It can include official and informal actions for developing others in roles such as a teacher, guide, counselor, manager, coach, or mentor, and it is not restricted to self-help.
[7] This can happen through roles such as those of a teacher or mentor, either through a personal competency (such as the alleged skill of certain managers in developing the potential of employees) or through a professional service (such as providing training, assessment, or coaching).
Examples include self-help books; education technology, neuroenhancement, and experiential learning (instructor-led training, motivational speeches, seminars, social or spiritual retreats).
[non-primary source needed] Major religions—such as the age-old Abrahamic and Indian religions—as well as 20th-century New Age philosophies have variously used practices such as prayer, music, dance, singing, chanting, poetry, writing, sports and martial arts.
Michel Foucault describes in Care of the Self[14] the techniques of epimelia used in ancient Greece and Rome, which included dieting, exercise, sexual abstinence, contemplation, prayer, and confession—some of which also became practices within different branches of Christianity.
[20] Paul Oliver suggests that the popularity of Indian traditions for a personal developer may lie in their relative lack of prescriptive doctrine.
[23] The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 BCE – 322 BCE) wrote Nicomachean Ethics, in which he defined personal development as a category of phronesis or practical wisdom, where the practice of virtues (arête) leads to eudaimonia,[24] commonly translated as "happiness" but more accurately understood as "human flourishing" or "living well".
His ideas continue to influence family values, education and personnel management in China and East Asia.
In his Great Learning Confucius wrote: The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom first ordered well their own states.
[29]In contemporary China, personal development remain a salient priority in social life, and is shaped by diverse traditions, including Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, as well as modern influences such as communist ideas of citizenship and capitalist conceptions of human capital.
[30] Young adults in particular must navigate different social roles and values as they seek to become socioeconomically competent citizens.
Preview of referen Psychology became linked to personal development in the early 20th century starting with the research efforts of Alfred Adler (1870–1937) and Carl Jung (1875–1961).
He made the important point that aspirations focus on looking forward and do not limit themselves to unconscious drives or to childhood experiences.
[33] Daniel Levinson (1920–1994) developed Jung's early concept of "life stages" and included a sociological perspective.
[34]Research on success in reaching goals, as undertaken by Albert Bandura (1925–2021), suggested that self-efficacy[35] best explains why people with the same level of knowledge and skills get very different results.
According to Bandura self-confidence functions as a powerful predictor of success because:[36] In 1998 Martin Seligman won election to a one-year term as President of the American Psychological Association and proposed a new focus: on healthy individuals[37][38] rather than on pathology (he created the "positive psychology" current) We have discovered that there is a set of human strengths that are the most likely buffers against mental illness: courage, optimism, interpersonal skill, work ethic, hope, honesty and perseverance.
Much of the task of prevention will be to create a science of human strength whose mission will be to foster these virtues in young people.
[48] Psychodynamic theory suggests these subconscious changes—which emerge as external actions—are formed from suppressed sexual and aggressive urges and other internalized conflicts.
[49] Sigmund Freud and other notable psychodynamic theorists postulate that these repressed cognitions form during childhood and adolescence.
[54] Educational psychology seeks to further personal development by increasing one's ability to learn, retain information, and apply knowledge to real-world experiences.
The curriculum taught at school must be carefully planned and managed in order to successfully promote personal development.
[55] Providing an environment for children that allows for quality social relationships to be made and clearly communicated objectives and aims is key to their development.
[60] In 2001 a Quality Assessment Agency for UK universities produced guidelines[61] for universities to enhance personal development as: In the 1990s, business schools began to set up specific personal-development programs for leadership and career orientation and in 1998 the European Foundation for Management Development set up the EQUIS accreditation system which specified that personal development must form part of the learning process through internships, working on team projects and going abroad for work or exchange programs.
[62][citation needed] The first personal development certification required for business school graduation originated in 2002 as a partnership between Metizo, a personal-development consulting firm, and the Euromed Management School[63] in Marseilles: students must not only complete assignments but also demonstrate self-awareness and achievement of personal-development competencies.
[clarification needed] In 1999 management thinker Peter Drucker wrote in the Harvard Business Review: We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity: if you've got ambition and smarts, you can rise to the top of your chosen profession, regardless of where you started out.
Companies today aren't managing their employees' careers; knowledge workers must, effectively, be their own chief executive officers.
[72] On the one hand, the company must allegedly recognize that personal development creates economic value: "market performance flows not from the omnipotent wisdom of top managers but from the initiative, creativity and skills of all employees".
Employee surveys may help organizations find out personal-development needs, preferences and problems, and they use the results to design benefits programs.
Proponents actually see such programs not as a cost but as an investment with results linked to an organization's strategic development goals.
[80] A common criticism[82] surrounding personal development programs is that they are often treated as an arbitrary performance management tool to pay lip service to, but ultimately ignored.