114 Personal Growth Concepts

1. Perfect/Profound Wisdom – Perfect wisdom is the ability to break through the ignorance and see the true nature of things i.e. see things as they are and not from our mental filters. Your mind should be like a mirror which reflects only the truth. Profound wisdom is the only solution to end all suffering.
2. Pure Mind – It is the only way through which you can get wisdom. With wisdom you can end suffering, love more and have ultimate bliss. To have pure mind you must practice 6 paramitas, eliminate 6 dusts and 5 desires, practice meditation concentration daily and be more mindful/aware of the thoughts that arise in your mind.
3. Enlightenment – it is the transmuting of the mind into the Great Mirror Wisdom. And so surangama sutra points directly at the mind which when stirred but the first thought creates basic illusion of an ego and splits the whole into subject and object. By stripping of this attachment to the illusory body and mind or understanding that mind creates separateness will give you enlightenment for it is the root cause of existence and 6 coarse conditions. Causes of delusion: basic ignorance, subject & object, and its 6 coarse conditions i.e. attachment, responsiveness, knowledge, assigning names to object, karmic activities and sufferings.
4. Contemplation – In our daily lives we often forget to think on the right thing due to over thinking. A study shows that only 2% of our daily thoughts are based on facts or actual experience. We are addicted to thinking and the wrong thinking in particular. Every day set aside some time to do contemplation i.e. thinking deep about an object, a problem, a belief or anything else that you think you need more clarity on in life. The best practice to do so is vipassana meditation or insight meditation.
5. 100 Dreams! – take a notebook and write down at least a 100 wishes / goals that you want to accomplish in your lifetime. There are no limitations to your abilities & resources; even sky is not the limit. Write everything that comes to your mind.. Imagine that you have everything that is required to fulfil this list, so anything you write will be 100% actualized. Review this list every week, add few, and check on what you’ve accomplished.
6. Self-concept – The bundle of beliefs that you have about yourself. It is the way you see yourself and think about yourself in every area of your life. It is the ‘master program’ of your subconscious computer. It is like an operating system that determines everything you say, think, feel and do. So think, feel and do only that which will make you strong from inside.
7. Pro habits – One of the strongest indicators of your success is your habits. Develop habits that are worth cultivating and which will benefit you for lifetime. Learn about the habits of the most effective people and try to develop them in yourself. This will give you silent gifts for the life ahead.
8. Diderot effect – The Diderot Effect helps explain why we buy things we don’t need. Not knowing this concept will make you go financially broke in near future.
9. Mind dump – It is a technique to free up your mental RAM which makes your brain work faster and more effectively. It is about emptying you mind on paper. You cannot remember everything, but a paper can.
10. Magnifying glass – Our mind is like a magnifying glass, where ever we focus on grows, our mind magnifies the things that we put our attention/focus on. So, we must focus more on the positive things or else negatives will be magnified out of proportion making things appear worse than they actually are.
11. Arête – Striving to live to your highest potential from moment to moment. This will generate happiness. Write down how you can live your life to full potential.
12. Personal Legend – What is your life purpose? How do you want to feel? What are your lifestyle standards? What is your ultimate goal of life? Why were you born?
13. Deed Book – Make a journal and divide the pages in 2 columns (Good/Bad) and record all the good and bad deeds you did during the day, be accountable. Try to accumulate more wholesome deeds to neutralize karmic accounts.
14. The Law of belief – whatever you believe with full conviction becomes reality. Eliminate self-limiting beliefs. Build more strong positive beliefs.
15. The law of reversibility – you are more likely to act yourself into feeling a particular way than you are to feel yourself into acting. Act, walk, groom, work like top people and you will start to feel like the top people. Fake it till you make it.
16. 5 year fantasy – create a 5 year fantasy for yourself and begin thinking about what your life would look like in five years if it were perfect in every respect. Areas to include: career, relationships, social, psychological and spiritual.
17. The theory of Constraints – between you and anything you want to accomplish there is a constraint or a limiting belief (which makes you feel depressed, low, etc.), that determines how fast you get to where you want to go. Let go off all the beliefs.
18. Being – we are addicted to thinking or constantly doing something. We cannot just stay ‘being’. Take some time off every day to just be being. Don’t do anything physically, mentally or verbal. Just be nothing and this will bring peace.
