Personal Development and Self Growth are significant trends in our society that are gaining a lot of attention in setting personal goals and gaining interpersonal skills (personal skills, professional skills, communication skills, and soft skills). The two are similar, but they do differ in focus.
Personal development is a broad category that encompasses things like building better relationships, improving productivity, becoming an expert in something specific, and winning in life. Self-growth focuses explicitly on using self-discovery methods and exploring the self, such as introspection or meditation, for a better quality of life.
The differences are best reflected in how each person tries to achieve the same goal through personal growth: personal development tends to be more about what you can accomplish or gain for yourself; self-growth tends to be more about who you can become.
An example of this difference is that you tend to improve your relationships when you improve your social skills or grow your development skills. With self-growth, the main focus is on changing how you think and feel about yourself.
Initially, an acronym used to denote a series of self-help seminars led by Anthony Robbins, personal development has since evolved into a separate entity whose participants include people from all walks of life.
The main idea behind personal development is the belief that everyone can improve their lives by analyzing and correctly applying techniques and tools gleaned from other disciplines (such as psychology) that study these same subjects.
While the term may be broad and effectively encompass any hobby, it often refers to the types of self-help activities one might see at a retreat. These include goal-setting, persuasive speech, dating advice, time management, etc.
Self-growth is a subset of personal development that focuses on developing oneself as an individual. This is usually accomplished through methods such as introspection or meditation.
While personal development focuses on moving up in the company or social interactions (and potentially becoming more comfortable being “out there”), self-growth makes the personal world less stressful and more fulfilling.
For this reason, self-growth methods such as yoga and ancient traditions tend to be popular in personal development because it is seen as something that one can do to improve oneself.
In contrast, self-growth is generally incompatible with techniques taught in a group setting (such as personal development) because they focus on improving one’s emotional energies and general attitude.
Perhaps the most critical question to ask when thinking about the differences between personal development and self-growth is whether or not personally improving one’s life is a truly worthwhile goal.
If it isn’t, then the distinctions are somewhat meaningless. While the two techniques may seem very similar, their differences are significant for your life goals in different aspects of life.
For example, personal development focuses primarily on what one can accomplish. Even if improving oneself is a worthy goal, it could be argued that it isn’t as crucial as making social improvements or finding ways to become more successful in school or on the job.
On the other hand, self-growth focuses more on who you are and how you feel about yourself, using mental tools working on your emotional intelligence and Behavioral & Mental Health. A common theme in self-help literature is that if you improve your happiness and outlook towards life, you will automatically find yourself accomplishing more and gaining tremendous success in life.
