Personal Development:

Introduction
This article needs attention from an expert in Psychology or Personal life explain the issue with the article Personal life (or their Portals) may be able to help recruit an expert.
An individual's personality is an aggregate conglomeration of the decisions they have made throughout their life and the memory of the experiences to which these decisions led. There are inherent natural, genetic, and environmental factors that contribute to the development of our personality. According to process of socialization, "personality also colors our values, beliefs, and expectations. Hereditary factors that contribute to personality development do so as a result of interactions with the particular social environment in which people live." There are several personality types as Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers illustrated in several personalities typology tests, which are based on Carl Jung's school of Analytical psychology. However, these tests only provide enlightenment based on the preliminary insight scored according to the answers judged by the parameters of the test.
Other theories on personality development include Jean Piaget's stages of development, Erik Erikson's stages of psychosocial development, and personality development in Sigmund Freud's theory being formed through the interaction of id, ego, and super-ego.

Speak to almost any volunteer and they will tell you that they get at least as much out of giving time as they put in.
Some of this might be hard to quantify – meeting new people, the satisfaction of having made a worthwhile contribution – but other benefits are more tangible. Volunteering can help you learn new skills and get qualifications and experience. It can also help develop your knowledge in different areas of work and life. Career development
For lots of careers in areas like health and social care and the environment, volunteering is an important way of getting the necessary experience. If you have a career in mind try to find out exactly what it is that you need on your CV to get on the right course or apply for jobs. Then see what volunteering opportunities are available that can help you.
When applying to volunteer, don't be afraid to be upfront about the fact that you are career-minded. As long as you're prepared to commit a certain amount of time as a volunteer then most organizations won't mind that you are partly motivated by the desire to boost your CV. Of course, if your motivations are entirely selfish that might soon change, but if you show willing then they should be able to help you get the skills and experience you require.
If you don't have a specific idea about what career you want to pursue, volunteering can still be useful. Just searching through the opportunities on do-it.org.uk will show you a broad range of organizations and kinds of work.
You can use volunteering as a chance to try different things. Again, organizations will expect a certain level of commitment. But if you can find the time to try several opportunities it will give you a great insight into what it's like to work in those sectors.
Read more about how to boost your career through volunteering. Creating an opportunity
If you can't find a suitable opportunity on do-it.org.uk or via your local Volunteer Centre it might be worth trying to create an opportunity for yourself.
For example, if you want experience as a marketing volunteer but can't find an opportunity listed in your area, contact organizations that interest you and ask if they can make use of your skills.
The key thing is finding the right person to speak to within the organization. They might have someone who manages all the volunteers (usually called a Volunteer Manager or Coordinator), or you might have to speak to the head of the department in which you want to volunteer.
Be prepared for disappointment. Lots of organizations, even charities, might not have considered taking on volunteers in the areas you are interested in and they might not be able to accommodate you. But don't be put off – there are always more organizations to try. A broader view
Personal development concerns more than just your career, of course. Any aspect of volunteering could offer you something, even just the experience of working alongside new people.
There are ways of getting the benefits formalized, however. For example, as Tom Hardwick explains, the Duke of Edinburgh Award has a strong volunteering element and can be a lot of fun, too.
Education and training can also help to give focus to personal development. There's a growing number of courses that ask students to draw on their experience as volunteers in order to get either vocational or academic qualifications. Passion over planning
Whether you are looking to get a degree or a job, or just keen to try a new challenge, the basic advice is the same: find a volunteering opportunity that really interests you.
You might be volunteering with a big national organization or a small local one, and it might be the cause that enthuses you or the specific role, but you will still get much more out of giving your time if it is something you really want to do.
Volunteering has a habit of taking people in unexpected directions. Sometimes passion can bring better results than planning.

Personal development includes activities that improve awareness and identity, develop talents and potential, build human capital and facilitate employability, enhance quality of life and contribute to the realization of dreams and aspirations. The concept is not limited to self-help but includes formal and informal activities for developing others in roles such as teacher, guide, counselor, manager, life coach or mentor. When personal development takes place in the context of institutions, it refers to the methods, programs, tools, techniques, and assessment systems that support human development at the individual level in organizations.[1]
The concept covers a wider field than self-development or self-help: personal development also includes developing other people. This may take place through roles such as those of a teacher or mentor, either through a personal competency (such as the skill of certain managers in developing the potential of employees) or a professional service (such as providing training, assessment or coaching).
