Personal Development

You might not automatically think of counseling when you’re looking for help with personal growth. It’s a common assumption that counseling is only for people who have serious issues. That’s simply not true. Christian counseling can help with all kinds of problems – not just the serious ones.

If you feel stuck, you’re not living your life to the full – and Los Angeles Christian Counseling is here to help! Our counselors can come alongside you, offer you a compassionate ear, and help you to live your life to your full potential. Promoting personal growth through counseling will enable you to be clearer about your strengths, your calling and your purpose in life – and start living the life that you’re meant to lead.

I want to set some personal development goals, but I don’t know where to start. What do you recommend?

Goal-setting is an important part of personal development – and having goals helps to give you a greater sense of purpose. When you have goals you’re more focused and motivated – but it can be difficult to set goals on your own (and even harder to stick to them). To really benefit from having goals, you need to set goals in the right way – and a counselor can help you do that.

Self-growth through setting personal development goals is something many people find challenging, so working with a Christian counselor can be beneficial. Your counselor can help you to narrow down the specific areas of your life where you’d like to see change.

With goal-setting in self-development, it’s important to be specific about the improvements you’d like to make. Goals that are too broad are much more difficult to attain. Goals also need to be achievable. You’ll not benefit from personal development counseling if you set yourself up for failure with unattainable goals.

A personal growth plan (or personal development plan) is a tool that is often used in personal development counseling to help you focus your goals in a manageable route towards growth. It looks at the areas of your life where you’re dissatisfied or “stuck” (and want to change) and helps you to decide on the changes you’d like to make, and how to make them.

You can, of course, create a personal growth plan without a Christian counselor’s help but it can be really helpful to have someone to listen to your concerns, help you to decide on the most important areas of development you need, and keep you accountable as you journey towards growth.

The first aspect of creating a personal development plan is to ask yourself a set of questions for different areas of your life (such as your career, your personal life, your family, your education, your finances, and so on).

These questions are:

• What is going well in this area?
• What is not going so well in this area?
• What would I like to keep doing in this area?
• What aspects would I like to improve on?
• What do I need to change completely?

This self-reflection helps you to see more clearly the parts of your life where you’re dissatisfied – and enables you to begin to set goals for change and improvement. Remember that any goals that you set in your personal growth plan have to be achievable and specific, though.

I want to become a better person. Where should I start?

This is a difficult question to answer – because it depends on what you mean by becoming a “better” person. At Los Angeles Christian Counseling, we have Christian counselors who can help you to unpick what it is that you want to change in your life to become a ‘better person’.

Everyone’s idea of becoming better is different – for one person it might be to stop engaging in risky behaviors, while for another it might be to focus on involvement with a ministry or social cause such as volunteering at a soup kitchen. There’s no right or wrong way to become “better” but a Christian counselor in Los Angeles can help you to set goals to work towards your vision of what it means to be better.

There are different ways of approaching Personal Development Counseling for self- development and self-growth. Los Angeles Christian Counseling takes a Christian approach to Personal Development Counseling that looks at areas in your life where you’re out of balance or not satisfied. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a tool that is used to help categorize the important areas of your life.

When you start working with a counselor for personal growth, it may be that you want to focus on one specific aspect of your needs, such as building your confidence (esteem needs) or working towards career or education goals (fulfilment of purpose). Your counselor will ask you questions and give you space to reflect on why you’re dissatisfied in these areas and help you to create achievable personal development goals.

Evaluating your life and being honest about your feelings can be challenging – but your personal development counselor is trained to support you as you start to work on your personal growth plan.The goal with personal development counseling is to help you to reach your full potential – and this might take some time, especially if there are underlying issues that have been holding you back.

Christian counseling for self-development and self-growth uses biblical truths to guide you on your journey of personal growth.Taking a faith-based approach adds an extra dimension to your growth and helps you work towards becoming the person that God intends for you to be. For example, your Christian counselor can help you with learning to love and appreciate yourself, which is essential for personal development.

Working with a Christian counselor in Los Angeles can help you to understand how God loves and values you, and this is an excellent stepping stone towards the fulfilment of your purpose through self-actualization. Self-actualization is a psychological term that’s used a lot in personal development counseling, but from a Christian perspective it’s about reaching the fullness of life that Jesus promised in John 10:10:

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

Using the Bible and working with a Christian counselor can supercharge your personal growth and development so that you achieve personal growth levels that you might not have imagined were possible!

At Los Angeles Christian Counseling, we have counselors waiting to help you prioritize your personal development goals and achieve fulfillment in all areas of your life. Adding a faith-based means of healing your spirit makes Christian Personal Development Counseling a more effective means of actualizing the changes that you long to see in your life.