If you are here, I trust you have set, and taken some time for reflection. A time when you can think and carefully consider your future. By taking this time you are feeding your mind, body, and soul. Clearing my mind by thinking about the most important things in life allows my mind to wander and go where I never take the time to go.
As you continue your reflections, I strongly suggest you begin taking notes and/or journaling your thoughts and discoveries. Before your reflections, think of things to think about. Have a focused discussion with yourself. Make an agenda for your focused thinking session.
Where do you want to be in your career, life, and relationships one year from now? What about 3 or 5 years? I have personally noticed that when I think about these items in my normal day-to-day hustle and bustle they are between other thoughts, dismissed quickly and maybe with a "Huh, I wish!" I never gave it a second thought until a later disconnected thought brought me back. You do not need a schedule, just some forethought.
Step 3 - Commitments
We started out talking about failed resolutions. January 10, 2025, (Quitter's Day) is in the rear view mirror, and if you are still here, still working on your personal growth, good on you!
You are the only thing that can make your plan successful. To be successful, you have to make a personal commitment to grow. You have to find a way to make it stick. Plan to spend time working on your personal growth plan weekly.
The hardest person I have ever led was myself. I don't listen consistently. I tend to slack off and spend time with my family instead of attending to the things I know to do. I never succeeded until I started doing what I always knew needed to be done and stuck with it.
DON'T WAIT - Write this down and commit to coming back to this until you have completed it. This is your plan for your life. Make sure you take the needed time to get it all worked out. It can take you several tries to get it how you want it. But plan it, take the time, and do it. Get started as quickly as you can on the items in your plan. It doesn't have to be perfect before you get started. Don’t let “good” be the enemy of “perfect." Get started and adjust along the way.
Commit to intentionally grow. Commitment and consistency create habit. The secret of my most successful times was when I created consistent actions toward goals. Where possible, I recommend you set a schedule for these actions. I learned that when I schedule them while my energy is highest, I get the most out of them. My highest energy time is usually the earliest part of the day.
Make that commitment public- A commitment that is not public is worthless. We all tend to stray, but shared commitment becomes a strong commitment.
What do I mean by Public? Commit to yourself, commit to those around you, your loved ones, your people, commit to those with whom you work. Even though your growth is your personal journey, making public commitments encourages your peers to root for you. Your public commitment encourages your peers to be accountability partners in your journey to hold you accountable. If they are not supportive, you are in the wrong group. Do not be afraid of accountability.
Commit to share your growth with someone. Someone happy to hear of your growth and progress and keep sharing. If they are not happy with and for you, share with someone else, you have outgrown them, move on.
Remember, growing is not a goal, but a life-long process that MUST start with being intentional. While scheduling growth time may seem simplistic, it IS the beginning of action intention. And I love intentionality.
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