Personal Growth: A Framework

Personal Growth: A Framework

What is Personal Growth?

Personal growth refers to ongoing efforts to improve ourselves on various dimensions – mental, emotional, physical, social, moral, financial, spiritual and so on.

Personal growth, when it works, leads to fulfillment and happiness.

Hopefully that is the aim of most people when they have gone through a bit of life.

Not money, success, fame, but fulfillment and happiness.

It is possible to spend a lot of time, energy and money reading self-help books, following gurus, or being coached. If it achieves the aim, that’s great. But quite often the results are mixed because of one reason.

There is no quick and easy path to personal growth.

Personal growth is achieved through the development of life skills, skills necessary for successfully living a productive and fulfilling life.

What are life skills?

According to Wikipedia,

Life skills are abilities for adaptive and positive behavior that enable humans to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of life.

It went to distinguish the list above between desirable qualities and life skills. This is quite an important distinction.

Skills are abilities. Hence it should be possible to practise life skills as abilities.

Self-esteem, sociability and tolerance are not taught as abilities:

rather, learning such qualities is facilitated by learning and practising life skills, such as self-awareness, problem-solving, critical thinking, and interpersonal skills.

Framework for Personal Growth

Below is the outline I intend to cover – some as concepts to understand, some as qualities or attributes to develop and some as skills to practice.

I always find it useful to understand the meaning of words as quite often the way we use them isn’t always what they mean.

Concept is “an abstract idea.“

Quality or Attribute is an “a distinctive attribute or characteristic possessed by someone or something.“

Skill is “the ability to do something well; expertise.”

Let’s understand this distinction with a few examples.

Example 1: Time is a concept, ‘Being Organized‘ so that you know what to complete and when is a quality, Time Management is a skill.

Example 2: Wealth is a concept, Financial Independence is a quality, Building Assets that Create Wealth is a skill.

Example 3: Mindfulness is a concept, Being Present is a quality, Meditation is a skill.

The aim is to equip you with the understanding of these concepts, attributes and skills so that it becomes a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) toolkit or framework that you can use to help yourself with no intermediaries.

Health warning – I intend to outline general principles, they may not necessarily be appropriate in all situations. Please read, understand, research, and use your judgement about its relevance for your specific situation before taking action.

Let’s proceed, we can come back to this again.

List of Personal Growth Topics

What I intend to write is –

  • Based on my experience and aspects I learned and practiced for some time.
  • Based aspects that I know now, but didn’t know when I started my working life.
  • Based on personal experience, or
  • Based on experience of others I know, or
  • Based on what I have read (about some else’s experience) but which I believe is worth learning from. I will cite the sources when I do this.

In each case I will share my thoughts and references to articles and books on that topic for further reading and research.

The list is in no particular order.

It is not exhaustive. It will keep evolving.

I don’t intend to follow any particular order while writing about them.

There is no time limit I have set to finish writing them all – it may take 3 months, or it may take 3 years. However, I definitely intend to finish much before the decade of 2020s is over 🙂

Bookmark this page and keep visiting back. I intend to start an email newsletter so that you know when a new article is published. If you want to receive the newsletter when I start it, please drop me a note on the email id in the ‘Connect’ section at the bottom of this page.

Wealth

Wealth is a concept of abundance of desirable things.

Quite a few people have one of their personal growth goals as being wealthy and devote a significant portion of their life towards the achievement of this goal. Hence it is important to understand the concept of wealth.

There are four types of wealth –

  1. Financial wealth (money) – Refers to “the abundance of valuable financial assets or physical possessions, which can be converted into a form used for transactions.”
  2. Social wealth (status): Most people associate status with a person’slifestyle, education, or vocation. Status refers to“the relative social or professional position; standing.” 
  3. Time wealth (freedom) – Time refers to “the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.” While freedom refers to “the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants” or “the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved.”
  4. Physical wealth (health) – Health refers to “the state of being free from illness or injury.”

There are two aspects to be conscious about when we set wealth goals –

1. Wealth is a broader concept than just Financial Wealth (money). Goals that ignore different types of wealth may end up gaining money but at the cost of other types of wealth.

2. Concept of Financial Wealth is not clear. Lack of financial education is to blame here. Quite often Wealth and Financial Wealth is considered as having valuable assets, but they are not the same, at least in my mind.

***

Financial Wealth (Money)

Financial Wealth generally refers to “the abundance of valuable financial assets or physical possessions, which can be converted into a form used for transactions.”

I feel following is a better definition.

Wealth is an asset that produces money (income or, more specifically, cash flow) without you spending time. Wealth generates income when you are sleeping. 

Other key definitions of aspects affecting Financial Wealth are:

An Asset is anything valuable that stores value and can be exchanged for money.

An expense is anything you spend money on, where it’s value is consumed immediately or within a very short time. 

Read more in my article Wealth: A Concept of Abundance to understand the concept of financial wealth.

***

Time Wealth

Life is defined by time. Time is a complicated concept – in science as well as life.

Who is more wealthy – Warren Buffet, or you?

Would you exchange your age with Buffet (age 89) in exchange for his billions?

