Personal Development: Step Zero

I’ve written a lot about the difficulties involved in personal development, goal setting and self-improvement. It’s no great secret that going after (and getting) what you want isn’t easy. It seems one day you’re up—the next day you’re on your face.

These emotional roller-coaster rides are rarely highlighted on the dust jackets of self-improvement books. Much of the popular literature on the subject seems just a bit too easy. It’s a “do this—get this” kind of approach. The information is delivered in a very linear way, without taking to account all the side-roads, potholes, and down-right washouts that can happen during the process. The up and downs on the road to self-improvement can be rough, no matter the goal: whether you are working towards a healthier lifestyle, financial freedom, enlightenment or maybe even becoming a professional author.

Sadly, it’s never the difficulty of the goal that causes us to ultimately fail, but it’s these bumpy patches along the way that prove to be the undoing of many a dream-seeker. This is because these setbacks are:

1) Unexpected.
2) Disappointing.
3) Exhausting—emotionally, physically and spiritually.

Let’s face it, we are always going to have setbacks. But they do us in because we simply aren’t ready for them—most of the time. And that’s because we haven’t properly prepared ourselves in advance. And to prepare ourselves we have to start out on the right step.

Step Zero

I’ve always thought that I knew what this first step was. After all I’ve been studying, teaching and writing about personal development for a few years now. I’ve taught in my workshops and written that the first step in goal-setting is making a choice—a real choice. A choice that declares: “It’s time I made a serious change in my life and go for what I want.”

I’ve always seen this all-important choice as the spark that ignites purpose—a new direction.

But the other day, a co-worker and I were discussing some challenges she was having with the lessons in my book: My Happy Workplace. I happened to mention that the first step is all about making that choice to change your life for the better. “You have to want change,” I said.

She looked at me and said, “I don’t think that’s right—at least not for me. For me, it’s more about believing I can make that change, that I have what it takes, that I can do it. And ultimately, believing that I’m worthy.”

This floored me! I had always assumed that belief developed throughout the process of going after what I wanted—little acts of faith leading to small successes which in turn build up the belief system. I saw it as part of the ongoing process, not the beginning.

But what my friend had told me was fundamentally different. Without believing in herself, she couldn’t even get out of the gate.

I took the next few days to think about what she had said. Afterwards, I was left with an interesting question: What comes first—the belief you can make a choice or choosing to believe?

I finally came to the conclusion that if a person doesn’t believe in himself, his abilities and his worthiness to reach his goals he can never take the first step.
Then a problem occurred to me. True belief can’t be faked or forced. It has to be felt—known. Belief grows out of experience. You just can’t choose to believe something. To believe something, you must experience it, have conscious contact with it. Otherwise it is always going to be tainted with doubt.

So if you can’t make a choice without belief and you need to choose to believe—it’s a classic stalemate, right?

Not necessarily.

The key is working yourself up to it—slowly.

Think of it this way: A sprinter doesn’t just walk up to the starting line and jump right into the race without preparing herself. She warms up, stretches, and gets settled into position.
We have to do the same thing in goal setting. Before we even begin the process of going after those big shiny goals of ours, we have to prepare.

We have to get our house in order. Our ducks in a row. Our stars aligned…well, you get the picture. It’s like we are conditioning ourselves not physically (as an athlete does) but spiritually. It’s an internal process of self-discovery, acceptance and mindfulness–one that gets us to the starting line.

So how do we prepare ourselves spiritually?

  1) Start where you are right now—leave behind whatever past baggage has been holding you back. Accept that you are perfectly positioned in the here and now to begin a new life.

  2) Understand that you don’t have to do everything all at once. Break the process down into smaller more manageable bits.

  3) Expect road bumps and setbacks. They are part of the process and have nothing to do with your worthiness to receive your goal. Problems and failures are teachers, treat them as such.

 4) Give yourself permission to make a mistake now and then—for goodness sake. Nobody is perfect—and that’s okay. Your mistakes and setbacks do not define you.

 5) Recognize that time is not a factor. There are no deadlines, no schedules other than the ones you impose upon yourself. There is no score keeper—except you. Things will happen as they happen.

6) Lastly, accept that you are worthy of your goals. The very fact that you desire a goal indicates that you have the power to achieve it. The desire wouldn’t be there otherwise. Goal setting is like casting a tow-line into the future—where you have already achieved the goal. All you need to do is allow that desire to pull you into that future.

Consider the above work as prerequisites to transform your outlook and opinion of yourself to the point where you are ready to take that first step and become a person capable of making a choice to go after the life you want, knowing that it is yours.

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Thanks again,

 Troy