Jenny and Erin

Self-development is just that - the process by which one goes about developing or growing oneself. It doesn’t matter where you are when you start the process, whether your life is in such ruins that you struggle to get out of bed or if you only have one little area in your life you want to improve. What matters is you have decided that you want to be, think and experience more from life. Once you have made this decision you have planted a powerful seed.

Luckily you live in a time when information about self improvement is abundant. Venture to a bookstore, get lost on the internet or sit yourself in front of the TV and you will find yourself bombarded with resources. And amazingly, they all seem to offer an easy answer, straight-forward solution or a simple step-by-step plan. Wow, you think, I can do this! It’s easy to get lost in the hype and begin believing that if you would have only known how accessible and simple personal growth could be you would have changed eons ago. So, off you go!

In the midst of absorbing and attempting to apply the hallowed steps to whatever it is you desire, you may discover what I have; many popular guides and gurus alike overlook the struggle involved in personal growth. Instead they offer simple, prescriptive, and “easy” advice - guaranteed success. Although this advice is not inaccurate, neither it is as straight-forward as it appears.

Musing over this apparent contradiction, memories of a childhood science experiment came to mind. One year in grade school every student in my class was given a seed and we all set out to grow them. Similar to many common self-development instructions, growing our seed into a plant was presented in a few simple steps:

1. Obtain a seed.
2. Put the seed into soil and cover it up.
3. Water the soil.
4. Give the seed adequate sunlight.
5. Re-water as necessary and wait.

Ta-da! In no time we were supposed to have a healthy and beautiful plant to take home and surprise our parents. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Well, maybe just a little too easy. I deduced more of a good thing could only make my plant better. Thinking myself quite the problem solver I figured out a way to sneak into my classroom early from recess and give my plant an extra dose of water each day assuming more water equals faster growth. Not so.

When the plants started to sprout, mine did not. Imagine my despair. I thought I had done everything right, in fact, better than right. I was crushed and I wasn’t alone. Several of my classmates had done the opposite of me, and forgotten to water their plant several days, and so my teacher let us try again. This time - remembering my teachers warnings - I was cautious with the water, determined to have a plant to show my parents, rather than a container of dirt. After a couple weeks a plant I had. Oh, you have never seen someone happier.

It seems self development would be best approached in the same way. No matter how clear the instructions are or what anyone says, growth is not always easy and rarely follows the outlined steps smoothly. If an approach is not working for you, despite claims it has helped “millions”, it is okay. Based on the seed directions, how was I supposed to know the correct amount of water? Rather than thinking of advice as set in stone, regard it as guidelines to work from. Yes, the directions for growing a plant were accurate, but differ greatly depending upon what type of plant you are trying to grow.

Only through being open to adjustments, asking questions, observation and a bit of experimentation can you determine the exact needs of your plant. I imagine in order to grow through your struggles you might want to look at your growth the same way. Consider how either “over-watering” a relationship or forgetting to water it at all would likely kill it or at the very least stunt its growth. If that is hard for you to remember you might want to imagine my poor little flooded seed.

It’s okay if things get a little messy. Seeds are planted in the dirt after all. Be forgiving of yourself. How was I to know that over-watering would kill my plant? How could you know that it’s hard to build your self-esteem in the midst of a divorce? To find love while secretly believing that you are unlovable? That taking out all those loans would result in debt far into the future?

If you are anything like me, you grow by doing. When nothing seems to work try it again and again until it does. I don’t imagine it much matters if you are initially successful as long as you use what you learn along the way to improve your perspective for the next attempt by adjusting the generic steps to fit your life and your particular circumstances. Keep at it and something beautiful will eventually sprout and when you finally see it full-grown it will be amazing.

Related Posts:
The Science Behind Change
Challenging Our Mental Maps
The Importance of Awareness and Acceptance, by Mark Lapierre
Keeping Perspective When You’ve Bitten Off More Than You Can Chew

Is something missing in your life? Do you just know you were meant for better things, yet find yourself feeling unhappy and unmotivated? If so, consider yourself blessed. Unhappiness and dissatisfaction with our current circumstances is one of the few reliable ways to recognize when we are out of alignment with our true desires and capabilities. A thorough examination of this dissatisfaction can bring the inspiration to be, think or do better.

