What is your underlying desire in life? Do you yearn for self-fulfillment? Or is self-development more important to you?

Are your efforts designed to make you feel good? Or are they designed to help you become the best you can be? Is your goal to be successful? Or is it to achieve significance?

These are great questions to ask yourself.

Before you can help anyone else grow, you must first take care of your own growth. In "The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth", John Maxwell talks about what he calls the Law of Contribution. According to this law, "Growing yourself enables you to grow others."

You may be wondering why you'd want a personal growth plan. What is the purpose of such a plan? Most of us are already growing at least a little. So why make a plan?

The purpose of a plan is that it takes your further. Intense growth does not happen by accident. Without a plan, you might grow a little, but you're unlikely to reach your true potential.

Although making a personal growth plan involves intense self-evaluation, it is by no means selfish. The ultimate benefit is not for ourselves, but for the people in our lives. If we don’t become good at what we do, the people around us can't become good at what they do. If we don’t reach our potential, the people around us can't reach theirs either.

The main reason for pursuing self-growth is to help others.

You can't give what you don't have. Every day ask yourself, what do I have to give? No matter how much you have to give today, if you keep growing, tomorrow you will have more.

In his book, John tells us to be like a river, not a reservoir. In other words, we need to let our gifts flow out of us. We all have people in our lives who've given their gifts to support our growth.

Stop for a moment and think about those people. Who has encouraged you to be your best?

These questions will help you identify the people who are like a river in your life:

1. Who offers you mentoring and a baseline of wisdom?
2. Who challenges you to think more deeply?
3. Who helps you aspire to be a better person?
4. Who cheers you on in the pursuit of your dreams?
5. Who shares your load during those high-pressure moments?
6. Who gives you perspective when you've become dispirited?

We all have the potential to grow. At the Up Close Team, we believe that we have no greater purpose than to take what we've learned and pass it on to you.

We believe you have potential and we're excited about the prospects for your future. But you won't get there until you start the growth journey.

You may not be ready to receive all that you could be today. You may have to grow before you will be able to do that. But keep stretching and growing, and one day what seemed so hard and difficult will become simple and easy. That's the magic of self-growth.

I would like to leave you with two thoughts from John C. Maxwell that have inspired our growth:

1. Don’t let life come to you; you go to life.
2. Don’t expect things to happen to you; go make them happen.

The best is yet to come. Start your personal plan for growth and see how your personal and professional life begins to change.

The best is yet to come. It starts with you.

Your friends,
UpCloseTeam