what is it in psychology and where to start? The plan of the program of spiritual development of the personality. Description of methods and exercises

Even school­child­ren are now begin­ning to think about the need for per­son­al growth. The fact that self-devel­op­ment is nec­es­sary is repeat­ed from all sides by teach­ers, par­ents, friends. Some­one under­stands this con­cept as the study and expan­sion of one’s own inner world, oth­ers call for the knowl­edge of high­er pow­ers, oth­ers insist that this is the only way to suc­cess. So what is per­son­al growth and why is it still need­ed? Let’s try to fig­ure it out.

Ini­tial­ly, the con­cept of “per­son­al growth” was used only in psy­chol­o­gy. More pre­cise­ly, in its sep­a­rate direc­tion - human­is­tic con­cept. Its founders are Amer­i­can spe­cial­ists in the field of psy­chol­o­gy. Abra­ham Maslow and Carl Ran­some Rogers. It was they who first used the con­cept of per­son­al growth in their the­o­ry. How­ev­er, lat­er oth­er psy­chol­o­gists start­ed talk­ing about it and began to wide­ly apply it in their prac­tices.

The essence of the con­cept is that a per­son is ini­tial­ly capa­ble of much, the main thing is to devel­op his pos­i­tive qual­i­ties giv­en by nature. Then the “basic com­po­nents” of per­son­al growth were expand­ed. The cri­te­ria for its assess­ment includ­ed such com­po­nents as the abil­i­ty to know and improve one­self, com­pre­hen­sion of the world around, con­stant striv­ing for self-improve­ment not only of one’s human qual­i­ties, but also pro­fes­sion­al ones.

At the moment, not only psy­chol­o­gists talk about per­son­al growth. The con­cept is often used by reli­gious and near-reli­gious fig­ures. They often call it also the spir­i­tu­al path — that is, the oppor­tu­ni­ty to improve one­self through the knowl­edge of high­er pow­ers, striv­ing for per­fec­tion from the point of view of God. And, final­ly, the most com­mon def­i­n­i­tion of per­son­al growth now is giv­en at var­i­ous sem­i­nars and train­ings, where peo­ple who aspire to make a career gath­er. There­fore, before you go for this or that guru of self-knowl­edge, it is worth­while to fig­ure out why you need this teach­ing.

Per­son­al growth is the process of an indi­vid­u­al’s devel­op­ment through­out life.. Each of us at birth receives almost equal human capa­bil­i­ties: the abil­i­ty to be kind, sym­pa­thet­ic, fair, and so on. Anoth­er ques­tion is how we use these gifts. Some­one seeks to improve their per­son­al char­ac­ter­is­tics, oth­ers “dig in” them deeply and over the years sim­ply kill at least some sprouts of virtue in them­selves.

The same applies to pro­fes­sion­al qual­i­ties. All suc­cess­ful peo­ple are con­stant­ly look­ing for new knowl­edge. They nev­er stop at the achieved lev­el of edu­ca­tion. Even if they do not go for the next diplo­ma, they def­i­nite­ly attend pro­fes­sion­al cours­es or at least engage in self-devel­op­ment, which has enveloped us The World Wide Web makes this pos­si­ble any­time, any­where.

Only by mov­ing for­ward, a per­son will be able to improve the qual­i­ty of his own life, come to his dream, achieve his goal. It does­n’t mat­ter what exact­ly is your main idea. Whether you want to be suc­cess­ful in busi­ness, sports, or your per­son­al life, self-devel­op­ment is essen­tial. It helps to cope with dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions, improve rela­tion­ships in the fam­i­ly and at work, and thus pro­vides a per­son with a sense of self-sat­is­fac­tion. How­ev­er, it is nev­er com­plete. After all, per­son­al growth does not stop either with grad­u­a­tion from school, or after receiv­ing a diplo­ma of high­er edu­ca­tion, or when your busi­ness has become a real empire that brings in mil­lions of dol­lars in income. This path begins from ear­ly child­hood and lasts until the end of days.

Some­times it seems to a per­son that he has already achieved every­thing: the house is a full bowl, a pres­ti­gious job, excel­lent rela­tion­ships with fam­i­ly and friends. And this is where the real cri­sis can break out. The prob­lem is the world does not stand still, which means that an indi­vid­ual striv­ing for suc­cess needs to go with it at the same speed or even exceed it. This applies to both work and home.

