Hey guys and gals, welcome back to another episode of the Constructive Liberty Podcast. Today is Wednesday, January the 25th, 2023.

This is episode number 139. This episode, again, is brought to you by Empowering Forward Momentum, the men's online,

community that I'm developing where I help guys find purpose fulfill their God-given potential and reach the next level of growth and impact in their,

personal professional and spiritual lives. If that's something that interests you reach out to me coach at KennethEsh.com I will send you an invite,

link. Can't wait to welcome you to the group. Today we're talking about five reasons why you need a personal development plan because what better way to reach for everything that you want in life to achieve or to succeed in becoming,

all that God's created you to be, then to actually create a plan to achieve it.

See I have this little saying that says, unrealized growth equals untapped potential. Perpetual growth equals unlimited impact.

When you develop a plan, you can go from unrealized growth to perpetual growth, go from untapped potential to unlimited impact, but it takes a plan to get there.

So five reasons or five benefits of creating your own personal development plan.

See a personal development plan will help you in finding your purpose, developing your strengths and it will give you the confidence you need to get out of your comfort zone.

That's a place that we all like to live is inside of our comfort zone, but often the biggest best growth, the biggest progress happens outside of our comfort zone.

A good personal development plan also helps you to improve your awareness of self, your Your awareness of what's going on around you, your awareness of life and how events in life affect you and how you show up in the world.

Improves yourself.

Of all of those things almost guarantees that you'll live up to your full God-given potential.

Living intentionally. It takes intentional action to achieve those things. So the first benefit of creating a personal development plan is to help you discover your purpose. Now I talk a lot about.

Purpose and fulfillment and what it takes to get those things. A lot of that is because that is.

Something that affects me big time in my daily life. I am searching for purpose and fulfillment.

Everything I do strives for purpose, but on the road to discovering who God created us to be, We're often asked the question of why we're here, and that ties back into purpose.

If we want to find our purpose in life, we need to focus on developing ourselves, on developing into the person who can fulfill all the potential God placed within us.

And a written personal development plan is a great start on that journey to finding our purpose. As we figure out why we think the way we do, as we figure out why we do the things that we do.

We discover who we are, we challenge our thoughts, and we need to decide the parameters around which we'll make our decisions. Like we all have different reasons

why we do, think, say, feel, decide the things the way that we do.

Figured out, we'll find more information about ourselves. We'll know better what our purpose is.

Like we'll be able to get closer to discovering our true purpose in life. We'll have a good idea about the actions that we take each day. We'll have better clarity on what we need to do.

To have the impact that we wanna have in life.

The second thing that a personal development plan helps with is to develop our strengths. God gave us gifts, talents, abilities, personalities.

He gave us unique strengths that fit only us. As we do the work to discover the strengths, as we study ourselves, we become more self-aware.

We pay close attention to how we feel about the things that we do, how good we are at it. And as we go through that, we can know more what to work on. Focusing on what you're good at is far better than focusing on the things that you're not good at. Look at it this way.

I'm a really good trim carpenter. Like I'm probably one in, I'm going to say at least one in a hundred. I'm good. But when it comes to hanging and finishing drywall, I might be one in five.

I'm not good at it and I don't enjoy it. If I develop my drywall skills, I might become a one in ten, but I'm still gonna hate it. But if I develop my trim carpentry skills, I can become,

one in a thousand or one in ten thousand and that is so much more exciting than becoming one in ten.

By focusing on what I'm already good at, what I'm already strong in, I can become so far above average that there's no comparison. But by developing my weaknesses, I might become average.

I don't want to be average. I want to be above average. So find the things that you're good at. get extra training, practice, learn from others who are in the same field or who have developed,

those strengths that you want to

That brings a lot more pleasure and success in life as we work in those areas. If you're naturally good at something and you do that thing, it brings you a lot more joy.

It makes you better the more you do it because practice makes, not always perfect, but practice makes better. Practice can be enjoyable. As opposed to the basketball player, I can't think of his name, NBA player.

NBA player, we talk about practice, man. You know, you need to practice. That's what makes the greats so good is they practice the ordinary 10,000 times. I think it was Bruce Lee that said,

I don't fear the man that practices a thousand kicks once. I fear the man that practices one kick a thousand times because he is utilizing what he's already good at and making it perfect using his

natural gifts. The third thing is it gets you out of your comfort zone. Now why do we want to get out of our comfort zone? Like I'm comfortable in my comfort zone.

Right? Why should I get out of my comfort zone? While we want to focus on the things that we're good at doing already, sometimes it takes time and effort to actually see what those things are. Getting out of your comfort zone doesn't.

Necessarily mean that you focus on things that you're not good at. It might mean displaying your skills in a different light. It might mean showing up,

in a different way, still utilizing those skills. It might mean telling somebody about it like, hey look I'm really good at trim carpentry. Can I help

you out? Can I work for you? Can I do this trim carpentry for you? It just means doing something different than the normal. It doesn't mean focusing on what you're good at at the expense of what you're... doesn't mean focusing on what.

You're not good at at the expense of what you're good at. It just means changing things up a little bit. The next thing is it boosts your confidence. As.

You develop yourself, you'll start experiencing success and that success will boost your confidence sky high, exponentially.

Part of personal development is focusing on learning to have a positive mindset and taking better care of yourself. It is being proud of your skills and your experience.

It's not being afraid to put yourself out there. When your confidence is strong, you free yourself from paralyzing doubt and negative thoughts and negative emotions. You can't help but be strong and courageous When you craft.

Based on discovering the who, what, when, where, why, and how that God made you and setting goals around that. And the fifth thing that a personal development plan.

Can help you with is it can improve your self-awareness. Since personal development is personal, it's all about helping you become everything God created you to be, getting to know who you are. That is especially important.

Like we need to know who we are. Knowing who you are allows you to know and lead with your strengths so that you can, you know, overcome your weakness or cope with your weaknesses realistically and be nice to yourself.

Like you don't have to lie to yourself and say, oh, I'm so good at drywall.

No, like I'm really good at trim carpentry. Don't wanna do drywall so much.

You don't have to lie to yourself or to other people about who and what you are, about why you are the way you are. You can show up as you, as who God created you to be.

Self-awareness, understanding the who, what, when, where, why and how that God created us.

That is the ultimate precursor to authenticity, to being who God made you to be.

We also need to have a personal development plan because we're so much more likely to succeed at a thing when we have a plan.

The Bible talks about the guy who set out to build a tower and didn't have a plan, and it sat there unfinished for years, and his neighbors and friends all laughed at him because he didn't create a plan to finish the tower. He didn't have the billing materials.

He didn't have the finances. He maybe didn't even have a set of blueprints.

Have a plan, have a goal, stick to it. A personal development plan is a documented guide.

It's information to help direct you through creating the actions and habits that make up your life that will lead you to success, that will lead you to automatically achieving your goals.

So if you have a dream or a vision, you need to take that and turn it into a goal. Rather than something vague in your mind, turn it into something definite on a piece of paper.

And then through smart goal setting or however you go about setting goals, create a plan of action step by step by step by step that you can follow, you can track, and you can.

Change throughout your life as you work towards achieving that thing.

Staying focused on your goals and your dreams until that becomes reality. So I hope this has given you the whatever it is that you need to create a personal development