College is a crazy experience for everyone. Throughout your time at APSU, you will go through a lot of firsts that will help mold your future. Either you are walking into the college concept freshly graduated from high school, or you are walking out hoping to find a job in the field you spent months studying in. With everything going on, it’s easy to forget the fundamentals of personal growth.

When you finally hit the point where you want to grow as a person, this is the time you need to sit down, think of the basics and build a foundation for you to truly grow on.

Before you can look at job opportunities or a master’s degree, you first need to know yourself better then you know anyone else. You need to take time to think of your likes and dislikes. You need to make sure you know who you are as a person and who your true friends are. You also need to consider who you trust and what your boundaries look like in different areas of your life.

If you aren’t able to think of things about yourself, there are questions you can ponder such as what are your goals for the next month or what your favorite song might be right now. You could also reflect on what might be the career of your dreams. Are you growing as a person? You need to make sure you are keeping up with who you’re becoming as person. Change is not a bad thing. It’s not a problem if you are a different person then you were a month ago, one week ago or even a day ago.

Once you have a good understanding of who you are as a person, then it’s time to look around and see who you’re surrounding yourself with. To work toward personal growth, you need to surround yourself with beautiful people. By beautiful people, I mean beautiful souls. When you’re trying to grow, it’s hard to become anything when you’re surrounded by negative and toxic people.

There is a major difference between a friend and a best friend; both want to see you do big things. However, a friend doesn’t want you to be bigger things than them. When you look at people, you need to understand who you have in your life and if you plan on keeping them.

Keep a journal. When you start to change things in your life, write down how it makes you feel. If you don’t see progression, you may need to relook at the changed piece. For example, if you start working out every day and it’s not helping you. it may not be something that needs to be added. When you add or take away parts of your life, be sure it’s not causing more stress on you.