Yes­ter­day’s beau­ty with a high lev­el of intel­li­gence suc­cess­ful­ly mar­ries, gives birth to chil­dren and “buries” her­self. She has not changed her dress­ing gown for an evening dress for a long time, she has for­got­ten the way to the beau­ty salon, her hands do not reach books. As a result, the hus­band is already with anoth­er, the chil­dren are not inter­est­ed in her, her friends have for­got­ten about her, they are also unlike­ly to take a good job, thus, it would seem that per­son­al defor­ma­tion becomes the cause of the com­plete decom­po­si­tion of the indi­vid­ual, depres­sion, alco­holism and oth­er health prob­lems, diag­nose which can only be done by a spe­cial­ist. But the fact that you stopped imper­cep­ti­bly for your­self can be under­stood with­out resort­ing to their help.

Try to diag­nose the fol­low­ing ques­tions:

• How long have you been read­ing the book?
• How long have you been buy­ing new things for your­self?
• How long have you vis­it­ed a beau­ty salon, mas­sage par­lor, den­tist, and so on?
• How long ago did you raise the lev­el of your own edu­ca­tion (attend­ed sem­i­nars, train­ings, stud­ied lit­er­a­ture)?
• How long have you been in the gym, swim­ming pool, walk­ing in the park, for­est, and so on?

If at least one of these ques­tions you answered “for a long time”, you need to urgent­ly cor­rect the sit­u­a­tion. The only excuse is the post-trau­mat­ic peri­od, when it is sim­ply phys­i­cal­ly impos­si­ble to do some­thing.

First of all, you need to get rid of every­thing unnec­es­sary, both phys­i­cal­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly. In oth­er words, you need to put things in order in your head. Over the years of life, we accu­mu­late in our­selves a lot of unnec­es­sary, and some­times harm­ful: imposed thoughts and rules, wrong lifestyle, com­plex­es. All this pulls back and does not allow to move for­ward. Per­haps what you are doing is not at all what you real­ly need, and there­fore it is not pos­si­ble to achieve at least some sig­nif­i­cant results.

Talk to your­self in the most frank way. Answer the fol­low­ing ques­tions.

• Who do I want to be in the end? Per­haps you have dreamed of being a clown all your life, and your par­ents and pub­lic opin­ion sent you to study as a lawyer, as a result, the cir­cus lost a great artist, and a large army of mediocre law experts was replen­ished with anoth­er unclaimed spe­cial­ist.
• Where do I want to live? Maybe you just need to change your reg­is­tra­tion. Change an apart­ment in a metrop­o­lis for a house in the vil­lage or a vil­la on the sea, or go to con­quer the cap­i­tal or new coun­tries.
• What do I want from life? Per­haps you stick around at work all day, and when you return home, you fall off your feet, while you don’t under­stand why you are so unlucky in your per­son­al life. And where will it come from if you sim­ply don’t have the time and ener­gy for it? Unload your­self as much as pos­si­ble. Then make a list of your goals and desires. Write a clear plan that will allow you to achieve them. Your task is to cross off at least one goal per day based on the results of its achieve­ment. How­ev­er, in order to strive towards the goal by leaps and bounds, this is not enough! Things will go uphill faster if you use sev­er­al tech­niques at the same time.

To suc­ceed, you need to work on your­self every day. Per­son­al devel­op­ment is a whole sys­tem that con­sists of many steps. Cre­ate your own self-devel­op­ment pro­gram using the tasks below.

• Towards the unknown. Think of every­thing you’ve ever dreamed of doing but nev­er got around to. Per­haps you want­ed to learn Japan­ese, or at least Eng­lish, but you still didn’t have enough time and ener­gy. Or maybe there was a desire to mas­ter the recipes of gourmet cui­sine, but you nev­er went to any culi­nary course. It is pos­si­ble that for sev­er­al years in a row you are going to do yoga or at least start run­ning in the morn­ing, but you put every­thing off until the next Mon­day. It’s time to get down to busi­ness right here and now. And don’t put off any class to a lat­er date. Live every day like it’s your last. This is the main strat­e­gy for the for­ma­tion of a suc­cess­ful per­son­al­i­ty.
• Vic­to­ry over the mind. When our brain starts to work hard, it can start giv­ing false sig­nals. The mind is try­ing to lead us astray. He shouts: “Don’t rush to do it today, you’ll still have time, you’re too tired!” Non­sense, he is just try­ing to deceive you and make you lazy with him. Don’t give in. Silence the voice of lazi­ness in your head once and for all. And in order to have enough time and ener­gy for every­thing, always leave min­utes in your sched­ule for a break — this stage is no less impor­tant than the work itself. Do not over­do it in your desire to move for­ward, but do not mark time.
• More pos­i­tive. The key to suc­cess­ful per­son­al growth is a pos­i­tive atti­tude and thoughts. Don’t let your­self think bad. Put a bar­ri­er to all gloomy thoughts. Togeth­er with them, all fears will leave you, inse­cu­ri­ty will recede, and the under­stand­ing will come that you are capa­ble of any­thing. Not only you, but also the world around you will begin to change for the bet­ter.
• Clos­ing the cir­cle. Change your social cir­cle. Throw out of your life every­one who pulls you down: gos­sips, whin­ers, losers should be left in the past. Com­mu­ni­cate only with those who, like you, are tuned in to a pos­i­tive wave. Share pos­i­tive ener­gy with each oth­er.

