Personal Development Across the Lifespan 1
Personal Development Across the Lifespan: A Reflective Analysis in the Context of Human Growth and
Development Concepts
Sayra “Bethney” Hill
School of Behavioral Sciences, Liberty University
Personal Development Across the Lifespan 2
Abstract
This paper looks back over the years from their birth to now and picks key moments that have
changed their life. These moments have had big impacts, but people do not always understand
why they happened or how they happened. Throughout our lives, we face many challenges and
also enjoy some triumphs. In both types of situations, we are tested and changed. Each
experience, good or bad, helps our personal growth. Each of us is like a slow-motion video,
showing how each moment adds to our development. Sometimes we need to look back in time.
It's up to each of us to consider how this "video" and our "tapestry" of experiences have shaped
who we are today. And if we want to grow even more, we need to ask: How has each moment,
best or worst, changed not just our lives, but also the lives of those around us?
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Personal Development Across the Lifespan: A Reflective Analysis in the Context of Human
Growth and Development Concepts
Introduction
This paper talks about an autobiographical story based on thinking about the writer's own
life, education, and work. This story is linked to key ideas in human growth and development.
The writer goes over their life from the day they were born to their current academic and
professional life. They do this to think about how their life has "changed shape" (not in a really
important or big way, but just enough to notice) over the years. They hope that by doing this, it
will be easier for the reader to understand and appreciate the important and meaningful parts of
their life story. These past events and the connections and relationships that come from them are
not just "good stuff to tell" (though the writer does hope it's that too). They are also what the
writer thinks of as "the real story."
Understanding the author's story, values, and beliefs needs concepts from Lifespan
Development or Human Growth and Development. This is about the peculiar writer that the
classes perceived to be in the room. Lifespan Development made the author think about their
past, present, and the "just around the corner" future. This course helped the author reflect on
their family, education, college, and "work in the world." The author has had several careers in
the private sector, public sector, and non-profit organizations. The practices and policies of the
organizations where the author has worked (in North America and abroad) have either greatly
influenced or tried to improve the lives of many private and public clients, customers, and
citizens; their "work in the world." This has given the author opportunities to serve others since
they started working at age 16.
Theoretical Frameworks of Human Growth and Development
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Changes in how we grow and develop throughout our lives are clearly seen and, you
could say, are easily understood. As people grow, they make the most of their time and use up
the years given to them by staying active and doing things, mainly, though not exclusively, in
relationships with others and by taking care of themselves. This assumes that in the growth
period from birth to age 25, or around there, a person has done enough to ensure good health in
the time from age 25 to 75 and maybe even (most likely) 80, which lasts in their lifetime. In the
clues and signs we see, we more often than not see the life built during the 60 years between age
15 and 75, or close to that. (David A. P. Bundy, 2023)
Over time, people change a lot, and studies show that most of us get better at certain
skills as we grow older. We learn to do things in ways that society (experts, family, friends, you
name it) thinks are better. These things are considered markers of "development" and "progress,"
and they're so common that it's hard to avoid noticing them. We start school, learn to read and
write, develop friendships and relationships, find and keep jobs, and don our caps and gowns at
college graduation. When we look over the "big" points in our lives, the chances of certain
events happening (like starting school, getting married, or having kids) and how much we've
changed since we were born almost always come to mind. (Tooley et al., 2021)
Choosing a right theory is never easy. Too many theories are fighting for our attention.
