5 tips to maximizing your personal growth

Quit bouncing, and figure out what matters.

You can’t do it all. You can do all that matters. Not all of it can matter, or does matter, to you. What matters to you won’t be the same as what matters to other people.

Find your priorities. Don’t assume someone else’s. We’re not meant to live the same lives, chase the same dreams, even hold the same standards. Quit judging the worth of your ideals by someone else’s ideals. You can’t cross-criticize like that; it doesn’t compute.

Be brave. Stand alone, in the dark, by yourself, long enough to get a glimpse of your own soul. What’s the spark in there? Look at it, breathe on it, give it some fuel. That’s what matters. Keep it alive.

Let loose of the burden of the ideal.

You don’t need ideal, you need something that works, that is actually happening, that is real, that is work, that you can do. You can mess round with ideal later, if you want. Right now, just go for acceptable. Choose progress over perfection. Choose one small, struggling step at a time over a hypothetical leap to the end goal.

If it helps, institute two sets of standards in your life, which can be useful in all sorts of ways.

Focus on your strengths.

Seriously. If you haven’t already figured it out, sit down and take some time to do a strengths analysis and also figure out your weaknesses.

Then focus your life on building up, improving upon, and adding MORE of what you’re good at and minimizing, downplaying, delegating, and eliminating the WEAKNESS, or weak areas. This will revolutionize your life, your productivity, your personal growth, your goals, your progress, your work.

Review your past goals, your resolutions, etc. Have any of them actually been to improve your strengths? Or have they all focused on trying to improve your weak areas?

Figure out the one thing that matters most for each goal.

It’s the critical inch. You can let a lot slide, and still make progress toward your current goal, if you know what one important thing must be done, daily. Schedule it into your life. Make it a priority. Give yourself a daily quota, or a weekly deadline.

Tell people about it. Be accountable with a select few, and check in regularly and report on your progress. Gain that critical inch every single day, and you will make huge progress.

Start developing your own personal set of rules.

Rules for happiness, for growth, life, truth, creativity, family, productivity, work, success, etc. Your life isn’t anyone else’s life. Your rules shouldn’t be anyone else’s rules.

Sure, there will be overlap. There are some universal truths, or some rules you’ve been taught that you want to hang on to. But don’t live your life blindly following some set of rules you’ve never even looked at in the clear light of day. Be thoughtful, analyze your beliefs, analyze your assumptions, and throw out what doesn’t ring true, what doesn’t work, what’s worn out and used up.

Set your course, choose your rules, and then have the integrity to live by them.

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