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How to Write About Personal Growth

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You can write about personal growth in a variety of situations. You may use a personal journal to track your growth , or you may be required to write about a personal growth experience for a class. You may even need such writing for a college application essay or a job interview process. In any case, you can write about your personal growth with a few simple tips.

Start by letting your ideas flow freely. Brainstorming, or free-writing, is a way of getting your ideas out of your head and onto paper. Do this by writing anything that comes to your head when you think of how you have grown personally. Don't worry about punctuation or organization; just write until you're out of ideas. You can do this by jotting down ideas in list form or writing in a stream of consciousness style free form paragraph. Personal growth author Jill Jepson says that when she wrote one of her books, this free-flowing style of writing worked best for her. "Ideas would come to me at all hours of the day and night—it was all I could do to get them all down," she said.

Think of the challenges you have faced. One way we grow as people is to face and overcome challenges, so this can be an inspiration for your personal growth writing. When you write about a challenge, consider how you came to face that challenge, how you dealt with it, and what you learned from the experience. If you are writing for a job or college essay, try to think of a challenge you successfully overcame; this will paint your personal growth in a positive light. If you are writing for yourself, you may learn a lot by considering the challenges you were not able to overcome, and considering the reasons for your inability to overcome them.

Consider influential people from your life. We grow in life when we learn from other people, so the inspirational people in your life can also be inspiration for your writing. Think of someone you emulated who helped you learn something new, or discover something about yourself. Maybe someone gave you advice that changed your life journey, or someone helped you in a difficult time and you learned about kindness as a result of their actions. Writing about people who have influenced you can help you see how you grew from your relationships with those people.

Think of goals and how you reached them. Everyone sets goals in life, whether it is a goal to lose weight, learn something new, or improve a skill. Think about the goals you have set for yourself and how you went about achieving those goals. Whether you succeeded or failed, you probably learned something from the process, and in doing so you grew.

Remember emotional times. The days that stand out the most in our memories are probably days we grew as people.Consider the happiest day in your life, or the saddest. Remember a time you felt proud and a time you felt afraid. On these occasions, you experienced strong emotions as the result of a significant occurrence in your life, and as a result of that you experienced personal growth.

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