How we can make personal growth a permanent part of our lives? By making personal growth, with gradual and steady improvements as the cornerstone of our lives.
“I want to grow. I want to be better. You Grow. We all grow. We're made to grow.You either evolve or you disappear.”
― Tupac Shakur
― Tupac Shakur
The most essential element to long-term personal growth is to continually optimise. Personal growth should not be done in random spurts of enthusiasm and action, but long term steady progress. Attempting to overhaul your entire life all at once most likely will not last. Instead we need to make consistent and constant gradual changes that will impact over time.
When most people win the lottery, they have spent all of the money they won within a year or two. This is because money was never their problem. These people never learned how to properly handle money, so they become poor within a short time of their windfall payment.
Motivation works very much like money in this case. Many of us win our own jackpot of motivation and enthusiasm after a particular moment, because we have never learnt how to properly spend that enthusiasm and motivation, we end up drained and poor again in no time at all.
Instead, we need to focus on making little but constant improvements throughout our life. If someone starts out poor and becomes a self-made millionaire, they are far more likely to keep their money than a lottery winner. Random, quick bursts of improvement are not going to give us the permanent changes we seek.
This theory of steady and progressive improvements is not a new idea. Simply understanding that we need to make steady improvements over random bursts of innovation is a little different than actually living this way. So, how can we take this practice of making steady and incremental improvements and make it a standard by which we operate our life?
Step One: Commit to Change
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature,
nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
– Helen Keller
nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
– Helen Keller
This may seem a little odd, but few people rarely commit their lives to change. We do not want change and risk. Instead we want comfort, stability and security. As a result, we spend most of our time trying to keep our life stagnant.
Our lives are always going to be changing. Instead of recoiling from that prospect, we need to embrace it. We need to embrace that there is no permanence in our lives. Furthermore, we need to embrace the idea that change is inevitable, even if we try to avoid it. By making this commitment, we are also asserting that we are going to help guide that change so it brings us more good than bad.
Personal growth will not work for people seeking stability. People who want to just make a quick change and keep everything else the same will not be able to make permanent changes. Remember, as Helen Keller said, “Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”
Step Two: Act
The second step is to start making those small improvements we see. These improvements do not need to be huge, they just need to be consistent. This could be as simple as reading for fifteen minutes a day, or buying healthier foods.
This step is really not that difficult. Whenever you see yourself doing something you think could be done better, just start. Instead, some people try to start with their most difficult problems right away. Then when they have trouble, they give up altogether. By keeping the steps small but noticeable, we can make lasting changes.
Step Three: Evaluate
The third step in being consistent with improving our personal growth is
to be constantly evaluating our progress, this can be done in a weekly review. In this review answer the three following questions:
1) What went right? What things did you improve this week? By giving yourself credit for these small improvements you encourage yourself to make future improvements.
2) What went wrong? What things could you improve next week? By identifying the areas you believe you have to grow, you will be able to start making gradual changes to improve them.
3) What now? Now you need to ask yourself what you plan on doing for the future. By identifying what you are going to do in the next week to improve, you are ready for those improvements.
A weekly review certainly is not the only way to evaluate your progress. However, shorter daily reviews, keeping a journal or even meditating on your day can all serve to evaluate your progress.
These evaluations are crucial. If you are not evaluating your progress, you will not be able to see your own growth and you are far more likely to slide back to your old habits. Gradual improvement is generally fairly hard to see in the short term but huge in the long term. By evaluating our progress we can allow ourselves to see these little improvements.
Step Four: Measure
There is an old adage that says “Whatever is measured, improves.” This truism has a lot of significance to our own commitment to constant personal growth. Simply by measuring something, we have a better grasp over our effectiveness and efficiency with it. We can see this is especially true with money. If you are careful with keeping track of all of your finances and budget properly you have a lot more control over how you spend your money, than if you are not even sure how much you have.
The process of measuring takes the subjective process of evaluating and makes it objective. Instead of just reasoning where we have seen improvements, the results are tangible. By knowing exactly how much we are improving (or getting worse!) we have a lot more control over where we emphasise our personal growth. Keeping track of steady improvement is important to ensure if we are actually improving.
Long term personal growth can only come from our commitment to steady and consistent improvement. By taking the four steps of commitment, action, evaluation and measurement, we can make steady improvements in our personal growth that will transcend the temporary boost we get from an inspiring seminar, book or audio program.
With thanks to Scott H Young https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2006/04/06/continuous-improvement-making-personal-growth-last-series/
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