Self-discipline means living your life the hard way, resisting temptations, and avoiding immediate self-satisfaction, with the aim of obtaining greater and better rewards in the future. It is certain that you can avoid fatigue, leave responsibilities, stay away from all kinds of discomfort, and indulge in self-satisfaction and comfort whenever you want. But in the end, all you get from this approach is fleeting pleasure now at the expense of your future, which could otherwise be much better.
How does a weak-willed person behave if faced with challenges?
Think with me a little – dear reader – in the case of a weak-willed person whose ideal values are to obtain comfort and live comfortably. How likely is this person to achieve anything substantial in life? How will he act when faced with a challenge? How can this person manage a crisis that they must face? Confront it? Even if it is a relatively minor problem, this person will certainly face obstacles that he cannot overcome, for someone who lives in the safe haven of life and constantly avoids everything that is difficult or unpleasant.
Now compare that with the person who voluntarily makes his life a more difficult life. A person who looks for challenges. He invests in problems and afflictions and welcomes them as opportunities for growth. This person, day after day, fortifies himself against problems, simply because he looks for problems and does not run away from challenges, and does not stop no matter what he faces. Of pitfalls and obstacles, and when life deals him an unexpected blow, he is prepared to face them and is able to overcome them and turn them into an opportunity that serves his personal interests.
Is a difficult life limited to work only?
Living a difficult life does not absolutely mean that life is limited to work. A difficult life means working on exercising, hobbies, relieving stress, and staying within safe limits for mental health. It means adhering to social duties. It means adhering to a healthy diet, adhering to exercising, and living happily. And ambition. In short, a difficult life is living with balance and integration between the heart, soul, and body, and between social life and professional life. But what is important to know is that a difficult life, after time, becomes a wonderful life full of happiness, comfort, and well-being.
It is not possible to accomplish anything essential or important in life without living the difficult life. In order for any person to be able to achieve his goals, accomplish what he must accomplish, and face everything that comes up in life, he must first adopt a firm conviction and the highest value of living the difficult life. It cannot be done without the personal planning process.
Planning
Planning in general is designing the hoped-for future and developing effective steps to achieve it. It is a rational and regular method of making decisions and solving problems that combines your experience, knowledge and skills on the one hand, and provides realistic assessment tools for the progress you have achieved and what you want to be in the future on the other hand. It also indicates the risks you face when charting your path in the corridors of the future that you do not know. It helps you identify sources of danger and opportunities that determine your chance of success.
Shows you how to turn opportunities into achievable goals within specific time periods. It helps you reach critical milestones on the road to success. It motivates you to think about your future in terms of facts instead of imaginary fantasies, and provides you with the strength you need to control your future.
The concept and stages of personal planning
Personal planning involves thinking about the future, determining what you want to achieve, and thinking about the steps you can take to reach your goals. Goal setting is a major part of personal planning. When you prepare a personal plan, you can start by taking a moment for self-reflection, to examine your strengths and weaknesses, and it is useful to write it down so that you can refer to it later.
Sometimes personal planning is not voluntary. Rather, some workplaces may ask you to make a personal development plan. In this case, it is important to focus on your self-reflection on professional topics. After passing the self-reflection stage in your personal planning, you can begin Gap Analysis Analyzing the gap/gaps between the current situation and the vision you want to reach. Gap analysis is a set of tools and means used to know where I am now? Where am I in terms of the position I want to reach?
When analyzing the gap, the process of identifying information must be correct and realistic because this information is the basis upon which the executive schedules for tasks, operations, and short-term goals will be determined. Then a plan is drawn up to collect the necessary resources and tools to reduce this difference step by step until it reaches the general vision at the pre-determined time. The plan includes the steps and implementation means through which the difference will be reduced. The planning objectives must be characterized by the following standards, which represent the word Smart, meaning intelligent.
This acronym is a five-part framework to help you set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals. For example, if you want to get a promotion at work next year, make sure you set goals that can help you prepare for the job and apply to that position. You can also update your personal plan over time. Once you complete one goal, you can update Plan and set a new goal for the same, which can help you stay motivated.
