Personal Development Plan 2017-2018
The summer holidays belong to the past and the academic year of 2017-2018 belongs to the present and future. Therefore I have to create my own Personal Development Plan (PDP), time to start questioning my skills levels, my ambition and my summit to reach. This is something I seem to struggle with each and every time.
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‘Who Arjo/are you?’, the question to start with, which I ask myself a lot. Well I am for starters a person of extremes who is open-minded about almost everything but stubborn in my manners. That’s also the reason why I reflect so often on myself. For example my personal sports life is very diverse extreme sports such as skateboarding and dirt jumping have my interest. Both sports in which nothing is really fully under control so you experience an ephedrine rush. And then there is my other love: fitness/bodybuilding, where the main principal is training under specific regulated circumstances to progress according to plan. Relating the extremes to my personality I would say I’m an open-minded person that is able to work in a disciplined fashion but is also not afraid for the uncertainty of new experiences. In new situations with new people I always try to be true to myself in taking a neutral/positive point of view. This will put to the test when I start my PAL-nutrition minor in Rio de Maior, Portugal. Here a new culture and environment certainly will test my self-called open-mindedness. But of course I too have some presumptions. Knowing that presumptions never tell the truth, so I need to experience all that’s new to me to come with my own opinion, which is a good approach you could say. But every right has its wrong, in my case it’s my stubbornness. My stubbornness to assume things from others. Much often my peers give me their realistic point of view on a situation, while I’m still weighing everything I experienced. All according to the personality tests of the first year in which the Belbin test conclude I’m a creative ‘Plant’ and the Kolb test concluded I’m a ‘Thinker’.
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This variety of personality traits gives me an good level of concentration and understanding of theoretical knowledge that I have to digest. However the implementation and application of such knowledge in practice is something I need and will work on during the upcoming year. The internship at ‘The Kettlebell Fitnessclub’ will connect the theoretical with the practical. I am really looking forward to my internship because the company is a start-up and there are big opportunities for me to learn from their entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship takes strategic moves and assertive behaviour and especially in the fitness and health sector interpersonal skills. These three parts are all in need of development in order to reach the level of an all-round sports/health professional.
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At the moment I’m not fully behaving like an all-round health professional, when it comes to sharing knowledge in a professional environment or in school context I sometimes keep my mouth shut to avoid being the mr. Knowitall. In this way I could become more assertive in sharing all my knowledge with others. The biggest development will be made through creating a better professional image of myself by obtaining and using feedback from the professional field. This will help me projecting and demonstrating the correct etiquette and image. Networking is one of the most important points I have to work on. Being and showing more professional confidence will help to contact others in the work field. This will lead later on to more optimal shared base win-win situations as relationships develop. I could help myself with this in researching what successful networkers do and I am not doing at the moment. This in combination with planning for long term development of my professional self will lead to continues development and in year four I hope to be less of a student who is just passing his classes and more of a young sports/health professional.
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This will prepare me for my graduation project and for a qualitative sports/health career in which I hope to help many people in their physical activity and healthy behavior.