Dissatisfaction is a general longing for something better and being unsatisfied with your current reality, no matter how good it looks from the outside. Although uncomfortable, noting the source of this dissatisfaction is an easy way in which to identify the gaps between what is and what you want in your life to bring change. This is never clearer than when one feels persistent and piercing dissatisfaction, despite living the “perfect life”. Indeed, dissatisfaction is a powerful tool that helps you to be honest with yourself.

The uncomfortable sensations that accompany dissatisfaction feel terrible. It is common to misinterpret the pain as a statement of your worth or abilities as a person, rather than see its role as messenger. The degree of pain is typically in direct proportion to the size of the problem you are hiding from. In fact, maybe you can find solace in the fact that you are actually in a much better position when your level of dissatisfaction is strong as it calls for more prompt action. It is difficult to find the drive to work to become better when you are mostly satisfied with yourself and your world except in bed late at night.

Thankfully, the pain of longing for better can become strong enough to provide you with a clear and honest source of inspiration. Inspiration does not only come from positive experiences in your life, it can sprout from highly dissatisfying things as well. Inspiration, most simply defined, is anything that that stimulates the mind or emotions to a high level of activity or feeling. To create inspiration from dissatisfaction you must be able to accept the unhappiness is just a symptom, not the problem.

If you do not use your dissatisfaction as motivation to do better you will probably use it to instead make things even worse; you may employ an attitude that says it really does not matter what you do because things are already so miserable and screwed up. Unfortunately this attitude will only create a spiral for more negative things to enter your life. If you find yourself unsatisfied on a regular basis with your life you have a good clue you are doing something wrong. By no means do you have to remain unhappy; you can use dissatisfaction to make your life better. Transform your dissatisfaction into inspiration and watch its power.

When Yoda said, “May the force be with you,” he may not have been referring to the particular force I am talking about, but perhaps he should have been; momentum. Momentum is much under recognized and under appreciated when working to create change and growth.

Are vague memories from high school physics coming back to you? Remember when your teacher stood at the blackboard and defined momentum? Okay, maybe not, so let me remind you, momentum is mass times velocity. Or in plain English momentum describes a well known truth; the faster an object is moving, the more difficult it is to stop.

Outside of the classroom, the concept of momentum is applicable to a wide variety of things. If you are running up a hill and your legs start burning you will want to stop first consider your options carefully. Stopping in the middle of an upward climb only makes it that much more difficult to start up again. It is far easier to just keep going. This is momentum at work.

This same principle holds true when trying to change or create a habit. Take for example, a caffeine addiction. Say you have successfully managed to refrain from drinking any caffeine for one full month, you have momentum. This momentum is lost the minute you decide to reward yourself with just one cup of coffee or soda. Oops, now you have to restart the whole quitting process again. You had momentum, and now it is gone. The same can be true of self improvement or self reflection. In the middle, as things begin to really hurt or you are making some big changes, you may be begging yourself to stop. DON’T DO IT! You have momentum on your side. You are gaining speed and by stopping, things will slow back down.

The beauty of momentum is that once you recognize it, you can work with it allowing its force to carry you along. If properly understood this truth can be a powerful motivator in and of itself. It takes work to build momentum, yet with relative ease you can maintain it. It also takes work to break momentum and once it is broken the process of building it starts again at the beginning. A further danger exists in the fact that it is typically towards the middle or the end, right before a huge breakthrough, that the fatigue makes you question whether it is worth the work to get the momentum back.

Stopping a run midway up a hill is just that - stopping. To begin again means you are starting over, which is okay, because you still have run everything before you stopped. However, it also means finishing up is a bit harder than it would have been if you had never stopped in the first place. If you stop building back your momentum gets harder and harder each time. Once you have started down a path, whatever it may be, do not stop. Soon you will be moving along at a pace you would not have guessed or dreamed you would have been able to achieve through harnessing the power of momentum.

Related Posts:
Are You On Automatic Pilot?
Understanding the Daunting Goals
How to Have a Beach Ready Body in Six Months
Is Your Life a Death March or a Grand Adventure?

Have you ever experienced a moment where time seems to stand still? Where you were able to think clearly, but were unable to take action? Where the outcome seemed inevitable? A couple of weeks ago I had an experience like this that stands out in my mind. As you you read this you might start wondering, so what? Great! This is my point exactly as I think that is how we feel about most of the cumulative moments that shape us, that are responsible for creating our mental maps and our views of the world.

