The power of personal development in the retirement journey

In a seminar I attended some years back, the facilitator noted that you must work on your personal self-development if you are to greatly change from who you are to whom you want to become. This is why Jim Rohn observes that “The only way to get better is to get better yourself.” How do you get better: through personal development?

Dictionary.com defines personal development as —“the act or process of developing, growth and progress.”  In short, it is the process of personally developing yourself into a better person through learning.

We need to recognise that we are a result of knowledge, information and experience accumulated over time. While this is true, some people have accumulated enough knowledge, information and experience to blame government, taxes, prices, traffic jam, weather, inflation, neighbours, rainfall, parents, relatives and anything they can place blame on. This is why personal development comes in handy to help us to learn and appreciate that we can greatly change if we become personally self-developed. Why? We will learn how government works, how the tax system works, what drives prices, what influences weather patterns, what drives inflation, what drives successful retirement; and then pick lessons to enable us to lead a successful retirement life.

When you personally develop, you start to recognise that:

• If you do not like the way you dress, you can work on changing your dress-code.
• If you do not like the way you make presentations, you can learn and practice to make better presentations.
• If you do not like the current amount you are saving and investing, you can learn better and efficient ways of saving and investing.
• If you have not prepared well for retirement, you can learn and take action on your retirement preparedness.

If you can change yourself (through personal development), you can change most of the things around you for the better. This change is only possible if the information, skills and knowledge you acquire is implemented with discipline and consistency.

Learning to be empowered

You can start small and improve on your personal development journey. For example, if you want to grow spiritually, and you have identified reading the bible as one of your goals, then you can begin by choosing to read at least two verses a day for a month. When you consistently achieve this, then you can increase to daily mass readings. Jim Rohn makes it clear when he avers: “If you never take small steps, no one, including yourself, will trust you with the big ones.”

Thus, personal development gives us the ability to enjoy gradual and consistent learning, empowering and facilitating accelerated momentum for adaption, change and growth. In a recent meeting with my coach, he guided that if I keep the momentum of writing retirement planning articles and making presentations on a weekly basis: within 12 months, 52 articles will have been written, and 52 presentations on retirement planning made.

If you remain committed to learning and taking action about your retirement preparedness, “you will create a big change over time?”

In summary, we are a result of what we have learnt and practiced over time. It is our responsibility therefore, to learn and improve in order to bring out what we are capable of doing and becoming. It is this discipline and consistency that will gradually make a difference in our retirement journey.

Dr. Charles Barugahare (FCCA)

Co-Founder Retirement Life Hub