Personal Growth Map

There is something I haven’t quite understood about New Year’s resolutions.

What do they actually mean?

Suppose you’ve clarified your resolutions for the upcoming year and know exactly what you want.

Do you expect to make a complete transformation as soon as the clock strikes 12? Do you expect to achieve your goals within the year, or at the end of it?

This is an extremely important point to clarify as it will define the expectations you will attach to your resolutions.

If you don’t believe that you will go through a transition phase, where you haven’t completely achieved your goals but are in the process of getting there, then you might give up on your goals prematurely.

You would admit failure only because you thought that everything in your life will change by January.

Hoping to reach your goals by the end of the year is no good, either. Although you’re giving yourself more time to reach your goals, you may end up putting off what you need to do to reach your goals, since you think you have a WHOLE 12 months to work with!

As you’ve probably realized by now, months and years tend to pass by very quickly, especially when you’re postponing the important things in your life.

So how should you approach your resolutions? And when should you expect to see the results you want?

It’s very difficult to estimate when you’ll get the results you want, but you can take an approach that allows you to celebrate your successes and helps you achieve better results.

There are 3 steps to follow:

1- Focus on spending your day in the best way possible: Trying to think of too many days ahead (let alone an entire year) will dilute the attention you’ll give to your day, where change can happen. As much as you can plan for the days ahead, it’s what you do right now that matters towards achieving your goals.

By focusing on what you can do with your day, you won’t feel regret if you don’t achieve your goals “on time” because you know you’ve done what you can.

Remember you’re only working with one day, so you can’t cram in it more than can be done in a day. Don’t force an entire project into a day, when it’s more likely that you can only commit 2 hours of your day.

Don’t expect to run a marathon every day, when it’s more likely that you can only exercise for an hour a day.

Each day, plan what can be done in that day, and adjust it according to your commitments and the circumstances you’ll be facing. But make sure that the day contributes to a transition towards your goals.

2- Look for leverage points: You won’t have perfect days, especially not at first, because an efficient use of your time requires a set of skills that you need to develop. And it’s OK that you don’t possess these skills right now. After all, you’re undergoing a transition, and you can’t expect to achieve perfection overnight.

The best way to accelerate your progress is identifying the factors that can greatly impact your performance. These can be weaknesses or “problem areas” that you need to work on, or strengths you possess that you need to harness.

If your work is being compromised by distractions, lack of clarity about what you need to do, lack of support, and a host of other reasons, pick out the most influential factor you can work on. The factor you expect to get you the greatest results with the least effort. That’s a leverage point.

You can’t work on everything, so you might as well work on what gets you the best* results possible, where you are, with what you have.

* Aiming for the “best” results or the “most important” factor can be a tricky thing, since you might spend a great deal of time trying to figure out what is the best or most important. I’ve spent a billion hours (or so) looking for the BEST productivity system, while ignoring the work I want to get done and overlooking better approaches available to me. The point is to identify the most important leverage point, given what you now know, and work with that.

3- Evaluate your performance: At the end of each day, look back on what you did, and identify the ways you can improve for the next day. Again, don’t think too far ahead. Focus on making tomorrow better than today.

How did you spend your day? What could you have done differently? What might you want to focus on more? What changes can you think of making to your day? How does your day make you feel? What can you shift around in your schedule to get better results?

By allowing a transition towards your goals and focusing on the best use of your day, you will have a more realistic take on achieving your resolutions, and will spend the time you truly need to get to where you want to go.

Without setting high expectations, or distant hopes that you will work on your resolutions someday in the months ahead.

You’ll be making use of what you have, and developing the skills you need to make better progress in the days ahead.

We are often told by personal growth writers that we have two options in life: We can either cultivate a burning desire to pursue the life we want (but don’t have), or accept our life as it is.

If you belong to the first camp, then you deserve admiration. And if you belong to the second, you deserve pity.

But there’s an important connection between the two that tends to go unnoticed.

Before I explain the connection, let me ask a question: What do you believe is the source of your frustration?

Would you blame the problems you’re facing in life? The poverty and violence in the world? The corruption of politicians? Your job? Your financial situation? Your spouse? The people around you? Your health? How you look?