Beyond improving oneself and developing others, personal development is a field of practice and research. As a field of practice it includes personal development methods, learning programs, assessment systems, tools and techniques. As a field of research, personal development topics increasingly appear in scientific journals, higher education reviews, management journals and business books.
Any sort of development — whether economic, political, biological, organizational or personal — requires a framework if one wishes to know whether change has actually occurred. In the case of personal development, an individual often functions as the primary judge of improvement, but validation of objective improvement requires assessment using standard criteria. Personal development frameworks may include goals or benchmarks that define the end-points, strategies or plans for reaching goals, measurement and assessment of progress, levels or stages that define milestones along a development path, and a feedback system to provide information on changes.
Personal development HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_dev has several business relationship formats of operating. The main ways are business-to-consumer and business-to-business. However, there are two newer ways increasing in prevalence: consumer-to-business and consumer-to-consumer.
The business-to-consumer market involves selling books, courses and techniques to individuals, such as: * newly-invented offerings such as: * fitness[citation needed] * beauty enhancement[citation needed] * weight loss[citation needed] * traditional[citation needed] practices such as: * yoga * martial arts * meditation
Some programs are delivered online and many include tools sold with a program, such as motivational books for self-help, recipes for weight-loss or technical manuals for yoga and martial-arts programs.
A partial list of personal development offerings on the business-to-individual market might include: * books * motivational speaking * e-Learning proograms * workshops * individual counseling * life coaching
The business-to-business market[edit]
The business-to-business market also involves programs - in this case ones sold to companies and to governments to assess potential, to improve effectiveness, to manage work-life balance or to prepare some entity for a new role in an organization. The goals of these programs are defined[by whom?] with the institution or by the institution and the results are assessed[by whom?][citationHYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed" needed]. With the acceptance of personal development as a legitimate field in higher education[citation needed], universities and business schools also contract programs to external specialist firms or to individuals.[citation needed]
A partial list of business-to-business programs might include: * courses and assessment systems for higher education organizations for their students * management services to employees in organizations through: * training * training and development programs * personal-development tools * self-assessment * feedback * coaching * mentoring
Some consulting firms specialize in personal development[3] but as of 2009 generalist firms operating in the fields of human resources, recruitment and organizational strategy have entered what they perceive as a growing market,[4] not to mention smaller firms and self-employed professionals who provide consulting, training and coaching.
Origins
Major religions, such as the Abrahamic and Indian religions, as well as New Age philosophies, have used practices such as prayer, music, dance, singing, chanting, poetry, writing, sports andmartial arts. These practices have various functions, such as health or aesthetic satisfaction, but they may also link to "final goals" of personal development such as discovering themeaningHYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning_of_life" of life or living good life (compare philosophy).
Michel Foucault describes in Care of the Self[5] the techniques of epimelia used in ancient Greece and Rome, which included dieting, exercise, sexual abstinence, contemplation, prayer and confession — some of which also became important practices within different branches of Christianity. In yoga, a discipline originating in India, possibly over 3000 years ago, personal-development techniques include meditation, rhythmic breathing, stretching and postures. Wushu and T'ai chi ch'uan utilise traditional Chinese techniques, including breathing and energyexercises, meditation, martial arts, as well as practices linked to traditional Chinese medicine, such as dieting, massage and acupuncture. In Islam, which arose almost 1500 years ago in the Middle East, personal development techniques include ritual prayer, recitation of the Qur'an, pilgrimage, fasting and tazkiyah (purification of the soul)
Two individual ancient philosophers stand out as major sources[citation needed] of what has become personal development in the 21st century, representing a Western tradition and an East Asian tradition. Elsewhere anonymous founders of schools of self-development appear endemic - note the traditions of the Indian sub-continent in this regard.
Personal development in psychology
Psychology became linked to personal development, not with the psychoanalysis of Freud (1856–1939) but starting[when?] with his contemporaries Alfred Adler (1870–1937) and Carl Jung (1875–1961).
Adler refused to limit psychology to analysis, making the important point that aspirations look forward and do not limit themselves to unconscious drives or to childhood experiences.[12] He also originated the concepts of lifestyle (1929 — he defined "lifestyle" as an individual's characteristic approach to life, in facing problems) and of self image[citation needed], a concept that influenced management under the heading of work-life balance[clarification needed].