I was running some errands in my car in the heart of the city on a beautiful day. I came to a complete stop at a stop light and began looking around to take in the splendor of the day. The sun was shining, my music was playing and the windows were down. I began checking out all the people around me - the guy in the car next to me who seemed unhappy about something, a nondescript lady waiting at the bus stop, a guy with streaming dreadlocks riding his bike my way while turned around watching a especially attractive woman walk by. My attention seemed drawn to the guy on the bike and I turned to look again.

Slowly it dawned on me this bike rider was so fixated on the woman he was eyeing he didn’t realize he had just glided through a busy intersection. Then it dawned on me that he was headed straight towards me! Hmmm, I thought, he’s biking pretty fast that the impact is really going to hurt him and possibly do some serious damage to both him and his bike. He wouldn’t hit me, would he? I tilted my head and pondered this a bit more and noticed the nondescript bus lady was also watching the events unfold with the same disbelief. I then glanced and watched the grumpy man’s anger turning to concern as it dawned on him what was about to happen. We all just sat and watched in disbelief as I silently pondered the probability of the biker hitting my vehicle. Then, with less than 2 feet left to impact, the biker turned around and swerved so rapidly that he nearly hit a parked car but he didn’t hit me.

What the heck, I sat there and watched a guy nearly collide with me in a head-on collision? Yes, he would have been hurt and I bet he would of wrecked my windshield and I didn’t do anything except watch. I could have yelled or honked, but did not a thing. Neither did anyone else.

Why? I think it was because it was so outside what I expected that I became stuck in observation mode. I had no previous experiences to guide my actions and since I did not seem in danger my fight of flight responses did not kick in. I certainly would of known what to do if my vehicle was moving (stop or swerve) or if I was biking (pay attention to where I was riding and gradually change my path to avoid parked vehicles). That afternoon however, I didn’t know what to do. My mind did not guide me, instead it played the role of silent observer, a role that would of brought me much discomfort if the biker had hit my vehicle and gotten hurt. I would of felt guilt and confusion over my complete lack of response as, I image, would of the others who watched this near accident unfold with perplexed looks on their faces.

Just what was this inability to respond? Was I getting the chance to see first hand just how perceptions and beliefs are formed? How they are directly tied to my actions? A striking demonstration as to how my future choices and decisions and even perceptions of the world would forever be changed in a small but very memorable moment? I think so…

Related Posts:
Challenging Our Mental Maps
How Your Mind Really Works, Steve Pavlina over at Steve Pavlina.com
Changing Beliefs: Instantaneous or Gradual?, Mark Lapierre over at The Winding Path
Learn How to See Your Own Rose-Colored Glasses, Jason Ivers over at A Miracle a Day

Erin and I are very pleased to say that Jason from A Miracle a Day agreed to write a guest post for us. I’ve had a very hard time writing a proper introduction for Jason. Not because I can’t think of anything to say but instead because there’s too many things to say… Jason is a great guy. He is thoughtful, considerate, caring and highly intelligent. He’s the kind of man you’d like in your corner when things aren’t going well and someone it’s a pleasure to be around when they are. He loves learning about as much as anyone I’ve ever met and is one of the rare people who understands how transformative a dialogue can be. He is also a source of much envy because he is one of the most articulate and prolific writers I’ve ever met. My jealousy over this runs deep…

You can break down any specific motivation into one of two categories: external motivation or internal motivation. Losing weight for a specific event, or to impress a certain person is external motivation. Losing weight because you like the way you feel better is internal motivation.

Both types of motivation work. Either one can prod you into doing something, like losing weight in the examples above. External motivation, however, is destined to fail, sooner or later.

In the examples above for external motivation, you can easily see how the motivation based on the specific event ends once that event is reached. You may or may not have reached your goal, but either way, that motivation has gone away. The same is true for impressing someone, too… either you impress them or you don’t, but in the long run, impressing them with your body is going to lose its importance.

True, you can then turn and look for another source of external motivation, and for something like losing weight, you can probably find it. Each time you do, however, that motivation is eventually going to end as well, and then you’ll be looking for yet another source. And another. And another.

Internal motivation has three major advantages over external motivation:

A Reliable Source Of Motivation

Internal motivation essentially can be described as doing it “because I want to”. There can certainly be refinements on that, as to why it is that you want to, but that essence remains. If you truly want to do something, for internal reasons, you have motivation that doesn’t require you talking yourself into it. There is no more reliable source than yourself… you are the only thing that you have full control over, with no way for an outside party to interfere with your motivation unless you let them.

