Psychology of personal self-development (M. A. Shchukina, 2015)

What is self-development?

Self-development is the process of developing personal qualities and skills.

Self-development is difficult, but... interesting. I speak from my own experience)))

What personal qualities are there:

• discipline;
• organization;
• determination;
• sociability;
• ability to adapt to new situations;
• determination;
• hard work - willingness to work 80-100 hours a week, like Elon Musk;
• concentration - the ability to focus your attention on one problem and work on solving it;
• economy;
• passion - you need to love what you do.

Personal skills are as follows:

• oratory - the ability to persuade;
• setting goals is a skill with which self-development begins;
• acting - the ability to play your role well so that people believe you and follow you;
• the ability to learn quickly and master large amounts of information;
• storytelling - the ability to tell interesting stories that captivate people - used in sales, books and articles;
• speed reading - if you cannot read quickly, you will study for a long time and achieve results slowly;
• active listening - when you listen carefully to your interlocutor, ask the “right questions” and sometimes insert your thoughts;
• the ability to save - if you spend everything you earn, you will not become richer;
• knowledge of foreign languages ​​- opens access to books, speeches that have not yet been translated into Russian, and the opportunity to communicate with people from other countries;
• planning skill - to achieve goals, you need to be able to draw up a plan for achieving them and follow it.

The main stages of personal self-improvement

Self-development in psychology is an individual process that each person goes through in his own way. However, in psychology there are general stages of self-improvement:

• need for change;
• idea of ​​the ideal “I”;
• searching for your strengths and weaknesses;
• drawing up a plan to achieve the goal;
• direct actions.

Need for change

Everyone comes to the understanding that change is needed in their own way. The higher the level of awareness, the easier it is to do this. How to understand that you need to reach the next level:

1. It seems to you that life has lost its logic, the behavior of others has become strange. Perhaps you are not a model of adequacy. You are thrown from side to side.
2. Feeling like a stagnant swamp. You don't feel the taste of life. Routine and everyday life cause apathy. It seems to you that you are falling back and losing your skills.
3. Procrastination is constantly putting off necessary, important things. Instead of working, you hang out on your phone and are constantly distracted from the task at hand. It is difficult for you to start and complete any business.
4. A vague feeling of dissatisfaction with oneself, the environment, life. At first glance, everything is fine, and you should be happy, but something is constantly oppressing you and doesn’t suit you.

It’s not easy to immediately realize that it’s time to reach a new level, but our subconscious mind actively helps with this, signaling in different ways.

Idea of ​​the ideal "I"

The next step after realizing that change is overdue is understanding what exactly you want to achieve. At this stage it is necessary to set goals.

It is important to understand what you really want. It’s not just a big income, but the purpose of obtaining finance is buying a car or a house, traveling, starting a business

Finding strengths and weaknesses

When you decide on the “ideal”, sort yourself out.
What do you need to achieve your goal? It is important to understand that the presence of deficiencies is considered normal. You should not consider yourself worse than others

Consider this stage as a kind of revision that helps you understand what is preventing you from being happy.

Any disadvantage can be worked out and turned into an advantage. Critical thinking will allow you to understand how you can use personal qualities. You are too meticulous and slow; there are many areas of activity where this is a key skill. Don't be afraid to change yourself, your lifestyle, your job, your hobbies.

Drawing up an action plan

Having decided on your desires, strengths and weaknesses, make a clear plan. What exactly needs to be done and how long it will take. Break the path into small sections, this will make it easier to move forward.

Trainings, video lessons, and psychotherapy sessions will come to your aid. Find out more about people who have achieved success.

Active actions

When you have a complete understanding of the goal and methods of achieving it, do not procrastinate. Active actions are the key to success.

Study more materials on a topic of interest, communicate with like-minded people, and turn your plans into reality.

Without practical action, knowledge will not be useful

Ignore people who discourage you or doubt your success. If criticism from others interferes, try to change your social circle

Avoid envious, constantly complaining, angry people. They will try to “pull” you back. Communicate with those who have already achieved what you want or have moved further along this path. Charge yourself with positivity.

Why do you need self-development?

You can engage in self-development without realizing it. When you read books or watch educational films, you are educating yourself.

