3 Critical Steps To Pursuing Growth
September 23rd, 2008
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In yesterday’s post, I discussed how to find opportunities for growth. Once you have identified them, choose four or less to pursue – choose the ones that feel important or will help you a lot.
What Exactly Are You Trying To Accomplish?
The more clearly you know where you are heading, the easier you can pursue it. If you want to become a nicer person, you must have a real, tangible idea of what that means to you. Ultimately, any growth opportunity will change our thoughts, feeling, words, and actions. Abstract ideas are hard to grasp because they aren’t related to a physical, concrete thing. If you can’t understand it, how can you act it? Take your goal – for example becoming a nicer person – and make it more tangible. What would your thoughts, feelings, words, and actions be when you reach your goal? Take inspiration from all that you have read and any people in particular that you know. Use your imagination to get a tangible idea of what you are reaching for.
- Some examples:
- Thoughts - What will I be thinking when I see another person, or during a conversation? “How can I help him?” or “What can I do to make him feel more comfortable?” are both good thoughts.
- Feelings - How do I want to feel? “ahavta lireacha kimocha – love your friend like yourself ” seems particularly apt. What does love feel like to you? Recall loving or empathetic moments with family and feel the same emotions now.
- Words - What words will I use? “Good morning!”, “I hope you are doing well!”, “Thank you!”, “That was great!”, “Go for it!” all sound very appropriate.
- Actions - How will I act? Will I hold open the door for people? Smile and wave enthusiastically? Say “Good morning!” to everyone I walk by?
This may seem inauthentic to you. “OK, I should smile at people. But how do I really become a nicer person?” If you think how nice people think and do what nice people do, then you are a nice person. The Ramchal says that your external actions affect you inside – acting like a nicer person makes you a nicer person. With repetition, the actions and thoughts become part of your personality. The Rambam says if you are trying to work on any trait, go to the extreme of what you are aiming for. This helps remove all the shortcuts in your brain that reinforce the old behavior.
Finding Motivation
You may feel raring to go work on your growth opportunity. If you don’t, think of why you should be! It’s great to be motivated today, but how do you make the excitement last?
Find the reasons why you are excited, and why you could be excited, and keep reminding yourself. You may want to ask other people for ideas. You are a salesperson trying to convince yourself to pursue this growth. What is so great about this goal? What are the benefits? Write as many as possible! Having powerful reasons will keep you going.
One of my next areas to focus on is thinking appreciatively and gratefully (one of Rabbi Pliskin’s 9 Happiness Principles from Conversations With Yourself.)
The motivation for this shouldn’t be too hard. It will cause happiness. Happiness also leads to better learning (mitzvah!), accomplishing more, and better health (mitzvah!). I will be thanking everyone around me for their help, so everyone involved with me will feel more positive (mitzvah!) and want to help me more.
Wow, that sounds amazing!
Continuous Thought
If you forget about being a nicer person, or you forget to remind yourself of how great it would be, it won’t help you at all. You can spend as little as 5 minutes a day with this great way to keep yourself reminded.
- A short summary of what you trying to achieve (”Be a nicer person”)
- The best reasons why it is important to you (”I love seeing other people smile!”)
- The longer explanation (the thoughts, feelings, words, and actions)
Every morning and every night right before sleep, enthusiastically or joyously read what you are trying to achieve and why. The emotion really locks in what you are working on. Picture yourself acting the way you want to think, feel, say, and do. In the morning, write some ideas for how you can apply this today. At night, reflect on the day and see how you succeeded and what you would do differently next time. At the very least, rewrite the goal. The more time and emotion you put into reviewing your goals, the faster your progress will be.
For most people, the only way to make sure you do this review is to put the notebook on your pillow and not go to sleep until you spend the few minutes reviewing. In the morning, don’t leave until you do the review. Each 2-minute review gets your brain involved for many hours! Reviewing at night lets your brain work on the idea the whole night!
Final Thoughts
Plans never survive their first encounter with the real world. Look for what works, and what might work better next time towards achieving your goal. Celebrate any success to keep you motivated to keep working!
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