It’s been a little over a year (about 2 weeks over) since I began consciously pursuing personal growth. There have been several changes that I’ve experienced within the last year so I want to explore them and I also want to be completely objective.

Much cleaner and more organized

I love this change and it’s a very noticeable. It’s a lot easier to be clean and organized than to live in clutter. It’s a much freer and powerful feeling. I think the main problem with clutter is the reaction most people have to it – that I used to have. As soon as I would walk into a room filled with junk, food, clothes everywhere, immediately I would have an overwhelming frustrating feeling and the urge to find a distraction to avoid what I “needed” to do (clean the room). The answer was taking the “have to” and “need to” away and just focusing on what I want.

More of a reader

This is definitely a great change for me. Usually I would read maybe 10-30 pages of a book and put it back never to be read again and I would only pick up a book every now and then at that. After I wrote down my goal of reading 100 books, I said I’m going to start one book and finish it so I picked up A Road Less Traveled and read it all the way through. That was about a year ago and since I’ve read 17 other books and listened to 2 audio books. I guess I had to prove to myself I could start one and finish one before I was able to do the rest. That’s a pattern I see a lot in other areas of growth as well. Say you want to start earning money online. You have to earn that first dollar before the others come. You have to prove it to yourself that you can at least earn 1 dollar and then you can raise the bar. This year I’m looking to push it to finishing one book a week.

Seeing that I’m on my way to accomplishing that goal of 100 books evokes a powerful feeling every time I think about it, but that isn’t the biggest benefit of reading more. The biggest benefit by far has been the paradigm shifts. Every now and then I’ll find something that totally sends life in a new direction. For instance, if I hadn’t of read about the abundance mentality in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People this blog wouldn’t be going anywhere. I wouldn’t feel like I had anything to give. My cup wouldn’t be overflowing.

More authority over life

I feel it growing. There’s no feeling like progress and flowing with momentum and having that progress and flow be directed towards your goals. When you take more authority over your life, you say no more often. There are some things you just won’t do and you start living life more congruently with what you value and your vision for how life will be. Life is still pushing me around a lot but I know if I continue down this road I’ll be able to hold the reigns. I know as long as I keep following true desire, over the long haul authority will increase.

Increased awareness

I put this last, but it’s probably the most important because it affects all the other improvements. There are more moments throughout the day where I’m aware of how I feel both emotionally and physically, how I’m responding to people, what thoughts are going through my head, etc. When I become aware of it, I can consciously change it if it isn’t what I want to feel or think. I might drink some water or listen to something to inspire me or help someone else out some way.

Focused more on giving

I started this blog in November and it’s pretty much been my main outlet for giving. I want to step it up here too, but giving freely has already had nice benefits so far. This is my first year feeling like I had anything to give, so I’ll keep going with it and see how it turns out this year.

Improvements to be made

Consistent action for faster growth

For some reason it feels like growth is going very slow. The paradigm shifts happen very slowly. Progress happens very slowly. I see tangible results trickle in. What will make growth happen faster? —> not being afraid to think out of the box, facing fears/getting out of my comfort zone and consistent, positive, productive action towards my goals. Growth has happened slowly because I’ve slowly came out of my comfort zone in different areas and take action every now and then. More consistency and coming out of my comfort zone is in store this next year.

This is what happened with piano lessons and I think it’s where most people encounter problems when learning piano. If you don’t consistently practice you end up repeating the same lessons over and over again which frustrates everyone and has you second guessing yourself and feeling like you should quit. If you persist you’ll eventually get to where you want to go, but it could take a very long time without consistent action.

More focus on health

My health has actually declined. I’ve gained more weight and I can feel it physically. Much of it falls back on money. In many cases I know what to do, but I don’t have the money to follow through with it so many of my efforts now involve finding ways to earn more money consciously. Still, I want to establish some different habits here and also earn more money. There are empowering habits that take no money at all to build so money is not a valid excuse to take no action at all.

More giving

Giving takes time, physical effort, and thought so consistent giving takes consistent time, consistent effort, and consistent thought. The great thing about this is I can somewhat measure it. I will know when I have become more productive. For example, the main area where I want to give more is through my blog. So far I can see I’ve made 23 posts in a little over 9 months. At that rate after a year I would end up with 31 posts. I can do more than that. If I step that up to 100 posts in a year that would mean I would post every 3.65 days. I believe I can do that.

The reason why producing fresh content is so important is because it drives everything else about this blog. If I want to give that means I want to put value in people’s hands so if there’s no value (consistent quality content) then there’s less motivation to market so there’s no giving.

All in all this past year has been great, but I want this next year to be the best I’ve ever had. I know that takes daily consistency and going out of my comfort zone. The daily consistent actions aka habits produce the big results.

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