Would Buffet consider this a good deal? Would you? Who is wealthy in this context and why?

Time refers to “the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.”

While freedom refers to “the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants” or “the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved.”

Read more in my article Time: An Abundance of Life.

***

Health / Physical Wealth

Health is wealth.

Sleep

The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life.

We, humans, spend one-third of our life sleeping; it is the single biggest investment of our time. For such a significant investment of our time, our understanding of sleep and its benefits is appalling.

Sleep is the daily maintenance job that makes us healthy, wealthy, and wise. It enables us to learn, remember, and be creative. Yet sleep is increasingly neglected in our society. Not only is sleep being neglected, but society is also evolving in a way that could potentially penalize people who value their sleep.

Consequences being every major disease – Alzheimer’s, cancer, obesity, diabetes – has causal links to inadequate sleep. 

How often does a doctor ask his patient about the duration and quality of sleep while investigating or diagnosing these ailments? 

What is the probability that you or your loved ones are taking medications for something that could be easily solved by sleeping for eight hours daily?

Read my book summary of Matthew Walker‘s fascinating book Why We Sleep to understand sleep, its implications on our health, and the do’s and don’ts. The summary is divided in two parts given the volume of takeaways from the book.

Part 1 – Why We Sleep covers the various aspects involved in sleep.

Part 2 – Covers the Health Effects of Sleep Deprivation and Dreaming.

***

Status / Social Wealth

Status refers to“the relative social or professional position; standing.”

***

Concepts Relevant to Wealth

Investment

I am sure some of the you have come across this or similar picture through social media.

What is the investment in the below image?

Is your understanding of the concept of investment aligned with it?

Leverage

Leverage is something that creates a non-linear relationship between an input and a given output in a given context.

For example, in finance, this refers to the use of borrowed money to increase the return of investment of a given amount of capital.

Diversification

Not putting all eggs in one basket.

Compounding

The ability of an asset to generate earnings, which are then reinvested in order to generate their own earnings. In other words, compounding refers to generating earnings from previous earnings.

Financial Independence/Freedom

***

Personal Finance

Income

Expense

Savings

Borrowing / Debt / Loan

Cash Flow

Financial Investment

Concepts relevant to Work

Job / Employment

Business

Specific Knowledge

Work life Balance

***

Job / Employment

A job or employment involves working for someone else, typically the owner of a business.

In pure economic terms, a job involve exchanging or renting time for money.

Employer pays money called salary (but its just a different word for ‘rent’) to hire employee’s time to perform an activity.

Employee sells his/her time in return for salary.

There’s nothing wrong with having a job. Most people start their working life by selling the only thing they truly possess at that time, their Time.

***

Business vs Job

Pursue your ‘calling’ if you have one. Else just do what you know and are good at doing.

Always consider yourself as a ‘Business of One.’ 

Read my article You are a ‘Business of One’.

***

Specific Knowledge

***

Work Life Balance

Stoicism: A Philosophy for Living

Nothing happens to anyone that he can’t endure.

Marcus Aurelius

Philosophy in the modern era is considered an intellectual pursuit. However ancients considered action as the essence of philosophy.

Stoicism is an action-oriented philosophy for living that’s as relevant in today’s modern life as it was two thousand years ago.

Read about the Stoic disciplines of Perception, Action and Will and their relevance for your personal growth.

Meaning of Life

Success

Attitude

Habits

Luck

Suffering and Pain

Character & Reputation

***

Meaning of Life

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked.

In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

***

Success

Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it.

For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.

Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.

I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it

***

Attitude

***

Habits

***

Luck

Luck refers to events that affect us but are not in our control. With chance events, particularly those that adversely affect us, we struggle to find their meaning. Luck is not ‘meaningful’ enough.

***

Struggle and suffering/pain

***

Attention/Energy

Energy is the currency of the universe as Emily Maroutian so brilliantly articulated in her fascinating book Thirty.

You ‘buy’ the experience you ‘pay’ attention to.

Your attention creates your reality.

Be selective in what you give your attention to.

***

Relationships

Mutual vulnerability is an essential ingredient of strong relationships.

Behind every criticism is a wish, as Esther Perel says. This may be a defensive strategy some adopt. But don’t react. Look beyond the words and try to find the unexpressed wish waiting behind those words.

***

Decision-Making & Judgement

Learn the The Art of Decision-making and Judgement. There is no shortcut but to iterate through things, learn from your mistakes and keep going.

Make time your ally in decision making. Use the knowledge of the Lindy Effect. Let time decide when you cannot.

***

Happiness

The world has been using income as a proxy for happiness and quality of living. Income, though a vital element of happiness, is not sufficient to be happy.

Viktor E. Frankl, a psychiatrist and a holocaust survivor, in his soul searching book Man’s Search for Meaning says,

Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.

…

The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it.

In The Little Book of Lykke, Meik Wiking, CEO of the Happiness Research Institute, identifies the ingredients that make up the secret sauce of happiness:

  • Togetherness or Sense of Community
  • Money
  • Health
  • Freedom
  • Trust
  • Kindness

And remember a happy man has no past.

Aphorisms / Principles for Living

Read More Like This

Recent Articles