Personal Growth Ladder
A lot of people believe that COURAGE wins battles. But, wisdom says, "plans may fail but planning is inevitable" to win wars.
Now, here I am talking about personal battles with inner-self rather than someone outside of us. It is the battle with our own fears, fear of failure or success or whatever. Different people may go through different emotions, challenges in life. It could be in personal or professional life.
Though different people learn, behave, work and transform in different ways, there are a few stages I understand and would like to highlight. This is more of a principle rather than a plain protocol to be followed. Imagine, you want to travel from 1 corner of city to other corner and it is a city like Bangalore (high traffic). There would be a dilemma whether to take this leap of change/ travel or not? It's confused state of mind. Isn't it?
Stage 1: Developing Awareness - Imagine, this journey is to your new company of a new business client. So, you know certain profits or bigger salary is your motivation to embark on this tough city journey. But you are aware of it before you take it right? Knowing what situation are you in, is a good start to change.
Stage 2: Accept,Acknowledge - Now, when you know that to make this change you have to travel through traffic, you do tell your self that this has to be done. No option. Cause or motivation is me only and its an outcome of my own choice. Traffic is an outcome of many people like me making these choices. So, what am I complaining about or what I should complain about? When you accept the situation you will have a more receptive mind to move forward.
Stage 3: Ownership - When you understand that your present situation is an outcome of your own choices and many other people choices in similar situation like you, you stop complaining while you accept the responsibility of challenge at hand. Once you accept the responsibility you become more receptive and open to change which is about to begin. And, who takes charge of change? Its YOU
Stage 4: Introspection- This is a very important stage where you rip your thoughts apart to know, what is wrong? Why are you in dilemma or why decision making is so difficult? Is it external environment stopping you and is it just your own thoughts or confusions overpowering your motivation for the change? This stage is crucial as this is going to give you lead in to how to overcome self created challenges whether it is people, habits or thoughts. In this example you that that you are getting stuck in traffic because you are starting late.
Stage 5: Intention: I came across a wonderful quote a few days back. It said " A dream written down with date is A Goal. A goal broken down in steps becomes a plan. A plan backed by action makes your dream come true". During this stage you, break down your desire to change in to conviction, a vision, by virtue of a plan of action. You commit to the change and are actually ready to embark on transformation journey for your own good. So, to avoid traffic and not getting stuck, you may need to work on your wake up time, starting time to office to avoid traffic, and it has to happen daily. This is your goal here. Isn't it?
Stage 6: Action - As I talk about 3 Cs of success "Conviction, Commitment and Conclusion". We spoke about Conviction and Commitment in previous points. But, what fun it is to do so much introspection not backed by actions and follow up by course correction? Once you have committed to the change, create objective and SMART (Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound goals). Keep a check on your progress against the actions and time plan which you created for yourself. If you don't follow up on your actions and course correct sincerely you will fail, then imagine, if you can't do it for yourself, can you do it for others?
Stage 7:: Embrace Change - Appropriately as the 7th Habit by Steven Covey. It says "Sharpen the Saw". Once you develop a positive change in yourself, you need to keep practicing it else, brain is wired to forget good things more quickly. Once, you gained confidence in the personal transformation and can feel the change, get the feedback from people near and dear to you that they see the change. Keep it up. Let go the past, it doesn't have value any more in your life.
So, This was a small everyday challenge example I just picked up and I hope we can connect to it. Having said that, PRINCIPLES of LIFE don't change. So, the problem or challenge, however big it is, can fall in to place and can be overcome if we are STRUCTURED in following the principle of change or transformation.
Wishing all readers a great TRANSFORMATION Journey.