Categories
Personal Growth

Your Personal Growth Reference Card

Personal growth literature is full of tips and exercises on how to achieve the results we want in different areas of our lives. But it’s absolutely impossible to put all the advice we come across into practice and definitely not at the same time!

We need to decide what we want to put into practice and leave everything else for a later time. Possibly when we’ve developed what we have currently taken on into habits, or if we find that the exercises we want to practice don’t suit us.

This is where your Personal Growth Reference Card comes in handy.

The Purpose of a Reference Card

The idea behind a Reference Card is quite simple. You want a single point of reference on what you have committed yourself to doing that you can check on a regular basis (to ensure that you don’t forget what advice you wish to follow).

Knowing that your favorite blog has a great post on how to overcome procrastination won’t do you any good, especially when the post will soon make its way into the blog archives, with more and more useful posts making their way to the blog. You will soon forget that great post, and all the posts that came before it and after it as you continue to wonder what you will put into practice and why you aren’t getting the results you want from what you read!

A Reference Card helps you focus on a set of manageable exercises and resources that you will make use of for the time being. Everything else will have to wait unless there are things that can be incorporated into your Reference Card.

Principles of a Reference Card

To get the most out of your Reference Card, fill it in with these principles in mind:

– Categorize the tips into different areas (health, work, family, etc.) and try to have a set of tips that span the most areas you can (to develop a more balanced life)

– Mention the schedule or time in which an exercise is to be practiced (if it is time specific). For example, if you want to drink 8 glasses of water in the morning, you have to include the time you want to drink the glasses, or simply note: First thing in the morning

– Be specific on how the advice is to be put into practice. “Be focused while working” isn’t very practical. “Close all program windows except for the task you are working on” is more practical

– List the resources/tools you want to use. Dumbbells for exercising, a speed-typing software, a set of DVD’s you want to go through, etc

– Be realistic. Don’t put too many routines that are time intensive and which won’t even fit into your schedule!

A Peek at My Reference Card

To give you a sense of what a Personal Growth Reference Card looks like, I’ll share with you some snippets of what I have on my Reference Card:

Health

– Decide what to eat and how much to eat before starting to eat

– Eat slowly. Put the spoon/fork down while chewing

– Don’t drink juices/soft drinks

– Go to the gym before work. Burn at least 600 calories (cross trainer and rowing machine)

Waking Up Early

– Wake up as soon as the alarm rings (snoozing is evil!). Sit up as soon as the alarm rings

– Meditate in bed before going to sleep. Close eyes. Think of how I feel about waking up in the morning. Imagine waking up early full of energy and looking forward to going to the gym

Work Habits

– Write a to-do list of the 3 most important tasks to do early in the morning and ensure they are done before moving on to other tasks

– Close all browser tabs that aren’t related to the task I’m carrying out

Punctuality

– Add a 30 minute buffer for every appointment I need to get to

Starting Your Own Reference Card

Think of the most important habits you wish to develop in the different areas of your life and note them down with a practical description of how you will apply them.

Focus on the habits that make their way into your Reference Card and ignore all other advice (for the time being).

Monitor the progress you make with the habits you have in your Reference Card. If you aren’t feeling comfortable with some habits, replace them with others intended to achieve the same result (e.g. a productivity habit with another productivity habit).

You will notice that this simple tool will help you gain enormous focus on how to advance your life in different areas without feeling overwhelmed with all the exercises you can practice!

Categories
Personal Growth

Take Your Own Advice

Personal growth enthusiasts are on a desperate search for tips, tricks and advice to help improve their lives. They read the books, listen to the audio programs, attend the seminars, participate in the workshops and do just about anything to find the right advice to help them grow.

But there is an extremely useful resource that we often neglect. While our eyes are busy scanning our environment for resources we can use, we neglect our most precious resource: our own knowledge.

Since we’re experiencing the problems, we figure that the solution has to come from the outside. We need other people’s help. We need to gain more knowledge. After all, the knowledge we already have isn’t helping us overcome our problems!

That’s because we can play two roles: the person giving advice and the person in need of advice. By recognizing the role and immense knowledge of our “Adviser Self” we can solve most of our problems without searching for answers in distant lands.

Meet Your “Adviser Self”

Has a friend ever came to you for help in overcoming a problem that you suffered from as well, but were able to give him the most eloquent and helpful advice to solve his problem, yet you weren’t following the advice yourself?!

That’s your Adviser Self speaking. The Adviser Self is very knowledgeable and clear headed. He tackles problems objectively and the solutions are apparent to him. When others seek his counsel, he can remain level-headed, calm and collected. He is willing to listen to the problem without being judgmental. He is able to ask sensible questions to better understand the problem and the situation in which it arose.

He focuses on finding solutions. He is able to make use of his past experiences and all the resources he has come across in the past to present the most beneficial advice he can come up with. And in most cases, his advice is effective in dealing with other people’s problems.