Carl Gustav Jung made contributions to personal development with his concept of individuation, which he saw as the drive of the individual to achieve the wholeness and balance of the Self.[13]
Daniel Levinson (1920–1994) developed Jung’s early concept of "life stages" and included a sociological perspective. Levinson proposed that personal development come under the influence — throughout life — of aspirations, which he called "the Dream":
Whatever the nature of his Dream, a young man has the developmental task of giving it greater definition and finding ways to live it out. It makes a great difference in his growth whether his initial life structure is consonant with and infused by the Dream, or opposed to it. If the Dream remains unconnected to his life it may simply die, and with it his sense of aliveness and purpose.
Levinson’s model of seven life-stages has been considerably modified due to sociological changes] in the lifecycle.
Research on success in reaching goals, as undertaken by Albert HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bandura"Bandura (born 1925), suggested that self-HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-efficacy"efficacyHYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_development"[16] best explains why people with the same level of knowledge and skills get very different results. According to Bandura self-confidence functions as a powerful predictor of success because:[17] * it makes you expect to succeed * it allows you take risks and set challenging goals * it helps you keep trying if at first you don’t succeed * it helps you control emotions and fears when the going gets rough
In 1998 Martin Seligman won election to a one-year term as President of the American Psychological Association and proposed a new focus: on healthy individuals rather than on pathology:
We have discovered that there is a set of human strengths that are the most likely buffers against mental illness: courage, optimism, interpersonal skill, work ethic, hope, honesty and perseverance. Much of the task of prevention will be to create a science of human strength whose mission will be to foster these virtues in young people
Personal development in higher education
Personal development has been at the heart of education in the West in the form of the Greek philosophers and in the East with Confucius. Some peopleemphasize personal development as a part of higher education. Wilhelm von Humboldt, who founded the University of Berlin (since 1949: Humboldt University of Berlin) in 1810, made a statement interpretable as referring to personal development: … if there is one thing more than another which absolutely requires free activity on the part of the individual, it is precisely education, whose object it is to develop the individual.
During the 1960s a large increase in the number of students on American campuses led to research on the personal development needs of undergraduate students. Arthur HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Chickering"Chickering defined for young adults during their undergraduate years: * developing competence managing emotions * achieving autonomy and interdependence * developing mature interpersonal relationship * establishing identity * developing purpose * developing integrity
In the UK, personal development took a central place in university policy in 1997 when the declared that universities should go beyond academic teaching to provide students with personal development. In 2001 a Quality Assessment Agency for UK universities produced guidelines[23] for universities to enhance personal development as:
* a structured and supported process undertaken by an individual to reflect upon their own learning, performance and / or achievement and to plan for their personal, educational and career development;
* objectives related explicitly to student development; to improve the capacity of students to understand what and how they are learning, and to review, plan and take responsibility for their own learning
In the 1990s, business schools began to set up specific personal-development programs for leadership and career orientation and in 1998 the European Foundation for Management HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Foundation_for_Management_Development"Developmentset up the Equis accreditation system[24][dead link] which specified that personal development must form part of the learning process through internships, working on team projects and going abroad for work or exchange programs.[citation needed]
The first personal development certification required for business school graduation originated in 2002 as a partnership between Metizo,[25] a personal-development consulting firm, and the Euromed Management School[26] in Marseilles: students must not only complete assignments but also demonstrate self-awareness and achievement of personal-development competencies.
As an academic department personal development has become[when?] a specific discipline, usually associated with business schools.[27] As an area of research, personal development draws on links to other academic disciplines: * education for questions of learning and assessment * psychology for motivation and personality * sociology for identity and social networks * economics for human capital and economic value * philosophy for ethics and self-reflection
Personal development in the workplace[edit]
Abraham Maslow (1908–1970), proposed a hierarchy of needs with self actualization at the top, defined as:[28]
… the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.
