Photo by Michael Bina Courtsey of http://www.allamericanpatriots.com
The mirror is the first step in my process to better myself, but knowingly, it wasn’t enough. In my experience I’ve seen too many people get to the stage of looking into the mirror and do nothing about the problems that have gotten them to this point. In most instances, I’ve seen many come to the mirror multiple times without making any changes. The one thing that I know is true, for an individual to want to improve their situation, must actually make the conscious decision to change. The lack of commitment to change could be result of an overwhelming situation, whether it is your weight, financial debt, or your personal relationships, it makes those first steps the hardest to take when improving any of these areas.
So at this point of my development I was cleaning up my act, quite literally. As I mention in my first blog, cleaning on a regular basis was a useful way to create good habits, it was now time to incorporate this good habit making into these other areas of my life. At this point the one thing I had to ask is what is important to me? There are many things that happen in your life and it seems we over-obligate ourselves too easily, especially at the pace our society moves. For me, there are three things that has explicit importantance: my family, my career, and my health. At this time I was doing multiple freelance jobs, school and everything else in between. There was no way I could dedicate enough energy to give the best results to any of these obligations. It got so bad that I was actually fired off a freelance gig. Now that I have found what was important to me, I had to now evaluate everything to make sure any of my current obligations fit my goals. I had to incorporate a habit of good decision making. The first step is understanding what you want and what paths you need to take to get to those goals. I got the hard part pretty much done by figuring out what I wanted out of life. One of the best tools to incorporate is a road map. Yes, it’s a tool that follows a simple concept: it is a map that lays out your path to your destination and when you get lost you just check it. A road map can be something quite as literal as map to each objective to complete or it can be a software that lets you build a flow diagram to see the bigger picture. For example, I use mint.com to check all my accounts and assets. The interface allows you to keep track of transactions and even build budgeting goals to help you alleviate your debt. I use this website to help me track my success towards building an emergency fund. Too many situations I have been in where I had no money to cover unforeseen expenses. I also have been living paycheck to paycheck, without checking my expenses for years. So now this tool provides me the road map to use in achieving my financial success, and I have been getting in the habit of checking my account activity, which makes me active in providing my own financial security.
This method of goal setting and incorporating the map method has been a very awesome tool in my personal development. One of the best things it did for me was to create list. These lists can vary depending on what you are achieving. For me I have a couple list I regularly update, one is my general “To Do List” and the other is my “Projects List” (you can build list easily into your outlook or even gmail account, by using the task functionality). These list are fairly self explanatory, but they are very integral in my decision making and execution. Each week I pick one day to review my goals, and weekly schedule. I revisit these goals, including major life goals to make sure all my actions where in the direction I am wanting to pursue. It’s good to see your schedule for the week to get your mind in the frame set of “getting things done”. Once I have reviewed my week I then adjust my lists and road maps to accommodate any changes. Then into the week it is easy to execute such decisions because now I know what needs to be done. When something new comes up I take that new objective and implement it into one of my list. I may not be able to get to it, but I have seen and acknowledged that it has to be completed. This is how I regulate my work flow, and it helps me put everything into perspective.
As overwhelming as life can be with many things coming at you all at once or unexpectedly, there are methods of dealing with such events easily. The road maps and list are a few tools in adjusting to the needs of your world. Life is much like surfing, you can’t fight the waves but you can flow with them. On one last note, it was August 2009 I was just learning surfing here in Florida. There was a hurricane that swept by, which made the waves much larger than usual. One of the things you need to know about surfing is the hardest part is swimming out past the waves (and staying on top of the board). So on this day, I spent most of my time gasping for air as each wave threw me off my board, as I was swimming out past the wave breaking point. I’m not a very avid swimmer, so you can say at this point I was very tired, and close to giving up all together. Another surfer came by and told me I was taking on the waves all wrong. I really had no other idea how else you can handle a wave coming at you. I asked:
“How the hell are you suppose to get out there then with these huge waves?”
“Take the board at the nose, push down and let the wave roll over your back.”
As in life when the waves come at us hard, you have to just roll through them to go forward.
Good post man, especially the analogy in the last paragraph. That’s a good attitude to have. Too bad others do think that way.