Persistence

That leads to far more persistent motivation… and the second advantage as well. If you don’t succeed at your effort when you are relying on an external source of motivation, you feel like you failed, and are likely to give up. If you don’t succeed when relying on internal motivation, however, you still have that motivation, and you are more likely to pick yourself up and try again. That means that you will be far more likely to continue down the path that your motivation is prodding you along.

Adaptability

And then comes advantage number three for internal motivation… if you rely on internal motivation and things change, so that you no longer feel like pursuing that goal, you don’t feel guilty. After all, you were doing it because you wanted to, so if you don’t want to pursue it now, what’s the big deal? If you were relying on external motivation however, you are likely to
experience feelings of guilt, guilt that you failed at what you set out to do. This means that you are more likely to be happy, and to turn that motivation that has faded into a different, stronger direction, rather than just let it dribble away.

With those significant advantages, it is easy to see how internal motivation lasts longer and is healthier for you, as well. That doesn’t mean that you can’t, or shouldn’t, use external sources of motivation to get you started along a path to change… it just means that if you don’t have internal motivation as well, your chances of reaching the end of that path, unless it is very short, start fading fast.

So dig within, and find out what your internal motivations are… find out what it is that you REALLY want to do, without regards to outside influences.

And do it.

Related Posts:
(Jenny again. Here are links to a couple of my favorite posts of Jason’s and really show how broad his topics are.)
What Schools Don’t Teach - How to be a Man
The Law of Attraction Demystified
Are You Anchored or Adrift
Subconscious - The Conscious Mind’s Henchman

When you are living life - challenging and stretching, sometimes so much you scare yourself - the day will come when you find you have hit a limit. It is guaranteed to happen. However, that overwhelming, stomach sinking feeling is okay. It happens to the best of us. All this means is that you have found your current limits (congratulations), and if handled correctly, you can push up against them and further expand your range.

Unfortunately, this is not always easy. The day you bang against a limitation hurts. How you handle the realization that you bit off a wee bit more than you can chew is what determines whether you go on to success or failure. I have hit my limits a lot of times. Early on this nearly always led me to stop. I gave up without realizing that it is in this uncomfortable near-failure space that growth happens. This is no longer the case and hasn’t been for some time.

I was talking with Erin about my tendencies to find the “smash into wall” feeling every few months, and how I work through these limits. She gently pointed out to me that I find my limits much more often than the rest of the population. Being as this conversation occurred in the midst of one of my limit finding realizations that included her, I do not think this was a compliment. Regardless, the lessons I have learned in dealing with these walls may be helpful as you run into your own limits in life:

• Big dreams take preparation and shortcuts are an illusion. The things worth having take time to acquire. If you want to write a bestselling book you must begin by writing. If you want to lose weight you need to exercise and eat right. The better you understand what you want and plan appropriately, the easier your path will be.
• Having more than one life changing goals competing for your time and focus increases the likelihood of disaster exponentially. Although this may seem pretty self-explanatory, it never has been for me… The more areas in which you are seeking to stretch your limit, the more uncomfortable you will be. When you hit a limit you will not necessarily be able to identify which goal the limit is linked to, trust me it’s funny that way.
• Others are watching you and their reactions are based upon how you handle yourself. If you quit believing in yourself or that which you lust after, it is likely those around you will do the same. All to rare is the encouraging voice when things start heading south.
• It is scary chasing after what you dream of. Fear is often accompanied by complaints, excuses and every form of self-doubt imaginable. Get used to it - regardless of their magnitude - they stick around. The more experience you have the less a impact fear has, but it never goes away.
• In order to succeed your planning cannot be based upon best case scenarios! Some people feel it is enough to consider worse case scenarios in making your plan, I argue that you might as well make your absolute worst case scenario the plan. When things start falling apart do not be scared to change your parameters, adjust your time lines or revise your vision. Basically do whatever it takes.

I have learned, grown and stretched my limits. When I look back at my old limits they surprise me because they seem so small. What you do not see if you have never climbed over, under or around your limits is the hard earned view from the other side. It is beautiful.

Related Posts:
At Your Mercy
How to Live a Miserable, Failure Ridden Life
The Importance of Awareness and Acceptance, guest post by Mark Lapierre
You Will Self Destruct in 5…4…3…