Personal development is a daily grind. Habits are great, but sometimes habits will cause us to neglect other activities that can benefit us as well. Here are 8 of the best personal development activities to do today that you may be overlooking.
1. Reviewing your whys.
Your whys are the foundation to your personal development. Knowing your whys will carry you during the hard times.
If you need help determining what your whys are, you can check out this article.
If you already know your whys, then you should be reviewing them fairly often. Daily if possible. Sometimes the most important personal development activities are the ones that we overlook.
Get a free template of my personal whys by following this link.
2. Thanking the people around you
The people we surround ourselves with are the people who we become. Part of your personal development journey is networking and making friends with people who are pushing you to become your best.
If you have done this, then the people around you are just as vital to your success as you are. Take some time today to show appreciation to the people who are helping you grow into the person who you want to be.
If you’re looking for a few more ideas on things to do, you can check out these 25 goals to add to your routine.
3. Spread Positivity
It’s super easy to become stressed out about everything when you are constantly striving to become better. Your aspirations are high and you’re working towards achieving your dreams.
Make sure that you’re not allowing yourself to get so bogged down with your internal drive that you are forgetting to spread positivity to others.
You can feel it in your bones when someone is being negative. Make sure that you’re being the most positive person in the room every time you step in the door.
Spread that positive energy to everyone that you come across. A smile is more contagious than the flu!
4. Check in with your mental health
If your daily habits include yoga or meditation then you are probably doing pretty good with your mental health, but a lot of times your mental health just simply gets overlooked as one of the personal development activities to do every day.
As more research is done on mental health, it’s easy to see that a lot of us who are really working hard to become the best versions of ourselves often end up letting our mental health suffer.
Make sure you’re keeping an eye on your stress levels and anxiety. Stress can really creep up on you and before you know it you will be having difficulty concentrating, headaches, tension, or other physical symptoms. Try to beat stress to the punch by checking in with yourself every day.
5. Do something creative
The power of play is incredible. Your brain takes a fraction of the time to create new connections if you’re playing when you learn something.
A lot of us end up spending way too much time on the serious stuff like writing, preparing speeches, and working. Try to get out and do something creative today.
Maybe you can draw a picture or pick up a guitar. If you have kids, go make some slime with them. Redecorate your living room. Anything to get your creative juices flowing, just start taking action!
6. Be an attentive listener
As far as personal development activities go, this one is a little less cut and dry. It’s also one of the most difficult.
Listening to people can be so hard sometimes. It’s hard because we always have other things on our mind. We are thinking about what we are doing later, what happened yesterday, how dumb we looked in that email we sent, or maybe it’s about something totally off the wall.
Try to stop your brain from thinking about all of those other things. Let the thoughts come and go without dwelling on them (meditation helps you learn this).
Next time you have a conversation with someone just truly listen to them. Be attentive. Make eye contact. Ask questions. Let them know that they are your main focus during the conversation.
7. Exhibit Confidence
You’re really working to make something of yourself, so you probably are already doing this, but just in case it has slipped your mind I wanted to remind you to exhibit confidence.
Confidence is one of the things that attracts other people to you. It helps with everything. Your conversations are better when you’re confident in what you’re saying. You have better posture and body language when you’re confident.
Personal development is one of those things that you’ve been working on a lot lately, so there’s a lot to be confident about. You’re learning new skills and you have you know what is driving you because you’ve developed your whys.
So show that you’re getting it all together by exuding confidence to everyone around you.
8. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday
The thief of all joy is to compare yourself to someone else. You don’t know their circumstances. They have a totally different world than you.
Don’t steal your own joy by trying to compare yourself to other people. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday.
Did you wake up a few minutes earlier today? Good. Did you work out a little harder today? Good. Did you pluck your nose hairs today? Well, ok that’s just a little reminder for myself.
Seriously, just try to get a little better every day. Before you know it, you will be a totally different person.
Wrapping it up
You’ve been working hard on your personal development and self improvement, so try to add a few more things that you may be overlooking to your habits.
Personal development activities don’t have to be elaborate or hard in any way. A lot of the things on this list just call for a few small adjustments.
Learning how to manage time is a critical skill for all of us. Being more productive is easier than we think.
Keep your eye on the big picture and eat the elephant one bite at a time!