What are the Values Needed for Self-development?

Values are essential for self-development. This is because these values are the guiding principles that will make the journey towards a better you much more efficient. While people have different values in life, some values should be similar to everyone going towards self-development. So we will answer here what are the values needed for self-development.

Here are the values needed for self-development:

1. Open-Mindedness
2. Commitment
3. Hope
4. Passion
5. Trust
6. Dependability
7. Responsibility
8. Efficiency
9. Honesty
10. Faith
11. Integrity
12. Service
13. Freedom
14. Family
15. Truth

The list contains the most important values. There are hundreds of different values. People will have different things they value in life. This is because we are different from each other. But, the ones on the list are important for self-development. So in this article, we will explain them in further detail.

If you want to know why values are essential for self-development, I have an in-depth article discussing this topic. It is an excellent read to learn more about values: Why are values important for self-development?

1. Open-Mindedness

Open-Mindedness is important in personal development because you need to learn many things to improve yourself. Sometimes, what you’ve learned is entirely the opposite of what you believe. Thus, it would be best if you kept an open mind to find things out yourself.

One of the critical values needed for personal development is open-mindedness.

Self-development requires us to go away from what is comfortable to us, including information that we once thought was right.

We must embrace that there will be times when what we previously believed was wrong. It may not be completely wrong, but it may not be for us.

For example, in my case, people say that you should read as many books as possible, and I followed that. It is a good practice. It is an incredible way to improve your knowledge in many aspects.

But for me, it takes a lot of time.

Because of this, I did not give myself time to build my career. That is why I wondered what had been happening in my life and why I was not moving.

This came from my personal reflection that I need to control my reading. This means that before, I finished 2 books per week. Now, it is 1 book every week or 2 weeks.

Because of the time I’ve freed, I was able to build this website you are reading right now.

One of the key things in open-mindedness is to do some reflection. Self-reflection makes you aware of the things in your life—even the subtle ones.

Recommended read: I have made an article on how to do self-reflection, which is a good read and filled with information. Everything you need to know on how to do self-reflection will be there. Here is the link: How do you Reflect on Personal Development or Growth

2. Commitment

Self-development is useless without any commitment.

Whatever you do in life, doing things half-heartedly will not make any significant difference.

It is one of the lessons I’ve learned in the book One Thing by Gary Keller. In the book, he said that to succeed, you need to give your all to one thing that brings the most success.

If you want to improve more efficiently, you should be very committed to self-development. No questions asked.

Doing things without commitment is prone to stopping by the middle. Giving up without reaching the endpoint will make everything you did in the first place to be useless.

So if you are in for self-improvement, you have to ask yourself this. Are you committed to improving your own life? If yes, how committed are you?

Every successful people took years of commitment for them to reach their goals. There is no such thing as an easy victory.

Commitment is an important value in self-development. This is because reaching the best version of yourself takes a very long time. People with a low commitment to personal development usually don’t stick to the end and fail to get the benefits they should’ve had.

Think of this picture above as how self-development should be. Each step you take is your daily work towards a better you.

The longer you stay, the higher you’ll be.

It takes extreme commitment to reach the highest.

3. Hope

I said in the last section that commitment is a significant value in personal development or improvement. But, we are all human.

Sometimes, we are low and just want to give up. I understand all of that because there are times when I also feel that way.

Hope is an important value in personal development because hope is what keeps us going despite the odds life throw at us. It takes a lot of commitment to reach the top and what will keep us going is to hope that there is light at the end of every tunnel.

Without hope that we will one day be successful, or some day you will reach your goals in life, your motivation to continue will suddenly drop.

Most quit at this stage.

However, if you are just reminded that there is always hope, it wouldn’t be the case.

One of my recommendations is to write your goals as an affirmation. I am not talking about generic affirmations. I’m talking about writing your goals and reminding yourself everyday to give hope even if times are hard.

To give more hope, I have another article that is worth reading. The article is about the point in doing self improvement. It is a good way to give you hope because you will understand what your goals really are: What is the aim of personal development?

4. Passion

Passion is an important value for self-improvement. It is the act of believing wholeheartedly in what you are doing. Without passion, it will be extremely hard to stay long-term. Staying long-term in personal development is necessary in order to receive its rewards.

