Brave New Kitty

We chose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our skills and talents, because that challenge is one we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone and one we intend to win, and the others, too. – John F. Kennedy

Getting an easy ride through life isn’t necessarily a gift. If anything, it’s a detriment.

If you’re smart, you probably made it through high school without having to work too hard. Then, when you got to college and found yourself in a class where you actually had to apply yourself, you didn’t know how. You may have given up, or settled for a lower grade than you were used to getting. Certainly, it shook your self-identity on some level: “Could it be I’m not as smart as I think I am?” Perhaps.

If you’re beautiful, people have probably been nice to you your whole life. Attractive people typically have more friends, better jobs, and make more money than average-looking people. But it’s likely that you’re insecure about your competency, and that you want to be taken seriously: “Was I hired for my looks, or am I actually capable of doing this job?” “Does my partner love me for who I am, or is he with me because of my looks?” How to find out?

If you were born rich, you’ve probably gotten everything you wanted all your life. But what about when what you want goes beyond material things? If you have any depth at all, at some point you’re going to wonder if people love you for you or for your wealth, and if you’re good at anything; since you’ve never had to apply yourself, you don’t know.

I’m not, by any stretch, saying it’s a curse to be born with a gift. Being naturally blessed with higher than average ability is something a person ought appreciate (and if she’s lucky, she’ll have parents who teach her that early on). It’s just that, in the real world, natural gifts don’t mean very much. It’s what you do with them that matters. All natural talent means is that if you work really hard, you can become world class at something; nobody becomes world class at anything without effort.

Less gifted people seem to have an easier time learning this lesson. Maybe that’s what Harry Truman meant by “The C students run the world.” Meaning, the more average among us learn early on that if they want to succeed, they have to apply themselves.

I think it’s a tough would-you-rather: gifted but insecure, or average and tenacious. That’s kind of a straw man argument, though, because it’s not an either/or. We all have natural talent, and we all have tenacity, either developed or potential. That’s the point of this post.

In the realm of personal development, the only race you run is with yourself. So whatever your starting position, you have to work if you want to blossom into your full potential.

There is no other way.

If you find yourself dissatisfied or unfulfilled, you’re probably not challenging yourself enough. Pushing yourself to become better, more knowledgeable, more whole, more honest, wiser, more compassionate, to have more depth and more understanding and more ability, is what makes life worth living. There are few satisfactions in life equal to accomplishment, to knowing that, by your own effort, you made yourself better than you were before.

Yet many of us struggle with this process. We have dark thoughts like, what if I work hard and fail anyway? What if I don’t have the talent to be successful in my chosen field? What if I get what I want and find out it wasn’t what I really wanted? Look at all the time I’ll have wasted!

But it’s these thoughts that are the true waste, a mental quagmire that serves only to keep you stuck and stagnant. Effort is never a waste of time, and applying yourself is always beneficial. Even if the outcome isn’t what you wanted, or you discover you didn’t really want it. You always learn something, and learning is a form of accomplishment. Therefore, even if you consider the outcome a failure, you’ve accomplished something. In fact, failure might be the most valuable teacher of all.

All successful people have come to terms with failure. Most entrepreneurs fail several times before they finally create a successful business. Most writers endure hundreds of rejections before they get a story or book published. Many great artists aren’t appreciated until after their death. And we all know the story of Thomas Edison’s tenacity with the light bulb: it took ten thousand-some tries before he got it right.

Perhaps the main difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is how they look at failure. While unsuccessful people see it as a reason to give up, successful people see it as a learning opportunity. Successful people have learned to not take failure as an assault to their character. Instead, they take it in stride and wring all the knowledge they can out of it. They see it as part of the natural learning process. Failure means nothing more than that they’re making progress. Failure means they’re trying.

Somewhere along the way, successful people figured out that, regardless of natural ability, hard work is the secret to success. Work is how we define ourselves, how we blossom, how we become whole. In one sense, it doesn’t really matter what you choose to work at, or even what the outcome is, because it’s the effort itself that matters. The effort is where you’ll find the gold: it’s impossible to put in a good day’s work and not feel good about yourself.

Now, if you can just learn to feel that positively about failure, there’ll be no stopping you.

We all have limitations. Recognizing them is not a way to be hard on yourself or focus on the negative. Rather, it is part of taking a realistic inventory of your strengths and weaknesses. Knowing both is important to success.

Knowing your limitations may at first glance seem contrary to a personal growth message, but it is not. It is very much the opposite. Knowing limitations is a key to being successful at whatever you choose to do. Unrecognized limitations are your Achilles heel, your fatal flaw, the wrench in your cogs. If you don’t what know your limitations are, they will always trip you up.

When you start a job, you will know some skills, and other skills you will have to learn. The way to excel in a new job is to hone what you do well to higher and higher levels of expertise while incorporating new skills into your repertoire. If you’re unsure of your performance, you won’t be after your first review with your manager. He or she will happily let you know what you’re good at and what you need to work on. Your limitations will be spelled out clearly and, if you’re lucky, your manager will help you devise a plan to conquer them.

The reason the manager does this is not to be cruel or sadistic. Unless he is a complete buffoon, he wants you to excel at your job. He wants you to do well if for no other reason than to make him look good. Discussing your weak areas with you—so you can improve—is one of the ways he does that.

The performance review is a good analogy for figuring out limitations. Just as you do in a work setting, you can figure out your personal limitations for yourself and devise your own action plan for working on them, working around them, or accepting them, whatever the case may be.

Why is it important to know your limitations? The main reason is so you have an accurate self-perception, important because:

• If you don’t have an accurate self-perception, you won’t focus on the right issues. You can polish a car until the cows come home, but if it has a broken drive train, it still won’t get you anywhere. It’s often just human nature to focus on the problems with easy solutions. If this means ignoring the harder issues that really need work, then you risk seriously limiting your capacity for growth. Often these harder issues are our areas of greatest limitation.