Smart
The goal must be specific, measurable and realistic
The goal must be specific
Measured, meaning that the goal/objectives are measurable
Attainable A is a non-fictional goal
Achievable A goal must be attainable and realistic
Time-bound: The goal is limited to a specific time. Timely T
Accordingly, personal planning can be viewed as a conscious mental process similar to other planning processes concerned with business management. Therefore, it is necessary to use strategic personal planning, short-term personal planning, and executive personal planning. Personal planning looks at the results and is not distracted by happy or sad introductions to the results. What is required is that looking at the ends gives the person the strength of energy, will, patience, and managing life in an organized, non-random manner. Among the most prominent benefits of personal planning are:
Benefits of personal planning
Achieving motivation
Achieving motivation: Motivation is a factor that has a huge impact on achieving success and personal growth. It can help you overcome challenges, inspire you to continue working hard, and ultimately lead you to achieving your personal goals. Motivation helps you build a personal plan and stick to it, especially plans that It is about personal development and self-development, whereby you simplify your goals and focus your energy on specific paths or tasks. By giving priority to the most important goal, you can also use the personal development plan to monitor progress. Motivation affects in two directions, as it pushes you to personal planning and commitment to it, and when you achieve your goals, your motivation increases towards perseverance, continuity, and the search for more progress and growth.
Increased opportunities for professional advancement
Increase opportunities for career advancement: Managers look for certain characteristics when determining who to promote. They may consider an employee’s work ethic, initiative, drive to succeed, and many other job-specific categories. Creating a personal plan demonstrates many of these qualities. It shows that you want to You succeed at work and that you take the initiative to figure out how to succeed. It also demonstrates strong organizational skills and proves that you want to improve yourself and your role within the company.
Maintains mental health
Maintains Mental Health: Creating a personal plan helps you develop a path to completing your goals. This can lead to healthier mental health. Completing goals can improve self-confidence and self-esteem. Having clearly defined goals and plans can improve your organizational skills and increase mental health. Your chances of success. All of this can lead to a more positive attitude and increased happiness, strengthen self-confidence, and work to open new horizons and modern ideas that were absent from the planning team, especially if its steps and stages are achieved.
Helps identify strengths and weaknesses
Helps identify strengths and weaknesses: Identifying your strengths and weaknesses is an important step in the process of creating a personal plan, so personal planning can be an excellent time to perform self-reflection. Knowing the areas you can improve can help you create more specific goals. This also leads to greater satisfaction when you accomplish your goals, because you have learned and developed new skills.
Allows you to track your progress
Allows you to track your progress: Tracking your progress is very important in reaching your goals. Creating a personal plan and constantly updating it is a great way to track your progress. It gives you the opportunity to focus on your current goals while adjusting the path you have set to complete them. Personal planning detects mistakes; Which makes a person feel the need to think deeply about the importance of life and its many tools to achieve better results, and at the lowest possible costs.
It gives you a sense of purpose
Gives you a sense of purpose: A sense of purpose is an important part of maintaining a good work-life balance. Creating an actionable personal development plan will definitely give you a sense of purpose, as belonging to a purpose makes you focus your energy and gives you something to work towards, improving multiple areas of your life.
It provides you with an opportunity to learn new skills
Provides you with an opportunity to learn new skills: Having a personal development plan can help encourage learning, because expanding your knowledge and skills may contribute to achieving your goals. Personal planning also allows you to evaluate the resources you have and how you can best invest them in learning new skills. This can It makes you more employable and provides you with more rewarding career options.
It brings you clarity
It brings you clarity: Personal planning depends on clarity of vision through successive stages. It eliminates ambiguity and reduces potential crises, by evaluating these stages, discovering mistakes the moment they occur, working to overcome them, adjusting the path and investing in alternatives, and working to expand the horizons of thought. By organizing ideas, using possible methods and means, and choosing between alternatives and others.
Organizing priorities
Organizing priorities: When you prepare yourself for a personal plan, you set priorities and act on them. Thus, planning helps you determine your priorities and work to achieve them without paying attention to the margins of things and being preoccupied with them.
Reducing waste of time, effort and money
Reducing waste of time, effort and money: Personal planning saves you from trial and error processes, which leads to saving effort, time and expenses, which improves the living situation in general.
Achieves excellence
Achieves excellence: Personal planning achieves a competitive advantage for the person who carries it out effectively, as it increases the person’s chances of excellence and creativity compared to his colleagues at work, or his peers in social life.
Personal planning problems
The biggest drawback to personal planning is that daily plans may lack flexibility. Life rarely goes exactly according to plan, so daily plans can be frustrating once you fall off schedule. With the monthly plan, you can make adjustments. If a delay occurs, the person may be confused between adhering to the plan, or making decisions contrary to what was stated in the plan in order to seize opportunities.
