“How can you accelerate your personal growth?”

I was asked this question on Quora the other day. At first, I was a bit overwhelmed by the question.

You see, there are just so many ways that you can improve your personal growth that I was having trouble figuring out how best to respond. It’s challenging as a coach to corral a vague question like this because you want to list every single solution for a client, but at the same time, you don’t want to completely overwhelm them.

Instead, I decided to figure out what really moves the needle for you, in order to get you the most bang for your buck when it comes to personal development.

Here are 5 ways you can accelerate your personal growth:

1. Set better goals. Let’s start with the basics. Being a better person or even maximizing your personal growth is too vague of a goal. On the other hand, if you use S.M.A.R.T goals combined with stretch goals, you’ll have a much clearer direction and get positive results. To make it easy for you, look at this insanely popular goal-setting guide.

2. Ask better questions. Along with the first point, you must reframe your questions and be more specific. Be inquisitive; ask questions that will lead to more detailed answers, and therefore, more questions. Trust me, asking the right questions that will grant you access to more opportunities to succeed and accelerate your personal growth.

3. ILT. This is my favorite way to learn by far. The first step in the ILT process is to Invest the time and money into education, resources, and training for yourself (books are an excellent low-cost investment, for instance). Second, you must Learn that training and utilize that education you invested in (it’s amazing how often people fail to complete education and training that’s already available to them). Finally, you must Teach this newfound knowledge to others to solidify what you just learned. If you can teach it, you have truly mastered that area of expertise and can move on to the next uncharted territory.

4. Make mistakes early and learn from them. It’s okay to make mistakes. However, it’s better to make them early when they don’t matter as much so you can adjust and pivot if needed. Remember, “done” is better than “perfect”, meaning it is better to have completed something than to wait until it is perfect, which it will never be. The key is learning and building from mistakes and previous experiences to transform and grow your skills and abilities.

5. Find a mentor and/or a coach. This is single-handedly the best way to accelerate your personal growth. It is challenging at times to gauge your progress and refine your direction. However, with mentors and coaches, you get much better feedback and tips to improve without all the guesswork. Even better, you can learn from others’ experiences and figure out what works before you try it yourself. Not sure what the difference is between the two? Find out here.

What do you do to accelerate your personal growth? What moves the needle for you?