How To Use A Personal Development Plan To Succeed In This Economy

When you think of personal development, the economy is probably not the first thing that comes to mind.  Most likely you were thinking of reading a book or listening to some famous motivational speaker.  So here’s a simple lesson on the economy and how you can get ahead by using a personal development plan.

First of all, we need to understand one simple concept.  People get paid for bringing value to the marketplace.  Now, bringing value to the market place takes time and that’s the reason most wages are calculated by a measure of time.  People get paid for value, not time.  It is not true that you get paid $8/hr, or $20/hr or whatever your salary might be.  Just think about this for a moment, what would happen if you show up to work every day and do nothing all day long?  Would you still be getting paid for doing nothing?  Would you even have a job after a few days?  So if you increase the value you bring to the marketplace, you increase your income.

That’s the reason why we hear the term economic ladder.  It is a ladder that you must climb.  A person earning minimum wage is not very valuable to the marketplace.  Now, I’m talking about the marketplace.  A person can be a very valuable member in the family, the community, church, etc.  But if you are not very valuable to the marketplace you won’t get much money.  This means that a person making $100/hr must be more valuable to the marketplace than the person making minimum wage.

“In climbing this ladder economically, all you have to do is work harder on yourself than you do on your job.” – Jim Rohn

So instead of hoping for the economy to turn around, for things to change, you need to work on yourself.  If you work on increasing yourself, your skills and becoming a better person you will become more valuable to the marketplace and move up the economic ladder.  You need to change yourself.

To do this, you must learn from personal experience.  Reflect on what you have done and learn from your mistakes.  However, your personal experience is very limited.  To achieve greater results you must learn from other people’s experience.  You can learn from your friends, family, teachers, mentors. Learn from their failures and successes. Ask them how they achieved success.

There are four ways we can learn from other people’s experiences and the first one is observation.  You can learn by what you can see and observe that other people do to succeed.  Second, you learn by what you  hear.  You can listen to audio books, sermons, lectures. You can turn your car into a university on wheels instead of listening to the radio all the time.  Third, read all the books you can possibly read on personal development, biographies and whatever else interests you that can be beneficial to your life.  Some good books to start would be “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill, “The Richest Man in Babylon” by George Clason and “As a Man Thinketh” by James Allen.  Develop a habit of reading daily and at least one book a month.  Last but not least, keep a journal.  Write your ideas, thoughts and quotes, anything you read or hear. Capture the value so you can refer to it later.

Get started and develop your personal development plan.  It does not matter where you start but that you start right away and don’t let time go by.

To your success,
Danny Martinez

P.S.  To start on your Personal Development Plan.  Visit the following link to learn how you can increase your skills and create additional income.