4 Key Strategies to Accelerate Your Personal Growth

I spend a lot of time thinking about personal growth. And over the years, I’ve figured out one very important truth: It doesn’t happen quickly!  In fact, when it comes to personal growth, it often seems that no sooner have we taken one step forward, than we immediately take two steps back! But the good news is that there are ways to accelerate the personal growth process. 

When we talk about personal growth, what we’re really talking about is the development of our emotional maturity and wisdom.  Unfortunately, emotional maturity and wisdom are not qualities that we’re born with.  Instead, they’re qualities that we have to develop over time and with work. 

In fact, the reality is that you’ll be working on your personal growth until the day you die.  But even though we know that personal growth is a lifelong pursuit, it still helps to see progress along the way!  And, of course, we all want to speed up that progress, whenever possible.

Fortunately, you can accelerate your personal growth.  Below are ways to do just that.  Adopt these approaches and see how much more quickly you can grow in wisdom, emotional maturity and happiness!

Set Clear Personal Growth Goals

It’s hard to make progress in any area of personal development, unless you choose an area on which to focus your energy.  The key is to figure out where your life isn’t working. And then you have to create a personal growth plan to fix that area of your life.

For instance, let’s say that you feel unsure of yourself. Perhaps you’ve developed the bad habit of being too hard on yourself.  You may go through the day feeling “not good enough.” If so, you need to develop a personal growth plan that focuses on building your confidence.  That may mean making a list each day of all the things that you did well.  It also may mean eliminating the critical people from your life.  You might also read articles and books about how to be more confident in yourself and your abilities.

I regularly set personal growth goals. One of my recent personal development goals has been to become a more relaxed person.  Now, of course, I’ve found that it helps to be more relaxed if you eliminate stressful people from your life!  But beyond that very practical approach, I’m also trying to be more easy going.  So, I’m taking life more slowly.  I’ve stopped rushing.  And I don’t fill up my schedule with activities that don’t interest me.  My life is about doing less, and enjoying those things that I choose to do!  And that is making me a calmer person.

So, accelerate your personal growth by focusing on very specific goals.  If you do so, you’ll see your personal growth develop more quickly than you ever could have imagined!

Cultivate Self-Awareness

One of the most important ways to accelerate your personal growth is to become self-aware. That is because people who are self-aware know which areas they need to focus on in their personal growth plan.  

Here’s a test that you can give yourself to see if you are self-aware:  Ask someone whose opinion you trust to tell you what they think are your three greatest weaknesses.  If any of those weaknesses are a surprise to you, then you lack the self-awareness needed for accelerated personal growth. 

A lack of self-awareness is really about being in denial. Folks who are in denial refuse to acknowledge their character flaws.  Even though everyone around them is well aware!

So, to accelerate your personal growth, you want to become aware of the areas of your character that need work. And then you need to be willing to try to fix them!  After all, you won’t grow as an individual if you have no interest in changing and evolving for the better. 

Realize that no one expects you to be perfect in life.  We all have character flaws.  For instance, I can be judgmental and impatient.  But I’m aware of those flaws in my character, and I try to work on them.

So, if you want to fast track your personal growth, become self-aware! Learn to identify your character flaws.  And then commit to working on fixing them.

Develop Healthy Habits

Your physical health is intimately tied to your mental health.  And if you want to be in a place in which you can accelerate your personal growth, you need to be not only mentally healthy. You also need to be physically healthy. 

The reality is that when are physically unhealthy, we can’t think clearly.  After all, poor health leads us to be tired and distracted.  And personal growth simply can’t occur when we can’t think!

That means that healthy habits are an important part of your strategy to accelerate your personal growth.  Because when our bodies function well, then our minds can function well too. 

The good news is that healthy habits are obvious.  You don’t need to be a genius to know that smoking cigarettes is terrible for you, as is drinking alcohol.  We also all know that daily exercise is necessary to keep our bodies trim and agile.  And eating healthy foods means eating lots of vegetables and plant-based proteins.  None of that is rocket science.

But while we all know what healthy habits are, not everyone adopts those habits.  That’s because healthy habits require self-discipline.  For example, I do some form of exercise every day.  Some days I do more, and some days I do less.  But I try to at least some exercise daily.  That takes discipline!  Admittedly, I’d much rather spend that time sitting in my reading chair with a good book and a cup of tea. 

But my goal is to become more and more healthy and physically fit.  Because when my body is in top shape, my brain functions at its best.  So, part of my personal development regime is to exercise every day and to eat healthy foods.

My payback for my self-discipline is that I am not only healthier, but I have clarity of thought.  I don’t spend my days feeling sluggish, either physically or mentally.  And my clarity of thought allows me to fast track my personal growth.  Because when I feel physically good, I have the energy to think, read and reflect.  And those activities keep me on the path to becoming wiser and more emotionally mature.

Continuous Learning

Personal growth is obviously all about growing.  And you should spend your life growing not just in wisdom and emotional maturity, but also in knowledge and skills. As a result, one of the more important choices you will make in this life is to become a lifelong learner. 

To start on the lifelong learner path, simply pick out one or two topics that you’d like to learn more about.  Or you might choose one or two skills that you’d like to develop.

For instance, I’m committed to being a lifelong learner. So, I currently have two areas of interest on which I focus my free time.  First, I love foreign languages.  As a result, I spend some of my free time studying both French and Spanish.  In addition, I try to practice my foreign language skills whenever I can by going on holiday to places where those two languages are spoken.

My second interest is history.  So, I devote some of my free time to reading books about history.  In addition, I listen to a podcast called “Empire” in which the hosts have interesting discussions about particular periods of world history.   And when my husband and I travel, we make sure to visit historical sites whenever possible.

Now, my goal isn’t to become a linguist or a historian.  Rather, my goal is simply to be a lifelong learner.  And I can tell you that being a lifelong learner is fun! I truly enjoy developing new skills and learning new things.  To me, that is the spice of life.  And most importantly, learning is part of my personal growth plan. 

So, I encourage you to fast track your personal growth by becoming a lifelong learner!  I promise that educating yourself about new topics and developing new skills will not just lead you to improve as a person.  It also will make your life so much more enjoyable.

Admittedly, personal growth takes time.  It doesn’t happen overnight.  But you can speed up the process!  If you are seeking to accelerate your personal growth, try the approaches above.  If you do so, you’ll fast track yourself to increased wisdom, emotional maturity and greater happiness! (To read about 8 ways to increase your emotional maturity, click here.)