They are full of different ideas, and each one tries to solve the many annoying problems we have
with how we grew up. But many theories give us a lot of ideas as options. Their ideas can help us
understand why we went from one stage of life to another. They can also help us see how much
we've changed, in both good and bad ways, as we've gone through life. Instead of trying to talk
about all of them, or even a few of the most well-known ones, to show readers the ocean of ideas
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offered by many "theories of life," I've decided to present just two chosen topics from two
chosen theories. (Vuong, 2023)
Stage of Development According to Piaget
Piaget's educational theory is based on adaptation and organization. Basically, his theory
says that children build their understanding of the world, and later of our abstract and complex
ideas, from experiences they have with it. According to Piaget, there are three processes that lead
to the growth of intelligence and formal logic. First, assimilation happens when we deal with an
event or object mainly by using or applying a thought framework we already had. For example, a
child might see a squirrel and respond to it by saying, "Look, a cute little rodent!" In this case,
the child's thought framework of "rodent" was already formed and organized. The other two
processes, which we'll talk about soon, involve adapting and organizing thought frameworks,
which are central ideas in Piaget's theory. (Martinez et al. 2023)
According to Piaget, intelligence and mental development come from the brain
organizing and adapting basic thought structures. As kids get older, they form more of these
structures. This lets them better organize new experiences and things they encounter. Piaget says
that the mind is shaped by going through four development stages. In these stages, brain
structures are formed and reorganized, and thinking becomes better adapted. The first stage lasts
from birth to age 2. From ages 2 to 7, kids go through the preoperational stage. This is a big time
for language and early math. Kids think about words and numbers more symbolically. They are
good at pretending. They find it really impressive when people (like adults) talk, which is kind of
like thinking out loud. When someone is "thinking," a kid sees it as a form of magic where words
become actions or symbols represent something. When this magic happens, kids are really
paying attention. (Pakpahan and Saragih2022)
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Nature vs. Nurture
The old question of nature vs. nurture makes us think about how much of a person is
determined by their genes and how much is shaped by the environment they grew up in. Genes
obviously have a big impact on something as complex as how humans turn out, but I don't think
anyone would say that growth and development can't change the basic blueprint of a person's
body and mind. For example, imagine identical twins raised very differently. If one twin is
brought up in a strict religious home, while the other grows up in a totally free-spirited place, and
they both reach adulthood without the mental illnesses their genes might have caused, what
happened to the nature part in one twin but not the other? (Keller, 2023)
Postformal Thought According to Perry
Perry thought that postformal reasoning was a new stage in cognitive development that
was different from dualist and formalist thinking. When students first start college, they're often
dualists. They see clear good-bad or right-wrong opposites. But as they learn more in college,
they become multiple thinkers. These students start to realize that there are two sides, and
sometimes even more, to almost every issue or problem. Eventually, as they get closer to
professional thinking, they become contextually relativistic. This means they understand the
wide range of views on an issue and can see both the similarities and differences in the ways
people think about it.
What Perry calls postformal thinking is interesting because, well, it doesn't show clear,
rational thinking. Usually, when we talk about college students, we naturally think they should
be more rational than average. This is because, honestly, most of us aren't very rational in how
we think, problem-solve, and make decisions, especially when compared to how we should be.
You're probably already figuring out that I'm going to dig into two kinds of thinking that are
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common among the general public and even some college students. One kind is pretty immature
(good only for kids who still stick to "concrete operations," as Piaget would say, or "formal
operations," as most good kids in college are expected to do). The other kind of thinking is
metacognitive and postformal. I bet you haven't heard those last two terms used together much,
and I'm going to show you why I think they should be. (Jakubik, 2024)
Career Development Process: Super’s Approach
Super's developmental psychology approach focuses on how a person sees themselves
and looks at jobs as part of life development over time. In this view, how people see themselves
is central and shapes all the main ideas. Super thinks that how people see themselves at different
times in their lives, especially from young adulthood to later years, is really important. Super's
viewpoint gives more importance to not just managing, but also understanding, the job choices
people make throughout their lives. (Zacher & Froidevaux, 2021, p. 576)
To develop his theory, Super used a clear and simple definition of psychological career
theory, which gave him a solid base for understanding all work-related behavior. This allowed
him to draw on many relevant ideas. One of these is about vocational maturation, which means
growing and developing in how you choose a career and then adapt to the job you picked. It also
means having insight into what's expected in the career.
Super also related his theory to what's called predicting vocational success, which has to
do with predicting career outcomes. He connected it to social theories, which help explain the
many different pathways people can take in their careers (Zacher & Froidevaux, 2021). He called
what we use to predict a person's likelihood of getting a certain job "theories of vocational
prediction."
Identity Development
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Recently, people have paid a lot of attention to identity, and it's often talked about.
Identity formation is different at different life stages, and this is really important when we
discuss children. That's because the explanation involves interaction at three different levels: the
child's world, which is the physical and social environment; the parent's world, who probably has
some narcissistic traits; and the psychologist's world, who explains what's happening with their
theories. However, my focus will be on identity in general and how it forms, especially in
adolescence and young adulthood. (Orenstein & Lewis, 2022)
Maybe the main goal of developing a personality is to get through different crises that
affect a person's identity. The last two stages of development deal with the ideas of identification
and how the ego interacts with others. Identifying with others is a big part of personality
development, as is making a stable ego identity. The idea of identity has different meanings in
different places. Generally, it means marking something as separate and figuring out who or
what it is. Although our bodies can be seen as a legal identity, the idea of creating an identity
from the body has a long history, going back at least to the Renaissance when scientists started
studying anatomy (Shen et al. 2021).