Since Maslow himself believed that only a small minority of people self-actualize — he estimated one percent[29] — his hierarchy of needs had the consequence that organizations came to regard self-actualization or personal development as occurring at the top of the organizational pyramid, while job security and good working conditions would fulfill the needs of the mass of employees.[citation needed]
As organizations and labor markets became more global, responsibility for development shifted from the company to the individual.[clarification needed] In 1999 management thinker Peter HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Drucker"Druckerwrote in the Harvard Business Review:
We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity: if you’ve got ambition and smarts, you can rise to the top of your chosen profession, regardless of where you started out. But with opportunity comes responsibility. Companies today aren’t managing their employees’ careers; knowledge workers must, effectively, be their own chief executive officers. It’s up to you to carve out your place, to know when to change course, and to keep yourself engaged and productive during a work life that may span some 50 years.[30]
Management professors Sumantra Ghoshal of the London Business School and Christopher Bartlett of the Harvard Business School wrote in 1997 that companies must manage people individually and establish a new work contract.[31] On the one hand the company must allegedly recognize that personal development creates economic value: "market performance flows not from the omnipotent wisdom of top managers but from the initiative, creativity and skills of all employees".
On the other hand, employees should recognize that their work includes personal development and "... embrace the invigorating force of continuous learning and personal development".
The 1997 publication of Ghoshal's and Bartlett's Individualized Corporation corresponded to a change in career development from a system of predefined paths defined by companies, to a strategy defined by the individual and matched to the needs of organizations in an open landscape of possibilities.[citation needed] Another contribution to the study of career development came with the recognition that women’s careers show specific personal needs and different development paths from men. The 2007 study of women's careers by Sylvia Ann Hewlett Off-Ramps and On-Ramps[32] had a major impact on the way companies view careers.[citation needed] Further work on the career as a personal development process came from study by Herminia Ibarra in herWorking Identity on the relationship with career change and identity change,[33] indicating that priorities of work and lifestyle continually develop through life.
Personal development programs in companies fall into two categories: the provision of employee benefits and the fostering of development strategies.
Employee benefits have the purpose of improving satisfaction, motivation and loyalty.[citation needed] Employee surveys may help organizations find out personal-development needs, preferences and problems, and they use the results to design benefits programs.[citation needed] Typical programs in this category include: * work-life balance * time management * stress management * health programs * counseling
Many such programs resemble programs that some employees might conceivably pay for themselves outside work: yoga, sports, martial arts, money-management, positive psychology, NLP, etc.[citation needed]
As an investment, personal development programs have the goal of increasing human capital or improving productivity, innovation or quality. Proponents actually see such programs not as a cost but as an investment with results linked to an organization’s strategic development goals. Employees gain access to these investment-oriented programs by selection according to the value and future potential of the employee, usually defined in a talent management architecture including populations such as new hires, perceived high-potential employees, perceived key employees, sales staff, research staff and perceived future leaders.[citation needed] Organizations may also offer other (non-investment-oriented) programs to many or even all employees. Typical programs[which?]focus on career-development, personal effectiveness, teamwork, and competency-development. Personal development also forms an element in management tools such as personal development planning, assessing one's level of ability using a competency grid, or getting feedback from a 360 questionnaire filled in by colleagues at different levels in the organization.
Criticism[edit]
Scholars have targeted self-help claims as misleading and incorrect. In 2005, Steve Salerno portrayed the American self-help movement—he uses the acronym SHAM: the Self-Help and Actualization Movement—not only as ineffective in achieving its goals, but also as socially harmful. 'Salerno says that 80 percent of self-help and motivational customers are repeat customers and they keep coming back whether the program worked for them or not'. Others similarly point out that with self-help books 'supply increases the demand...The more people read them, the more they think they need them...more like an addiction than an alliance'. Self-help writers have been described as working 'in the area of the ideological, the imagined, the narrativized....although a veneer of scientism permeates the[ir] work, there is also an underlying armature of moralizing'.
