What are the best self-development activities?  The ones that work consistently, reliably and give you the results you desire.  In this article, you will learn 12 of the best activities to improve yourself quickly and effectively.

I start by explaining what self-development is and what it isn’t. I’ll then briefly share my self-development journey with you.  This will help you understand what is possible when you consistently apply self-development activities to your life.

I’ll then uncover the 12 best self-development activities for an awesome life.  Don’t feel you have to do them all! Just pick the activities that resonate with you. The ones you feel are most helpful right now.

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What Is Self-Development

Self-development is about becoming more and wanting more in life.  It’s having greater success, happiness, or being more effective and proficient. It’s about developing your talents and potential and achieving your goals and dreams.

A key part of self-development is becoming more self-aware. This is understanding yourself and why you do things. It’s knowing your strengths and weaknesses. It’s being clear on your life’s purpose, mission and values.

So self-development is developing yourself by yourself. But perhaps with the help of other people, through coaching, therapy, reading books or watching videos.

The self-development industry in the US is worth $11 billion. Every year $500 million is spent on personal development products, courses and seminars. It’s a vast market!

What Is Not Self-Development.

Self-development is not being “fixed” by someone or something else. The power to change ultimately lies within you, not someone else.

It’s not learning personal development without applying it to your life. It’s not a dopamine hit. This is consuming self-development content purely to feel better now. This often leads to becoming a personal development junkie.

If you want self-development to be more than a hobby or entertainment, then it’s essential that you apply what you learn.

Would you like a step-by-step formula for success? Or to learn the rules that successful people follow? If so, click the button below to discover this for yourself.

My Self-Development Journey

My first experience of self-development was attending a seminar on stress management whilst at university. This was fascinating and encouraged me to learn and practice meditation.

When I moved to London, I became interested in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and was actively involved with the NLP practice groups in London.

There were three books that I read that had a massive impact on me.  There were.

At this time, I wanted to improve my social confidence and dating skills. I used self-development activities to help me do that successfully.

I had a wonderful life in my 30s. I got married, had many friends, a brilliant career and lots of opportunities to travel. So, I lost interest in self-development. 

In 2010, we moved to Sydney Australia and continued to have a wonderful life. However, I didn’t feel happy or fulfilled in my career, despite changing jobs several times. Now, in my 40s, I also had some niggling health issues that influenced my state of mind.  I became more interested in natural health. That then led me back into self-development and especially mind-body healing.

I decided to make self-development my career, so I invested in training to become a qualified clinical hypnotherapist and also launch the Self Help for Life online business and brand.

The 12 Best Self-Development Activities That Will Change Your Life

So now you know what self-development is, lets dive into 12 of the best self-development activities that have changed my life and I’m sure they will do the same for you too.

1. Affirmations

Affirmations are short, positive statements about what you want in life. You repeat these statements as often as you can. Repeating them out-loud is most effective, but silently to yourself is good too.

Affirmations help replace those repetitive negative thoughts that keep you stuck. You’re already saying negative affirmations to yourself, so you’re simply replacing these negative affirmations with positive ones.

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An alternative to affirmations is Lofty questions. You can learn about these here.

2. Meditation

Meditation is highly effective for reducing stress and anxiety. Meditation helps you gain a greater awareness of your thoughts and feelings. And when you’re meditating, you can change those thoughts and feelings, or let them go.

The easiest way to meditate is to focus on your breathing. Close your eyes and focus on breathing in and breathing out.  Whenever your mind wanders (and it will frequently, especially if you’re new to this), then accept that this is fine.  It’s completely natural.

Then as soon as you notice your mind wandering (and this could be a few seconds after your mind wondered), gently bring it back to your breathing.

Another option is guided meditations. This is listening to a recording of someone giving you relaxing suggestions. You then focus on the words being said. There are thousands of guided meditation recordings available and also guided meditation mobile apps.

3. Creative Visualization

We naturally use our imagination. However, it’s typically for worst-case scenarios or things we are afraid of. Just like thinking negatively, we imagine negatively too.