Dimensions of personal planning
When doing personal planning, you must ensure that you achieve integration, balance, and comprehensiveness, so that personal planning increases the individual’s advancement and effectiveness in life, through the individual planning for himself healthily, professionally, family, financially, socially, and spiritually, and working to achieve them in a balanced way, by planning for the following:
Social planning
Social planning: It is the detailed planning of how to carry out your social, familial, marital and parental duties, visiting the surrogates, times for family participation, the activities in which you will participate, and your role in those activities, as well as times for social visits and the participation of neighbors and friends. Social planning may seem dreamy, and it may be seen as something secondary and unimportant, but it is necessary to draw social plans and adhere to them to the extent that the individual has control.
Financial planning
Financial planning: There are some wrong and common Arab beliefs about the issue of financial spending, such that any financial planning process is viewed as a social stigma that is considered as (stinginess). However, financial planning must be done with complete rigor, in order to avoid falling into debt or loans. Money is sufficient to fulfill all needs and obligations. Random spending is what causes money to be wasted without return or value.
Career planning
Professional planning: Whether you are an employee, a manager, an entrepreneur, or a businessman, you cannot perform your job roles and tasks without professional planning, taking into account that personal professional planning is completely different from pure professional planning, as professional planning is the task of senior management in your workplace. As for personal professional planning, it comes through setting personal goals and plans for career and professional development, such as working extra hard to obtain a reward or promotion. Personal professional planning also plays an important role in achieving integration and balance between private life and work life.
Personal development planning
Personal development planning: This is a very important part that is concerned with planning for courses, training, or self-learning, for the purpose of developing knowledge and skills, such as planning for graduate studies, or scholarships, as well as cultural planning, such as following a plan to read books and literature, or watch plays and documentaries.
Health planning
Health planning: It is planning to maintain mental, psychological, and physical health. In light of the complexities and speed of life’s circumstances, we all fall under countless psychological and physical pressures, which inevitably affect our physical and psychological health. Therefore, health planning provides us with the opportunity to undergo periodic medical examinations, and directs us to Exercising continuously according to a correct plan, the type of foods we eat, eating times, and many other details that directly affect psychological and physical well-being, and attention must also be given to spiritual and recreational planning.
Steps for personal planning
The first step (reflect on yourself)
The first step (reflect on yourself): At this stage, be slow and think deeply. Do not run away from your circumstances, your shortcomings, your weaknesses, and your fears. Contemplate all your actions, all your habits, and all your character. Contemplate how others view you and their opinions of you. Contemplate the conditions of your peers who are at the same educational and professional level as you. Contemplate your achievements, contemplate your dreams and ambitions, remember your childhood dreams, contemplate your physical health.
Ask yourself (Am I satisfied with myself?), (Have I accomplished everything I needed to accomplish?), (Does my current work suit me and meet my needs?)… Make sure that you have begun the contemplation stage in order to develop yourself, correct your paths, and develop a personal plan for yourself. Be careful not to enter this stage without determination and will, as it is a stage that gives you the complete truth and you will emerge from it with many flaws, shortcomings, and errors. It is a double-edged sword whose goal is to lay the foundations for personal planning, but it may make you despair and frustrated.
Step Two (Reality Analysis)
The second step (reality analysis): comes after the contemplation stage, in which the capabilities, strengths, weaknesses and ways to overcome them are identified, opportunities in the form of external opportunities that can contribute to personal development and personal planning, and challenges that may hinder the achievement of your goals.. Here is a model Swat to write your current reality with precision and clarity. Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Challenges
Step Three (Sorting and Dividing)
The third step (sorting and dividing): After contemplating and analyzing the reality – you found, for example – that you need to develop your skills in some computer applications, and you found that you suffer from obesity, and you found that you have some social deficiencies, each topic must be placed in a separate side from the other. .
Step 4 (Define your goals)
The fourth step (define your goals): After the sorting process, analyze each aspect, put all the required procedures and options available to you, turn the points that need development into goals, and do not neglect the strengths.
Your goals
- Be specific and clear.
- Be realistic and implementable.
- Be observable and measurable.
- Be specific in time units.
Step Five (Implementation)
The fifth step (implementation): or detailed planning for implementation. If the development activity is related to practicing sports, here you must set dates for practicing it and the form in which you will practice it, and determine which club is most appropriate and closest, and what is your specific goal in participating in the club, such as if your goal is to lose weight ( 10) kilograms per month. In executive planning, measurement tools are built to measure the extent of your commitment and achievement.
- Write your goals on an agenda
- And carry it wherever you are
- I am working on implementing it
- You may struggle to stick to the plan
- You may overlook the day the plan activities are implemented
- No, just keep setting schedules to make up for what you missed from the plan
- Don’t focus on the difficulties
- Focus on achieving goals
