They have the very same goal; however, there is a very thin line that sets them apart

Let’s talk basics

Personal development and spiritual growth tend to get jumbled together since they relate to evaluating ourselves. There’s a slight difference between the two. Personal development focuses more on the external layers of your persona, while spiritual growth focuses more on your personality and soul. It’s learning who you are at your core. Let’s take a deeper look at the two.

Now Let’s Brake Them Down

The meaning of spirituality is the understanding of your soul. Spiritual growth is simply the process of being aware of your consciousness. You go on a never-ending journey of self-exploration to transcend the boundaries of your mind and ego to realize who you are on a soul level.

Personal Development has a much broader scope; it has several aspects, each aimed at different goals. The aspects of personal development are mental, physical, social, emotional, and spiritual.

Personal development can encompass spiritual growth; let’s explore this further. We are here to get down to the nitty-gritty!

Reasons for Personal Development and Spiritual Growth

We are always looking for ways to improve our daily lives. We move forward with the motto “work smarter, not harder.” I know I do! It’s no mistake that we are all aware of how we can improve our lives.

Reasons for someone to seek personal development can be derived from their need to improve their professional background. Personal development allows you to assess your skills and provide a growth path.

We can see these paths in the aspects of personal development concerning mental, physical & social. Let’s say, for instance, you want to improve your physical state. Your first step is to align your diet and exercise to have a better physical health, that’s a delineated path.

Now spiritual growth is not as calm and easy as it sounds. If you think it is all “zen,” you may be doing it wrong. A spiritual journey entails highs and lows. My spiritual journey, for example, has been an emotional roller coaster.

Seeking to enter a spiritual journey means better understanding and controlling our main emotions and triggers. The purpose is to know the depths of your soul and be in harmony with everything around you.

We seek spiritual growth to be in harmony with our relationships and understand ourselves as individuals within them.

What purpose do personal development and spiritual growth serve?

Remember how I said that personal development and spiritual growth are similar, well the aspect that differentiate the two is that Spiritual growth is an internal evaluation of your existence in this lifetime; personal development is driven by external factors.

Spiritual growth is influenced by thoughts, actions, and emotions. It allows us to improve our lives and overcome life's challenges. Spiritual growth aims to understand one's human essence and pursue one's role on earth.

On the other hand, personal development uses external factors as the motivation to improve. We look at our environment, careers, and families and consider how to manage ourselves better within these factors.

Regarding the benefits you can obtain from your personal development, we can mention better physical health, higher social status, and more social acknowledgments.

The benefit of spiritual growth surpasses personal development since I believe that happiness is best when you are well with your soul. You are better aware of your personality, emotions, and triggers, and you don’t let them control your life.

Self-Awareness as The Bridge

You may be asking if these are similar yet different. What connects them? The answer is your self-awareness!

When initiating the personal development path, you know the skills you need to improve to land that big contract at work or the pace you need to run in next year’s marathon.

Your path toward personal development to achieve those goals begins with signing up for courses that teach you how to improve your writing and presentation skills. You can also rearrange your schedule to include morning runs to reach your goal of an 8-minute mile.

You are aware of these external factors that you can improve on.

Spiritual growth dives a bit deeper. Your awareness is focused on how your emotions or lack of emotions influence and affect your daily relationships. You begin to realize that your obsession with fame and money is not genuinely fulfilling you.

Your awareness in a spiritual journey allows you to understand where you have lacked boundaries and how you can implement meditation sessions to calm the monkey mind.

Our awareness of these deficiencies allows us to seek the balance of the soul, a beautiful balance you can only understand and feel!

Practice, Practice, and Practice Some More!

Improving ourselves is a never-ending task, so we must implement what we have learned daily and pivot when necessary.

Personal development allows clear plans you can take to improve daily. There are seminars, personal trainers, and online courses to teach you how to write that long project proposal or present such a project to those C-Suite executives.

Unfortunately, there are no set paths and rules for spiritual growth, but please don’t let that scare you from thinking about where to start.

Every day is a new opportunity to work on the habits you didn’t get a chance to tackle yesterday. You have another day to be aware of the emotions you carry when you are alone and around others.

There are spiritual books that you can buy, but change only happens when you implement them daily. Don’t just talk about it, be about it!

Conclusion

You can scratch the surface and realize that both personal development and spiritual growth offer the opportunity to level up and be more productive and happy. Alternatively, you can grab a shovel and learn that searching for evolution can lead to a long road down a rabbit hole. To make it simple, we can say that personal development gives you material and physical rewards and spiritual growth grants you emotional maturity and higher consciousness.

Ps. How would you define spiritual growth and personal development? Have you started your spiritual journey? What have you discovered? Please leave your comments below; I’m curious to know.

Love Always, Mirtha

Is There A Difference Between Personal Development & Spiritual Growth?