The Most Important Question on the Road to Becoming a Better Person
Posted in Personal Development on March 30th, 2007 by Erin DietrichPersonal growth is lonely and miserable. The road to self-improvement is often described in flowery terms like “embarking on the journey of self-discovery” or “learning to see the beauty which lies within” when it is actually more akin to a trip to the dentist; worthwhile, necessary, but utterly unpleasant.
Jenny’s diatribe, “Becoming a Better Person Sucks”, portrays this beautifully. Click here to read her post. However there is at least one step, personally the most painful, not addressed in Jenny’s post. Asking the question - How do I know what I need to change?
Back to the tennis analogy, so you’re a horrible player and you just got beat. You want to improve because currently you can’t show your face at your health club. Initially, defining the steps to becoming better seems obvious. To win next time you just need to get into better shape. Slow down buck-o, things are more complicated. To truly get better you must take an honest inventory of your performance. What made you fail? Not understanding the rules of the game? Fatigue? Did you psyche yourself out? These questions can sting, who wants to make a list of all of their failings, especially after just going through the pain of losing? With your self-esteem in the toilet, you have the joy of defining how you plan to get better. Should I run sprints? Lift weights? Play more until I improve? What will have the highest yield?
Three weeks and many workouts later you lose again. You are frustrated that you lost, especially after all your effort. Losing hurts so you blame others - if my parents had insisted I play tennis in high school, maybe my friend cheated, I was distracted by the people on the adjacent court. When you repeat the story to your friends no ones jumps to your defense; they actually avoid your gaze!
If you are lucky, maybe, just maybe, a friend remarks that you are taking on the wrong problem. They suggest the answer may not even be related to tennis, maybe it is tied to your unrealistic need to be perfect or to always win. To expect that you, who haven’t played tennis since junior high, are going to win against someone, who played competitively in college and once a week since, is unrealistic. This is when it hits you; maybe you have been trying to change the wrong things. Your need to win has served you well at work, but has also cost you several friendships over the years.
It is time to examine your habits, beliefs and thoughts. However, it’s not just the bad habits, beliefs and thoughts that need to go under the microscope; surprisingly (and more often painfully) you must also dissect those you have always assumed were positive, or worse yet helpful. This is typically where the true problems mask themselves. The trouble lies in the fact that if you knew what you were doing wrong and it was easy to fix, you would have changed it a long time ago. Get over your embarrassment; call the experts, your friends, or (gulp) even your family. Again, they know you and can help identify what needs the change, and sometimes even how you can go about doing it.
Congrats, you are making progress - it may not feel like it - but keep at it and one day you will look back and see how far you’ve come. Who said it would be fun???
