The Best of the first 100 Personal Growth Articles

By dougnau on Dec 3, 2008 in Gratitude, Success

I am very excited to publish my 100th ‘Best of The Personal Growth Network’ article today. For me, this represents a significant milestone as this site’s been officially up and running for just under one year now. In January, I set a goal to have 100 articles published this year, and this accomplishment provides ample reason to celebrate (by the way, goals and personal acknowledgement were two topics heavily searched on throughout this site).

As part of my celebration, I am going to share with you a summary of results from the first 100 articles I’ve written - specifically I’ll provide a recap of the top ten most popular articles based on unique visitors. This will give you an idea of the articles that people have found the most useful if you are looking to browse through this site more extensively, as well as those that best fit a writing niche which is not yet saturated (the vast majority of my traffic comes from organic Google searches).

The Top 10 Personal Development Articles

How to become a Wellness Coach: By a landslide, most visitors are finding this site because they are interested in what wellness coaching is, how to become a wellness coach, and what opportunities are out there for wellness coaches. This is very encouraging as the field is becoming more widely accepted – particularly with the rising healthcare costs. If you’ve got an interest in wellness coaching or how to become one yourself, this article is a fantastic starting point.
Writing your Personal Mission Statement: It excites me to see the popularity of this article as the personal mission statement is such a powerful tool for creating clarity and more success in life. The traffic to this article has been quite impressive as its the second most popular I’ve written – yet its just 3 months ago. If you don’t have a personal mission statement yet, this is a must read.
The Difference Between Life Coaching and Psychology: When I began my coach training program, we spent a lot of time discussing the difference between life coaching and psychology. To summarize, a coach supports a client in learning who they are, what they want, and they focus on finding a way to get there. Traditional psychology focuses on healing the pain of the past – while coaching tends to ignore the past and is more future oriented. I wrote this article before knowing a lot about solution focused brief therapy and positive psychology. Its great to see that the article I wrote later on positive psychology and life coaching also makes it into my top 10! While we are seeing a shift in psychology to a more empowering future oriented approach, the vast majority of all psychologists are still working on a ‘therapy’ model rather than a strengths development model (which has huge potential).
How to Become a Life Coach: Similar to the article on becoming a wellness coach, many people are searching on the term for how to become a life coach. If I had to guess, this is probably a more common internet search in general, but is very likely to have many other authors on the same topic. Regardless – this article provides valuable information on what it takes to be a life coach, if certifications are required, and how you can get started building your business.
10 Steps to Success: The 10 Steps to Success is a series of articles which explains an empowering model for success. You’ll see that two of the steps (9 & 3) are also part of the top ten searched articles list. This article is an overview of the ten steps that pretty much guarantee success if applied as written. I wrote this as one of the starting points for this website and the more and more I read from other authors on the principles of success, the more confident I become that these steps are universal and comprehensive in nature. I suggest it as an awesome starting point if you are looking for more than information when reviewing this site and you are looking for a way to design a successful plan for your future.
Positive Psychology and Life Coaching: As I made reference to in the discussion of article 3 above, this article actually points out a branch of psychology that looks more like life coaching than the traditional therapy approach. Positive psychology is an exciting new area of study (its movement began in the late 90’s) that looked at using psychology to excel rather than to simply heal. Read all about it with this comprehensive article.
10 Steps to Success - Step 9 Consciously Learn, Evolve and Grow: Number 7 & 8 on the list are part of the 10 steps to success. Step 9, Consciously learning, evolving and growing really explains the foundation for this entire website. If we all focused on this step alone in life, we’d be in a continual cycle of self betterment. This article attempts to discuss how you can configure your life such that this is second nature.
10 Steps to Success - Step 3 Develop a Vision: I am happy to see that two of my articles on developing the vision grace the top ten list of articles that I’ve written. This is the single most important action you can take if you’d like to create change in your life. A person without a vision is pretty much going to get more of the same in life. This article discusses the vision, why its important and how it can be used in life. To learn how to write an empowering vision statement, read the 10th most popular article below.
Book Review - Who Moved my Cheese?: It surprises me to see that this article has made it in the top 10. Because of its popularity, if you haven’t read this book already, read this brief review and definitely pick it up. Its very short and only takes a couple hours to read – but the message is huge. Judging from the popularity of this article (and I’ve got to think there are a lot of reviews of this book out on the market), its a must read for any personal growth and change enthusiast.
Developing the Vision: The top ten most visited articles list wraps up with one of my favorites which explains in detail how to write your personal vision statement (as opposed to the mission statement - #2 above). The vision statement contains specific information on what you will create in your life, as opposed to a mission which states your guiding principles. If you have not yet created your own vision statement, I highly recommend you read this article as a starting point in moving forward.

Recapping the first 100 articles

Its been an absolute pleasure providing this wealth of free information for my readers in 2008 and I look forward to writing another 100 articles in 2009. As I continue to evolve and grow, I’ll be reviewing the top articles more often such that I can be sure to provide the information that is most relevant and useful to my readers. As always, I’d love to hear your comments on what you’d like to read more about – feel free to contact me any time to give suggestions.

“If you’ve found this site useful, please link to it so that others can benefit!”

Be Well

Related Articles (Top 10 in order of unique visitors):