Let’s take for example a person who is not involved in his own development. He is not familiar with reading, planning, goal setting and earning money.

His approximate daily routine is as follows. Get up, eat, go to work, come home, watch TV, eat and go to bed. If he still brushes his teeth, then this is already a great success.

These are the people who complain that nothing works out for them. They focus everything on life, the government and those around them. They are “offended by life.”

They shift responsibility onto others and go with the flow. Therefore, they achieve nothing and continue to cry.

If you don't want to be like that, engage in self-development.

Psychology of self-development or the path to yourself

Experts consider personal growth to be a deeply individual, truly personal matter. The art of acquiring oneself is the advancement of each individual towards his dream - towards his ideal self, the way he wants to be. Everything that helps make this dream come true is self-development.

Everyone's dreams for themselves are different. Long-term goals in life also differ. This means that each of us has our own process of personal growth, special and unique. Let’s say, today everyone denounces human selfishness and greed. What if someone preferred a different model of behavior? For example, a person decided that saving was more important to him than giving away what he earned left and right. Should we rush to label him an inferior subject? Or is it still worth realizing that he is also a person. Just different.

Mechanism of individual self-development

How does a person take the path of personal growth? We can roughly imagine 3 stages of this process:

1. Impulse. Life sets its own challenges for each of us. Finding himself in another life “moustrap”, an individual receives new food for thought.

2. Generating your own ideology. In search of a way out of the difficulties that have arisen, a person realizes certain ideas containing principles for solving the assigned problems. In other words, he begins to understand how to make life better - simpler, richer, more interesting.

3. Incarnation. A person makes certain efforts and puts his ideas into practice, following his own principles.

Experts in self-development psychology warn that at the second stage, the personality can be confused by generally accepted guidelines. Ideally, the solution to a problem thrown up by life should come from your own head. Otherwise, failures will occur in the self-development mechanism.

You cannot achieve personal growth without knowing yourself, blindly following only other people's recommendations. They cannot teach everything, no matter how ardent the faith in them. It is not for nothing that Friedrich Nietzsche believed: in order to rise high, you need to use your own legs, you cannot allow yourself to be carried or sit on other people’s shoulders and heads.

How to read books correctly. Step by step plan

1. Just read the book. We made notes and highlighted interesting ideas.
2. We wrote down the notes, thoughts and quotes we made in a separate notebook.
3. In 2-3 sentences they explained the meaning of the book they read.
4. We put the advice into practice.

The fourth tip is the most important. The main thing is practice. Without practice, reading books is pointless. Apply the ideas immediately after reading them. Don't delay. The 72 two-hour rule applies here - if a person does not do something within 3 days, then, most likely, he will never take up this task again.

Consuming information is a road to nowhere. Andrey Parabellum

Power is not in knowledge, but in the application of knowledge. Jack Canfield

Stumbling blocks on the path of self-development

Personal growth is always a path of overcoming. Let's highlight some of them.

1. Other people's stereotypes. Only by freeing his consciousness from them does a person begin to think and act productively. However, there is a risk of going to the other extreme: starting to look down on other people’s goals and values. So, while evaluating them objectively, one must avoid snobbery.

2. Self-pity. Not everyone can cope with the temptation to destroy the seeds of doubt in their own infallibility. You should be able to be critical of yourself and look at yourself from the outside more often.

3. Complexes. To avoid drowning in a swamp of self-flagellation, you need to focus on the positive aspects of your development. You need to ask yourself more often: what should a person without cockroaches do in this situation?

4. Discomfort. By getting rid of social patterns, you can find yourself in a hostile environment. Therefore, freeing yourself from prejudices, you need to consciously replace them with your own, fundamentally important goals and values, developed on the basis of reality.

Let's sum it up

Each individual determines the general line of his personal growth himself. At the same time, it proceeds from internal needs. Having created a self-development program, he begins to act, overcoming the inevitable obstacles along the way!

