How does you garden grow?

Last week, I shared how I have learnt to value self-development. When you are a child, you learn

different things in stages to help you  develop into an adult. Similarly, if we want to develop new skills, we have to have plans in place. Sadly, skills can’t grow overnight, it takes hard work. My front garden is currently a mess, and I wish that I could sleep, wake up and see it filled with all sorts of beautiful, fragrant flowers... but that’s just not going to happen without me putting the work in. To invest in our self development, we need to take out time to do that. So here are 5 tips for self development.

1. Know your areas of development
It sounds obvious but it isn't always! If you are investing in your development, you need to know what you want to develop. If I am making a journey somewhere, I need to need to know where I am going. Not planning where you want to go, will mean you will end up where you don't want to be. Using my sat nav should mean I'll get to my destination, however there are times when I have mixed up my addresses and ended up where I didn't intend to be! Therefore, it is important that we should know what area of our life we want to invest in. Another reason why this is important, is because we can't spread ourselves too thin! When we focus on different things, we may not invest enough to see certain things grow...and it's not necessarily that we can't invest in different areas of our lives but we have to be intentional. Without intent, we can find ourselves aimlessly heading for nothing.

2. Read

There are many different quotes that show the importance of reading i.e. ‘readers are leaders’ or my favourite, ‘the more you read, the more you you know, the more things you learn, the more places you’ll grow. Reading is invaluable as you gain so much knowledge. Read into the area you want to develop and as your knowledge increases, so will you.

3. Watch videos

This is almost the same as reading, but it isn't! It is just another way for us to gain our knowledge. No longer do we need to travel long distances to find out information, but in a few clicks I can watch an informative video on how to play the guitar. We put things off and say we can't do 'a' or can't do 'b' because how can we learn? But we can't let that be an excuse anymore. There's lots of information out there for us to tap into, but we must be willing to do it.

4. Observe people

No, I didn't say stalk, I said observe. Let's go with the guitar idea. I want to learn how to play guitar, I am going to observe some great guitarists. How do they develop their skills? What do they do to perfect their skill? If I wanted to be more assertive, I would do something similar. I would observe how people communicate, observing body language and the verbal language people use. But remember observe not stalk! 

5. Apply

Now this is where I make false starts, I must admit. This point is easy for some but hard for me. You see I love learning, but application is hard. When teaching, I see children develop their skills well, but trip up when it comes to application. It's like doing well in practise tests but becoming anxious about the final exam! But this is the most important part of self-development - a very important part of growth. Whatever we learn, we have to put it into practise as then we can truly develop and grow. 

I hope these 5 tips help. They're helping me and I am sure they will help you too.