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5 Steps that will accelerate your personal growth and make your desire to become a better person just a little more clear.

Leadership requires growth everyday, even in small ways.

Think about it: in order to have an effective team, your team members will have to adapt to working with each other, overcome personal conflicts, and improve both their professional and interpersonal abilities. Even if they’re not overhauling their lives, there is still some measure of personal growth required to be a part of any productive team. 

You, as the leader, are right to expect that of them. It’s part and parcel of being a better, more professional person. Communicating expectations in a way they can be received by each individual can be very demanding and thus you must grow your skill set. 

If you are expecting growth from your followers, how can you expect any less of yourself? It would be hypocrisy to demand personal growth from them but never make any changes in your own life! Yet it happens all around us… I dare say I have been guilty of becoming stagnant a time or two myself.

So what can you do to grow? Even if you don’t see any “problem areas” in your life (or have had them pointed out to you), there are still lots of ways you can accelerate your personal growth every day.

Always Be Learning for Personal Growth

If a day goes by that you didn’t learn something new, that could very well be a day wasted!

The truth is that there is always more that you can learn. Whether it’s a new skill that’ll be used on the job, a new perspective on a common problem, or just something you find interesting, it’s always worth learning something new.

Learning stretches your mind and broadens your horizons. It gives you an insight into something you might not have understood before, or a new angle to approach an old obstacle. The more you learn, the more you grow.

Take time today, and every day from now on, to learn something new. Expand your professional skillset or take up a personal hobby. Study a language or read a book. Whatever it is, just do it! Every day, one small step of growth, and you’ll see huge rewards down the line.

The more you learn, the more versatile and adaptable you become. And those are invaluable traits that will always come in handy.

Analyze Your Reactions

This is surprisingly hard to do, and requires a degree of self-awareness that many people will never possess. Yet, if you can do it—and do it right—you’ll find it helps your personal growth in massive ways.

Next time someone asks you something, analyze your reaction—good, bad, or ambivalent. Think about why you reacted that way. Not what they did that caused you to react that way, but what it was about their request, their approach, their personality, or even their tone of voice that you responded to.

Never make it about the other person or what they did right or wrong, but make it all about yourself and your reaction. Dig beneath the surface to examine why you responded the way you did. And, of course, think about how you could respond better the next time around.

The more you question the “why” of your reactions—especially the knee-jerk, emotion-driven reactions—the more self-aware you will become, and the more control you’ll have over your actions.

Sit Still

You’d be surprised by how hard this is! 

In our modern day and age, it’s so easy to get lost in “doing something”. We’ll spend hours working, but fill every spare moment of free time talking, listening to something, checking social media, or filling our time with things that have little to no value. Now, even the bathroom is a place where we spend hours on our phones.

But it’s time to change that! Next time you have a free moment, take that time to just sit and be still. Don’t pull out your phone, switch on that podcast, or strike up a conversation. Just sit, be quiet, and take a few minutes of silent reflection.

Meditate if you want, or listen to the world moving around you. Close your eyes and reflect on the events of the day, or just be in the moment.

Stillness and silence are two invaluable skills that will help you find peace in the middle of our busy, hectic, and fast-paced life.

Create

There are few things as rewarding as creating something amazing and finding connection with others through your creation.

Art is the most basic, primal form of communication. When you craft something beautiful, paint a picture, or write a story, it is your way of expressing who you are on a far deeper level than polite conversation could ever express.

When someone connects with that art, when they find a sense of understanding or identify with you through your creation, it creates a connection that transcends words.

But even if you never display that art and no one ever sees it, just being able to express yourself through that creative medium will be worth every minute you invest in it.

Take time today to create something: write a journal entry, pen a poem, paint or draw a picture, or carve wood. Find a creative outlet, and spend time on it every day. You’ll find it’s not only highly rewarding, it’s also quite de-stressing to be able to let out those emotions often kept bottled up.

Communicate with People

And no, that definitely doesn’t involve texting, video chatting, or doing anything with technology as an intermediary.

Get off your phone, shut your computer, and go find someone to talk with face to face. Be it at a bar, a club, or at the water cooler—just go and communicate with people!

Real-life communication skills are much harder than communicating via text or email, but you’ll find that spending time working on those skills will make you far more effective in your professional life. After all, now that you know how to communicate face to face—even with difficult or challenging people—you’ll be far more adept at handling the communication between your team members.

Conclusion

Take the time you develop yourself and your skillset with respect to interacting and developing others around you. Use a variety of different strategies to develop your personal growth and the rewards both personally and professionally will create a life of abundance.