Have you been treading water professionally for some time and would you like to finally be promoted and/or earn more? Or are you self-employed, but your business isn’t really up and running yet and you could use more customers? In this article, I will explain to you why personal development is the be-all and end-all for your professional success and how you can finally achieve your goals at work.
„Dissatisfaction is the first step to success“ – Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde already knew that the first step to success is dissatisfaction. This applies to all areas of life – including your career. Because anyone who is always happy and content will not get the idea of wanting to change anything about their situation. Therefore: Congratulations – you have already taken the first step towards your professional success: You have recognized that you are not satisfied with your current professional situation and would like to change something about it (otherwise you would hardly be reading this article).
Why you have exactly what you deserve right now
But enough of the praise – now comes the painful truth. It may sound harsh, but I maintain that you are exactly where you deserve to be professionally at the moment. How do I know? Your outer circumstances always reflect your inner. Or to explain it with the law of attraction: Like attracts like. By the way, you can read in this article what your professional success has to do with your energy.
So that means: If your salary is low at the moment, it is because you subconsciously believe that your work is no longer worth it. (Warning: I am not writing that your work is no longer worth it!) This also applies to your professional position. While you may think you’d like to be a Senior Consultant (to give an example), deep down you probably don’t think you’re ready yet.
You’re probably going to think to yourself: What nonsense. That’s your ego kicking in right now. By the way, you can read more about it in this article. If you manage to ignore that voice for a moment and keep reading, I promise you won’t regret it.
How to get where you want to be
Are you still there? Wonderful. Now comes the good news: Just because you have exactly what you deserve right now doesn’t mean that you can’t be somewhere else in the future. On the contrary: Another assertion of mine (and, by the way, smarter people have also asserted this before me): You can achieve anything in life you want. All you have to do is develop yourself until you are where you „deserve“ to earn 1000€ more a month or to be a Senior Consultant. What is necessary for this? On the one hand, of course, the hard skills – i.e. the necessary technical knowledge. On the other hand – and many forget this – the soft skills for it: your personality, the right mindset and an inner being geared towards your success. And both can be developed further.
Why your personal development is so important
Everyone will probably agree with me that it is important to develop professional knowledge and to continue to educate yourself. Your personal development is at least as important. It’s about recognizing and realizing your potential. It’s about taking action and taking full responsibility for your professional success and recognizing that finding and changing a single wrong belief can give your professional success wings.
In the age of digitization, anyone can download any information and any kind of knowledge from the Internet in a matter of seconds. At the same time, more and more people are enjoying a top education. So we can no longer really differentiate ourselves on the job market through our hard skills, but through our soft skills – our personality, character and attitude.
How you can develop yourself personally
Firstly, if you lack technical knowledge, it’s easy to argue and accept, and secondly, it’s not that difficult to fix. Today it is a piece of cake to acquire skills through (online) courses or professional experience in a company.
Developing your personality is much more difficult. Although many high-priced coaches and „personality builders“ would like to tell you that all you have to do is come to their seminar, the truth is that personal development is a lifelong process that is never really complete.
In fact, you can’t just sit down and „do personal development“ for an hour a day. Rather, personal growth is what happens as you encounter and learn to deal with different challenges in life. But now comes the big but: You can very well initiate certain processes and actively challenge yourself in order to grow personally.
So what can you do specifically to develop yourself personally?
- Questioning your thoughts
The first thing you can do is question your current worldview and thoughts. In this article I have already described why you should not believe everything you think. Realizing that the voice in your head is not the only truth is an important step. Because when you understand that there are many other ways of thinking and seeing things, you will automatically start to question your ways of thinking and to develop yourself further.
- Get other opinions
In order to question your own thoughts, you need to get other opinions and thoughts. Because only if we know opinions that are contrary to ours can we even get the idea that our way of thinking and acting is not the only one. And what better way to do that than to read? For example, in this article you will find 10 recommendations for books that have made me think and rethink. This article provides more book, podcast, and video recommendations.
Attending seminars by well-known personality developers is also a wonderful opportunity to firstly confront yourself with new ideas and secondly to get to know many people who also think outside the box. In German-speaking countries, for example, Christian Bischoff is a possibility, in English-speaking countries it would be Tony Robbins.
- Getting out of your comfort zone regularly
It is also helpful to regularly leave your comfort zone. Because when you break out of your usual environment and activities, you will automatically encounter challenges and different ways of thinking, which in turn allows you to grow personally. The next time an opportunity arises that makes you feel a little uncomfortable, a voice should immediately pop up in your head saying, „Beware, this is an opportunity to get out of your comfort zone!“ Be sure to accept!”
Conclusion
If you want to develop professionally, earn more money or attract more clients as a freelancer, it is essential that you engage in personal development. How exactly you can do this, I have described in this article.