Creative visualization allows you to counteract negative imagery by vividly imagining what you want instead. It’s seeing situations and activities going the way you want them to go. Creative Visualization is often known as mental rehearsal, especially in sports and athletics.

Creative visualization is much more than seeing the positive outcome in your mind. It includes hearing and feeling it too. You want to engage all the senses, even smell and taste if you can.

Olympic athletes use creative visualization all the time. It’s an essential part of what they do to become the best in their sport.  They might not consciously use creative visualization, but they definitely do it unconsciously. 

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4. Self-Hypnosis

Self-hypnosis is like guided meditation.  However, it’s more goal oriented. People use self-hypnosis to increase motivation or confidence. Or to stop a bad habit such as smoking, overeating or drinking too much alcohol.

The easiest way is to listen to a self-hypnosis recording. There are thousands of those available and some are more effective than others.

I use and recommend the self-hypnosis recordings created by Uncommon Knowledge. Their website is

You could learn how to hypnotize yourself without using self-hypnosis recordings. I cover this in one of the related articles below.

Related Articles

How to Hypnotize Yourself | A Self-Hypnosis Tutorial

Self Hypnosis and Meditation – What’s the Difference?

5. Journaling

When we keep thoughts in our head, this can lead to overwhelm and confusion.  It’s very easy to blow things out of proportion. To make it much bigger than it really is.

Journaling is writing your thoughts on paper (or in a computer file). When you do this, you gain a fresh perspective, a calmer mind and greater clarity. Writing can help release emotions too.

For the best results, write your thoughts on paper. However, if you prefer to type your thoughts on your computer, tablet or smart phone, that’s fine too.  The most important thing is to do it!

6. Setting and Achieving Goals

Most people use self-development activities to improve or change their life.  This starts with setting goals, so you’re clear on what you want to achieve and by when. Goals provide a focus for all the other self-development activities.

When you set goals, this gives you the desire and motivation to consistently work on self-development activities. You have a specific reason and benefit to work on yourself.

I encourage you to set SMART goals. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-bound.

Start by setting goals for this year, and then smaller quarterly or monthly goals.  Equally important is reviewing your goals regularly, at least monthly. Check that you’re on track and make any adjustments to maximize your chances of achieving these goals.

Related Article

How to Set and Achieve Your Goals

7. Coaching

A one-on-one coaching session is a highly effective form of self-development. An excellent coach will ask you direct, dedicated and personalized questions to help uncover your blind spots.

They will help you expand your beliefs about what is possible for you. A professional coach will also identify and help you change any limiting beliefs.

An important benefit of coaching is goal setting with accountability. It’s much harder to wriggle out of a goal that you have shared with a life coach.  You are accountable to the coach. If you fail to achieve the goal, you will need to explain your reasons (and excuses) to your life coach.

In the same way as a Personal Trainer will drive you to do 30 push-ups, when you only feel like doing 20, a skilled coach will spur you to achieve your goals faster and expand on what is possible.

8. Therapy

Therapy differs from coaching. It helps heal past events that stop you from moving forward in your life right now. Therapy helps you deal and resolve traumatic events. Or childhood events that shape your beliefs about what is possible for you right now.

There are different types of therapy.  These include counseling and various forms of psychotherapy. If you see a psychologist, they will often use Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

There is also hypnotherapy, which is what I specialize in. Hypnotherapy can help deal with, heal and resolve past events. Or it can be more solution focused, which makes it similar to coaching.

If you would like me to be your therapist or coach, then this page provides further details.

9. Overcoming Fears

One of the best self-development activities is overcoming your fears. I believe that fear is the biggest barrier to success. It’s fear that keeps people stuck. One of the fastest ways to grow and improve yourself is to overcome fears.

Do things that scare or frighten you, especially those that won’t affect you physically. For example, public speaking, talking to strangers, tough phone calls or recording videos.

Perhaps it’s having that difficult conversation with your partner or boss that you’ve been putting off for weeks.