There are many things in our lives that can make us feel frustrated or depressed, but there’s a common theme that underlies all these factors: We reject reality for what it is.

We want things to be different, and don’t accept them as they are.

There’s a subtle point here. You don’t want to accept things as they are and leave them the way they are, but you do need to accept things for what they are.

Have you ever caught yourself saying (or thinking): “This is NOT happening to me!”

That’s a very revealing statement that, well… reveals the source of our frustrations.

We reject facts. We reject circumstances. We reject human nature. We reject natural laws.

We want things to be different. To behave differently. To respond differently.

We want things to go as planned. The way we want them to go. Without any surprises or glitches.

And when we don’t get what we want. When the universe doesn’t obey our wishes. We get angry and feel frustrated.

Because the world isn’t what we want it to be.

Acceptance isn’t an alternative to change, but the foundation for change.

In order to change your life, you must first accept that your life is what it is today. Don’t judge it according to your expectations and wishes. Evaluating a situation must come after accepting that the situation is what it is.

Once you accept facts as facts and develop the willingness to stare reality in the face, you can then plan how you will move your life in the direction you want.

The wonderful thing about acceptance is that it creates a healthy emotional environment that sets the stage for personal transformation. You won’t be living in denial or escaping from your problems so you can protect the imaginary world you prefer to live in.

Think about your life and the “problem areas” you feel like looking away from and accept them as facts.

Admit the mistakes you’ve made in your past and recognize them as mistakes.

Without judgment or thought of what should be done. Before you take any action to bring about change, you must first accept reality for what it is.

Accept your limitations. Your circumstances. Your past. Your present. The people around you. The politics of your country. Anything that’s annoying you and tugging at your attention.

Accept the facts for being facts.

Through acceptance, you will experience profound changes in your life.

Your mind is a wonderful gadget. It’s so wonderful that it does stuff you didn’t ask it to do.

But, unfortunately, when you don’t know much about what your mind is getting up to, you miss out on a ton of benefits, and may even experience some set backs.

To give you an example:

Your mind doesn’t only process data, but refines its own thinking algorithms, processes your emotions and includes your values in its equations.

When it comes to setting goals, you may have conflicting factors that you’re not aware of. On one end you have the goals you want to reach and on the other you have the moral guidelines you feel obliged to adhere to.

Many, many of these moral judgments are picked up by your brain without you even knowing it!

It takes how others behave into consideration, what they say, how they treat you, what your parents brought you up to believe is good and bad, what you were taught in school, what your friends value, what celebrities promote, how religious authorities and intellectuals define morality, and so on.

The moral teachings you’re exposed to are often contradictory, but without a conscious filter to accept the good, reject the bad and resolve conflicting values, your morals are likely to offer you dilemmas rather than a clear destination to pursue.

Whenever you define a goal for yourself, your mind will automatically ask: “But is it the right thing to do?”

You may not be aware of this question (and, sadly, this is the common case), and your mind will either draw a blank, or offer conflicting answers: one that supports your goal and one that condemns it.

“You can’t do that. It’s too selfish.”

“But what’s wrong with being selfish? Don’t I have the right to pursue my own happiness?”

If you fail to resolve such conflicts, you won’t be able to make too much progress in life as you try to travel two separate roads.

For each of your goals, ask yourself: “Is this the right thing to do? And why?”

Don’t worry about arriving at the right answer. What matters is that you express your own views and to be consciously aware of the automatic thinking that goes on in your head, which you will need to consciously correct.

Don’t allow morality to compromise your happiness. That’s not the purpose of morality.

Morality is meant to help you advance in life without compromising your own, or other people’s, well-being.

Leading a moral life will help you experience greater joy, integrity and peace of mind.

If you feel like agreeing, but there’s a part of you that seems to disagree, then you’ve uncovered potentially conflicting values.

Think them through and let your conscious mind be involved in choosing the morals you wish to live by.

Your goals and happiness may be on hold because you’re not willing to think about your own values, and that’s not a good thing. 🙂

Last summer, I was introduced to the Alexander Technique, a collection of teachings and exercises to help build better awareness of how we use (and misuse) our bodies, and encourages the release of unnecessary tension in order to move with greater ease.

