If you are not, then you risk the chance of actualizing your dreams. If you put the course of your life in the hands of others, you may not achieve your dreams, you may not become what you want to become and not doing what you want to do.
You have to be proactive and change the way you think about your dreams. You have to take change because the only way you would activate your dream is to contemplate about where you want to go, plan to get there, and then start moving.
Personal development planning is a structured way of activating your dreams. One key step is for you to understand yourself so you can set meaningful goals.
Understand yourself
To understand yourself, you need to identify what you are good at. What you are not so good at and what opportunities you have at your disposal. These questions can be answered using the SWOT and PEST tools.
SWOT is a phrase for strength, weakness, opportunities and threats.
Your personal SWOT analysis will help you analyze and match your proficiencies and abilities to the opportunities existing within the environment.
Strengths
When thinking about your strength, answer the following questions:
What are you really good at?
What skills do other people identify in you?
What do you do better than most people within your sphere of contact?
What were you known for or paid for?
What about yourself, are you most satisfied with?
What links, experiences or talents do you have access to that others don’t?
Weakness
To identify your weaknesses, use the following questions as guide. The trick is to recognize them and manage them.
What do you try to do that you can’t seem to overcome?
What do you do only because you have to do it only to satisfy someone else?
Are there one or two aspects of your personality that holds you back?
What do other people within your sphere of contact most often detect as shortcoming for you?
Where do you lack resources, skills or competence where others have them?
Opportunities
Opportunities turn your attention outside yourself to identify key elements that you can build on or use that will enhance your chances of success. Identifying your opportunities answers the questions:
In what ways can you maximize your strength?
What opportunities are available to those that can do it properly?
What are you good at that you will desire to do?
How can you maximize your strengths?
What tendencies are having an effect on your present project or one you are thinking of pursuing?
Threats
These are things that can derail you from your dream. It loses its effect when it is properly managed and prepared for. To identify these potential hazards, you need to ask yourself the following questions:
Do you have weaknesses that require to be attended to before you can make progress or advance?
What troubles could your weaknesses cause if left unchecked?
Which disappointments might you encounter?
Which barriers have other people prevailed over when they were trying to get what you want to accomplish?
PEST is a phrase for Political, Economic, Social-cultural and Technological factors.
Political factors
This brings to light the influence that government and its policies may have on the goal you are set to actualize:
What new laws or regulations are likely to affect your goal?
Will any of these influence your ability to perform in certain area, earn a definite income?
Is there a modification in government or government policy anticipated?
What opportunities and threats do these modifications illustrate?
Economic factors
This identifies the monetary factors that may influence your goal.
What is the long term demand for your offer?
Can you meet your economic needs based on the expected income?
What opportunities and threats do these situations illustrate?
Socio-cultural
To identify the societal trends that influence the goal you want to achieve, you need to consider the following:
What demographic trends will impact your goal?
Are educational requirements expected to change?
Are there lifestyle trends and changes that would impact the desirability of your goal?
What opportunities and threats do these circumstances illustrate?
Technological factors
New technologies are coming out steadily. These questions would enable you detect modifications that may take place with respect to the goal you want to achieve.
What are the technological patterns influencing what you want to accomplish?
Are there facets that will be replaced by technology in the upcoming years?
Which technologies are coming out to take their place and how do you capitalize on it?
What opportunities and threats do these situations illustrate?
Opportunity examination
After finishing the SWOT analysis, you may have a range of opportunities to enable you accomplish your dream and your PEST analysis has brought to light some exciting and not so exciting channels that are not worth pursuing.
Now, match your internal strengths with external political factors and record them for yourself.
The purpose of these is to generate feasible alternative strategies. Not all strategies generated must be implemented. The aim is to help guarantee sustainable advantage.
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