Rather than tackling your biggest fears head on, you can start gently.  Break down your biggest fears into smaller action steps. As you complete each step, your confidence and experience will grow and you’ll feel more able to overcome the bigger fears.

Another way to strengthen your fear muscle is to do something new, unfamiliar or a little uncomfortable each day.  This could include going to a new café, trying a different food or exploring a more efficient way of doing a task at work.

10. Completing Challenges

A challenge is when you invest a significant amount of time and energy to achieve something monumental in a relatively short space of time. Here are some examples.

  • Training and then running a marathon
  • Starting a business
  • Changing jobs or your career
  • Losing a significant amount of weight.

When you set challenges, it forces you to step up and become more.  Challenges help you prove that you can do something, that you thought was difficult or even impossible.

Challenges are fantastic for overcoming habits and for achieving the more important and meaningful goals in your life.

For challenges to work effectively, you want to specify an exact amount of time.  This could be 30, 60, 90 or 100 days.  For me, 100 days works incredibly well.  I started Self Help for Life and my Hypnotherapy business in 100 days.  You can achieve so much in 100 days when you put your mind to it. It’s also long enough to make it a habit.

I do a 100 Day-Challenge every year and I use Gary Ryan Blair’s 100 Day Challenge program to motivate me, inspire me and keep me accountable during that time.

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11. Taking Action

I touched on this earlier, but it’s so important! Learning a new self-development activity, tool or technique is useless if you don’t apply it to your life. Or a Stephen Covey says “to know and not to do is not to know”.

So here are some examples:

  • Reading and learning the most effective dating techniques versus going on dates
  • Researching the most effective ways to speak in public versus speaking in public
  • Learning all the different ways to make money on the internet versus starting an internet-based business.

Knowing is easy. You can gain the knowledge by going to university or surfing the web. All the information you need is readily available.

Doing is applying what you’ve learned and testing it out.  You’re not fully committed at this stage.

Living is taking consistent action on what you’ve learned. You improve through repetition. This leads to consistent and predictable results.  The action becomes a habit and perhaps even part of who you are.

12. Expressing Gratitude

The key reason for doing self-development activities is to achieve something that we don’t already have.  It’s easy to become focussed (even obsessed) about achieving goals and major life changes.  This can lead to unhappiness and frustration, especially if the goal takes much longer than you intended.

It’s easy to forget what you have now and the good aspects of your life. Therefore gratitude and appreciation are so important.

Take a few minutes to be grateful for what you already have. Write all the things you’re grateful for and that you appreciate. Create a gratitude journal and list additional things each day.

Focus on simple things such as having enough food, good health, a safe and comfortable place to live or enough money. Be grateful for waking up and experiencing another day of your life.

Related Article

The 11 Benefits of Gratitude and How to Practice it Daily

To Conclude

So now you have a list of the 12 best self-development activities, including many of the ones I do regularly. If you want to crush your goals, be happier more fulfilled and more successful, then apply some of these self-development activities to your life and reap the benefits.






Taking personal responsibility is one of the key principles of self-development.  If you’ve read a few self-help books, you will have come across this idea already. 

All successful people know the importance of taking personal responsibility.  It may be a mindset trait that they have developed or one they do naturally.

In this article, I will cover what taking responsibility is and why it’s important.  I’ll then cover 10 ways to help you know if you are taking personal responsibility or not. 

You can use these as a road map to assess how well you take responsibility in your life.  I cover many personal examples of how I took personal responsibility to help me get to where I am today.

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What is Taking Personal Responsibility?

It’s being responsible for how you think about, deal with, and react to the events in your life. It’s not (in my view) being responsible for the actual events themselves.

At the time of writing this article, we were in the middle of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.  I believe that I am not personally responsible for this pandemic coming into my life and the health and financial consequences of this.  This is clearly outside of my control.

However, I can take personal responsibility for how I think about it, deal with it, and how I react or respond to it. I can choose the meaning that I give to this event.

Taking personal responsibility is something you continually work on. You always have an opportunity to take more personal responsibility.


Why Is Taking Personal Responsibility Important?