The main thing in the tech­nol­o­gy of increas­ing one’s own devel­op­ment is dai­ly prac­tice. The tech­nique for com­plet­ing each step is sim­ple — none of them can be post­poned until lat­er. To over­come the psy­cho­log­i­cal bar­ri­er, first try to devel­op your own set of exer­cis­es and per­form them accord­ing to your own tech­nique.

The devel­op­ment of the spir­it is impos­si­ble with­out the devel­op­ment of the body. Even if while your appear­ance is far from per­fect and going to the gym is tor­ture for you, start putting your­self in order at home. The first week, do 20 tilts and 10 squats, then increase the num­ber of sets. Do not wor­ry if at first the move­ments will be dif­fi­cult, and the whole process will not look very pre­sentable. Very soon the body will become more toned, and a trained spir­it will final­ly allow you to cope with all the com­plex­es and buy a sub­scrip­tion to a fit­ness cen­ter.

Do not for­get Prop­er nutri­tion and walks in the fresh air. Both help the brain work more effi­cient­ly. As for oth­er ways to con­quer your­self, one of the most effec­tive and eas­i­est meth­ods to quick­ly get what you want is to visu­al­ize what you want. Often men­tal­ly imag­ine what you are striv­ing for: a large office with mahogany fur­ni­ture, a huge bank account, a red busi­ness class car or a prince on a white horse. The clear­er your ideas about the dream are, the soon­er it will come true.

First, let’s fig­ure out what it is and what affir­ma­tions are for. The word comes from the Latin affir­ma­tio, which trans­lates as “con­fir­ma­tion”. An affir­ma­tion is a short phrase that must be repeat­ed many times in order to believe and feel every word.

For peo­ple brought up on Sovi­et films, per­haps the most famous affir­ma­tion is the phrase of the hero­ine Iri­na Muravy­o­va, which she had to repeat reg­u­lar­ly. She sound­ed like this: “I am the most charm­ing and attrac­tive.” For you, appear­ance is not an object of dreams, so start sug­gest­ing to your­self, and at the same time to the Uni­verse, that you are the smartest and rich­est, lucky and resource­ful. It’s up to you to decide what to be.

One of the most pop­u­lar and enter­tain­ing books for those who have decid­ed to embark on the path of per­son­al devel­op­ment is Amer­i­can author Adam Kurtz. A suc­cess­ful artist and graph­ic design­er from New York offers read­ers a diary for cre­ative peo­ple - 1 page per day. On each — a task that is not like anoth­er, push­ing to new actions, obser­va­tions, devel­op­ing cer­tain skills. On Mon­day, you will be asked to tell about one of your child­hood birth­days, on Tues­day — to draw an ele­phant, on Wednes­day — to write an essay on a free top­ic. Such a self-devel­op­ment guide for begin­ners can be a great help.

The book Be Your Best: How Ordi­nary Peo­ple Become Great is writ­ten by renowned busi­ness coach and strate­gist Dan Wald­schmidt. After ana­lyz­ing his life path, Dan iden­ti­fied 4 qual­i­ties that suc­cess­ful peo­ple always have. If you want to know which ones, go to the book­store, where you will sure­ly find a lot of inter­est­ing lit­er­a­ture that will help your self-devel­op­ment. Remem­ber that any book can help you become bet­ter, smarter, kinder.

The same goes for good films. To get start­ed, watch the Amer­i­can tape “The Pur­suit of Hap­py­ness.” Despite the fact that the movie was released back in 2006, it does not cease to be one of the most pop­u­lar among view­ers, espe­cial­ly those who want to believe in them­selves. The main idea is that any­one can real­ize even the most dar­ing dream.