Personal Development Plan

Personal Development Plan

A personal development plan is a document laid out by the writer to describe their current skills and qualities while describing how they plan to improve them.

PDPs can then be reviewed at a set date, allowing the writer to confirm whether or not they have reached their goals.

Strengths Achieved 

I am a positive thinker, usually viewing situations with an optimistic approach.

I believe I was successful in achieving this strength because I met my goal of improving my ability to view positive aspects to any situation.

I met this goal by rigourously reminding myself to maintain a positive attitude in all things, keeping this at the forefront of my mind as often as possible.
Additionally I created an audio recording on my phone which I then set as my alarm and to play occasionally throughout the day.
This recording simply acted as a further reminder to "look on the bright side", further helping to keep it at the forefront.

In order to meet my goals in the future I would make increased use of the aforementioned recording techniques, attempting to further integrate it into my daily life in various ways.
I would also be interested in reading a variety of philisophical works on the topic of positive thinking, which would open me up to new ways of perceiving situations again.
I would also attempt to force myself into negative situations as a test to see how well I can maintain a positive attitude.

I feel that being an aural learner was a strong advantage in achieving this strength as one of the most effective measures I took was the audio recording, which I feel was very effective. Hearing it first thing in the morning and playing it while I fell asleep helped me passively absorb the message and so achieve my goal.

I’m good at playing guitar, able to play most songs that I choose to learn with relative ease.

I believe I was successful in achieving this strength because I met my goals and have dedicated time to practice, learning four new songs so far.

I met this goal by taking it more seriously than I previously did, dedicating at least four hours a week to practising playing songs rather than simply playing bits and pieces from songs I liked when I felt like it as a hobby.
I learnt those songs by looking up their tabs online, utilising the website Songsterr when possible to find tabs that can be listened to and played along with.

In order to meet my goals in the future I would purchase either software or a subscription to songsterr or another similar utility, as that would offer me a massive database of tabs that can be listened to, which I find very easy to learn from thanks to my preferred learning style.

I feel that being an aural learner was incredibly helpful, as playing guitar is heavily sound based. I found the audio tabs to be an immensely useful tool when learning as I was able to simply listen to several riffs and pick them up by ear.

I’m tolerant of others, even if they are annoying, to a degree.

I believe I was successful in achieving this strength as I met my goal of improving my tolerance to the degree where I can stay relatively calm even when in an incredibly annoying situation.

I met this goal by practising zoning out and counting to ten when I find myself becoming irate. Additionally I practised replaying songs that I know every beat to in my head, allowing me to always have metaphorical earphones to block out annoyances.

In order to meet my goals in the future I would dedicate more time to practising methods of staying calm so that I can hopefully one day master them and never again become annoyed by others. I could also incorporate this with my goal to stay positive when reading books on the subject, as the two are relatively interlinked.

I feel that being an aural learner helped with achieving my goal, as it made the mental earphone techinque much easier to learn by making the details of songs very easy to remember clearly.

 

Weaknesses Achieved

I tend to lie in bed all day and am incredibly lazy in general.

I believe I was successful in achieving this weakness as I met my goal of increasing my level of activity in daily life

I met this goal by becoming drastically more active over the past several months, I now get out of bed much earlier on weekends and walk at least 3 1/2 miles daily, in addition to other work and activities throughout the day. This is thanks in part to improved weather and mostly to a change at home meaning I now have to walk myself home from tech, essentially forcing me into activity.

In order to meet my goals in the future I would allocate time to proper, rigourous exercise. To this end I could join a gym or take up an outdoor sport or acitvity. This would again increase my level of activity and ensure that I am both healthy and not lazy.

I feel that being an aural learner only helped a small amount with this goal as the only sound related aspect of it has been listening to music when walking or doing outdoor activities.

I occasionally resort to smoking tobacco.

I believe I was successful in achieving this weakness as I met my goal of reducing my tobacco usage, quite drastically.

I met this goal by purchasing a small vaporiser, meaning I no longer need to use tobacco as I can now vaporise a selection of herbal mixes instead.

In order to meet my goals in the future all I need to do is keep the vaporiser, meaning I'll very rarely, if ever use tobacco again.

I feel that being an aural learner played no part in achieving this goal.

My default response to most situations is a highly sarcastic one.

I believe I was successful in achieving this weakness as I met my goal of using less sarcasm in conversation, generally improving my personality.

I met this goal by making attempts to become more tolerant and positive, leading me to consider what I say before speaking; this has resulted in a marked decrease in sarcasm over the course of this year. I also believe that my aforementioned goal to be increasingly optimistic played a role in tempering my sarcastic nature, as the more positive I am the less I even consider a sarcastic response.

In order to meet my goals in the future I simply need to keep practising maintaining a positive attitude and thinking before I speak so that I will be less likely to think of something sarcastic to say and in the event that I do I will be more likely to think about it before actually saying anyhting.

I feel that being an aural learner was very effective in achieving this weakness as one of the main techniques that has helped was the recording that I made to help achieve my positive thinking goal. It has had a knock on effect that has left me less sarcastic overall, I believe it was that effective because of how easily I absorb information aurally compared to other methods.