19. Lifestyle Minimalism – at the core of our being we do not want anything. This realization will come after deep contemplation. Success, money, relationship, party, any action is just a delusion. We don’t want anything, and we are doing exactly the opposite of it so how can we be happy? We need to minimalize everything in our life. Minimalize the number of your clothes, hobbies, activities, work, thinking, talking, reading… Minimalize everything by 50% and the remaining 50% of activities should be done more mindfully and also with extending time.
20. Mind Expanding – focus on expanding your mind. Your mind is everything, with a small mind you cannot go far, and expand your perspective, thinking and reflection. Read more books; get more knowledge from anywhere possible because it is the best way to expand your mind. The universe exists in our minds.
21. Silent gifts – Develop habits or do daily practices that generate silent gifts (benefits). Example Quadrant  2 activities (reading books, exercising, visualization, healthy eating, meditation, regular blood work)
22. DIY-Life Project – Commit to yourself that you will make everything that is required for you to achieve your dreams. You won’t let anything stop you. If nothing supports you, you will do it yourself, you are the creator, you won’t settle for your dream!
23. IT (Intuition Time) – 80% of your mind is acquired by your subconscious (super ego). It is very powerful, it is responsible to communicate with the cosmic energies and make your imagination a reality. This may sound vague but you can refer scientific studies on subconscious mind and its power. Set aside 40-45 minutes every day to listen to your ‘in-tuition.’ Because it knows everything and it guides you to take right action at right time but this little voice in your head can be heard clearly only when you mind is quite.
24. Chain Creation: Your completion of one project (goal) should lead you to start your second. You should not stop after you have completed a project, start working on your second project the other day. Also, all your goals should be aligned to your life purpose, where one goal triggers the second and the chain reaction starts. This will lead you to your goals by building momentum and strong foundation.
25. Micro Sabbatical: If you often burnout or get super stressed while working on your goals, you can take small sabbaticals or a day or two off from your work. This is very advantageous when you cannot take a long vacation, it will recharge you and give more strength to achieve your goals.
26. Troll Poop: Accept the fact that there will always be some people who will troll on you when you are chasing your dreams. They will try to demotivate you and also make fun of you. Don’t be discouraged by this, clean this poop and through it out. Ignore it! Don’t let people’s shit stop you.
27. Craftsmanship: Know your craft. Know who you are and what you want to do. Be a person who can turn illusion into reality. Know your skills and knowledge to turn your imagination in actualised things. You should be willing to put your hand, heart and mind in your work with intrinsic motivation, high ambition and a hunger for excellence. A craftsman is a creator, creator of the invisible!
28. Deliberate Practise: Deliberate practise is the only way through which you will get mastery in any field. To practise this, invest at least 2 hours every single day in the work you love (or want to have mastery in) No holidays, weekends or breaks are allowed, practise every single day for at least 2 hours and you will become a master.
29. Life Purpose: Life purpose is absolutely necessary. Without having a life purpose is like living a life without meaning. Life purpose is the number one most important thing that you need to figure out.
30. Morning & Evening Rituals: A set of activities that you perform everyday in the morning and in the evening that takes care of you throughout the day. They are essential as your targets and so take care of them and they will take care of you. All highly successful people have these rituals.
31. Daily & Weekly Planning: “Plan your days, plan your life” You need to learn this art. Daily and weekly planning is essential if you want to accelerate your speed towards your goals. It is necessary to have a direction in your life, do all important tasks in time and keep away from distractions.
32. Intrinsic Motivation: Motivation is something that moves you to action.  Without motivation you would not be reading this ConceptNote©. There are two types of motivation – Intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic is what comes from within and extrinsic is what comes from surrounding.  Intrinsic motivation never dies, extrinsic motivation is temporary.
33. Trusting Instincts or Gut: You cannot go far without this one quality.  Instincts most commonly known as your “Intuition” is nothing but your tutor within. It guides you when logic fails. It gives you an unexplainable feeling of “Do this! Or this is going to work!” You need to learn and be able to tap into your intuition as it is the real power, it knows everything!
34. Brain Food: The quality and type of information you feed your mind will directly affect the quality of your life. It is what determines failure or success. It is what determines your character. It is very delicate and often un-cared area of life.
