Personal Growth and Development – Is Life Keeping You From Getting Anywhere?
When was the last time you spent time thinking or contemplating what you want in your life?
Personal Growth, Development, and Effectiveness
Are you so distracted with life that you have no time to pay attention to what you want in life?
Can you even remember what you want anymore?
Are you too busy with what you are doing to change or get ahead?
The routine tasks of daily life can so easily use up all of your time that they become the main part of life.
When was the last time you spent time thinking or contemplating what you want in your life?
For most, it has been far too long.
Predominant Habits
Are you aware that your daily activities are your predominant habits?
A habit is an automatic thought, routine, or behaviour.
They become so ingrained in your life that you build interpretations, thinking, behaviour, and defences around them, protecting the status quo.
Have you noticed how protective you can be about what you do and think, even if you are not really sure why?
How you will defend anything even if it is really not in your best interest.
You will actually personalise and protect your habits no matter how negative, debilitating and restrictive they become.
Sometimes, what habits prevent you from doing is far more damaging than the habit itself.
Many habitual routines cause you no harm other than sapping your time and energy that could be utilised for your personal growth and development.
More Effective Use of Time
We have all heard of how effective use of our time leads to results.
Well, there are always results in your life; everything you do has a result.
Even when you think you are doing nothing, you are getting the results of doing nothing.
And part of the result is, what you are not doing all the while you are doing nothing.
If you sit and watch TV instead of washing the dishes, the result is – the dishes are not washed, and, of course, you accomplished TV watching.
This goes on all day, with you getting appropriate results for all of your actions and apparent inaction.
The question becomes, how long are you going to continue to let what you do all day long prevent you from the life you desire?
Doing the Same Thing and Expecting a Different Result
You can’t continue to do everything you do now and expect different results. You must make some adjustments.
Change what you are doing and what you are doing will change.
Your results will change and so will your Personal Effectiveness.
Personal growth and development takes effort on your part.
Who said the life you want is easy?
I’m not saying it is hard either, not any harder than what you are doing now.
The challenging part is in getting yourself to alter what you are now doing to allow for what you want.
Building a Better Life
You have gradually built your life into what it is today, whether you did so intentionally or not.
You then need to make any adjustments that are needed to support what you want.
It will take effort at first, as your ego-mind will want to fight to preserve the status quo.
It will take determination and self-discipline on your part at first to override the existing habits.
This can only take place when your inner drive is sufficient to back your efforts.
Only when you become fed up with what you no longer want and you become deeply desirous of what you do want will you have the needed mental and emotional drive.
You will need to insert into your day, some things that support what you want.
You need to be moving in the direction of your dreams, not just once in a while, but each day.
Take a look at what you want in your personal growth and development.
- What activities would help you achieve your objectives?
- What skills would benefit from being improved?
- How would you like to interact with others?
- What would you like your personal impact to be?
- What kind of leader could you become?
Put these into your daily schedule and help them become your habits.
Start Small, But Start Now
Even if small, they will begin to have an effect.
If you were in baseball and wanted to be batting over 300, don’t you think you should be doing a lot of batting practice?
Of course, that’s obvious right?
Then why don’t you do any practice for what you want?
You have allowed yourself to be consumed by your habits, you must change that in order to get what you want.
And what you have in your life is directly related to how much time and attention you have given it.
Give an appropriate percentage of your time to what you do want.
Spending all of your time doing things that are not part of what you want your life to be and then complaining about it changes nothing.
All you are doing is accentuating your unhappiness.
Another key part of this is to know what you want unfiltered by the ego.
There is a lot deep in your mind that is covered by the activity of the day.
Schedule time in your day for contemplation of some sort, as well as specific activities.
Meditation is good or any quiet undistracted dedicated thinking for 20 to 30 minutes at least once a day.
Contemplative Thinking
Contemplative thinking is something most of us do not do enough of, as we are so busy running around just doing what we are in the habit of doing.
It is so easy to allow ourselves to get into the rut of just wishing for something rather than taking steps toward making it happen.
And very important, you must stick with it, just doing something for a short term or once in a while will not effect any change.
What job, business or college degree can you be successful in if you only do it once in a while?
If you want it to be a part of your life – make it a part of your life!
Change your efforts and your results will change. This article was contributed by John Halderman who writes and speaks on personal growth.
John Halderman writes and speaks with intent on helping you get effective results with your personal growth and development.
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