I am so stoked to share about a few different elements of personal development today. We’ll look into: Why personal development, how to incorporate it into your life and how stay in alignment with your learning style. Yes, we are talking, learning styles! That’s gonna be super helpful for you to think about! It will also help when it comes to your own marketing and what you need to grow in your life and business.
Why Personal Development
I wanna talk about why personal development, because I know whenever I started building, These are just a few of the reasons that come to my mind.
Firstly, when you’re building a personal brand, YOU are the brand. Part of showing up online in an appropriately vulnerable way, no matter what your niche is, is showing your journey. It’s about continuing to grow along the path that you’ve set yourself on that your ideal client avatar is on themselves. Remember, you can’t inspire unless you yourself are inspired.
There’s another reason for us lady entrepreneurs to invest our time in personal development. It is, by nature, the ups and downs of being an entrepreneur. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a ton of friends who are entrepreneurs in my day to day life. Sometimes it can feel a little bit lonely or like no one understands exactly what it is that you’re going through. As an entrepreneur, when everything is on your shoulders, there is a lot of pressure. The more that we can nourish and pour into ourselves, the better.
The last reason I’m gonna give you for why do personal development is just to see growth over time. It’s fun to look back and think, wow, I never would’ve had this perspective, self awareness or skillset had I not taken some time to develop and grow with intention. It’s just a fun process. I think that’s really exciting to be able to continually expand. It’s exciting for your audience too, because it inspires them.
Incorporating Personal Development
Let’s talk about things to consider when it comes to incorporating personal development as a routine practice in your life.
The first is really your season of life. What is it that you are growing through? If you are working on your personal, then whether there’s ups or downs, you’re gonna be growing through it all, which is also very exciting. Consider your season of life. Are you working full time? Have kids and are building your side hustle? Taking your business full time and don’t necessarily have a ton of extra time?
I remember thinking that I had to do personal development. If I didn’t, my business was gonna fall apart. There was so much pressure. I want you to think about yourself and what feels good, because you want to have your brand and business in alignment with what feels good to you.
In general, if you have things aligned to your personality, preferences, gifts and skillsets, you’re going to be so much more likely to want to do the work. Personal development is such a big part of building your brand and yourself, because YOU are the brand. You are the biggest asset in your business.
Learning Styles
Now, I’m going to share about learning styles and some different types of personal development that would be well suited each different learning styles. If you’re not sure what your learning style is, I hope that I can give you a little bit of a description of each of the main four types of learning styles. There’s actually more than this, but these are the four main, so you should fall predominantly into one of these areas. We’ve got kinesthetic, auditory, visual and reading and writing. Hopefully you can figure out which one you are, if you don’t already know.
Kinesthetic Learners
So kinesthetic learners, this is someone who’s hands on and they are gonna, when they’re engaging their senses during personal development. So as a kinesthetic learner, you may be gravitating towards things like maybe yoga or guided meditation where you’re hearing messages. You’re hearing things that are inspiring to you that are helping you to center yourself. But you’re also engaging your body at this same time.
A lot of kinesthetic learners enjoy things like Bible journaling. If you read the Bible, getting a journaling style Bible where you can draw on the margins can engage your senses. If you’re listening to a podcast, watching a video or reading, you can have a scented candle with some music going. Engaging your senses makes this a whole experience for you.
If you’re a kinesthetic learner, pen and paper journaling is gonna be really important for you versus taking notes in your phone. Having that physical element is going to be something that would be a great practice for you when it comes to personal development. Incorporating some of those and always making sure that there’s a hands on components will really help you to thrive.
Auditory Learners
Auditory is going to be someone who prefers listening to information that’s presented to them vocally. They learn best by listening to a lecture or podcast. They’re going to do best when it’s just auditory input.
They might also, strangely enough, enjoy reading aloud to themselves too. Remember, you may not have a strength of a certain learning style, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t like auditory information. It may just not be your best way to learn. So as an example, some of the larger classes I went at UC Davis had professors that didn’t really notice if you were there or not. The professor would simply stand and deliver a lecture with no visual information paired with it. I just knew I could go home, read the chapters and do just fine on the exams. I would try and take notes, but my brain wasn’t able to do two things at once. For me, auditory is a strength as far as my learning styles.
Another example of something that would work well for an auditory learner are audible books. You can get the audible app and, I think, you get three free credits a month. That is a really easy way to incorporate personal development into your daily life, because you can just pop in an AirPod and listen to a podcast or an audible book while you’re doing housework, cooking dinner or whatever. here’s all kinds of opportunities where you can just listen to something.
Visual Learners
Next up we’ve got visual learners. They’re gonna be better able to retain information or grow through personal development best when it’s presented in a graphic depiction. Things like infographics, charts, graphs, symbols and diagrams will be super helpful for you. If you’re a visual learner, you may love infographics and things where you can see little bits of information. When it comes to your own personal development, you can actually take things that you’re listening to or reading and put them into some type of graphic or image for yourself.
I’m not necessarily a visual learner, but I do love a good flow chart. You know, where you have sort of one central concept and then you’re kind of mind mapping things off. That’s really helpful. When my clients are trying to figure out the common denominator between their brand pillars, I’ll walk them through an exercise where they are literally mapping out the commonalities and circling things. For visual learners, you’re gonna want to do that for yourself with your personal development.
