Top Online Personal Development Courses and Certifications in 2020
Looking to fast-tack your business and personal success? One of these online personal development certifications will help you realize your goals and better your life
Personal development is all about dedicating time and making a conscious commitment to invest in yourself so you can become the best possible version of yourself. When you invest the right kind of effort in improving yourself, you will be amazed by the positive results you can achieve. While these results may not be quantifiable, they can help you transform your life by opting for the right professional and personal growth strategies.
While we all want improvements, with today’s job demands and ever busy lives, getting there can be a challenge. Well, the beautiful thing is you do not have to go to the university for this. You can learn a whole lot through self-paced online personal development courses.
By signing up for one of these online personal development courses, you will acquire and develop skills in the subjects of strategic and creative thinking, mental mastery, listening, coaching, speaking, problem solving, personal finance, and a range of management subjects. The right skills and knowledge will help you become more fulfilled, confident, empowered, and effective not just in your career but also in other aspects of your life.
So what is Personal Development?
Basically, this refers to activities geared towards helping you improve your identity and awareness, harness and develop talents and potential, build human capital, boost your employability, help you realize your dreams and aspirations, and enhance your life’s overall quality. The best thing about personal development is that it is not only limited to providing self-help. Rather, it works in providing formal and informal skills that are crucial for developing personalities of the people around you so they can effectively assume the roles of manager, guide, mentor, counselor, life coach, and teacher. It also refers to the programs, assessment tools, methods, techniques, and resources that contribute to the human development at individual levels within the organization.
Why earn a Personal Development Certification?
Self-awareness is crucial to building self-confidence if you want to pursue your dreams and goals. It helps you nurture interpersonal relationships and can be the key difference between folks who are happy and those who are not. Successful people have access to a range of resources that allows them to discover and harness their strengths and weaknesses. It also plays a crucial role in the wellbeing of your mental health.Personal development is a life-long process. However, sometimes, you need coaching along the way.
Personal development certifications are designed to help you understand yourself and potential as a human being. They can help you reach full potential and get out of your comfort zone.
Opportunities in personal development certifications
Personal development certification offers tons of benefits to individuals and professionals who desire to build their self-awareness and understand their strengths and shortcomings. Upon successful completion of this certification, you will possess the skills you need to take up these positions:
- Personal Development Coach
- Life Coach
- Personal Development Teacher
- Personal Development Program Administrator
- Personal Development Consultant
Top Online Personal Development Certifications in 2020
1. The Science of Well-Being by Yale University
This is the most popular certification in the 317-year history of Yale University, and it is now available for you to sign up for free. This online certification was introduced by Yale Psychology professor Laurie Santos as “Psychology and the Good Life” in the spring of 2018 to help learners manage their anxiety, depression, and stress in their lives. The certification gained immediate popularity with almost 25% of Yale undergraduates enrolling for it within the year. This 10-week certification covers the following topics in its weekly installments:
- Happiness and the misconceptions surrounding it
- Why our expectations are so bad
- How to overcome biases
- How to improve happiness
- Putting strategies into practice
- Rewritement challenge
At the end of each video, learners are provided with small quizzes to help reinforce what has been learned.
2. Learning How to Learn: Powerful Mental Tools to Help you Master Tough Subjects
Do you want to discover how the brain works when it comes to learning new information? This online certification is offered in collaboration with University of California, San Diego and McMaster University. This course will help you understand how your brain actually processes information to master complicated subjects. Whether it is music, science, math, art, sports, or literature, this online personal development certification will serve as a guide to help you master the subject in a more efficient manner and improve at it. Some of the topics you will learn include:
- How the brain utilizes the focused and diffused learning modes
- How the brain encapsulates information
- Memory techniques
- Illusion of competence (how the mind confuses you)
- Renaissance learning
- Dealing with procrastination
The certification is offered as 4-weekly installments and comes with a 3-hour video, 3 hours of exercises, as well as 3 hours of bonus materials.
3. Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential
This course was created by Dr. Barbara Oakely to help learners boost their lives and careers in today’s fast-paced learning environment. There is no doubt that getting acquainted with the new workplace can be challenging, but it is a necessary step when advancing your career. This certification will help you master how to develop potential in your workplace and beyond. It teaches you how to keep your mind open, learn new stuff and be effective. This 4-week course contains video lectures, quizzes, and graded assignments.
What you will learn:
- Effective learning techniques
- How to match assets with opportunities
- Techniques for surviving career changes
- Understanding the brain and how it works
- Learning strategies
4. De-Mystifying Mindfulness
There is a growing interest in mindfulness, meditation, and contemplation these days. While to some, this is technology, to others it is therapy. And yet to others it is a lifestyle choice. Millions of people are practicing mindfulness throughout the world. This 5-week online certification in mindfulness is sponsored by Leiden University, The Netherlands, and is designed to empower learners with practical as well as theoretical skills needed to understand and critically practice mindfulness in its various forms.
What you will learn:
- An in-depth understanding of mindfulness as a contemporary phenomenon
- Conceptions and misconceptions about mindfulness
- Social and political significance of mindfulness
- Personal experiences of mindful practice
- Finally, you will compare different therapeutic and psychological approaches to Mindfulness
5. Achieving Personal and Professional Success
This 16-week online personal development certification is based on the four popular courses taught as Wharton, University of Pennsylvania. It is crafted to help learners maximize their potential and be more successful both in their personal as well as professional life while applying the exercises and techniques taught at Wharton School. This certification teaches you to harness crucial skills that can help you navigate the social world successfully.
Upon successful completion, you will be able to define what success means to you at a personal level, find your passion and core values, apply these principles and values both at home and in the workplace, communicate effectively, work well with others, set goals, and work with others to realize collective and personal goals.
6. Dynamic Public Speaking
Public speaking is one of the highly sought after skills by business leaders, sales persons, trainers, and individuals in public-facing professions. This University of Washington’s online public speaking certification is designed to help you up your speaking game. You will learn how to master the speech preparation process, design impromptu speeches, and deliver informative and persuasive speeches in the most effective manner possible. This 4-6 month course is ideal for learners at all levels.
What you will learn:
- Introduction to public speaking
- Speaking to inform: articulating complex ideas with concise explanations and dynamic slides
- Speaking to persuade: motivating your audience with concrete arguments and moving language
There you have it. As long as you are learning, you have the potential to improve your wellbeing and circumstances. No matter where you are in life, a personal development plan will definitely put you in the right path of growth. Your career and the important people in your life will appreciate the efforts you are investing into your personal self-development, and you may find yourself much happier and productive.