35. Human Capitalism: “The greatest investment you can make is in YOU” Human capitalism is all about how wealthy you are in terms of talent, skills, knowledge, intelligence and character.
36. Clarity & Strategic Planning: You need to be crystal clear about your goals, targets or purpose. Without clarity you will go round and round and end up doing nothing great. After being absolutely clear, you need to have a strategy to actualize your dreams.
37. Uncommon, Determined, Massive Actions: without actions nothing is possible. This blueprint is in front of you because it took actions! To achieve something uncommon, you need to do something uncommon. To be better at what you do you need to take determined actions. To be master at something you need to take massive actions.
38. Time Management: Your life is given to you in terms of time. Your time is limited. Do not waste it. Learn to manage your time for making your life effective and smooth. Effective time management can accelerate your growth rate by 50% making your achieve success faster than people who do not manage time.
39. Studying Successful People: You might have heard there is no shortcut to success, but believe me there is – studying successful people. Life is too short to learn from your own experiences and mistakes, learn from those people who have already gone through your situation to save your time, energy, efforts and sometimes money.
40. Understanding Real Growth: Growth is very confusing. You might think that you are growing but you may in reality not be growing! You need to be able to distinguish between Real and Fake growth.
41. Thinking Big: Your small thinking is what is blocking you from achieving big things in life. Thinking big pushes your limits and makes you do things that you never believed you could do.  It brings out the potential in you and expands you.
42. Open Mindedness: This will win you battles in relationships and social life. Open mindedness is all about respecting other person’s ideas, thoughts, actions and feelings without judgement. You should appreciate everyone’s uniqueness.
43. Filling your own cup: This is a huge one. It is all about embracing yourself. You need to learn to fulfil your own emotional and materialistic needs. You need to become independent and appreciate freedom.
44. Resourcefulness: Resourcefulness is the mindset of making resources available or creating resources that you need to have to make your dream life actualised. If you stop because of lack of resources, you will never be highly successful. If you don’t have something, go create it. This is how your mindset must be.
45. Hobbies: You need to have at least one hobby. May it be petting, sketching, sports, playing instruments or simply reading? Hobbies help you to stay grounded and relaxed at difficult times, make you know more about yourself and also be more emotionally stable. It is a great way to relieve stress also!
46. Psychology Conditioning: Your mind is everything. Remove your mind from your body and nothing exists, not even the universe. That is how important your psychology is. You need to take care of it the most. Condition your psychology to love, success, greatness, bliss and all the positive things. Condition your psychology for wealth, relationships and handling difficult times. Master your psychology, create an extraordinary life.
47. Subconscious Mind Programming: Your mind is divided into two parts conscious and sub-conscious / unconscious. Your conscious mind holds up to 2% of your mind which we use for thinking, acting, problems solving, talking, writing or everything that we do consciously.  Your subconscious mind is like autopilot it controls your heartbeat, breathing, blood flow, growth, digestion and 98% of your mind. Imagine if you could make success and greatness automatic!
48. Psychology of the Sexes: How does the other gender think? Understanding the psychology of the other sex will master your relationships, increase your attraction and magnetism and also boost your confidence.
49. Using Internet Effectively: Internet is a power, if you know how to use it effectively.  You can use internet to follow great people and get into their minds, you can access to almost anything within seconds, and it is not only a great tool for personal development but also for creating your business.
50. Journaling and Documenting: Journal and document your life. Journaling is a great way to learn more about our inner self and explore anything much deeper and wider. It helps you explore your own mind with high efficiency and deeper understanding. Also helpful to brainstorm.
51. Sharing and Helping: Share your knowledge, advice and resources with people who are need of it. This will make you feel more alive, successful, happy, fulfilled and satisfied. I cannot list the unlimited benefits of it, share how much you are capable of and you will reap the benefits.
52. Growth Mindset: Without having a growth mindset you will not grow faster than the natural pace of evolution.Learn from everyone and everything. Be positive, optimistic and set high standards to have an explosive growth. 
53. Possibility Thinking: Be a possibility thinker. Meaning – you need to believe that your dreams, thoughts and ideas are possible. Possibility thinking is the combination of being optimistic, realistic and expectancy theory.
