Purposeful Growth

This is the time of year when many of us will make resolutions to change. We’ll resolve to lose weight, eat healthy, get more exercise, spend more time with family, be more generous, and work on personal development and growth.

Most of these well-intentioned resolutions will fail within a few weeks, because they’re lifestyle changes we don’t really want to make, but think we should make.

As long as you’re inclined to evaluate your life and where you’re heading, I suggest you take a big step, but one with infinite potential for personal happiness.

With permission from Anita Pathik Law, I’m reprinting an entry she made in her blog, and suggesting that you consider her request and reformulate it as a goal, your goal for 2008. To be yourself.

From Anita….

And, so, this next year, I ask of you one favor; a favor that will serve all of humanity. Make a commitment this year. Be yourself. If you don’t know what that means, find out. Follow your heart, honor your resonance and your faith and have a conversation with your fears every time they come into the room. Be kind to one another. Be kind to yourself. Be kind to your parents and your children even when you don’t want to. Make love like you mean it and stop taking things so damned personally. Grow up and show up, even when it’s hard. Be present. Be present to the people in your life and the every day miracles that are gifted to you as whispers and kisses from the Divine. Take a long hard look at how you have adopted the beliefs you carry and release the ones that don’t serve a consciousness of healing and peace. Be conscious as you form and pass along new opinions, especially as they relate to the upcoming political elections and internationally impactful issues. Don’t make everything a crisis. Instead, see everything as an opportunity and grab the proverbial bull by both horns and enjoy the ride of your life!

Forgive everyone and everything from your past. Holding onto resentments is only weighing you down and holding you in a past that doesn’t actually exist. Be authentic. Be alive. Breathe. Smile. Laugh. Choose love over everything. And above all, be grateful. Be grateful for your ability to feel, to connect and to experience compassion. Be grateful for the entirety of your life, even those experiences that brought pain, for they are the ones that offered you the greatest opportunity to grow and become a better human being. Be aware that anger is compassion misdirected and fear is usually a temporary loss of faith. And, last but not least, please, please see yourself as the powerful person you are. You are a healer, a creator and a facilitator of incredible change. We need you. We need you to be strong. We need you to claim your power and to remember and serve your unique purpose in the world. In the end, this moment is yet a beginning of a new world, one that we will co-create together and I am honored to be on this path with you walking alongside me. It brings me great comfort to know I am not alone in the quest for a united humanity and that as each of us awakens to the healer within, uniting first our own internal divisions, we unite all. Anita Pathik Law is the the author of The Power of Our Way; A Path to a Collective Consciousness. Her purpose is “to raise consciousness and build bridges of higher understanding.” She serves this purpose through her coaching, writing, hypnotherapy, healing work, music and her facilitation of numerous groups, programs and retreats. To learn more about her work visit http://www.divinitymovie.com/,  http://www.powerofmyway.com/ and http://www.powerofourway.com/ Visit Power of Our Way for more on Anita’s life transforming programs.

Asking and answering four critical questions will help you set personal development goals you’ll achieve with energy and enthusiasm.

Now is the time to start thinking of setting your personal development goals for the next year. Setting and achieving goals

for personal development and purposeful growth is very satisfying. Setting but failing to achieve our objectives is frustrating and can be so discouraging as to cause us to turn away from goal-setting and personal development. 

Before you commit yourself to goals, objectives and resolutions, here’s what you’ll want to know about setting goals that you’ll achieve. Asking yourself these four questions and patiently uncovering your answers will set the stage for success; your goals will be challenging, energizing, and achievable.

This may sound obvious and trivial, but it’s critically important that the goals you set are your goals, not someone’s goals for you. A major cause of goal failure is that we take on an objective because someone influential wants that for us.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with considering growth objectives suggested by someone whose opinion we value, but make sure that when you decide on a goal it is a goal that you now want for yourself.

Once you settle on a goal it’s very important that you clearly understand the benefits you expect to gain when you achieve it. Most benefits ultimately translate to a feeling. A goal of losing 20 pounds is more inspiring if it is tied to feeling more attractive and confident.

Consider the benefits of your goal in terms of how you’ll feel when you achieve it. Lock that feeling in your mind so you can call it up when you have a setback or feel discouraged.

Objectives that are too easy or too hard are recipes for failure. Shoot for challenging but doable goals. When you think of the goal and visualize yourself there you should feel a burst of energy. If not, the goal may be too difficult or too easy. If too difficult you’ll get easily discouraged by lack of progress and will probably give up. If too easy, you may be likely to put it off thinking you can start working on it later.

A goal that is challenging but achievable, has clear and attractive benefits and is truly your goal, will be easy to visualize. You should be able to see yourself clearly achieving the goal and enjoying the benefits. If not, change the goal, set an interim goal or go back to step one, reflecting on whether it is your goal.

For example, let’s say your goal is to lose weight. Your doctor has advised that you lose fifty pounds. You realize that your health and quality of life will improve with that weight loss, so you set a goal to lose fifty pounds in the next year. But when you try to see yourself fifty pounds lighter, the picture is hazy and you have an uncomfortable feeling.

Your goal is probably too challenging. Set your goal for something less, say twenty pounds and see if you can visualize yourself there while feeling energized. Experiment with target weight loss goals until you find a combination that is energizing and easy to visualize. As you approach that goal, set your next goal until you ultimately reach the fifty pound target.

Related articles:

James Prochaska: Changing for Good

Even more Goal Setting Information

This article first appeared in the Personal Development Topic at Suite101.com.