What Is Personal Growth and Why Is It So Important?

If there was ever a time to invest in your personal growth, it’s now. Also known as personal development and self-improvement, it’s one of the most important buzzwords of our time.

This concept has built an entire empire around its name. You could say it’s the Beyoncé of one’s well-being. 

Philosophers, theologists, and psychologists are continuously trying to figure out the way to live up to our greatest potential.

If personal growth is your thing, here’s what you need to know about the self-growth game:

• What Is Personal Growth?
• Why Is Self-Growth So Important?
• What Are the Main Challenges of Personal Growth?
• How to Achieve Personal Growth?
• 7 Personal Growth Quotes to Inspire You by Mindvalley Authors
• How to Make a Self-Improvement Plan

Ready to unlock your greatness? Let’s dive in.

What Is Personal Growth?

Personal growth is the improvement of our skills, knowledge, wisdom, habits, behavior, and personal qualities. Personal development allows you to reach your full potential, be your best self and live your happiest, most successful life.

Personal growth definition

Think of personal growth as any positive mental, physical, and spiritual transformation. It’s not just about learning — it’s about applying whatever you learn so it becomes part of who you are.

Here at Mindvalley, we believe that your growth should always come first. After all, it’s through self-growth that we’re able to show up in the world as the most extraordinary version of ourselves.

According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, self-actualization, a.k.a. personal growth, leads to the highest form of human fulfillment. 

Sure, we need to breathe, eat, sleep and have a social network around to keep us sane and safe. But if you want to explore your limitless potential, you’ll need to explore the last step of the pyramid. And once you do, you’ll discover that self-actualization enhances the way you enjoy all other aspects of the triangle too. 

Personal growth can make you a sort of Buddha but a badass at the same time. Peaceful but highly productive. Kind but resilient. Loving but assertive. Healthy, but with the fun-loving nature of a child.

Types of personal growth

• Expanding your mental capacity
• Improving your social skills
• Connecting to your spiritual self
• Increasing emotional intelligence
• Boosting your overall health and well-being

Personal development can improve your self-love, relationships, career prospects, spirituality, and mental or physical health, just to name a few. It’s homemade. Or self-made. It’s personal to you.

Examples of personal development goals

It can sometimes be difficult to find a place to start. So here are a few examples of personal growth goals to get you inspired:

1. Learning to be more productive at work
2. Developing emotional intelligence or expressing feelings healthily
3. Leading a healthier lifestyle (including food and exercise)
4. Forging better relationships
5. Learning the art of active listening or public speaking
6. Adopting new skills such as learning new languages, instruments, meditation, and other platforms
7. Boosting your self-esteem and confidence
8. Getting wiser with your finances
9. Becoming generally more self-aware
10. Learning to respond with resilience to challenging circumstances
11. Cultivating more inner peace, love, and joy on a day-to-day basis

The true beauty of self-growth is that the possibilities are infinite. Whatsmore, you can grow towards your goals in whichever way you choose, whether you’re 8 or 80. And the more you grow, the happier, and more fulfilled you’ll be now and in the future. 

Not sure where to start? Complete this quick and fun quiz to identify your key growth areas.

Why Is Self-Growth So Important?

Personal growth gives you the tools you need to thrive in an ever-changing world. If you want life to get better as you get older, you’ll need to become a better version of yourself.   

It goes way beyond polishing your halo. It’s vital if you want to live a happy life. It’s also the key to success in every single area of the human experience. 

Personal growth is important if you want to have:

• Healthy, loving relationships with yourself and others
• A baseline of happiness, positivity, and wellbeing
• Greater resilience
• Career success
• Long-term financial success
• Motivation and productivity
• A sense of calm in a storm
• A healthy mind, body, and spirit

There’s nothing more important than your growth as a person. That’s why Mindvalley offers a vast array of personal growth courses that cover all aspects of personal growth. From improving your romantic relationships to clean eating, from entrepreneurship to spirituality, you’ll find everything you need under one roof. 

What’s more, the world needs you to be the best version of yourself. Because it’s only when you’re the strongest, happiest you that you can go out there and help others.

What Are the Main Challenges of Personal Growth?

Your personal growth is caused by change — big life events, struggles, new relationships, and spiritual enlightenment. It can happen by accident through forces outside your control. 