The best sites for self-development

1. niksy.net - Nikolay Sysoev's blog.
2. sergeiyurev.ru - Blog of Sergei Yuryev.
3. elizavetababanova.com - Blog of Elizaveta Babanova.
4. psy-victory.ru - Blog of Victoria Grizodub.
5. lifeidea.org - Blog of Mikhail Suboch.
6. qvilon.ru - blog of Valery Kharlamov.
7. reself.ru - blog of Olesya Vlasova.
8. nperov.ru - blog of Nikolai Perov.
9. petrosian.ru - Armen Petrosyan's blog.
10. cluber.com.ua.
11. 4brain.ru
12. bbf.ru.
13. blog.mann-ivanov-ferber.ru - blog of the publishing house "MYTH".
14. ariom.ru.
15. ted.com.

Nonsense classes. Don't kill your time

I don't understand why so many people act equally stupid? Although the answer here is very simple: they are driven by their instincts and emotions and engage in social nonsense.

People complain

Why pose as a weakling? I feel bad, I don’t get paid enough, I was abandoned, I was betrayed, I wasn’t invited, I’m sick, I’m tired, I’m tired, they don’t understand me, and the like. Such people make me sick, I want to leave them. As a result, such compassionate individuals find others like themselves, and they play games to see who fares worse. The one who is worst wins. The prize - everyone pities him. Next time you start engaging in social bullshit, remember my words and SHUT UP.

Children, sick and unhappy people complain. When you complain, you put yourself in their shoes. To begin to develop effectively, you definitely need to leave the stain of victimhood and go into the light of the author of your life. Let the other bastards complain, and you act! It's more difficult, but more productive.

People discussing

Gossip attracts people and they get hooked on it. By discussing other people, we do not solve our problems. We are not becoming richer, smarter or more successful. We're just wasting a lot of time.

People are lazy

No, we have already written about energy. But there is another kind of laziness. This is window dressing. Hey, I'm working on myself! I watch educational films, read tons of useful books, I write down goals and keep a diary. Oh yeah! I'm working on myself. But I can’t call it self-development.

It's simply detachment from action and choosing comfort. It’s like you’re acting, it’s like you’re developing, it’s like you’re even striving. But in fact, this is laziness, just an excuse for yourself that you seem to be improving yourself, although in fact such a person does not strive for anything. If you notice this comfortable bastard in yourself, then strangle him with action.

The third step to self-development is to stop doing nonsense!

Stories of people involved in self-development

Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin was born in 1706 into the family of a soap and candle maker.

From 10 to 12 years old I went to school. My father did not have enough money for a full education, so at the age of 12 he began working in his brother’s printing house.

In his free time, he read and wrote poetry. Thanks to the fact that I ended up in a printing house, I was sometimes able to communicate with educated people.

At the age of 20, he quarreled with his brother and fled to Philadelphia. There he created his own printing house. At first, things went poorly, but soon he received the right to publish several city newspapers.

He founded the Philadelphia Debating Club, where everyone could discuss philosophical topics and share books.

Benjamin Franklin got up at 6 am, tried to eradicate bad habits, kept a diary and studied science. Known for his list of 13 virtues that he cultivated in himself and wanted to see in others. He invented the lightning rod, the rocking chair and the Franklin stove.

If he had not read and educated himself, he would have continued to work in his brother’s printing house and would never have become famous throughout the world. Here is an example of a person who changed his life through self-development.

Bodo Schaefer

Bodo Schaefer is a German businessman and business coach, often called the “financial Mozart of Germany.”

As a child, he was an ordinary boy. Father worked as a lawyer. I didn’t get much money, I saved on everything. I went everywhere with a notebook and wrote down expenses. When I bought ice cream for my son, in front of other people, I took out a notepad and wrote “5 marks.”

Bodo did not want to be like his father - as stingy and poor. And I set myself a goal - to become a millionaire by the age of 30.

At age 20, he moved to Chicago without knowing any English. In order to somehow get by, he started giving German lessons. He communicated with students only in it or in sign language.

Then he went back to Germany. He opened a business and went bankrupt.

By the age of 26, he had several kilograms of excess weight, 75 thousand German marks of debt (2 million rubles) and a devastated state.

But he did not give up, but decided to find himself a mentor. This person was Bernd Reitgan. Bernd did not immediately accept him as a student. At first he refused, but Bodo Schäfer proved his persistence and desire to learn from the millionaire.

He opened his own consulting agency and also became a millionaire.

