Personal effectiveness is a branch of the self-help movement dealing with success, goals, and related concepts. Personal effectiveness integrates some ideas from “the power of positive thinking” and positive psychology but in general it is distinct from the New Thought Movement. A primary differentiating factor is that Personal Effectiveness proponents generally take a more systematic approach including a number of factors beside simple positive thinking. Some proponents take an approach with similarities to business process management techniques. Others may take a holistic spiritual and physical wellness approach.
Our personal effectiveness depends on our innate characteristics – talent and experience accumulated in the process of our personal development.
Talents first are needed to be identified and then developed to be used in a particular subject area (science, literature, sports, politics, etc.).
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 and risk assessment. Skills also determine whether real actions are performed in accordance with the plan. If the same ability is used many times in the same situation, then it becomes a habit that runs automatically, subconsciously.
Here are some skills that will greatly increase the efficiency of any person who owns them:
- 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 a result 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 a positive attitude and believe that by performing right actions and achieving right goals you will certainly reach success. Check out these practical tips on how to increase self-confidence.
- 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. It requires problem-solving skills.
- 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 increased when using creative tools. It requires the ability to generate ideas.
- Generating ideas
It helps you achieve goals using new, original, unconventional ideas. The 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.
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