10 Simple Steps to Kickstart Your Personal Growth Journey

So, you know in your heart that it’s time to focus on you and level up your life, but it’s been tough getting started with and staying committed and now you need to know how to kickstart your personal growth. I was right there with you until after years of frustration and lack of fulfillment, I discovered that personal development is a marathon, not a sprint.

It can feel so overwhelming to try to improve every area of your life all at once. Mental-, physical-, and emotional/spiritual- health, relationships, career, home life, finances, planning for the future…there is a lot that goes into personal development.

From personal experience, I can tell you, trying to change everything all at once isn’t the answer to successful personal growth. You’ll end up burnt out and feeling even less confident and optimistic than when you started.

Instead, kickstart your self-development by committing to the basics. Bit by bit, you can find more energy and momentum toward achieving your wildest dreams. But for now, let’s start with 10 tiny things you can do today to kickstart your personal growth and wake up tomorrow feeling one step closer to where you want to be.

What Is Personal Growth?

Personal growth is intentionally improving your habits and mindset to become more like the person you want to be. Personal growth can include changes to any area of your life including your mental health, physical health, emotional/spiritual health, finances, relationships, self-actualization, communication, etc.

10 Tiny Things You Can Do To Kickstart Your Personal Growth Today

Delete distracting apps off your phone

Let’s face it, we all spend too much time on our phones. And really, what are any of the apps we spend time on contributing to our well-being or self-development? Not much. Try deleting at least one app off your phone that you know you spend too much time on. This is a great tiny step to kickstart your personal development because it will free up some time, improve your mental health, and encourage you the replace the habit with something else (like reading, a language app, etc.)

Don’t drink alcohol

I’m certainly not here to tell you that the only way to reach your goals is by becoming totally straight-edge. But I am here to remind you that alcohol makes us less effective people. If you have a glass of wine or a beer around 6pm every evening, I can almost guarantee you’re not doing anything productive that moves the needle on your personal growth after that. Plus, the day after drinking, we feel less well-rested, more anxious, and less optimistic about the day ahead of us. If you really want to set yourself up for success, skipping the drink tonight is a great way to set the stage for tomorrow.

Write down your goals

There is power in writing things down. People who write down their goals are 1.2 to 1.4 times more likely to actually achieve them! Not only will writing down your goals help you to be more successful down the road, but it will help remind you what’s important to you and hopefully inspire you into action today. Personal growth happens in baby steps but it’s easier to know what steps to take when you have a clear big-picture.

Once you’ve written down your goals, try writing a Personal Why Statement for each one in order to give them more weight. Check out this article to get started: What’s Your Why? How To Write A Strong Personal Why Statement (With Examples)

Wash your sheets and make your bed

Although we don’t tend to give it much thought, the way that we begin and end our days is important. How you feel when you’re dozing off at night will determine how restful your sleep is, and the way you feel when you first open your eyes in the morning tends to set the tone for the whole day. Therefore, if we have an uncomfortable or stressful sleeping environment, we’re making personal growth an uphill battle that we’re trying to win while exhausted, irritable, and unfocused.

Washing your sheets and making your bed is a powerful way to kickstart your personal development that will allow you to go to sleep and wake up feeling more ready to take on your goals.

Go to bed earlier

Going to bed earlier is the second bedtime-related tip that I’m including because it pays substantial dividends. If you want to know how to kickstart your personal growth, first know that sleep is king (and queen). We become exponentially more effective when we’re well-rested. If you want to do the easiest possible thing to set yourself up for success tomorrow, get more sleep. Go to bed just a little bit earlier and you’ll be amazed how much more energy you have to give to your personal development tomorrow.

Research health challenges

Sometimes all it takes to spark a little motivation to get things done is to see other people doing it. Take a look online at some of the health challenges people are participating in and see if any light your fire. Just be careful not to mistake a fad diet for a health challenge.

One of my favorites, and the one that kickstarted my own personal development journey is the 75 Hard Challenge invented by Andy Frisella. You can read my review of the 75 Hard here!

Turn off the tv

Much like my assumption that once you pour a drink in the evening your productivity for the day is over, the same stands for watching TV. Once we turn it on, it’s really hard to turn off a favorite show until there’s something that forces us to.

Did you know the typical American watches three hours of tv per day? Imagine if you spent even half that time doing something for your personal growth. Your mental, physical, and emotional/spiritual health would improve drastically.

Eat fruits and veggies

Including a few different fruits and veggies in your diet today will give you a huge variety of naturally derived vitamins and nutrients that your body might be craving. Our bodies are complex, sensitive chemistry projects. Maybe the fatigue, apathy, lack of focus, anxiety, etc. that you’ve been feeling has really just been your body’s cry for nutrients. Plus, eating fruits and veggies leads to better digestion and better digestion makes us feel, well…better.

Stretch

Sometimes when we get into a slump where we’re not practicing great self-care, even just a little bit of movement or exercise can sound really hard. Just remember, the first time is always the hardest. Just like in physics, “a body in motion stays in motion, a body at rest stays at rest.” You don’t have to go out and sprint around the block as your first introduction back to good exercise habits. Start small. Start easy. Trust that a short stretching session today will lead to a less painful stretching session tomorrow (or maybe even a walk? Gasp.)

Be intentional about who you spend your time around

Do you ever notice that after spending time with certain people you always feel a certain way? Maybe one group of friends always leaves you feeling down on yourself and irritable but another group makes you feel adventurous and valued.

Today, make intentional choices about who you spend your time around. The goal is to end the day feeling better than you started so that tomorrow, you get to start from one rung higher on the self-development ladder. Who we spend our time around makes a huge difference to how we feel and when I finally committed to my own personal growth, I had to make major changes to my relationships and boundaries.

If you’re ready to kickstart your personal growth, try any or all of these tips and see if you feel motivated to keep going. Personal development is a lifelong journey! It’s important to keep it fun and interesting. Which of these tips are you most likely to try?