Co-founder of Mindvalley, Kristina Mand-Lakhiani shares an interesting approach to personal growth causes. She underlines the fact that growing from pain can happen, but it might be unnecessary. What can drive true transformation is our curiosity to learn the best skills on how to play this amazing game called life.

I prefer transformation from curiosity. It’s when you keep asking yourself questions. Wondering why the world works the way it does. And how do you master this game?

— Kristina Mand-Lakhiani, Mindvalley’s co-founder and pioneer in the personal growth industry, trainer of Live By Your Own Rules Quest

But with any change, there’s always something there to test you. Here’s a list of challenges that can seem like blockers to your transformation:

• Getting overwhelmed by information
• Being resistant to change
• Forcing yourself to do too much too soon
• Feeling lonely along your journey
• Questioning what the next best step is
• Fearing the unknown
• Realizing that the more you know, the more you actually don’t know

That said, whether you’ve noticed it or not, you’ve adapted and grown into different versions of yourself your entire life. You developed the resilience to leave your mother’s side to go to school. You then learned to share your toys, then your time, then your money.

Maybe you chose to embrace kindness over selfishness (most of the time). At some point, you probably lost someone you love along the way, so you found a way to cope with overwhelming emotions. All this causes personal growth.

But once you have built the experience to be self-aware, you’re ready to facilitate transformative learning and personal growth on purpose. It doesn’t just have to come about from pain, suffering, and survival. You can facilitate personal growth through reading, therapy, podcasts, and best of all, courses.

You can find plenty of best-in-class self-growth resources on Mindvalley. Sign up for FREE and join the world’s most powerful life transformation platform.

How to Achieve Personal Growth

The great news is that you’ve got a variety of options to choose from when it comes to how you want to focus on your self-improvement. The bad news is that it could get difficult to pick one when so many tempting options are available.

Here go a few of the best personal growth resources out there.

#1: Personal growth books

If the good old method of reading books goes right up your alley, the sky is the limit, as the saying goes.

Books open up a whole new world of possibilities while comforting you with the process of absorbing wisdom through the pages. Whenever you’re ready, make yourself some tea, sit down in the coziest chair, and grab yourself a self-growth book.

To make it easier for you, here’s a list of 10 Must-Read Personal Development Books by Bestselling Mindvalley Authors.

#2: Personal growth podcasts

Podcasts are a fantastic way to add a touch of personal growth to your daily routine. They’re easy to access, packed full of wisdom, and can be listened to whenever you’re running your daily errands and chores.

This way you can sprinkle some personal growth onto your daily activities, such as driving your car, cooking dinner, doing the dishes, or eating lunch.

If you need some inspiration for the next podcast to listen to, here are 5 Podcasts to Support Your Personal Growth Journey.

#3: Go out of your comfort zone

As you may know already, nothing grows in your comfort zone. The idea isn’t to turn your life outside down and go bungee jumping when you wake up tomorrow morning.

What truly matters is that step by step, you do something small that challenges you. Here are some examples of how to get out of your comfort zone on a daily basis:

• Take up a new course
• Go for a walk in the evening
• Say hi to a stranger today
• Listen to a podcast on your way to work
• Enjoy a healthy meal
• Spend five minutes focusing on your breathing
• Pay someone a compliment

True growth lies in the new habits that we slowly create, as they will end up creating a new version of ourselves.

Not sure where to start? Get some inspiration from this article: Use Your Discomfort Zone to Your Advantage — Here’s How.

#4: Meet new people

New connections have the power to elevate your consciousness when you’re around people that inspire you. Gently pushing yourself to get to know people outside of your usual social circle will help with improving communication skills and finding out a fresh perspective.

Looking for inspiration in your environment might redefine your idea of success. As you are surrounded by people who aid your personal growth, you’ll not only be motivated to work on your development more and more but will also see how possible it is to achieve your goals.

 If you’re looking for a tribe of like-minded people, check out the Connections by Mindvalley app, which you can use to stay in touch with the community, wherever you are in the world.

#5: Professional help

Why choose to do everything on our own when someone can easily point us in the right direction? It saves time, money, and energy to learn from someone that has already done it.