Hope is to believe on your future. That your future will have the things you are looking for. Passion is the belief in your present skill.

It is your present motivation that allows you to continue everyday loving what you are doing.

It is hard to do things for a long time something that you are not passionate about. Many masters in their field became who they are because they have passion in what they do. They love what they do.

In self improvement, you also need to love what you are doing. If not, learn to love it.

But there is a trick to this. Mel Robbins told about the 5 second rule, in which she told that the trick to doing things you don’t want is to count 5 to 0. I also do this even if I am passionate with blogging because there are just times where you don’t feel like doing things.

If you are interested, here is my book review where I told about the summary of the book, I also made a video on my YouTube channel in case you prefer watching book reviews: 5 Second Rule Book Summary and Review

5. Trust

Trust is an important value in personal development because some self-improvement lessons take time to take effect. It takes time to reach big goals in life and without trusting the process, it is more likely that you’ll give up early. Furthermore, trusting yourself not just the process is important.

Here is an example, let’s say that reading is important in self improvement. And it really is important in self help.

But it takes time just to finish a single book. It takes more time to finish 10 books.

In exercising, You need to trust the program that it will make you thin and build more muscles.

Without trusting the process, it is also impossible to reach the end of self improvement. The problem is most of the benefits of self improvement will be in the end.

Furthermore, how can you improve yourself if you don’t trust yourself that you can do it? Just how do you plan to do these things if you don’t actually believe in yourself?

One of the key lessons in self-improvement is to trust yourself. Trust that you have the abilities to improve. Without that, it will be impossible to be better.

I’m being harsh but it is the truth.

6. Dependability

One of the key values of personal development is dependability. Dependability is the ability for people to trust you. It is also the ability for you to trust and depend on yourself. There are times where you have no one to depend to but yourself, and you need to prepare for those times.

Dependability is a broader form of trust.

One of the key markers that you are improving is that there will now be people that will depend on you.

This is one of your goals.

How many people depend on successful people? A lot.

They depend on their words, their actions and more.

Building dependability is one of the benefits of self improvement because you are starting to prove to people that you are the one they can count on.

In building this, you have to be impeccable with your words. This means that if you say that you’ll finish a project in 1 week, then finish it in one week.

Prove to people that you are a man of your words.

I remember another book I’ve read which talks more about this. It is the Four Agreements. Here is a book summary article and video for the book, definitely a good one: The Four Agreements Book Summary

Furthermore, how can you start to make people depend on you if you don’t depend on yourself?

At the start of the self improvement, you may be at the bottom of your life. There might be no one depending on you or trusting your words. The only one that will depend on you is your ownself.

That’s why you should own your life. It is your responsibility to be the best version of yourself.

7. Responsibility

Responsibility is an important value in self-improvement. This is because one of the first steps in improving yourself or personal development is to be responsible for your own life. Without responsibility, we will easily fall down again to past mistakes which is what we are preventing.

Be responsible for everything including your success, goals, dreams, and your failures.

Without being responsible for your failures, it is impossible to win in life. It is responsibility that brings us to success.

Responsibility came from the word response. This is because responsibility is your response to the things happening around you.

If you know you need to improve yourself, would you run away? Or should your response be taking it on and showing others that you can be better?

If you found out that you need to lose some weight because of health issues, would your response be to just accept it? Or you should respond with fixing your diet and exercising?

That is what responsibility is. It is the way you respond in life

8. Efficiency

Efficiency is a vital value in personal development because you also need to further increase your likelihood of going forward. Without efficiency, we might be stuck in a certain place for a long time. The goal of personal development is to bring you to the best version of yourself as fast as possible.

It is one thing that we know that it will take a lot of commitment and time to be the best version of ourself.

But there will also be shortcuts along the way.

Aiming for efficiency is important for you to reach those goals as quickly as possible.

Remember that even if we are very committed, commitment is a limited energy. There might be a time that our willpower will be gone.

That makes us human and we need to reach success as fast as we possibly can.

For example, I make articles because my goal is to make this website bigger. I am creating my personal brand on the internet.

