The Benefits of Personal and Professional Development

Personal and professional development should be ongoing and congruous processes in our lives. Personal development spans all areas of life and is as beneficial to a college student as to a consultant neurosurgeon. Learning new skills, earning new qualifications, and even deepening our spiritual sides can provide us with fulfillment of our talents and potentialities. Ongoing development can help us discover our life’s purpose.

Creating a plan for personal and professional development helps us identify our areas of need and provides motivation to achieve those goals. Having a development plan enables us to put learning at the heart of everything we do. By continually learning, we are actually planning for our future happiness.

Here are some key benefits of continuing development:

Knowledge & Skills Boost Earning Potential
Learning the latest technology or taking advanced courses in one’s field can boost earning potential. Development can strengthen current skills by applying them in a new area. The right knowledge, skills, and desire for learning are sure to be bankable in today’s workforce and those individuals who possess them are able to demand higher salaries.

Enhances Health and Happiness
For one thing, learning is like exercise for the brain, and just like exercising the body it contributes to better physical health and mental health. This is particularly true when it comes to keeping a brain sharp and improving memory. How great would you feel if you knew where you were going? How amazing to know that you are planning for your future? Wouldn’t you feel happy and content?

Builds Confidence
A development plan imbues you with confidence – you have worked on yourself, looked to your future and planned a course of action that will enable you to reach your goals. Having more confidence and a wider knowledge base can make both social and professional engagement easier as there are more topics open for discussion in teams or networking situations. It will help you establish and grow networks with colleagues, senior managers, and leaders.

Increases Collaboration
Continuous learning and development encourage collaboration. Whether it’s through a team meeting in the workplace or an online class discussion, collaborative skills are nurtured in learning environments. In the majority of jobs, collaboration is essential, particularly as workplaces are changing from siloed entities to open plan environments that encourage hot-desking and overlap zones.

Heightens Motivation
If you know where you want to go, how you are going to get there, and within what timeframe, you will be motivated to see things through. Having the framework of a development plan will enable you to keep your motivation levels high as you will be able to check things off as you achieve them.

Drives Curiosity
When we learn new things, our curiosity is raised to explore new topics and areas previously unexplored. The interactive nature of learning helps stimulate questions and provoke new ways of thinking about concepts that can be applied to a new or existing role.

This spirit of curiosity can help develop an individual and affects many aspects of life. Ultimately, it can help foster creativity and a new way of thinking that can open new doors, both literally and metaphorically.

No matter how you continue to develop yourself, the benefits of personal and professional development are significant and far-reaching.