Can You Bring Personal Development Into Your Job?

What is personal development?

If you google it, you won’t find an easy definition. I define it simply as improving oneself. Continually, throughout life. Why? To be the best that you can be. You owe it to yourself, your loved ones, and the world at large. Someone said:

“The graveyard is the richest place in the whole world, because therein lie someone’s dreams of writing a bestselling novel, someone’s dreams of creating a real estate empire, someone’s dreams of earning millions of dollars and donating them all.”

Give shape to your dreams while you are alive. And personal development is the locomotive that will take you to the destination that is your dreamland.

My journey

I started on my personal development journey in 2013. I took 50% custody of the kids, and so for the other 50% of the time when I didn’t have kids with me, I suddenly found myself with the most precious commodity of all: free time!

That was the time I discovered podcasts, and that changed my life. One of the first podcasts I started listening to was Knowledge For Men, in which successful people shared the reasons for and paths to their success. That was the first time in my life that I realized that anyone (yes, including who we call “ordinary people”) can achieve success provided they follow the path. Every successful person had unique beginnings and a unique path, but the stories had one common theme - focus on being the best you can be. I was hooked!

Everyone on that podcast, in fact everyone in the personal development field, talked about following your passion, quitting your job and starting something of your own. That is the only true way to live, they claimed. I heard things like, J.O.B. means Just Over Broke, and a JOB means working for someone, which all the interviewees seemed to detest.

My entrepreneurship sojourn

In the spirit of following their advice, I looked around for my passion. I had been in the tech industry for about 15 years, and had always worked in a JOB. But now I wanted to try entrepreneurship. Although not very explicit, my underlying motivations for entrepreneurship were:

• Proving my worth to myself and to the world
• Achieving fame
• Earning money

My startup idea was to create an online platform where parents can interact with each other for kids’ activities. Kind of a meetup focused on kids activities. I created a business plan, attended several meetups to network with other wannabe entrepreneurs, looked for a developer, and finally ended up developing a web site on my own. Mind you, I wasn’t a developer so I spent about 6 months learning how to create a web site.

The job and personal development

Ultimately the idea did not work, mostly because I got into entrepreneurship for the wrong reasons, but fast forward to now, and I am working for a public company. I am much happier now in a JOB. And when I look back, I ask myself - I have learned a lot about personal development - can I apply those lessons in my job, even though I am no longer pursuing entrepreneurship like everyone recommends? The answer is a resounding yes. Let me share some examples.

“Your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development” – Jim Rohn

That’s what I heard from Peter Voogd on a podcast. And it stuck with me. In a job, far too many people focus on promotions, salary raises, and bonuses. I did too, for 15 years. If you’re like me, don’t blame yourself because no one teaches us how to be successful in our formative years. I now firmly believe that to be successful, you have to stop chasing it. See, the sentence itself says “to be successful”, not “to chase success”. To be successful, we have to shift our focus to creating value. In a job, you are creating value for the company. So the first step is to align yourself mentally with the vision of the company. It is important to be fired up about the vision (if you’re not, you should change your job). Once you have that in place, ask yourself what skills you need to create value for the company.

For example, I identify closely with the vision of my company, which is about stopping cyber criminals. I recently transitioned into Product Marketing, and the most important skill in my job is writing. Specifically, writing in a way that readers easily understand complex technical issues. So I found books, podcasts, blogs and courses on content marketing, and am using them to improve my skills. I am committed to continue developing my writing skills for years, maybe a decade. As you can see, this is not a short term game.

Success will follow.

To be successful, you truly have to believe in this. Improve yourself to create value, and success will follow.

Another skill that is important in virtually any job in the world is creating and maintaining relationships. For this, I am following Dale Carnegie’s classic book “How to win friends and influence people”. This book contains examples of people who became successful in their jobs using these principles. Like Charles Schwab, who was the first person to be paid a salary of a million dollars a year. I had read this book a few years ago, but hadn’t truly applied all of its principles. Now I am committed to applying them. What is my strategy? I read a new chapter every week. And then during the week I read the chapter summary every morning. In the evening, I reflect on how I applied the principles of the chapter in my life, including in my job. For example, this past week I read the chapter that talks about the importance of remembering and using people’s names. So during the week I made sure I remembered the names of everyone I came into contact with.

Develop the chosen skill. Master it. It will take years, maybe a decade, but stick to it.

Success will follow.

The last example of how personal development helps in the job is counter-intuitive. To be successful, you must develop your personal brand. Yes, you heard that right. You must develop a personal brand even if you are in a job. That doesn’t mean that you replace your company’s logo in the corporate brochure with your picture. It simply means spreading visibility and awareness in the organization about what who you are. There are lots of ways of doing this, especially in today’s digital age. If your organization uses social media within the organization, use it to update everyone about your goals, your latest projects, and your skills. Share helpful resources. Present your work at internal seminars. If an internal presentation platform doesn’t exist, either create it, or motivate other teams to create it.

People in the organization should know that if they need a specific skill, they can come to you. This is how you grow bigger than your job description.

Success will follow.

Once again, let me emphasize - this may take a long time. But persevere, and success will follow. You will be successful if you focus on improving yourself and your skills.

Change...

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” ― Rumi

I am truly passionate about personal development. I am on this journey. I haven’t reached all of my goals yet - far from it - but I have made significant progress. I encourage everyone to invest in themselves. Human progress in the past few centuries has been shaped by industrial revolution. In the last few decades it has been shaped by the power of computers. I believe that the twenty-first century will instead be powered by personal development. You can integrate personal development into your current pursuit of work, even if you do a job and plan to remain in a job. Go conquer the world, in your job!

This article first appeared on SuccessWithYourSoul.com

Images courtesy Pixabay, released under Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.