PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

LESSON 1. Knowing and Understanding Oneself during Middle and Late Adolescence

Key Terms
 ACTUAL SELF vs. IDEAL SELF
a. Actual Self – the one you actually you see in yourself. It is the self that has characteristics that you where
nurtured, or in some cases, born to have.
b. Ideal Self – is the self that you aspire to be. It is the one that you hope will possess characteristics similar
to that a mentor or some other worldly figure.
 Self-Knowledge – derived from the social interactions that provide insight into how others react to you.
 Personal Effectiveness – making use of your personal resources – talents, skills, energy and time, to enable
you to achieve life goals.
 Experience – includes knowledge and skills that we acquire in the process of cognitive and practical
activities.
 Knowledge – is required for setting goals, defining an action plan to achieve them
 Skills – determines real actions performed in accordance with the plan
 Determination - It allows you to focus only on achieving a specific goal without being distracted by less
important things or spontaneous desires. It may be developed with the help of self-discipline exercise
 Self-confidence - It appears in the process of personal development, as of getting aware of yourself, your
actions and their consequences. Self-confidence is manifested in speech, appearance, dressing, gait, and
physical condition. To develop it, you need to learn yourself and your capabilities, gain positive attitude and
believe that by performing right actions and achieving right goals you will certainly reach success.
 Persistence - It makes you keep moving forward regardless of emerging obstacles - problems, laziness, bad
emotional state, etc. It reduces the costs of overcoming obstacles. It can also be developed with the help of
self- discipline exercise.
 Managing stress - It helps combat stress that arises in daily life from the environment and other people.
Stress arises from the uncertainty in an unknown situation when a lack of information creates the risk of
negative consequences of your actions. It increases efficiency in the actively changing environment.
 Problem-solving skills - They help cope with the problems encountered with a lack of experience. It
increases efficiency by adopting new ways of achieving goals when obtaining a new experience.
 Creativity - It allows you to find extraordinary ways to carry out a specific action that no one has tried to use.
It can lead to a decrease or an increase of costs, but usually the speed of action is greatly increase when
using creative tools.
 Generating ideas - It helps you achieve goals using new, original, unconventional ideas. Idea is a mental
image of an object formed by the human mind, which can be changed before being implemented in the real
world. For generating ideas, you can use a method of mental maps, which allows you to materialize, visualize
and scrutinize all your ideas, which in turn contributes to the emergence of new ideas, these are just some,
but the most important personal effectiveness skills which make the achievement of any goal easier and less
costly.

THREE KINDS OF PEOPLE IN THE WORLD by Bo Sanchez

 Moviegoer. This person watches the movie of their lives, admires some parts and criticizes others. Aside
from that, they do nothing else. All she says the whole day is, "I like this thing and but I don't like that thing."
The Moviegoer feels she has absolutely no control of their lives except to comment about it. Moviegoers are
the most pathetic, miserable people in the world.
 Actor. This person does not only watch the movie of her life. She actually realizes she's the Actor - and can
control a big part of her life. She can actually make or break the movie - by how well she delivers her lines
and how she portrays her character. Actors are a happy bunch, realizing they're the start of the show and
enjoy some level of control. But many times, they wish the movie would end in another way - but realize
that they have no say in such things.
  Scriptwriter. This person does not only watch, and she doesn't only act, but she actually creates the entire
movie from her mind. She determines what she will say, what she will do, and how the movie will end. She
realizes she has enormous control over her life, and sees to it that the movie of her life will turn out
beautiful.
 

LESSON 2. Developing the Whole Person

ASSESING ASPECTS OF DEVELOPMENT

1. Physical Self. Describe yourself. Try not to censor any thoughts which come to your mind. Include descriptions of
your height, weight, facial appearance, and quality of skin, hair and descriptions of body areas such as your
neck, chest, waist, legs.
2. Intellectual Self. Include here an assessment of how well you reason and solve problems, your capacity to learn
and create, your general amount of knowledge, your specific areas of knowledge, wisdom you have acquired,
and insights you have.
3. Emotional Self. Write as many words or phrase about typical feelings you have, feelings you seldom have, feelings
you try to avoid, feelings you especially enjoy, feelings from your past and present, and feelings which are
associated with each other.
4. Sensual Self. Write how you feel as a sensual person. What sense do you use most - sight, hearing, speaking,
smelling, touching? How do you feel about the different ways you take in information - through the eyes, ears,
mouth, nose, pores, and skin? In what ways do you let information in and out of your body?
5. Interactional Self. Include descriptions of your strengths and weaknesses in intimate relationships and relationships
to friends, family; co-students and strangers in social settings. Describe the strengths and weaknesses which
your friends and family have noticed. Describe what kind of son or daughter, brother or sister you are.
6. Nutritional Self. How do you nourish yourself? What foods do you like and dislike? What do you like and dislike
about these?
7. Contextual Self. Descriptors could be in the areas of maintenance of your living environment: reaction to light,
temperature, space, weather, colors, sound and seasons and your impact on the environment.
8. Spiritual Self or Life Force. Write words or phrases which tell about how you feel in this area. This could include
your feelings about yourself and organized religion, reactions about your spiritual connections to others,
feelings about your spiritual development and history, and thought about your metaphysical self. Think about
your inner peace and joy. Think about your spiritual regimen or routine.