or mentor. When personal development takes place in the context of institutions, it refers to the methods, programs, tools, techniques, and assessment systems offered to support positive adult development at the individual level in organizations. More recently, it is recognised that workplaces should be more proactive in promoting personal development. Bob Aubrey (Founder & Chair of the Advisory Board of the ASEAN Human Development Organisation) contends "that human development should be integral to policies and practices in the workplace"
Overview
Among other things, personal development may include the following activities:
Social entrepreneurship or civic engagement Participating in festivals, conferences, or conventions Improving self-awareness Improving self-knowledge Improving skills and/or learning new ones Building or renewing identity/self-esteem Developing strengths or talents Improving a career Identifying or improving potential Building employability or (alternatively) human capital Enhancing lifestyle and/or the quality of life and time management calculating the return on time invested. Improving health Improving wealth or social status Fulfilling aspirations Initiating a life enterprise Defining and executing personal development plans (PDPs) Improving social relations or emotional intelligence Spiritual identity development and recognition Character building Developing personal attributes and rewiring the brains neuro-pathways Sustaining growth through habit maintenance and relapse prevention A distinction can be made between personal development and personal growth. Although similar, both concepts portray different ideas. Personal development specifies the focus of the "what" that is evolving, while personal growth entails a much more holistic view of broader concepts including morals and values being developed. Recent scholarship has noted parallels between personal-development frameworks and structured therapeutic models used in psychology, which also emphasize goal setting, staged progress, and feedback systems to support sustained change. Personal development can also include developing other people's skills and personalities. This can happen through roles such as those of a teacher or mentor, either through a personal competency (such as the alleged skill of certain managers in developing the potential of employees) or through a professional service (such as providing training, assessment, or coaching). Beyond improving oneself and developing others, "personal development" labels a field of practice and research:
As a field of practice, personal development includes personal-development methods, learning programs, assessment systems, tools, and techniques. As a field of research, personal-development topics appear in psychology journals, education research, management journals and books, and human-development economics. Any sort of development—whether economic, political, biological, organizational or personal—requires a framework if one wishes to know whether a change has actually occurred. In the case of personal development, an individual often functions as the primary judge of improvement or of regression, but the 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 A feedback system to provide information on changes
As an industry Personal development as an industry has several business-relationship formats of operating. The main ways are business-to-consumer and business-to-business. However, there have been two new ways emerge: consumer-to-business and consumer-to-consumer. The personal development market had a global market size of 38.28 billion dollars in 2019.
Business-to-consumer market A wide array of personal development products are available to individuals. Examples include self-help books; education technology, neuroenhancement, and experiential learning (instructor-led training, motivational speeches, seminars, social or spiritual retreats).
Domains Higher education, cognitive training Personal finance Weight loss, physical fitness, nutrition, and beauty enhancement Large-group awareness training Sensory deprivation Time-management Yoga Martial arts Initiation ceremonies Meditation Asceticism General methods of personal development also include: Life coaching or counseling Recommendation systems Nootropics, such as caffeinated drinks Brain computer interface Virtual assistant
Business-to-business market Some consulting firms such as DDI and FranklinCovey specialize in personal development, but as of 2009 generalist firms operating in the fields of human resources, recruitment and organizational strategy—such as Hewitt, Watson Wyatt Worldwide, Hay Group, McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, and Korn/Ferry—have entered what they perceive as a growing market, not to mention smaller firms and self-employed professionals who provide consulting, training and coaching.
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