A 2020 study showed that 80% of clients who hired a life coach have reported an increase in self-confidence and overall well-being. Personal growth is indeed a one-man job, as you can’t pay a fitness trainer to work out for you. But you can hire them to teach you how to do it.

If you, yourself, want to learn how to help others, life coaching could be the thing for you.

#6: Write down your true life goals

Knowing your goals will act as a roadmap to your personal growth journey. And for this task, you only need to ask yourself The 3 Most Important Questions. 

Asking the right questions will not only bring more clarity to what your dream life would look like but will also sketch out the first directions in your self-improvement plan.

#7: Find out your personal growth level

Maybe one of the most essential things is to know where to start. What that means is finding out your personal growth starting point.

You can then move on to pick up the best development tools for your specific level.

7 Personal Growth Quotes to Inspire You by Mindvalley Authors

1. “The swiftest way to triple your success is to double your investment in personal development.” — Robin Sharma, bestselling author and leadership expert, trainer of Mindvalley’s Hero. Genius. Legend Quest
2. “In the process of learning to fascinate healing in others, you yourself become healed.” — Deborah King, esoteric healer, trainer of Mindvalley’s Be a Modern Master Quest
3. “Self-enrichment is that act of creating a thousand micro wins, so you can have one macro win.” — Lisa Nichols, renowned inspirational speaker, trainer of Mindvalley’s Speak and Inspire Quest
4. “The quest for wholeness can never begin on the external level. It is always an inside job.” — Dr. Shefali Tsabary, psychologist and parenting expert, trainer of Mindvalley’s Conscious Parenting Mastery Quest
5. “Your potential expands as you move towards it. You could never know what you are capable of because as you get to it, your potential allows you to go even further.” — Marisa Peer, bestselling author and professional hypnotherapist, trainer of Mindvalley’s Rapid Transformational Hypnotherapy for Abundance Quest
6. “Your soul doesn’t care what you do for a living and when your life is over, neither will you. Your soul cares only about what you are being while you are doing whatever you are doing.” — Neale Donald Walsch, worldwide spiritual teacher, trainer of Mindvalley’s Awaken the Species Quest
7. “We need to understand how our minds work, so we can work our minds better.” — Jim Kwik, renowned brain coach, trainer of Mindvalley’s Superbrain Quest

Words can move us so deeply that will trigger action taken immediately. Especially when coming from people whose work is profoundly inspirational.

How to Make a Self-Improvement Plan

When it comes to personal growth, actions speak louder than words. So grab a journal and pen, and start your plan via the following four steps:

1. Ask the question: “What’s not working?” Identify what area of your life you’d like to improve. It could be your relationship, your career, or your level of health and general well-being.
2. Now you know what’s not working, ask yourself the question: “What do I want instead?” It could be an enhanced romantic life, a fitter, healthier body, more self-love, or self-expression.
3. Next, ask yourself what qualities you’ll need in order to manifest your dreams. If you want to lose weight, maybe you’ll need motivation and nutrition advice. If you wish to cultivate inner peace, you’ll need to learn how to meditate, etc. That’s where personal growth companies like us come in. We have a vast array of personal growth courses designed to help you grow into the best version of yourself in all areas of your life.
4. Set milestones. Make a promise to yourself that you’ll achieve certain goals by certain dates. Make sure they’re specific, achievable, and time-bound. For example, you may want to write a book in the next year. Your milestones may be writing the first chapter within 6 weeks, the second chapter within 12 weeks, the third chapter within 18 weeks, etc.

How to continue your journey

You can make sure you’re always growing and developing yourself by:

• Keeping a personal growth journal to record your progress every day
• Finding a mentor
• Reading about whichever area you’ve chosen to work on
• Creating a personal growth-oriented morning routine
• Getting an accountability partner to keep you on track

Fuel Your Future

Once you start your personal development journey, you may never go back. And not because you can’t, but your life will improve so much that you might not want to.

If you need guidance on how to explore any area of your life and find the answers you’re looking for, here is where to begin. Mindvalley is the place for personal growth expertise. You’ll find everything you need to know about leveling up your mind, relationships, health, career, or spirituality. 

What’s even better is that personal growth doesn’t have to be a lonely ride. Along your journey, you can connect with the Mindvalley tribe, a global community of people aspiring to meet goals similar to yours. So welcome in.