Ignite Your Personal and Professional Growth
Take a minute right now to reflect on your life. Single? Married? In a relationship? Front line employee? Manager? Director? Executive? Parent? Entrepreneur? What do you do from day to day and who do you do it with? What drives you? What bothers you?
As you think about these things, take a minute to interview yourself. Put yourself in the shoes of your significant other. Your children. Your employer or your clients. Ask a few questions. What is your biggest strength that you bring? What is your biggest area of opportunity? What have you done in the past 90 days to become better? What have you learned that you are applying to become better?
It is interesting to hear candidates’ responses during interviews. When you ask them about strengths, they can talk forever and when you ask them about opportunities, they typically struggle to find an answer. How did you do? Did you answer the questions quickly? Or did you struggle?
This is not an article about interviewing, but it is meant to help you start thinking about your life and how you are approaching your day to day. It has been said that every organism in the universe is either growing or dying… There is no status quo… We do not just sit idle. If we are not growing in our job, our relationships, our finances, our health, our knowledge, etc. we are basically dying. I believe this and I live my entire life around this principle. What can I learn from my experience and how can I be proactive to continue to learn and grow? We live in a time where everything we need is in the palm of our hand. We have access to some of the most successful and intelligent human beings on earth through our cell phones. Audio Books, Podcasts, Ted Talks, YouTube, Online Courses, Apps, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram… The list goes on and on. You can literally find an expert whom you respect and trust and subscribe to their content. You can have it delivered directly to your inbox. The only thing limiting us is ourselves.
How much time do you spend commuting each day? 1 hour? 2 hours? What if you decided to use that time to become a better spouse? 1 hour, five days per week is 260 hours of learning throughout a year. If you consume content about becoming a better spouse for 260 hours, can you imagine how life changing that could be? Seems so simple, doesn’t it?
What I have noticed is that most people are aware of the afore mentioned tools and resources, however the gap is that they do not self-reflect. So many of us go through life without taking an honest assessment of ourselves. We are not good at this and prefer to look at other people’s opportunities. The truth is that we don’t know what we don’t know. Even if you cannot think of any way you can grow, you can still pick an area of your life and consume some content. If you approach it with an open mind, you will certainly pick up some new tips to grow in that area which you had never thought of.
Let’s do this. Pick one area of your life today. Select the desired method of delivery for content and spend this week consuming the content. Make this a recurring activity each week. You may pick different areas of life. You may pick different methods of delivery. You may miss a week here and there. One thing is for certain. If you self-reflect, choose to grow, and you act, it is inevitable that you WILL grow.