Bodo Schaefer constantly wondered why some people remained poor while others became rich. He developed the laws of financial well-being and began teaching them in trainings. Then he published his first book, “The Path to Financial Freedom.” A little later, “Mani, or the ABC of Money” and other bestsellers appeared.

To become as successful. like Bodo Schaefer, you don't have to look for a millionaire mentor. You can gain all the knowledge in books while engaging in self-development.

Elizaveta Babanova

Born in Russia. At the age of 15, she won a competition and received a scholarship to study in the USA.

She studied well, danced and sang in the choir - for this she continued to study for free. At the same time, I found a job and combined it with my studies.

According to Elizabeth, upon arriving in America she gained 15 kilograms and for a long time could not make close friends. She had complexes about her appearance and was a deep introvert.

One day she heard the phrase “It’s not circumstances that make you unhappy, but your attitude towards them.” And I decided to change my life.

Over 4 years:

• switched to a healthy lifestyle;
• started doing sports and yoga;
• lost weight;
• received higher education in psychology, finance and marketing;
• got a job at a hedge fund.

But then I had an accident. Being close to death, she thought about what she had done in her life. I realized that I didn’t have time to learn how to benefit other people and love.

After the accident, she left for Russia and spent 2 years searching for herself. In 2012 she founded a school of self-development.

Over the past 7 years, I have written 200 articles, recorded 100 videos, became a coach and visited 35 countries.

If it were not for the accident, she would not have started self-development, would not have opened an online school and would not have had the opportunity to live for her own pleasure.

Alexey Shapolov

Read my story in the “About the Author” section.

Basic mental processes:

memory; sensation; perception; thinking; attention; imagination; speech.

These processes are characterized by the reflection of a person who is in interaction with the outside world. Development depends on its level. They can be used to judge how strongly or poorly developed a person is. The main such process is memory; it has the ability to remember important information that the individual may need in the future.

There are people who have well-developed memory and do not need medications. There are a different number of techniques that can improve memory quality.

Personal development is an important component of life success in family and career. And acquiring additional skills that help you achieve your goals helps you improve your level.

Another situation arises when a person is completely phlegmatic towards everything around him and has no personal growth. He becomes boring not only for those around him, but also for himself. No one is happy with stagnation, even people who are deeply convinced that development will not be able to give them anything new, and even more so, no one will expose themselves to the risk of this “newness”.

How to plan your day?

1. Take a notebook.
2. Sign it - the planning journal of so-and-so, in my case - Alexey Shapolov.
3. Write the date in the margin and the day of the week in the middle of the sheet.
4. List all the things you want to do tomorrow.
5. Label the most important and urgent tasks with the letter A. Important but not urgent - with the letter B. Unimportant and not urgent - with the letter C. Things that can be delegated to others - with the letter D. Things that should be excluded from the plan (computer games, drunken parties) - letter E.
6. Start your day with tasks under the letter A. Gradually move on to less important tasks.
7. At the end of the day, take note of what you did and didn't do.
8. Analyze why everything was not completed. Rate your day on a scale of 10.

How to achieve personal development

This process is not easy. It consists in a person’s independent work on himself. Constant work is required on:

• character traits;
• manner of communication;
• behavior in society
• personal or professional qualities.

Self-development of a person can consist in improving the body, spirit, and consciousness.

Everyone must determine the path of development for themselves: someone wants to achieve material wealth, and someone has more extensive goals.

Self-development goals may also differ:

• good job and own home;
• happiness and peace in the family;
• search for new ideas and opportunities.

How to overcome laziness and start taking action?

Sometimes banal laziness prevents you from starting to engage in self-development. How to deal with it?

1. Do exercises. When I do a few exercises in the morning, I feel energetic and not lazy to do what I planned.
2. Motivate yourself. Write 5-10 reasons why you should take action.
3. Come up with a reward. For example, you will read 50 pages and be able to watch the new series of “Game of Thrones”☺
4. Praise yourself. For the smallest achievements. Better yet, keep yourself a success diary.
5. Rest. Take a 10-minute break every hour you work. Drink tea, take a walk in the fresh air.

