10 Ways To Grow As A Person

As we age, we learn a lot more about what life has to offer, and as this happens, we can choose to do things that help us continue to grow as individuals. There’s no guidebook on how to do this, and a lot of it comes from learning from others close to us, like our friends and family.

Here are 10 ways that you can grow as a person. This isn’t the end all be all though, there’s always plenty more opportunities for learning!

Travel More

Travel is one part of life that should be encouraged. Exploring the world, meeting new people, and discovering new cultures is something that gives you more life experience and an opportunity to reflect on your own upbringing and the environment that you live in and allow you to compare it to others.

When it comes to traveling, the world is your oyster, and there’s so much to see and do out there. So it’s certainly recommended to travel as much as possible throughout your life and use as many opportunities as possible to get yourself somewhere new.

You may have friends or family that have moved abroad, so drop them a message and invite yourself to stay. Find ways to save money so that you can make a few trips away each year. They don’t need to be week-long holidays, long weekends will work just as well for city breaks, and then for the more long-haul destinations, try finding last-minute deals and save your PTO from working up as much as you can.

It’s never too late to go traveling. Although there may be times when travel will become limited due to other life events, that shouldn’t stop you from getting around to it eventually.

Get Comfortable With Your Own Company

It’s easier said than done when it comes to being confident and comfortable with yourself. For some people, the thought of spending time alone with their own thoughts and feelings can be difficult. It’s tough to admit, but the sooner you’re able to do this, the better. The saying “You can’t love someone else if you don’t love yourself” is certainly true.

If you can’t appreciate your own company, then it’s going to be difficult to do the same for others. Understanding that you’re good enough on your own without having to rely on others is something that will certainly help you grow as an individual.

Ways that you can get comfortable with your own company is to spend some time alone in a coffee shop, take yourself out for a meal, or have a night in to pamper yourself on your own. These are all great examples of how to experience some alone time!

Never Stop Learning

Many of us will have gotten some form of education from a young age. Others will have gone on to get college degrees, and a few may seek to study further education with a master's or even a Ph.D. Thanks to technology and the online world, higher education has become a lot easier and more accessible for many people wishing to gain more qualifications but may not always be able to attend a university or college to do so.

Degrees such as masters of school counseling are now available online, a career that could bring new opportunities to help others and help you grow as a person.

It’s important that even after the typical high school education we receive, and whatever qualifications we earn afterward, we still try to educate ourselves. There’s always an opportunity to learn from life and as you age, it’s important to keep challenging your brain so that you can stay healthy and live a long life too.

Forgive Those Who’s Hurt You

Forgiveness is certainly hard to do sometimes. Whether it’s yourself that’s caused pain, or whether someone has hurt you, it’s definitely going to do you good to forgive and forget. If you don’t allow that forgiveness then you are holding yourself back from moving forward.

When someone has done something to intentionally hurt you, it’s even more difficult to forgive. Look for the times in life when you’ve not forgiven yourself or people who have hurt you in the past and find a way to forgive them. It doesn’t mean you have to re-connect but it’s just something you need to tell yourself that you’ve accepted that fault of others and that you can move on.

Learn From Others By Listening

As well as focusing on yourself and giving your own opinions, it’s beneficial to learn from others by listening to their opinions on life and various topics. We can learn through books, and what we see and read online but having social connections where you listen and interact with people in person is something that will always be needed in order to grow as individuals.

Set Yourself Life And Work Goals

Goal setting is great to do for both your life and work. Without goals, it can often feel like life isn’t moving forward, and it can often feel a little stale. So whether it’s something in your life that you want to achieve or something for work, set a goal. When it comes to working, it might be wanting to get promoted, earn a raise, or do a number of projects throughout the year.

For life, it could be saving a certain amount of money, going abroad a specific number of times, or planning for your first property or family. We all have aspirations in life, and by completing these goals, you’ll feel like you’ve gained and achieved more in the year than you would if you didn’t keep track of all the things you did.

Put Your Happiness First

Your happiness should always come first. We tend to put others before ourselves, and sometimes that can be necessary. However, when it’s at the expense of your own happiness, that’s when it’s not right. Life is too short to be unhappy, and there are already a lot of things in life that can come along that can contribute to a lack of happiness. So it’s important that you make your happiness a priority, and that you do things that make you happy each day.

Work On Something You’re Bad At

We all have our strengths and weaknesses. It’s imperative that you lean on your strengths where necessary, but without building on your weaknesses, there may come several points in your life that you can’t overcome because you haven’t worked on them.

Write down your weaknesses and look at which ones are maybe holding you back from things in both your work life and general life. Find one to focus on and work on it until you’ve improved it. There’s something very rewarding in being successful in something that you once struggled with.

Make New Friends

As we get older, we go through the process of losing friends and making new ones. But making new friends can be a lot more difficult, even though we’ve probably figured out who we are ourselves more over the years. Making new friends though is certainly something that helps you grow as an individual because each person that comes into your life is someone who can help contribute to your experiences in life.

That might be a colleague at work who helps you with a project idea or a friend you meet who ends up becoming someone you share new adventures with.

Get yourself out and about with your current friends, and it’s likely that those friends are going to share the same personalities with their other friendship groups. This is the easiest way of meeting other people, but there are also other opportunities to meet people. It could be your local fitness group or drinks at work with colleagues.

Be Open To Change

One thing that we all come to realize in life is that things change. And it’s really important to be open to that change in order to stop living in the past. Change will always happen, whether you want it to or not. It might be a good change, but it also might be bad. When we’re open to change, we allow ourselves the ability to open our eyes to something we may have not experienced before. It gives you the self-confidence you need in life and also the ability to function, whatever happens.

Growing is certainly encouraged because you’ll need it in order to move forward with your life and to ensure it’s the way you want it to be. So get comfortable with your own company and forgive those who’ve hurt you in the past. Don’t be afraid of change and always be willing to make new friends to build on your life experience.

How about you? What else do you think contributes to personal growth?

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