See also[edit] * Coaching * End-of-history illusion * Holland Codes * Know thyself * Life planning * Self-actualization * Self-help * Training and development * Human Potential Movement * Micropsychoanalysis
References[edit]
tJump up^ Bob Aubrey, Managing Your Aspirations: Developing Personal erprise in the Global Workplace McGraw-Hill 2010 ISBN 978-0-07-131178-6, page 9 * Jump upHYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_development"^ Some sources recognize personal development as an "industry": see for example Cullen, John G. (2009). "How to sell your soul and still get into Heaven: Steven Covey's epiphany-inducing technology of effective selfhood". Human Relations (SAGE Publications) 62 (8): 1231–1254. doi:10.1177/0018726709334493. ISSN 0018-7267. Retrieved 2010-04-28. "The growth of the personal development industry and its gurus continues to be resisted across a number of genres." and Grant, Anthony M.; Blythe O'Hara (November 2006). "The self-presentation of commercial Australian life coaching schools: Cause for concern?" (PDF).International Coaching Psychology Review (Leicester: The British Psychological Society) 1 (2): 21–33 [29]. ISSN 1750-2764. Retrieved 2010-04-28. "[...] much of the commercial life coaching and personal development industry is grounded more on hyperbole and rhetoric than solid behavioural science (Grant, 2001) [...]" and Grant, Anthony M.; Michael J. Cavanagh (December 2007). "Evidence-based coaching: Flourishing or languishing?". Australian Psychologist (Australian Psychological Society) 42 (4): 239–254.doi:10.1080/00050060701648175. ISSN 1742-9544. Retrieved 2010-04-28. "To flourish, coaching psychology needs to remain clearly differentiated from the frequently sensationalistic and pseudoscientific facets of the personal development industry while at the same time engaging in the development of the wider coaching industry." * Jump upHYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_development"^ Firms such as PDI, DDI, Metizo, and FranklinCovey exemplify international personal-development firms working with companies for consulting, assessment and training. * Jump upHYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_development"^ Human-resources firms such as Hewitt, Mercer, Watson Wyatt Worldwide, the Hay HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hay_Group"Group;McKinsey and the Boston Consulting Group offer consulting in talent-development, andKornHYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korn/Ferry"/Ferry offers executive coaching. * Jump upHYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_development"^ Foucault, Michel, ed. (1986). Care of the Self 2. Random House. Translated from the FrenchLe Souci de Soi editions Gallimard 1984. Part Two of Foucault’s book describes the technique of caring for the soul falling in the category of epimelia from the Greek to the classic Roman period and on into the early stages of the age of Christianity. * Jump upHYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_development"^ Template:Reference is dead link Ventegodt, Søren; Joav Merrick, Niels Jørgen Andersen (Oct 2003). "Quality of Life Theory III. Maslow Revisited". The HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_ScientificWorldJournal"ScientificWorldJournal (Finland: Corpus Alienum Oy) (3): 1050–1057. doi:10.1100/tsw.2003.84. ISSN 1537-744X. Retrieved 2009-12-15. "In ancient India people talked about reaching the level of existence called 'sat-sit-ananda': beingness, wisdom and happiness as one."[dead link] * Jump upHYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_development"^ Nichomachean Ethics, translated by W.D.Ross, Basic Works of Aristotle, section 1142. Online in "The Internet Classics Archive of MIT": http://classics.mit.edu//Aristotle/nicomachaen.html * Jump upHYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_development"^ Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness, Cambridge University Press, discusses why the English word happiness does not describe Aristotle’s concept of eudaimonia, pages 1-6 * Jump upHYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_development"^ Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen identifies economic development with Aristotle’s concepts of individual development in his co-authored book written with Aristotle scholar Nussbaum:Nussbaum, Martha; Sen, Amartya, eds. (1993). The Quality of Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press.ISBN 0-19-828395-4.; as well as in his general book published a year after receiving the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998: Sen, Amartya (1999). Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. * Jump upHYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_development"^ Daniel Seligman explicitly identifies the goals of positive psychology with Aristotle’s idea of the "Good Life" and eudaimonia in Seligman, Martin E. P. (2002). Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment.New York: Free Press. ISBN 0-7432-2297-0 (Paperback edition, Free Press, 2004, ISBN 0-7432-2298-9). * Jump upHYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_development"^ Confucius, Great Learning, translated by James Legge. Provided online in The Internet Classics Archive of MIT. * Jump upHYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_development"^ Heinz Ansbacher and Rowena R Ansbacher (1964) Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler, Basic Books 1956. See especially chapter 3 on Finalism and Fiction and chapter 7 on the Style of Life. * Jump upHYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_development"^ Jung saw individuation as a process of psychological differentiation, having for its goal the development of the individual personality. C.G. Jung. Psychological Types. Collected Works, Vol.6., par. 757) * Daniel Levinson, Seasons of a Man’s Life, Ballantine Press, 1978, page 91-92 14 Gail Sheehy, New Passages, Random House 1995. Sheehy had written an earlier best-selling book, Passages popularizing Levinson’s stages; her second book demonstrated how far society and life stages had changed.
15. Gail Sheehy, New Passages, Random House 1995. Sheehy had written an earlier best-selling book, Passages popularizing Levinson’s stages; her second book demonstrated how far society and life stages had changed.