Stuck in a Rut? How a Personal Development Plan Can Get You Out

Personal Development Plans Add Challenge and Excitement to Your Journey.

Have you ever gone for a nice, long walk down a beautiful path through trees covered with lush, green leaves? You know, the one that you always walk for exercise and a little respite from your daily grind. It’s the path that is comfortable because you’ve walked it so many times you know every curve, every hill, and every fork in the road.

Is that how you approach your career? What about your personal life? Do you walk the same path, day in and day out, because it’s safe and familiar? Do you walk through each day making the same choices, completing the same tasks with the same approach as the day before?

Despite the comfortableness of that path, eventually, it gets a little boring. At some point, you might start wondering what would happen if you turned left at one of the forks in the road instead of continuing to veer right down a path that eventually just loops around and repeats itself. There is nothing new to experience. No challenge to overcome.

That’s where I was just a few weeks ago, tired of walking the same path, looking at the same trees, and ready to try something new.

In my pre-parenthood days when I worked in corporate America, I remembered using a Personal Development Plan to help guide my professional career. Now that I work from home, those simple resources take a little more work and a touch of desire to find, complete, and start using one. Lucky for me, the folks at Mind Tools sent me one for free, just for registering for their newsletter. Don’t you love it when businesses give you  free gift for subscribing to their newsletters?

Can You Handle the Challenge to Try Something New?

Lost of people get so used to their routine that they don’t want to venture down a new road. The safety of the familiar and ordinary outweighs the scariness of the unknown. So they don’t take the risk to try something new. They won’t take even one step down an unfamiliar path.

Guess what choice I made? I chose to print out that Personal Development Plan and honestly fill it out. I decided that it was more important for me to leap into the scary unknown than it was to continue following the same predictable path that left me feeling unsatisfied wanting more. I was honest with myself and documented my strengths and weaknesses. I called myself out on attitudes and behaviors that keep me from true success. And I made a commitment to start tackling each goal, one at a time, turning down a new path that I have yet to discover.

So far, the scenery is even more beautiful than I could have even dreamed.