Faith Development
Faith is a key part of human development that has lots of meaning for people. Based on
years of looking at data and talking to experts, mostly from the last century, we can define some
main ideas of faith. These ideas seem to come up naturally in many cultures around the world,
and they have for hundreds or even thousands of years. Also, these ideas are really important in
private and shared lives, as well as in support practices. However, developments over the last
century or so, happening mostly in the West, have greatly expanded how much and the overall
looks of faith. This also includes many practices that aren't usually called faith in personal life
Personal Development Across the Lifespan 9
but are often included in recent academic and theological talks about what we mean by the word
faith (Cantor et al.2021).
Understood in these ways, practices of faith, both public and private, provide people with
a kind of architecture of meaning that deeply influences their lives. Until recently, discipline-like
psychology and sociology have mostly focused on the public parts of this architecture and the
private practices scholars have looked at in the last century.
Personality and Temperament
When we talk about who a person is, like their personality or temperament, we usually
think that those traits are natural. Even when we talk about them changing over a lifetime, like in
the case of something called "character," we still believe that all those parts happen inside or are
mostly natural. If that's true, then the study of psychology and the study of people were both
meant to be about the "natural" part. The natural part, of course, because of evolution, has a lot to
do with biology. (Miller, 2019)
In the past, people thought that not being afraid (showing courage) was a big part of
someone's character. But these days, we can test and talk about all kinds of courage because we
know more about genetics and brain science. We now see courage in situations where, in the
past, people might have just called someone "tough" or "not afraid." Actually, the word "not
afraid" used to be a common way to describe someone going into a situation where they needed
courage. But now, we admire different kinds of bravery, even though we kidding claim that
people with certain traits from birth are meant to make us proud. (Kagan, 2022).
Culture, Religion, and Well Being
People naturally look for a place to fit in. They want to be around others who share their
beliefs. It's not an accident that throughout history, people have gathered into groups to share
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common goals and beliefs. You see this in religious orders, in how traditional healers and
shamans work, even in modern therapy groups. When their prescriptions and practices don't help
someone much, the shaman or healer usually blames the person for not following the way of life
they were supposed to (Shir & Ryff, 2022). "If you didn't do what I told you, the magic didn't
work," the healer might say. The ancient cultures in Daniel's Babylon wouldn't have thought
light and dark magic were opposites. "Brownies," as we might say, are a type of magic too.
When we study beliefs more deeply, we find a kind of religion that connects us to a
higher supernatural power. This connection leads to a form of communication that is richer, but
not because it's between equals. Four things have set the stage for a "religion of the future." First,
it's absolutely necessary and very urgent (Shir & Ryff, 2022). Second, the spreading idea of a
world community naturally fits into a "religion of the future." This new form of life for the types
of groups we have so far is with us today.
Also, it's mostly happening on the Internet. Third, somehow, we have to put an end to the
cruel mockery of human dignity that inequality represents. The notion, dangerous to freedom
since it gives people something to fight for and something to live for, has been outlawed by
societies that pride themselves on being advanced. Fourth, in the midst of all this sadness, there's
something quietly joyful about what we are here trying to do. What we're doing here is the
world's latest news to the people from the next world (Shir & Ryff, 2022).
Conclusion
This paper includes a personal reflective analysis of the concepts of human growth and
development. It mostly discusses physical and psychological growth and development that I have
experienced or that have happened around me. During my life, I have shown many different
types of growth. Some have been good, and others haven't. I've grown in physical size and
Personal Development Across the Lifespan 11
strength. Even more, I've grown up in different important areas of my life. These include school,
friendships, and family. At the same time, I've had to deal with many problems. Through all
these experiences, I've learned a lot and grown in different ways. I've become stronger both
physically and mentally.
Personal development takes a long time. Sometimes, it's called human development
because it leads to meaningful changes in our lives. The process is clearly about growth. Usually,
people see their changes as good, though that's not always true. It's time to talk about Salman and
his long-term story. He experienced both growth and development in the last chapter of his life.
He was on a path that some people might see as negative or misguided, while others might see it
as positive and revealing how complicated life can be.
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