Self-development

According to my conditional division, in the natural motivation of a person there are 3 motivational vectors - the desire for comfort, the desire to establish various relationships and the desire to realize one’s creativity. In essence, this is all a person needs. By collectively and systematically achieving what is desired in all vectors, a person will inevitably be in a state of happiness.

Individual motives can be approximately the same all the time, like eating or drinking water - these are providing motives. Others change as they are implemented - these are developing motives. These changes in motivation, in the ideal case, constitute the ideal development of a person towards a Supreme Being. Or more precisely, the development from a being into a Higher Man. Those. It is simply in the realization of one’s real motives that a person’s self-development occurs, development through action. No additional effort is needed for development, it is a continuous natural process.

But since we are far from ideal, and even more so we live in an even less ideal world, our desires somehow do not want to be realized by themselves. Worse, even after putting a lot of effort into the field of individual achievements, for some reason the results, to put it mildly, are not very good. There's probably something wrong somewhere. This “something somewhere somehow” leads to the fact that in addition to the things we need within the framework of our existential desires, in order to move up we have to do separate things to change ourselves in some way. Sometimes only these individual actions to improve one’s own effectiveness are called training, self-development or personal growth. Which is not entirely true.

The self-development of the individual, his behavioral effectiveness, and together the development of the motivational system itself, which itself goes through certain stages, occurs as if in two conditionally separate processes. Part of the development occurs simply in ordinary life in the event of the emergence and repetition of successful experiences . True, especially useful experience usually appears through overcoming obstacles. I didn’t want to do it before, I never did it and therefore I couldn’t do it. But today I wanted to, I did it right away, I encountered difficulties, overcame them, gained effective experience and began to be able to do it. Accordingly, I increased my efficiency. This exactly corresponds to the ideal case of self-development. And this is always the case for any person. But, unfortunately, only in individual cases.

And it also happens that you wanted to do something, but couldn’t do it. Or he did so that it only got worse. And the next time, fear appears along with desire. And in order to start succeeding, you will first have to prepare yourself, find the best method, try it, work with fears or something else, and only then do it in real life. Or you can not do it, but simply suppress the desire, thereby creating the preconditions for neurosis. So, preparing oneself for future work is the second part of personality development, which occurs as if in isolation from the natural needs of a person.

The full cycle of conscious and sustainable self-change, developing new useful skills or eliminating previously acquired inhibitions, in reality almost always consists of a sequence of these two steps. First, separate preparation, and then application in real life. Sometimes it is possible to do without the first phase - if the circumstances are favorable. But without the second phase, there are practically no sustainable beneficial changes. Several consequences follow from this, which I consider significant for practical application. I will present the logic in the form of a list.

• Self-development for the purpose of self-development is meaningless . Directions of self-development should be determined by strategic goals, which in turn arise from objective vectors of life development.
• The goals themselves can often be vague, defining rather a direction - vector goals. At the same time, linking specific goals and practices to such vectors may have the character of vague expectations. But there should still be a connection.
• If you decide to do something for self-development, targeted training, psychopractice or something else, answer yourself a couple of questions. The first is “where am I going to apply this in real life or where do I expect positive change?” The second is “how does this application correspond to my chosen strategy?”
• If there are no answers or they are formulated abstractly, most likely the changes will not be applied anywhere, which means the time spent will be of little use. However, an acceptable answer may be “I’m interested,” if, of course, you really experience such an emotion DURING the practice. Everything interesting develops. So far it's interesting.
• One of the strategic goals of the initial stage of self-development is to achieve basic efficiency in life. Separation from the herd and transition to self-determination. It is to this goal that basic self-development is tied, as if divorced from natural goals. And one of the goals in basic self-development is to begin to feel your natural goals and learn to realize them . Understand what you really want.
• If you have no strategic goals in life at all, you don’t need to engage in special self-development. It’s better to enjoy life more, because you’ll die soon. And you don’t need to live long either, because your life has no meaning even for yourself. And for short-term, ordinary purposes, the roasted rooster will force itself to develop. And if it doesn’t force you, then it means you don’t really need these goals.

For people who are already at a fairly high personal level, there is no point in creating a separate strategic line “self-development”. At this level, development occurs automatically and for the most part directly in the implementation of practical goals. Such people are able to determine their suboptimalities “on the fly”, based on new conditions or new goals. And since the most important effective skill, the skill of learning , is very well developed in them, individual educational or developmental practices take a small fraction of their time and are immediately implemented in life. of complex basic efficiency in such people .