It gives you more choices for how you think about a situation or event, and more options on how to respond to it.

It gives you more control over the situation. When an unexpected or negative event happens, you may feel a lack of control over it.

However, when you take personal responsibility, you regain some control. This gives you greater personal power. You feel you can influence or change the situation.

It helps you focus on what you can do, rather than what you can’t do. It enables you to go from victim to victor.

Taking personal responsibility allows you to go from effect to cause. You realize and understand that these things are happening for you, rather than to you. They are happening for a reason.

I want you to understand that where you are today is largely based on the decisions and actions that you took in the past. It’s essential to take responsibility for where you are now, even if it’s not where you want to be.

Taking personal responsibility is understanding that the positive decisions and actions made today will lead to the future you want.

10 Ways to Know If You Are Taking Personal Responsibility

So what do people that take personal responsibility do?  Well, I’ve identified 10 specific mindset and behavior strategies that let you know when you are taking personal responsibility. These are the ones I use, along with many other successful people.

1. Setting and Achieving Goals

If you don’t set goals, you will be part of someone else’s goal! Here is a personal example.

About 12 years ago, I worked in a law firm in London as a software trainer. Several colleagues left the company at the same time. This created a lot of extra work for me to keep things going until we replaced them.

Week after week, I left the office at 7pm. On my way to the tube station, I would walk past people relaxing and having fun in pubs and restaurants. I felt sad and despondent as I walked past them.

At that time, I didn’t have any meaningful goals. I enjoyed the job and was happy to put in the extra hours. I regret that now though. If I had other goals, I would have worked more efficiently and made those other goals happen.

So when you don’t set goals or have a plan, it’s easy to get sucked in to someone else’s goal or plan.  If you’re an employee, this will often be the company’s goals or plans.

Setting and achieving your goals is an important component to taking personal responsibility. I encourage you to set big goals. Then work your way down to smaller goals and then daily goals or habits.

This will help you set the direction of your life, rather than unconsciously following a direction created by someone else.

Living Intentionally

Besides setting goals, you want to live intentionally. Be intentional about how you spend your time and the activities you do. Here is an example.

You’ve set a goal to drink less alcohol, and tonight you are going to the pub. Being intentional is deciding in advance how many drinks you will have and sticking to that. If you’ve decided on 2 drinks and a friend offers to buy you a 3rd drink, then you can make an instant decision to have another drink or not.  Even if you have the 3rd drink, this is far better than not being intentional, and having 3 or more drinks without even thinking about it.

You can also be intentional about how much time you spend watching TV or Netflix. Or about who you spend time with.

And when you don’t set goals or live intentionally, years go by with little or no change. You remain stuck in the same dead-end job. You are not where you want to be financially. Or you go backwards. This is especially the case with health when you don’t look after it.

Many people that don’t set goals go through a midlife crisis in their 40s or 50s. This is when they regret the things they did or didn’t do when they were younger.

If you are in your 20s or 30s, it’s so important to take personal responsibility. To set goals, live intentionally, so you don’t have regrets later in life.

2. Overcoming Fears

You are taking personal responsibility when you are regularly overcoming fears. Fear is the biggest barrier to success. It’s what causes you to live an average life. A life where you settle for what is, rather than what you really want. Overcoming fears is your gateway to a fantastic life.

What are the specific fears that stop you? Here are the major ones.

The 3 Types of Fear

The first is fear of the work involved. Is it too difficult, painful, challenging or time-consuming?

Second is fear of success. If I am successful, how will people think of me?  What additional responsibilities will I have?

Third is fear of rejection. This is big!  It’s fear of what other people might think or say when you venture out on a fresh path. Especially if that path differs greatly from what most other people do.  It’s rarely other people that stop you, it’s you!

Fear Acronym

Fear stands for False Expectations Appearing Real.

We blow things up in our mind and make it much bigger than it really needs to be. We then believe it’s real and don’t take action. You’ve probably experienced times in the past where you took action to overcome a fear. You then asked yourself “what was all that about?” or “why was this such an enormous deal in my mind?”