54. Self-Education: “A child, who is educated only in school, is an uneducated child.” Don’t limit your learning and education only to the university courses. Go out, interview successful people, examine the lives of people, look within yourself, read books and educated yourself in every area. Become smart! 
55. Success Clues: Success leaves clues, your job is to find it, understand it and soak in that piece of wisdom. Life is too short to make mistakes yourself and learn from it or waste your time in trial and error. Learn from industry leaders, legends, experts and wisest people who have ever lived. Learn from their mistakes, take advantage of it!
56. Neuroscience: Learn how your brain works. This will help you to apply the concepts, knowledge and intelligence in more effective way.
57. A Rage to Mastery Theory: Be hungry and strive for mastery. A master is a leader and a successful person. Connect to the concept of deliberate practise.
58. Ayurveda: The science of life. It is related to how you food affects your body and how that energy affects you mind and ultimately to your life.
59. Personal Philosophy: Have your personal set of rules. Don’t let people control you, instruct you or tell you what is good or bad. Do what is right for you, do what your heart tells you to do. Have your own signature and be yourself. Live by your own set of rules this will make your life easy. Checkout my article on this.
60. 80/20 Rule: Success is 80% Psychology and 20% strategy.Everything about my work is based upon conditioning you psychology. If you can master your psychology you can master your life, very simple.
61. Self Determination Theory:  It is concerned with the motivation behind choices people make without external influence and interference. What motivates you? Identify it!
62. Constraints: Set boundaries for yourself in life as well as your products (work). My sleep is limited to 5 hours. I read daily for 45 minutes. In general, have constraints for your life so that you get everything done, sometimes you can break it but try to stick to your constraints.
63. Copying: “Good artists copy, great artists steal. – Pablo Picasso” Copy what is necessary and add more of your value to it. This doesn’t mean that you steal someone’s copyrights, but simply means that you adopt and implement great ideas of people in your work with your ideas and make it better. You have to be a great artist so don’t copy, steal it! –  “Good artists copy, great artists steal. – Pablo Picasso”
64. Drop by Drop: A jar of water is filled drop by drop.Your small, persistent actions towards your determined and crystal clear goals will bring you success. To get an overnight success, you have to work hard, every day for 10 years.
65. Dead by Tomorrow: What would you do if you would die tomorrow? Did you live your life? Did you enjoy your life? Did you make a difference? Did you love? Live everyday as if it was your last. Do what you really want to do.
66. Sustained Motivation: Without sustained motivation you cannot go far. To keep your motivation sustained it is necessary that it should be intrinsic. Download my 45 minutes motivation booster checklist.
67. Your Manifesto: Write your personal manifesto! The word manifesto traces its roots to the Latin manifestum, which means clear or conspicuous.  A manifesto is defined as a declaration of one’s beliefs, opinions, motives, and intentions. It is simply a document that an organization or person writes that declares what is important to them. Statement Have a Personal Mission statement — Write out your personal mission statement and spend 5 minutes reading it every morning, no matter what. Live your mission statement every day. Checkout this article it will be a great help for you.
68. Power of thought: The biggest one! Your thoughts are everything. “All that we are is the result of what we have thought, the mind is everything. What we think we become.” Our thoughts lead to feeling, feeling to attitude, attitude to action, action to habits, habits to personality and personality to Destiny. This is very deep, you won’t understand in one look so think upon it.
69. Mindfulness: Mindfulness is the cure to all sufferings. Mindfulness is all about being conscious of every moment. It is similar to “zero-thought” mind state where you are completely in the present moment, living the reality – experiencing the reality as it is! Mindfulness is amazing and it is one of my favourite practises that I do every single day for at least 30 minutes. There is no exception to it.
70. Meditation: Being aware of your thoughts, seeing where they wander. It is a perfect tool to tame the monkey mind and do magic. It can do wonders to your mind, body and soul. It is a perfect medicine for all mental and physical ailments.
71. Relationship Psychology: Study how the relationships work; know what does it takes to build a strong, transparent and long lasting relationship. Know what is your current mindset in relationships, what do you think about a person and your relationship with him/her, is it healthy? Or toxic?
72. Penetration: You every thought and every action has an impact on this world, indirectly. We cannot afford even waste 1 of greatness and epic dreamer. You are here to impact this world, shape this world and penetrate it with your ideas, work and contribution. Do it right!
