5 Areas of Personal Growth to Work on This Year

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Constant growth is essential for a healthy, fulfilling life. However, change can feel scary when you start out. Relying only on what’s comfortable may help you feel secure, but it also halts your personal development. You may become stuck in patterns that detract from your day-to-day simply because they’re part of your routine. Take this as a sign to stop doing what no longer serves you and work on yourself to benefit all areas of your life.

Whether you’re ten or 100 years old, there is always room for improvement. What areas of personal growth are you working on this year? These five items should be at the top of your list of priorities.

1. Mental Health

Your mental health is the foundation of your overall wellness. It affects all of your actions, whether you know it or not. A healthy state of mind leads you to make better personal and career decisions. It hasn’t been easy to stay sane these last few years, but there is some silver lining — you are a more mentally resilient person for enduring those hard times.

Think about all of the stress you have endured throughout your life. Your problems seemed insurmountable then, but you overcame them despite your anxiety and self-doubt. You kept pushing, even when your inner monologue told you to give up. This constant internal conflict is an unavoidable part of the human experience you must embrace.

Mental health isn’t about avoiding stress and anxiety — preventing hardship is impossible. On the contrary, the only way to improve your mental health is by accepting and even seeking out stress.

The United States military expresses the same sentiment with its famous mantra — “embrace the suck.” You need to be proactive and find new challenges to overcome if you want to become a mentally stronger person.

2. Emotional Stability

Mental health and emotional stability walk hand in hand. If you have a solid state of mind, you will also have a firm grip on your emotions. Some people naturally wear their feelings on their sleeves, but expressive individuals can still be emotionally stable. It’s all about having the appropriate reaction to each unique situation.

It’s time to do a little introspection. When you encounter a minor inconvenience, what is your emotional response? Do you scream and curse when somebody cuts you off in traffic? Do you cry when you get into a trivial argument with a friend or family member? If you said yes, you need to figure out why your emotions emerge during those moments.

Next time you get worked up over something small, take a deep breath and try to put things in perspective. This simple habit will help you become more emotionally stable and help with problem-solving skills. Instead of letting your emotions cloud your judgment, you can put them aside and assess your situation with more rationality.

Related Reads:
• 10 Activities to Keep Your Mind Sharp
• 5 Ways a Growth Mindset Leads to Success

3. Spiritual Wellness

Spirituality has become a lost area of personal growth as people are moving away from organized religion on a massive scale. You do not have to subscribe to a particular faith to be a spiritual person, though. Spiritual wellness comes from acknowledging you have a higher purpose besides survival.

People achieve spiritual growth in many ways. Sometimes they convert to a new religion after suffering a personal tragedy. Other times, they go on journeys of self-discovery in remote parts of the world. These significant changes can be effective, but the little things often make the biggest difference — congregating with other people, reading religious texts and, most importantly, praying.

Prayer is a powerful form of meditation with spiritual, mental and physical benefits. It decreases your heart rate and cortisol levels while improving your attention span and memory. It allows you to reflect silently on the day’s events with no external influences. You can also do it any time, anywhere. Prayer helps you engage with your spirituality constantly. It’s one of the best personal growth habits you can do.

4. Skill Development

Speaking of habits, everyone needs a few recreational hobbies. Without them, you would have no work/life balance and waste all your free time. But more importantly, hobbies help you develop relevant and constructive skills. They make you a more confident, self-sufficient person. You should make a personal goal to get better at one of your hobbies every single day.

Car enthusiasts provide a great example of personal growth through skill development. When they purchase a new vehicle, they have to test out the various features and make sure every component is in good condition before getting behind the wheel. They become more skilled technicians while simultaneously developing important qualities like patience, responsibility and attention to detail.

Hobbies also give you long-term goals to keep your mind and body occupied. It’s not a coincidence that people with no productive hobbies tend to struggle with depression and are out of shape. Recreation has many vital functions besides keeping you entertained.

5. Physical Fitness

Investing in your physical fitness is one of the best decisions you can make. Exercise can sometimes be intimidating, but that’s all the more reason to start. Remember the first lesson about mental health — you must embrace stress, not run away from it. Pushing your physical limits at the gym strengthens your body and mind. Working out is a natural antidepressant everyone can take advantage of.

Don’t worry about a lack of experience or equipment. All you need is a decent pair of shoes and the great outdoors. Start your fitness journey by going for a walk or run. When you feel like quitting, remember why you started!

Keep Growing Every Day

Nobody has a foolproof recipe for a happy life because the recipe doesn’t exist. Reality is far too harsh and unpredictable for anyone to make it through life unscathed. You can either try to hide from this reality or embrace it. Every day is an opportunity for you to grow as a person in all five of these areas.

Are you ready to rise to the challenge?