But when it comes to dealing with our own problems, the Adviser Self seems neglected. His voice is drowned in the noise of chaotic emotions, desperate rationalizations and defensive blockades that shun him away to the point where his existence is doubted!

We associate ourselves with our problems and not with our knowledge.

We see ourselves in need of help and not as the helpers.

The problem isn’t that we lack the knowledge but that we don’t even realize that we possess the knowledge in the first place!

This is when our most precious resource begins digging his own grave as we continue our struggle seeking other people’s help.

Listen to Your Adviser Self

Look at a single area of your life where you feel there is a great deal of room for improvement. Let’s take productivity as an example. Suppose your days pass by without you accomplishing anything. The default response would be: “Why am I such a lazy *bleep* *bleep*? I’m so useless! I need to read more about productivity! I need to find a productivity system to help me get things done! I NEED HELP!!!!”

This is what happens when you side with your Helpless Self. Your Helpless Self assumes that you are incapable of doing anything or figuring anything out by yourself. Therefore, it places its trust in other people’s advice while neglecting the Adviser Self.

Now, let’s try to pay attention to what the Adviser Self has to say. Rather than see the productivity problem as your own, assume a friend is asking you for advice. He has the productivity problem and not you. He wants to know what you have to say to solve his problem.

In this case, the most likely reaction is that you won’t side with your Helpless Self. Your Adviser Self will come to the rescue!

Write down all the observations, questions, answers, suggestions, comforting words and whatever else your Adviser Self has to say.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself. You won’t be too productive if you feel crappy about yourself. Don’t keep checking your email account every 3 minutes. Write a to-do list of the things you want to get done today. But be realistic about what you can accomplish…”

You will notice advice flowing that you may have not heard before!

And what’s special about your Adviser Self is that he knows you… very intimately! He can give you relevant advice that deals with the exact problems you are facing. But as long as you can project your Helpless Self and his problems onto someone else (a friend in need of your help), you can start listening to what your Adviser Self has to say.

An Exercise

Pick an area of your life you want to improve. Consider the problems you are experiencing in that area as problems your friend is trying to overcome.

Ask your “friend” the following questions (or any sequence of questions your Adviser Self comes up with) and write down the answers:

“What seems to be the problem?”

“How do you feel about it?”

“What do you think is causing this problem?”

“What do you think you can do about this problem?”

These are questions your Helpless Self will answer with the counsel of your Adviser Self.

Now, consider what your Adviser Self has to say about the answers. What advice can he give? How does he see your Helpless Self’s situation? What has he read that your Helpless Self can make use of?

Once you have presented your “friend” with the advice he needs, ask your “friend” this question:

“What will you do to put my advice into practice?”

Write that down as your stepping stone towards overcoming your Helpless Self’s problem. You now have a solution that didn’t need any reading for you to find. 🙂

Share your self-dialogue in the comments section below!

Categories
Productivity

Planning and “The Plan”

One of the main pitfalls I seem to fall into over and over again is failing to go beyond planning and actually getting my work done. I plan, plan some more, add planning to my to-do list, do even more planning, finish planning, get back to planning, re-plan and so on. It seems that planning –  for me –  is an end unto itself: I plan for the sake of planning.

To resolve this problem, it’s important to recognize the dual role of planning: planning as a process and as part of a process.

The Process

Planning isn’t simply done to pave the way for the actions that need to be carried out. Planning helps us resolve our own confusion and to manage our own thoughts. We put pen to paper, or mindmap on our computers or use any number of planning methods so we can clarify our own thinking about the project we intend to undertake.

In this respect, planning alone (without doing anything beyond the planning) remains a useful process to go through. It brings us clarity and relief. It helps us make sense of our projects. It helps us manage our own thoughts.

This is when planning can be considered as an end unto itself. We don’t need to do anything else to experience the relief planning, alone, can bring.

But to actually get things done, we need to see planning as part of a greater process.

Part of a Process

Most projects we undertake have a level of complexity that needs to be simplified – or understood – in order to manage the work associated with it, so we can get the desired results.

Planning is an essential step to take in order to bring clarity to any project and to define the action steps to take. The outcome of planning isn’t clarity and mental relief. As part of a process, planning must have a tangible output that gets fed into the next phase of the project. Planning is part of the “Thinking” phase of a project that defines how the project is to be carried out. The next phase would be the “Doing” phase, where the results of planning are put into practice.

What connects the two phases is The Plan.

The Plan

While planning, your intention should be to come up with an outcome that can be used to get work done. This is The Plan. While this may seem obvious, but if you default to seeing planning as a process (and not part of a process), an outcome beside mental relief is unnecessary. In fact, I’ve planned many, many times and simply forgot – or even threw away – my planning papers because I achieved the relief that I desired.

But to make planning effective, it must have a Plan as an output. A plan defines, clearly, what you intend to do in the “Doing” phase. Once you draw up a plan, the planning phase is completed and you can move on to undertake the tasks required.