73. Become Worthy: Work hard and focus on becoming worthy of the thing that you desire for. The moment you become worthy of something it will be in your life. Example: You want a Ferrari? Why not! Then become for it! That way you will know the true value of it and understand how much efforts it take to earn it.
74. Strategic Thinking: Live strategically — Make methodical, long-term plans for your life. Analyse your life and have your actions lead to some ultimate objective. A quality life is designed, it doesn’t happen spontaneously.
75. Resistance Be Prepared for Resistance — your brain creates resistance to change and growth. Be prepared to encounter serious resistance when you undertake any creative project that taps into your highest self. Be ready to wrestle and negotiate.
76. Happiness: Understand How Happiness Works — Most of us don’t understand what will truly make us happy. Happiness is living with integrity. It’s living your top strengths and values every day, consistently. Happiness is not about acquiring tangible or even spiritual “things”.
77. Top 10 Values: Articulate Your Top 10 Values — identify and articulate what’s most important and meaningful to you in life. Keep refining and prioritizing your values over time. Align your actions with your values
78. Charged Life: Commit to Living a Charged Life — you will live one of three types of life: a caged life, a comfortable life, or a charged life. You only have one life. Commit to living a charged life. Commit to being all that you can be despite the challenges.
79. Be Principle-Centred: Live your life according to deliberately-chosen principles. Ground your happiness and success in your ideal values, not external circumstances. Do not ground yourself in family, work, church, material possessions, or pursuit of pleasure.
80. Be a Creator: See yourself as someone who creates. In whatever you do, be a creator and artist. Take your work personally. Seek to contribute something new to the world.
81. Be Proactive: Take control your circumstances and show initiative. Make decisions that increase your agency over your external environment. Do not be passive. Do not be a victim.
82. Zone of Genius: Live Your Zone of Genius — identify your zones of genius, excellence, competence, and incompetence. Commit to living in your zone of genius even though you are comfortable in your zone of excellence.
83. Flow: Create More Flow Experiences — Design your life so that you’re “in the zone” more often. Do not multitask. Focus on one task at a time and develop technical mastery so you can easily become absorbed in the moment.
84. Normalize Expectations: Set Reasonable Expectations — Set reasonable expectations for yourself by studying the process and results of others. Know what you’re getting into and how much time and effort it will take. When you feel down, check back with your expectations.
85. Be World Class: Commit to Being World Class — Strive to be world class in your career or business. If you’re not going to be world class, why even bother? You’re leaving the peak experiences off the table! Dedicate yourself to excellence.
86. 10,000 Hours: Commit to Investing 10,000 Hours — Realize that it takes 10,000 hours to become world class at anything. Prepare yourself for the long-haul. Commit to and focus on mastering 1 or 2 things. Then, practice, practice, practice!
87. Kaizen: Commit to Constant Improvement — Baby-step your success. Build your life up with steady, incremental improvements. Stop trying to sustain knee-jerk, dramatic changes.
88. Growth Friends: Have 5-7 High-Quality Friendships — Build 5-7 high-quality friendships that you intend to sustain for the rest of your life. Invest time in enjoying and maintaining your growth friends. Shallow friendships don’t count.
89. Emotional Triggers: Dismantle Your Buttons — identify which situations and behaviours trigger negative emotional reactions in you and eliminate them. With introspection, visualization, and journaling, dismantle your buttons so other people cannot control you.
90. Sedona Method: Learn and Use Sedona Method — Learn to release negative emotions like worry, anger, and fear, so you can act from a position of good feeling. Develop emotional awareness and imperturbability.
91. Shadow Work: Invest in Shadow Work — Spend time introspecting and journaling about your past to release repressed emotions and get closure for past traumatic events. Integrate marginalized aspects of your psyche so you aren’t held back by the past.
92. Limiting Beliefs: Eliminate Limiting Beliefs — Identify your greatest limiting beliefs and eliminate them one by one with techniques like visualization, seeding, affirmations, contemplation, shadow work, and journaling.
93. Law of Attraction: Only Focus on the Things You Want — Build a habit of only thinking about the things you want. Stop worrying. Stop thinking about what you don’t want. Stop planning for worst-case scenarios. Think constructively.