Personal Examples

In the 90s when I was dating, I had 2 big fears. These were:

  1. Talking to women and getting their phone number (there was no internet, email, social media or online dating apps back then).
  2. Picking up the phone and asking for a date (for those lucky times when I got a phone number!)

When I confronted these fears by taking action, I felt a sense of elation and aliveness afterwards, like a positive dopamine hit. This feeling would drive me to do more scary or uncomfortable things. When I focussed more on how I would feel afterwards, it was so much easier to do anything that took me out of my comfort zone.

I also realized that these 2 fears were stopping me from relationships and love.  This made me more motivated to take action and confront these fears.

At school, when I was 11 or 12, I could swim. However, I was afraid of jumping into the deep end of the swimming pool.  This went on for months and the fear got bigger and bigger.

When I finally jumped (with a little help from a teacher, but that’s another story), I felt wonderful with an amazing feeling of elation. I also realized that I had made this far bigger in my mind than it needed to be.

So taking action is key to overcoming fears and being responsible for your life.

3. Responding Positively to Life Events

You know you are taking personal responsibility when you positively deal with life events. As I explained earlier, you cannot control everything that happens to you, but you can control your response.

Jack Canfield created a formula for this.  It’s:

E + R = O (Events + Responses = Outcome)

Unsuccessful people blame the event for the lack of results or outcomes.  They don’t understand how their actions or responses (or lack of them) led to this.

Successful people change their responses to the event until they get the outcome or result they want.

So what responses could you change? You could start with communication. How could you communicate differently to get a better result? How could you influence other people more?

Then change how you think about and imagine this event in your mind.  This will then change your feelings and influence the actions you take.  You have complete control over how you think and imagine.

As I’m writing this article, we are in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. It’s been fascinating to see how people and organizations have responded positively to this. Over the last few weeks, there have been online church services, virtual choirs, entire companies working from home and therapists running their sessions online.

Sometimes it takes a crisis to motivate people to think creatively and implement unique solutions quickly. It forces you to step up and do things you believed you couldn’t do.

4. Making Your Own Decisions

You are taking personal responsibility when you make your own decisions. It’s deciding about what you want, rather than basing your decisions on what someone else wants.

Let’s say your parents want you to become a lawyer or doctor. However, you want to be a musician or internet entrepreneur. It’s very easy to get pushed into what your parents want you to do, especially when making these decisions in your teenage years. You take personal responsibility when you stand up to them. When you follow your heart and your passion.

It’s also about the small decisions that you make every day. Decisions about what foods to eat or whether to exercise. It’s deciding to make regular time for your own personal development and mental health, rather than letting work and other priorities get in the way.

Every daily decision you make will compound over the years and dramatically affect your life in 5, 10 or 15 years’ time. If you make poor food choices every day, your future health will suffer in negative and predictable ways. If you make daily decisions to work on your mental health, you’ll be a much more positive and resourceful person in the future.

Don’t underestimate the power of making the right decisions consistently every day. They will compound and add up over time.

5. Not Blaming Other People

When you blame the government, spouse, parents, friends, boss, or anyone else, you are not taking personal responsibility.

As soon as you blame someone else, you take away your power to change it. You’ve surrendered your power to someone else.

You feel like a victim and believe you have no control. You miss out on learning what you could do differently next time.

If your boss says or does something that makes you feel angry, then you could blame your boss for your anger.  Or you could do some inner work to find out what triggered this anger. Ask questions like:

  • What precisely did my boss say or do that made me feel angry?
  • What was I doing (or not doing) that may have caused my boss to act this way?

So you can see how taking responsibility can lead to thinking and acting in more positive ways.

Also realize that it’s not someone else that makes you feel a certain way. They may trigger it, but the feeling comes from within you.

6. Not Complaining

To complain about anything, you need to believe that something better exists.  Otherwise you have nothing to compare it against. So complaining is comparing what is with how you think it should be.

Complaining is a choice. People complain to feel better temporarily. Others may take pity on you, and that makes you feel better. Complaining can be a way of releasing anger too.