Without a plan, planning can go on forever (and it usually does). There is always information to take in and alternatives to consider. But once a plan is drawn up, you can conclude the planning phase and actually get things done.

Categories
Productivity

Evaluating My Holiday

Today is the last weekday of my 5-week holiday. I had some very ambitious plans for the holiday (that’s why I took the holiday to begin with!). Some said my plans were overly ambitious and that if this is what my plan looked like, I might as well include “solving world hunger” on the list.

Were they right?

My answer is: “I don’t know.”

How many goals did I achieve?

None!

In fact, I would go so far as to say that I didn’t achieve anything in my holiday. You may have even noticed that I only wrote FOUR posts during my holiday (of FIVE WEEKS), while I was writing an average of one post PER DAY for almost a month before that!

Do I feel bad that my time was wasted without accomplishing anything? Kinda, but not really…

Why?

Because I just experienced the effects of a poor approach to getting things done and can now recognize the reasons for why I was unable to accomplish much. This doesn’t make me feel guilty or annoyed. In fact, I find it inspirational.

I took the holiday to find out if I can work productively at home for when I quit my job. The answer is clearly that I couldn’t. Not because it’s impossible, but because I didn’t approach it correctly, and can now pin-point where I went wrong. This is why I can’t answer the question of whether my plans were realistic or not. Had I done everything I could and in the right way, I would then be able to say whether they were overly ambitious or not.

I will hopefully be sharing some of these lessons with you so you can avoid my mistakes and worry about some other mistakes you will make 😛

Categories
Success Mindset

Six Men and a Glass

Is the glass half empty or half full?

A very popular question intended to distinguish between Pessimism (who sees the glass half empty) and Optimism (who sees the glass half full).

However, there are actually four more gentlemen gathered around the glass, who are usually not mentioned, even though their points of view are very common and extremely important to understand.

Let me introduce you to these four gentlemen, and let’s see what they have to say about the glass in front of them.

Realism

While Optimism and Pessimism can’t see eye to eye because they are looking at different aspects of the glass, Realism is able to appreciate what each of his friends are seeing: he sees the entire glass, both the full half and the empty half.

His attitude isn’t skewed by half the story because he is able to see the full story, both its positive and negative dimensions. He is able to appreciate what there is, as well as to admit what is lacking. He can choose to feel contented with what there is, or aspire to fill the whole glass.

Optimism, Pessimism and Realism share a very important characteristic: they are all seeing the glass for what it is. What distinguishes them from each other is what they choose to focus on.

And this is what differentiates them from their other three friends…

Wishful Thinking

While Optimism, Pessimism and Realism are contemplating the contents of the glass, Wishful Thinking is jumping with joy that the glass is full!

It’s not full, but that’s how Wishful Thinking apparently “sees” it. Wishful Thinking doesn’t care much about reality. Sometimes reality is an inconvenience for human happiness, so he chooses to create the “reality” that makes him happy. In this case, it’s a full glass.

But this doesn’t change the fact that the glass is only half full, no matter how hard Wishful Thinking wants it to be full. From a distance, Wishful Thinking can remain contented that the glass is full, but he will be unpleasantly disappointed when he tries to drink from the glass.

Limiting Belief

Our friend, Limiting Belief, is sitting uncomfortably with his friends. He can’t seem to understand how they can see any water in the glass when it’s obviously empty! Obvious only to him. Obviously.

Limiting Belief doesn’t focus on the negative. He denies the positive. He dismisses the existence of a reality and, therefore, cannot come to appreciate it or make use of it. Limiting Belief could very well die of thirst by the side of a river, simply because he denies that the river exists!

Evasion

While all his friends are facing the glass, Evasion is looking the other way. He’s fearful of what he might discover about the glass. Fearful of what to expect. Fearful of what the content of the glass would mean to him. Fearful of what the content of the glass would require him to do.

He, therefore, chooses not to look at the glass, or listen to what others have to say about it. “Ignorance is bliss,” and by remaining ignorant he doesn’t have to worry whether the glass is empty, half full or full. He believes he can go through life happily unaware of what the glass has to offer, and by directing his attention elsewhere.

While he doesn’t like to admit this, but Evasion sometimes feels compelled to find out what’s in the glass, and he chooses to drown those feelings with distractions. Alcohol is always a convenient choice, though he has sometimes tried out drugs to numb the feeling of curiosity and irritating consciousness.

The Six Men

I’m sure we can all relate to one of these men in different situations in our lives. We are sometimes optimistic, other times we are pessimistic. We sometimes face reality and sometimes choose to ignore it. We sometimes fool ourselves by inventing a new “reality” that brings us happiness, or a “reality” that confines us to what we feel comfortable with, while ignoring all the opportunities that exist for us, and the potential within us.

But for us to achieve happiness, it’s important that we:

  • Accept reality for what it is
  • Appreciate what we have
  • Use what we have to gain what we want

We need to befriend Realism, while being acquainted with his friends, and being aware of what influence they can have on our lives.