94. Relationship Abundance: Create Relationship Abundance — Design your life to have relationship abundance. You should be able to find another mate quickly if you wanted to, otherwise your intimate relationships will be unhealthy because you will feel and demonstrate scarcity.
95. Subconscious Mind: Leverage Your Subconscious — your subconscious mind plays a big role in your performance and happiness in all areas of life. Program your subconscious to align it with your conscious intentions.
96. Commonplace Book: Keep a Commonplace Book — Great Enlightenment era thinkers like Voltaire and Da Vinci kept scrapbooks for collecting their greatest ideas. Have a commonplace book to organize all the information you’re processing as a life-long learner.
97. Embrace Paradox: Learn to tolerate paradox, contradiction, and simply not knowing. Be flexible, open-minded, and intellectually humble.
98. Nominalised Identity: Don’t Be Attached to Your “Who” — Stop labelling yourself as being this or that type of person. You are not a fixed and static “who”. Your identity is plastic. Don’t be stubborn about who you are and how you’re supposed to be.
99. Quadrant 2 Activities: Prioritize Quadrant 2 Activities — Make important, non-urgent activities the core for you schedule. Minimize time spent on putting out urgent fires or dilly-dallying with unimportant activities.
100. Top 5 People: Surround Yourself with Great People — Surround yourself strategically with people who are successful, positive, intelligent, and support what you’re doing. Cut toxic, unsupportive people out of your life.
101. Block Time: Work in Block Time — Work in focused, uninterrupted 1-2 hour blocks of time. Work less hours but with more focus. High productivity comes from focused effort, not pure time.
102. Be More Authentic: Be More Authentic — strive to be more of your authentic self at work, at home, in relationships, and in social situations. Accept who you are and give yourself the freedom to express your uniqueness. Trust that people will accept the real you.
103. Stop Judging: Stop Judging Things and People —judging things and people is toxic. It will poison your mental wellbeing and distract you from what you want to create. Let things and people be as they are. Stop trying to fit them into your mould.
104. Life-Long Learning: Commit to Life-Long Learning — Read, listen to CDs, attend seminars, talk to smart people, study, subscribe to magazines, follow bloggers, etc. The more knowledgeable you are, the more options and opportunities you’ll have.
105. Social Conditioning: Free Yourself of Limiting Social Conditioning — Identify areas in which social conditioning have limited you and consciously challenge it. Free yourself from the shackles of government, society, media, friends, employers, and family. 
106. Life Balance: Balance Your Life — Live a well-rounded life, with attention put into career, intimate relationship, health, friends, hobbies, and personal improvement. Do not make the mistake of over-focusing on any one part of your life, like work.
107. Perfectionism: Stop Being a Perfectionist — Stop trying to make your work perfect. Accept that the path to mastery is full of screw-ups, big and small. Embrace kaizen. Your work will become good naturally, over a long period of practice.
108. Alignment: Align Your Life with Your Values — the over-arching strategy of your life should be alignment. Identify what’s most important to you and commit to changing your life to match that ideal. When you see a misalignment, resolve it.
109. Relationship Types: Build Independent Relationships — understand the 3 relationships types: co-dependent, independent, inter-dependent. Identify and eliminate co-dependencies in your intimate relationships.
110. 5 Love Languages: Learn How to Communicate Love — People express and feel love in 5 different ways: words of affirmation, physical touch, gifts, acts of service, and quality time. Learn exactly which behaviours make your lover feel loved and practice them often.
111. Visualization: Practice Visualization Every Day — develop a habit of visualizing, every day, what you want your life to be like. You can use visualization to mock-practice, change your self-image, or program your subconscious mind to help you achieve big goals.
112. Contemplation: Dedicate Time for Contemplation — Spend time alone in thought, thinking about a topic with absolute focus. Contemplation peels back the surface layers of an idea, giving you more awareness, understanding, and options.
113. External Validation: Eliminate Reliance on External Validation — Stop chasing after the approval of others, whether it’s friends, family, co-workers, or neighbours. Identify all the external sources of validation that you enjoy and re-ground them in yourself.
114. Know Yourself: Get to Know Your True Self — develop a deep understanding of who you are. What do you like? What don’t you like? What do you value? Who are you? What are you good at? What are you bad at? What must you have in life to be happy?