However, complaining is an excuse for not taking action and not taking personal responsibility. Complaining is an alternative to facing the fear or risk you need to take. It distracts you from taking action.

Complaining solves nothing, and it keeps you stuck.

7. Taking Charge of Your Thoughts and Feelings

The average person has 60,000 thoughts each day and we ignore most of them. It’s essential to understand that these thoughts are not you! You are the observer of your thoughts. You can decide the thoughts to pay attention to and the thoughts to ignore or challenge.

If you identify strongly with your thoughts and feel that they are part of who you are, then this article will help you learn how to become the observer of your thoughts instead.

Do you put things off when you don’t feel like doing them?  People that take personal responsibility rarely do that. They take action despite how they feel. So when you don’t feel like doing something, and procrastination sets in, take action anyway!  This is what successful people do.

I often record videos and write articles when I don’t feel like doing them. However, once I start, I feel more motivated and inspired and it’s easy to keep going. So feelings follow action.

It’s important to know when to stop too. Listen to your body. Are you feeling tired or burned out? Know when it’s time to stop and take a break.

8. Not Making Excuses

This is like blame, especially if another person is your excuse.  Perhaps you blame your parents for not giving you certain opportunities when you were younger.

However, most excuses are about you lacking a skill or personality trait. Here are some examples of common excuses.

  • I’m not smart enough.
  • I’m not intelligent enough.
  • I’m not outgoing enough.

Time can also be an excuse. For example:

  • I’m too busy to start an exercise program right now.
  • It’s not the right time to start an online business.

Or it can be other external factors like the weather!

So why do people make excuses? 

First, it allows them to relinquish power and control. You can say “it’s not my fault”. However, this also removes the ability to change the situation. It becomes outside of your control.

Second, excuses make you temporarily feel better. You don’t have to do something that is difficult or challenging. But feeling better doesn’t last. Soon it changes to feelings of regret. 

Finally, making excuses provides an alternative to facing the fear. It’s much easier to make an excuse than confront something that is scary. This could be a fear of rejection, failure or even a fear of success!

The problem with excuses is that you know they’re not true or helpful when you first make them.  However, as you continue to make the same excuses, they form a belief. The excuses become true for you. You then act as if they are true.

So making excuses takes away your power to change the situation.  You relinquish personal responsibility and the ability to take effective action.

9. Know What Brings Happiness

Understand that happiness is not linked to a future goal. It’s a habit that you can cultivate daily. Happiness comes from helping, caring and serving other people. You’ll feel happy when you’re living to your values, doing what is important to you and feeling that your life has purpose and meaning.

Happiness is about being grateful for what you already have.

As I write this article during the COVID-19 pandemic, I’m grateful for many things that I previously took for granted. I’m healthy, I’m making some money, my family and friends are all safe and well.  I get to experience another day of my life. You can always find things to be grateful for, when you look for them.

10. Put Yourself First and Help Others

The last way to know that you are taking personal responsibility is when you put yourself first, but help others as well. It’s when you understand that you can’t help other people effectively when you don’t feel good about yourself. Or when you don’t take time out for yourself.

You can still help others, but it won’t be as easy or enjoyable when you don’t look after yourself too.

To help you understand this, remember why you always put on your own oxygen mask on a plane, before helping others.

So this is about taking time for your own personal development. It’s creating time to learn and look after your own health and fitness. This gives you the knowledge, skills, health, energy and vitality to help others more effectively.

When you help others, do this with a sense of gratitude and not as a chore. You’ll feel much better as a result. The people you help will feel better too.

To Conclude

Use this article as a roadmap for taking personal responsibility. Look at each of the 10 ways and assess the ones that you do well, and the ones that you could improve. Be totally honest. 

As I mentioned earlier, you can always take more personal responsibility. It’s something that I constantly work on. Your brain finds it very easy to blame and make excuses. So find opportunities to take personal responsibility every day. You’ll then feel empowered to change and create the life that you truly want and deserve.