My aunt – who was my Alexander Technique instructor – made me realize how the way we perform certain movements can make them far more difficult than they need to be. A simple example would be getting up from a chair.

Imagine yourself sitting on a chair, then standing up. You can try it right now.

Now you may have put your hands on your thighs and pushed them down while you were trying to get up.

Give that a second thought.

You want to move up, yet you push yourself down.

Sound weird?

Because it is.

The advice my aunt told me was “get out of your own way.”

Let the body move in a way that doesn’t compromise its movement or cripple its efforts.

This applies to many (if not all) other areas of life.

We get in our own way, and act as the obstacle to our goals.

We compromise our own success.

We hold ourselves back.

Before we try, we admit defeat.

Rather than cheer ourselves on, we mock ourselves with every hesitation we experience.

We continuously remind ourselves of our weaknesses, yet overlook our strengths.

And our greatest strength is our ability to grow beyond our weaknesses.

To recognize that we’re not bound by our characteristics, the decisions we’ve made in the past, or what others think of us.

We can learn what we don’t know, and develop the skills we currently lack.

But we ignore this ability to change, because we identify with our weaknesses and reject any thought that attempts to drive a wedge between us and our weaknesses.

That’s how we get in the way of our success.

Whenever you try to convince yourself that you’re no good and will never amount to anything, be aware of that voice in your head, and don’t identify with it or feel obliged to believe in it.

Recognize that how you think, feel, speak, and behave are all decisions you made in the past and are currently identifying with.

Remind yourself that these are choices you’ve made, and you possess the free-will to make different choices.

Be on your own side, and don’t look for ways you can put yourself down.

Getting out of your own way is essential for you to make progress towards the life you wish to lead, and to translate the hopes you cherish within you into results you see around you.

If you went through yesterday’s “Ideal Life” exercise, your thoughts may have been interrupted by a nagging “but I can’t” feeling (and if you didn’t do the exercise, then I highly suggest that you do).

“I want to live in a tropical island… but I can’t.”

“I want to be a more patient father and a loving husband… but I can’t.”

“I want to be more focused while doing my work… but I can’t.”

That’s a perfectly natural response to what appear to be distant hopes. You’re aware of limitations in your own life, and want to take them into consideration while planning out your ideal life.

Such thinking can serve you well, and we’ll talk about it more in the future.

But for now, you shouldn’t be thinking of how you will create your ideal life, but what that ideal life is.

The Big But

There’s a common thread behind most of the “buts” that seek your attention while you’re trying to think about your ideal life. In fact, they’re all manifestations of a Big But that’s sabotaging the quality of your life.

And that Big But is…

**drum roll**

You’ll find out after the break!

…

**Commercial break**

…

And we’re back!

Where were we? Oh, yes.

The Big But.

That Big But is… YOU!

That’s right, you’re willing to abandon many of your desires and dreams because you believe you’re not capable of achieving them.

It could be because you can’t (given your characteristics or abilities) or that you don’t deserve them (given what you were brought up to think, or based on your religious beliefs).

“I’m unworthy… I’m too stupid… I’m so clumsy… I’m inexperienced… I’m too shy… I’m such a loser…”

The impressions we have about ourselves shape who we are and the sort of lifestyle we lead.

The reason why you’re living the life you’re living is influenced heavily by what you think about yourself.

What makes pursuing your dreams seem impossible also comes down to your impressions of who you are.

For the “Ideal Life” exercise to be carried out properly, you need to overlook your own impressions about yourself.

Imagine yourself behaving in the way you want to behave.

See yourself speaking and acting in the way you want to speak and act.

Imagine what that will feel like.

Again, don’t worry too much about feasibility at the moment.

You simply want to be clear about what your ideal life is like.

The “Ideal Life” exercise is so important that it deserves another day to think about.

So give it some more thought and notice how it makes you feel.

I’ll be here tomorrow for another update…

If you’re facing any problems with the exercise (e.g. you can’t seem to focus properly), or aren’t clear about something or the other, then express your concerns in the comments section, and I’ll do my best to guide you through the exercise.