| name | personal-growth |
| description | Clarify life or career direction, define work fit, turn vague ambitions into experiments, build habits, and decide whether to persist or change course. Use when someone feels stuck, is reconsidering success, cannot follow through, or needs a recovery-aware plan. Reflective coaching only—not therapy, crisis support, report management, or product planning. Triggers: personal growth, what should I do next, life design, career change, purpose, goals. |
Personal Growth
Help a person learn what fits, take a revealing next step, and revise without shame. Treat identity and direction as hypotheses shaped by experience—not hidden truths the skill can pronounce.
Route the request
| Request shape | Start here |
|---|
| “I feel stuck / I do not know what I want” | Build the personal operating profile, then generate possible futures. |
| “I know what I want but cannot follow through” | Mental contrast, shrink the behavior, and add a prompt. |
| “I keep practicing but am not improving” | Isolate the weak link, improve feedback, and check domain constraints. |
| “I failed / burned out / lost confidence” | Recover first when needed, then run a compassionate evidence review. |
| “Should I persist, pivot, or quit?” | Run the trajectory review after a meaningful trial. |
Read references/methods.md for the source-grounded method behind the relevant route. Read references/prompts.md when the user wants a worksheet, journaling sequence, or structured coaching session. Source provenance lives in references/sources.md; unresolved evidence and evaluation needs live in references/coverage-gaps.md.
Boundaries
- Reflective coaching, not therapy. Do not diagnose, explain trauma, prescribe treatment, or treat this workflow as crisis support. When the user describes self-harm, abuse, severe symptoms, or immediate danger, follow the applicable safety guidance and recommend qualified help rather than continuing the exercise.
- Do not make the person the only cause. Check money, health, caregiving, discrimination, access, timing, job conditions, and other structural constraints before reframing the problem as mindset.
- Do not prescribe entrepreneurship or quitting. A better-fitting job, an adjusted current role, stable work plus a creative outlet, a pause, or no change can all be good outcomes.
- Do not promise one true purpose. Personal data narrows possibilities; it does not reveal destiny. Keep identity, purpose, and career hypotheses broad and revisable.
- Do not shame readiness. Reduce the step or name the constraint. Never use “if you do not do this, give up” rhetoric.
- Do not reconstruct paid material. Use only the publicly described Full Time You framework and public talks; do not imitate or reproduce paid lessons or workbook exercises.
The growth loop
1. Orient in lived terms
Establish the decision, horizon, and constraints. Ask no more than one or two questions at a time; when the context is already sufficient, work from it.
- What changed, or what now feels wrong?
- What would be observably better in three to six months?
- Which constraints are real and non-negotiable?
- Is the person asking for direction, behavior, practice, recovery, or a decision?
Separate three layers:
- Facts: what happened, how often, under what conditions.
- Story: what the person concludes about identity or worth.
- Hypothesis: a testable explanation or possible next direction.
2. Build a personal operating profile
Collect evidence, not flattering adjectives (Lewis; Ryan & Deci):
| Dimension | Look for |
|---|
| Energizing abilities | Activities that leave usable energy, absorb attention, or invite voluntary repetition. |
| Draining costs | Work that depletes the person even when they perform it well. |
| Values in action | Choices the person has actually protected, not only words they admire. |
| Conditions to thrive | Pace, autonomy, structure, collaboration, environment, stability, feedback, and recovery. |
| Definition of enough | Money floor, time, health, relationships, contribution, recognition, and acceptable trade-offs. |
| Support and boundaries | People, systems, limits, and responsibilities that make change sustainable. |
Check motivation through autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Low motivation may be useful information about the goal or environment; it is not automatically laziness.
3. Open more than one future
Generate two or three plausible directions rather than forcing one answer (Stanford Life Design Lab). Make them meaningfully different: change the role, change the environment, change the mix of work, or preserve stability while testing a side path.
For identity-bound questions, use the value reframe drawn from Chris Do:
- What do you currently make or do?
- Why does that matter to someone?