Reading and Writing Learners
Lastly, there are the reading and writing learners who are people who are going to do best and succeed when it comes to learning and retaining information through things like worksheets and note taking. To retain information, you need that anchor of writing and you have a strength in reading. If you can see the words, you can read the words and then write them down. That is going to be your powerhouse combo. If you are reading and writing learner, reading blogs, reading books, and journaling is going to be huge for you.
Having that written anchor, especially if you’re listening to something auditory like a podcast, synthesizing that information through taking down some notes is gonna really help you retain that information. When we’re talking about personal development, that’s what we want, right? Now you may not always have time for that, but I’m just giving you examples of things that you may want to incorporate to be really intentional. This may not be an everyday thing, but definitely weekly whenever you get a chance to really get that quality personal development time in.
My Personal Development Journey
I wasn’t always aligned with my schedule, my learning style, all of the factors that we’ve talked about up to this point. So I want to point out why that is important and why all these factors are important. Of course, part of personal development is looking back and reflecting on what worked and what didn’t work. I’m not totally discounting the full experience, but I do want to share my experience to hopefully save you some time and make your personal development even better.
I didn’t do any personal developments for my first year of business, because I had a newborn, was exclusively nursing and then pumping for most of that year. I thought personal development was kind of new age, like self-help, and didn’t really get the concept. Nobody I knew was doing personal development. So I did not do it at all. I wish I started doing it as soon as I started my journey. Personal development has literally led to making huge life changes.
In 2017
Then, in 2017 I started doing a morning routine and did attribute a lot of my growth in my business to this morning routine. Looking back, I don’t know that it was the morning routine. I think it was being intentional and investing time in growing myself, which did in turn strengthen me as an entrepreneur. I was very focused on learning new skill sets in business. It was definitely something I needed to do, but I also desperately needed to fill my cup in other ways.
2019-2021
Towards the end of 2019, stopped doing my morning routine. Instead, I started listening to a lot of auto books in the shower. Audible books and listening to podcasts became a really big thing. Again, that’s not my best way to learn, but it was what worked for me at the time. It was a way that I could fit in feeding my mind and it helped me cope in that season.
Towards the end of 2019 through 2021, I was in a season where I was more focused on learning about mental health, healing and childhood wounds.
I worked with therapists and a life coach and I was in kind of a very different mode and it was completely transformative the type of personal development that I was doing, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t focused on business as it was before. It was really truly, even my life coach that I worked with. She is a business and life coach and I had the biggest years of my business in 20. I doubled my income in 2020 and then continued on that same trajectory in 2021. I really attribute it to healing things that I needed to heal within myself so that I could finally get into alignment with business and life and do what I’m meant to do. That’s why I’m so passionate about helping other female entrepreneurs to do that, to have the whole life up level where if you need that type of personal development focus on that, it translates into other areas.
Being Authentic
I can attribute the major growth in my income and impact to really working on myself, growing, becoming more authentic and being my actual self. It can take a lot of changes and hard work. It can also be really uncomfortable. but if you hear nothing else from this episode, hear that, give yourself that opportunity to have those breakthroughs. If you need to invest time and money in coaching counseling, whatever you need to do to heal and breakthrough and be your most authentic self man, that’s the whole life up level right there. So 2021 to 2022, which is where we’re at now. It’s interesting because now that I’m not so much in a survival mode like personal development for, you know, mental, mental, spiritual, emotional survival now personal development is something that I incorporate into part of my work.
For me, as a reading and writing type of learner, it’s reading something and then writing. Usually I turn them into podcasts, blog posts and social media posts. It about finding ways to regurgitate the information I’ve read and reflected on. Now it’s scheduled as a non-negotiable, because I know that I need that for myself. You can’t inspire if you aren’t inspired. It’s part of my work, which is really cool because now I look at it in a different way. It’s like an appointment for myself, but also for my audience. This is how I keep myself fresh and have new or expanded ideas for best practices that are current.
The Way You Read
I used to have this unwritten, unspoken rule that I needed to finish one book, podcast or audible book before moving to another. I would sometimes start a book and not necessarily like it, but I would muscle through it. Then, take a ton of time off from doing any type of personal development. The new rule is life is too short to finish books that are not resonating or that you just don’t like. Right now, I think I have five different books going and they’re different types of books. Some are more business focused, nonfiction, fiction, or even more focused on healing and personal development. I have all different types going because those different things feed my soul.
I’ll read a little bit of each one in a rotation and I love it. It works for me. I don’t have a pressure to finish one thing before moving on. It’s just sort of whatever I’m needing for that day. So anyway, if you need the permission to read more than one thing at a time or a certain type of personal development or whatever it may be, you have permission as Mavericks. I know I don’t have to tell you twice, but in all things, don’t be afraid to be yourself. Don’t be afraid to make adjustments to get back into alignment. I promise, you’ll be your most effective in all areas the more aligned you are.
Let’s wrap It Up
I hope you incorporate personal development in a way that’s gonna be unique and effective for you. Also in a way that honors your schedule and the season you’re in. Remember, you don’t have to do anything any certain way. It is up to you to!
If you are in my Facebook group, Elevate Academy, hop in there and share your learning style and what types of personal development you love. I would really love to hear from you! I hope this gave you some ideas for personal development that will be most in alignment for you.
Want to hear more about personal development and much more? You can checkout THIS EPISODE along with ALL the episodes of the Maverick Momprenuer HERE.