This needs me to write as many article as I possibly can. Right now I am about 3/4 away from writing this article and it took me only 2 hours to finish this article.

For efficiency, I am writing this with white noise on my ears so there will be no distractions. I have also blocked all notifications from my phone that can bother me.

By doing this, I am able write a 14 articles per week. For others, it takes a month to write 12 articles.

To reach your goals, efficiency is necessary.

If you are interested in efficiency, I recommend Dr. Cal Newport’s book called Deep Work. I have also made an article for on its summary, you can check it out here: Deep Work Book Summary

9. Honesty

Honesty is an important value in self improvement because you need to be honest in yourself if you want to change your life. Being honest with yourself opens you up for a lot of opportunities to make things better. This can include productivity, health, happiness and so on.

In here, I am talking about honesty within yourself.

Are you admitting that there is something wrong? Or what you are doing is not the most efficient one to reach the better version of yourself?

Or are you denying facts because you are invested in something wrong?

You need to start analyzing yourself in order to reach for the best.

10. Faith

Personal development requires you to build the value of Faith. This is not just having faith in others and the process that you are in, but also faith that you will be able to accomplish things in life. Faith is what drives successful people to reach the pinnacle of their success.

Faith is the more powerful version of belief.

Believing in yourself is important. But the other level where it is more powerful is faith.

The Faith that you have the abilities to reach the best version of yourself. The faith in yourself that whatever comes you way to break your belief, you will stick to it till the end.

Many successful people will tell about the faith they had in their business or themselves. That is how important faith is.

It is an unbreakable belief that one day, you will someone you’ve been dreaming about.

11. Integrity

Integrity is an important value in self improvement because it is the adherence to your own values. Remember that we have different values in life because we are different from each other. Integrity is when you stick by those values no matter life throws at us.

Integrity is the belief on your own values. It is how you stick to them never giving it up for anything.

This involves delayed gratification in which you are sacrificing what seems pleasurable right now to have a better future.

This can involve refusing to go to a party because you have some sales call to do.

Or to just working on your goals instead of using all your time in social media.

Controlling social media use is important. I made another article about it here where I quit social media for a week. The results? Immense productivity: I quit social media for a week

12. Service

Service is an important value in personal development because it goes beyond us. It is the belief that you are doing something good to others, or that you have something to offer to make the lives of others better. This is one of the key values of people who made our lives better.

Have you ever wondered why there are people who became heroes, known through history, or just changed the life of all the people on the planet?

It is because of this value or virtue.

Service is important because it drives people to go beyond themselves.

It is the ultimate form of faith. Faith that they have the capabilities to change the world around them.

13. Freedom

Freedom is important in personal development because this value is how we become happy in the things we do. Freedom is the ability to do the things that you love. It makes us stick to our plans until the end, in which that is where you can achieve success.

You’ve already read a lot of times in this article that it is important to stay in the end to be successful.

To stay till the end, one of the easiest way is to be free. You need to free yourself and be happy in what you are doing.

Another is to free yourself from your past belief. Belief such as you can’t do something big should not be in your brain. The first person who should believe in your abilities should be you.

14. Family

Family is important in personal development because we need support from others to be successful. Family does not only mean blood related but being with someone where it will feel like home. A good circle can bring you encouragement and support in reaching your life goals.

A circle is important in success. You can’t reach the best of the best without the aid of someone.

Plus, it was found out that habit forming is significantly easier with someone helping you.

This is called an accountability partner. They help you reach your goals or create habit.

It makes us own our thoughts and dreams because we have to prove our abilities to other people.

15. Truth

Truth is an important virtue or value in self improvement. You need to stay true to yourself if you are succeeding, or you are sinking. You need to be honest and be true to yourself if you need to change some things. Lying to yourself would be disastrous to personal development.

The only one who knows the truth is you.

I know it is hard sometimes to accept that you are wrong. Same with my denial to believe that reading more books is better than working more because I believe that I’m learning anyway.

But think of this as a wake-up call.

As others say, the truth will set up free.

It is believing that I am doing wrong and believing the truth that you have read this article.

I hope you understood what I mean since I am surprised you’ve reached the end.