Inspirit Personal Growth

Many personal development or self-improvement programmes focus on goal-setting without ensuring that you have solid foundation of knowing yourself, your values and beliefs, and your life purpose, vision or mission.  This holistic five-step process takes into account all the necessary facets for a successful life.

 Who are You?   

If someone were to ask “Who Are You?”, you might think of, or describe, yourself as a university educated computer programmer, married with a child on the way, living in the northern suburbs.  This does not answer the question about who you actually are.  Do you really know your values, beliefs and principles?  More importantly, do you know what limiting beliefs you have that could be holding you back from achieving all you can in life?  What are your values and what is important to you?  Or do you do things out of habit or because you believe you “should”?  It is critical to examine and know who you are, so you can determine what needs to change, if anything, before you can create your vision for your future.

 Who do you want to be?   

Once you know who you are, it is necessary to focus on who you want to be before you can do or have the things that you want in life.  In the first step you determined what your values are.   In my life coach training we distinguished between “being” values and “having” values, where traits such as being patient, compassionate, generous, confident and courageous are “being values”, and an indication of the kind of person you are, or would like to be.  Again, examine yourself and ask whether you are demonstrating your “being values” in your day to day life.  If not, why not?  What can you do to live your values, and become aligned and congruent with who you really want to be? 

What’s holding you back?

 I have covered this in previous articles “Are Your Limiting Beliefs Holding You Back” and  “How to Let Go and Move on with your Life”.    Basically, we all have beliefs which have built up over a lifetime, some are positive and serve us well, but more often there are negative beliefs which create fear and limit us from moving forward.  We may have uncovered some of these in the first step of self-examination, but often they are unconscious and need more work to be released or let go.  There are many different ways that this can be done, and I recommend that you read the second article mentioned above, available at my website (see below).  This releasing work is critical to the success of any personal development programme. 

What is Your Vision?

 I believe one of the most effective ways to determine your vision or life mission, is to “begin with the end in mind” by writing a mission statement, in the manner first put forward by Stephen Covey in his “7 Habits of Highly Successful People”.   It starts out by imagining people at your funeral (personally I prefer to visualise my 80^th birthday party!) and, briefly, what you would like your family, friends and colleagues to being saying about you.  Your vision should then reflect the people, things, and places you value most in life as well as your talents, strengths, and aspirations. It forces you to think through your priorities deeply and to align your priorities with your beliefs, as well as expanding your perspective and clarifying your purpose and aspirations, and sets general parameters for your life.

  How Will You Get There? 

Goal setting programmes with set time frames for achievement are great for some people and some types of goals, usually career/business goals, or material goals such as acquiring a new car. The “SMART” goal setting system which has been around for years – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound – works well, but what if you are looking for a new relationship or to improve your confidence or self-esteem?  Expecting the right person to come into your life by the exact time you specify may not be realistic.  Working on your own self development may difficult to measure – it’s usually more of a “knowing”.  There is also the factor of “ecology” (to use a term from NLP) which means that you have to take into account your environment and the people around you.  You may have set a goal to become the Area Manager within two years, but then the promotion involves moving away.  What if your spouse and kids are happy where they are?   This is why the first steps are extremely important – knowing who you are, who you want to be and knowing your life mission or vision.  These will give you your guiding principles and ensure you are always heading in the right direction.

 By all means, follow one of the many great goal setting programmes available.  They can certainly help to get you where you want to go, but don’t forget the steps of examining yourself and your values, your limiting beliefs (and releasing them) and your overall life purpose and mission.  If your goals are not aligned and congruent with your values and the character of the person you are or want to be, then your chances of success will not be very high.

  

Copyright Ruth Bridgewood.  This article forms the basis of Ruth’s 5 week e-course “Five steps to Life Success” which will be available late 2009.  To express interest, email ruth@inspirit-persgrowth.com.