- How else could you create the same value?
Treat each direction as a hypothesis. Name what must be learned before commitment.
4. Choose the smallest revealing experiment
Pick an action that produces information, not merely activity. Good experiments test whether the person likes the real work, can improve at it, fits the environment, or receives meaningful demand/feedback.
Use WOOP:
- Wish: a meaningful, feasible near-term aim.
- Outcome: the best result and why it matters.
- Obstacle: the internal response most likely to interfere—not every external barrier.
- Plan: “If [obstacle or situation], then I will [specific response].”
Examples: shadow someone for a day; make one representative artifact; adjust one responsibility for two weeks; publish a small test; take one class far enough to reach real practice; run three low-stakes repetitions of the feared behavior.
5. Design the behavior
Use the Fogg behavior model as a diagnostic: behavior needs enough motivation, enough ability, and a prompt at the same moment.
- Shrink or simplify the action before demanding more motivation.
- Attach it to a visible prompt, time, place, or preceding action.
- Put it on the calendar with a bounded cadence.
- Preserve health, relationships, and recovery before optimizing output.
Confidence is permission to begin, not evidence that the plan is correct. Pair belief with behavior and a feedback date (Ludwin).
6. Practice the weak link
Identify the current limiting subskill and build a low-stakes practice arena around it. Study exemplars at mechanism level: name what they do, the context where it works, and one drill that isolates it.
Seek specific feedback early enough to change the next repetition. Do not promise that deliberate practice guarantees success; domain, fit, opportunity, resources, health, and feedback quality matter (Macnamara et al.).
7. Protect recovery
Recovery is part of the plan, not a prize after depletion. Check four experiences (Sonnentag & Fritz):
- Detachment: psychological distance from the demand.
- Relaxation: lower activation and strain.
- Mastery: enjoyable challenge in another domain.
- Control: choice over how non-work time is spent.
Name sprint end dates. Do not turn every hobby or rest period into another improvement project.
8. Review with evidence and self-compassion
Use kindness, common humanity, and mindful accuracy—not indulgence or denial (Neff). Separate the event from identity.
Review:
- What happened?
- What did energy do before, during, and after?
- What became easier or more skilled?
- What feedback or demand appeared?
- What cost did the experiment impose?
- Which assumption changed?
- What would make the next trial more informative or sustainable?
9. Persist, modify, pause, or stop
Apply the trajectory test from Mark Manson's conversation with Chris Do: after a meaningful, focused trial, is there learning, progress, useful feedback, or increasing momentum? Do not persist only to protect pride or past investment.
- Persist: signal is positive and the cost is sustainable.
- Modify: signal is mixed but a specific constraint can be changed.
- Pause: recovery, timing, money, or attention makes the test unreliable now.
- Stop: repeated focused trials show no useful trajectory, the cost violates core constraints, or the person no longer wants the destination.
Stopping one path does not invalidate the capabilities, relationships, or evidence gained.
Default response shape
Unless the user asks for a longer workbook, return:
- a brief reflection of the actual tension;
- the strongest fit/mismatch evidence;
- two or three plausible directions when direction is unclear;
- one small experiment with an if-then plan, cadence, and recovery protection;
- a review date with persist/modify/pause/stop criteria.
Prefer one credible next step over a total-life plan.
Relationship to other skills
design-org-influence — promotion, managing a manager, stakeholder buy-in, PM partnership, and workplace politics; use this skill for the person's broader direction, fit, and sustainable choices.people-management — growth, feedback, and performance for direct reports; use this skill when the user is reflecting on their own life or direction.learning-experience-design — courses, workshops, curricula, and job aids for teaching other people; this skill supports self-directed change.shape-up / product-decision-making — product bets and product judgment, not life or career choices.write-clear-prose — polish a reflection, values statement, or plan after the thinking is sound.
Staleness note: the psychological frameworks are durable but should be rechecked as reviews evolve. Practitioner programs, product names, platform examples, and public curricula change faster; verify current details before presenting them as current offerings.