Basic effectiveness is also associated with each of the three vectors of natural motivation. But it is sometimes difficult to connect specific developmental methods with practice. You can justify everything logically, but it's pretty pointless. Your subconscious will still not believe (until it feels) that warming up the diaphragm clamp will help you more easily establish contacts with the opposite sex. You crush and crush him, but the relationship does not improve. You just need 2-3-4-5 other practices, and then everything together will give the desired systemic effect. Moreover, it is often impossible to track which practice made the greatest contribution to the final result. So, if there is no basis for efficiency yet, a separate direction appears - “self-development as an increase in life efficiency .

Naturally, in the full sense, efficiency cannot be a goal, being essentially a set of methods and personality traits for achieving the life goals themselves. But in view of the fact that for most people the achievement of basic life efficiency is still ahead, and this is a very capacious question, a serious and separate block of affairs is clearly emerging. So I presented this as a separate strategic goal.

Development also includes the constant adaptation of a person to changing external conditions. Not so long ago, this only became significant during certain periods of time. I think, remember the proverb - “God forbid you live in an era of change” (I can’t vouch for the correctness of the quotation). What does this mean? People do not want to adapt, but want to live in peace. Because adaptation skills are not developed, the social environment used to change slowly. But now times are different, the frequency of changes is already much higher than the life expectancy of a person. Like it or not, eras of change will find everyone, and most likely more than once. Grow up and learn enough to buy dad Carlo 100 new jackets. You will either have to learn new things all the time, or be content with old jackets.

A little about practicality. I've seen a lot of people clearly talk about "the need to develop only PRACTICAL skills" and yet make two critical mistakes. The first is that they don’t want to do practices that they don’t see immediate benefits. The second is that they spend a lot of time and money on training for purposes completely incomprehensible to themselves. In the first case, consistency is ignored, in the second, the practicality of training is highly controversial. Don't do this.

I will very briefly outline the main directions of self-development . There will not be specific practices in each area here. Firstly, their carriage and small cart, and secondly, everything is determined individually. In my book, almost at the beginning, from the chapter “life for oneself, or from theory to practice,” and further to the end of a large section, I described all these directions in some detail. In part, you can immediately take something on board, but with other areas you need to understand little by little, connect it with your goals, and then start practicing. At the initial stage, it is more important to generally begin to move steadily, even if not quite there or not quite usefully. Just get used to developing.

• Work on understanding yourself, your motives, your fears and inhibitions. Rationalization of the unconscious, as defined. And within the framework of the same process - determining your Main Creative Interest.
• Building basic skills in interacting with the external environment. Basically comes down to communication skills, in the broad sense of the concept of communications.
• Building basic skills in working with your own psyche. Effective communication with yourself (inward). Here communications are aimed at changing oneself.
• Activity in real life. Search activity.
• Constantly maintaining mental, energetic and physical health. Psycho-physiological component of an effective lifestyle.
• Periodically acquire specialized knowledge and skills in various areas according to your specific goals.
• Permanent formation and maintenance of a comprehensive, consistent system of one’s own long-term and medium-term goals. Strategic approach to life.

I affirm that these areas of activity are completely sufficient to build an integrally Effective life, Success and Happiness. The only question is how actively the directions will be implemented.

Well, let's summarize some results. In the strategic plan, we have a system of 4 basic strategic vectors:

• Providing yourself with comfort.
• Establishing the most satisfying system of interpersonal relationships.
• Self-realization through creativity.
• Self-development, as increasing your effectiveness in all significant areas and developing your own motivational system.

Self-development does not exist as a goal in itself, but “permeates” all the other three basic vectors. Figuratively, one can compare such a system of vectors with the space-time continuum. In this option, 3 vectors of needs make up the spatial position of the system, and the vector of self-development corresponds to the time axis. However, it is more convenient to place them on the planning plane as four separate vectors.

Work within the framework of self-development can be divided into two stages. First, achieving overall basic efficiency , and then increasing efficiency to overcome obstacles in the development of the main vectors.

The next block is “Lifestyle”