• If you don’t have an accurate self-perception, you are probably also unaware of your talents. An inaccurate self-perception usually goes both ways. Improving your self-perception in any capacity is going to improve your self-perception overall. The more able you are to assess your self accurately, the more likely you are to become aware of weaknesses and strengths. There is no darkness without light, no up without down, no good without bad. Knowing one means knowing the other; assessing one will always shed light on the other.In this sense, you could start with your strengths and subsequently find weaknesses. However, it seems to work best the other way around in most cases. We learn from mistakes, we are motivated by pain, and we are more likely to achieve a well-balanced sense of who we are if we start with our limitations. That said, this is not an invitation to flagellate yourself. When working with shortcomings and limitations, always be gentle and sweet to yourself. Otherwise, you’ve missed the entire point of doing the work.

• An inaccurate self-perception makes true personal change very difficult. How can you grow at maximum capacity if hindered by unacknowledged limitations and weaknesses? The better you know yourself, and the more willing you are to know yourself at ever-deepening levels, the more likely you are to reach the heights of achievement you desire. Another yin/yang principle: the deeper you can dig, the higher you can fly.When you watch successful people talk about their success, note their impressive sense of self-perception, at least in the area in which they’ve excelled. This is not accidental; it is an integral ingredient of the success recipe. When this keen perception extends to wider areas of personal awareness, the successful person is usually also happy and fulfilled. Don’t hate or envy them; learn from them.

How do you figure out your limitations? This is a big topic, and one that I’m not going to attempt to cover in any detail here. The general method involves developing the regular habit of personal inventory. This usually means writing down the things you seem stuck on or bothered by and checking them out with a person whom you respect and trust… It doesn’t matter so much how you do it as that you devise some type of plan and commit to doing it.

Making a personal inventory a regular part of your life will enhance it in every way. You will improve not only your self-perception, but also your self-image, your self-esteem, and your personal and professional relationships. It’s also fun: Getting to know your self intimately is a lifelong adventure full of infinite challenge and never-ending amazement. Once on the path, you will continually surprise yourself with new insights, discoveries, and directions. To miss out on such an adventure is to miss out, in many ways, on the point of life itself.

The great myths about heroic adventures, and also most biblical stories, including Christ’s crucifixion and a-rising from the dead, are metaphors for this great inner journey of discovering and overcoming limitations. If you really want to be “born again,” go inward. That’s where it starts.

I’ve always thought New Year resolutions were a bad idea. Somewhat like New Year’s Eve is an excuse for reserved people to be naughty, resolutions are a way for people who aren’t in the habit of goal-setting to set goals. This usually ends up being a way to feel bad about yourself; you either realize halfway or so through the year that your resolutions are toast and you have to deal with the fact that you’ve failed, or, when you take stock at the end of the year, which we all inevitably do (whether we’ve made resolutions or not), you realize that you have not met the unrealistic or poorly reasoned out ideals you had for yourself when the year began.

That said, the turn of a new year is a good time to take stock of your life. Particularly if it’s done as part of a regular regimen of stocktaking. So here is my suggestion: if you make a New Year resolution, resolve to set realistic goals and do regular stocktaking. Then spend some time figuring out what those goals would be and how to keep track of your progress.

It’s easy to get caught up in the New Year hoopla. Everywhere you look you find best of/worst of lists and people talking about everything that’s going to be different in the New Year. The promise of fresh hope and new potential hang in the air like electricity. Nobody wants to feel left out, so our impulse is to join in the excitement and make some New Year plans for ourselves. If we do it in the spirit of the moment, because it’s fun and funny and entertaining, that’s one thing. But if we fool ourselves into thinking these resolutions mean anything, we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment.

This cycle of resolution and disappointment is especially pronounced in people who tend toward self-flagellation.

New Year’s resolutions generally don’t work unless they’re part of a larger picture, a systematic approach to accomplishing tasks and getting what you want out of life. Everybody knows that goal setting is imperative to these ends, and the New Year tradition provides a way to feel like we’re doing that when actually, if this is as far as we get, we aren’t.

Don’t succumb to this illusion. Don’t set yourself up to feel bad. Instead, if you really want to make changes in your life, become really clear about your values, the goals you want to accomplish, and the monthly, weekly, and daily tasks required to do so. Educate yourself about goal setting if need be. If you’re not sure where to start, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is a classic, and there are hundreds—probably thousands—others, as well as websites, compact discs, magazines, newsletters, and television programs, all devoted to goal setting and getting what you want from life.

If you don’t want to feel bad about New Year’s resolutions, there are two solutions. One is to not make any, and the other is to make them within a larger context. I’ll leave it up to you which is the way to go.

Oh, and Happy New Year!

What is Personal Development?
What is personal development? Learning a new skill? Losing weight? Finishing a book you’ve been struggling with? Going to back to college? Changing careers? The answer is all of the above. The answer can also be none of the above. True development, which I define as becoming more than you currently are, is a value-based process. If our activities are not rooted in our values, nothing we accomplish will have very much lasting impact or feel meaningful to us. So, becoming more than you currently are is more than moving forward; it is moving forward in the directions of your choosing and for your reasons.

The development process is easy to see in children because it’s natural and inevitable. We start out as infants, unable to talk, walk, or feed ourselves. The infant’s world is very, very tiny. As the infant grows, he learns to talk, to feed himself, to use the toilet, etc. The older he gets, the larger his world gets. He goes to school. He makes friends. He goes camping with his boy scout troop. He becomes adolescent and discovers his sexuality. He starts thinking about colleges. Now his world is large, full of excitement and heavy with potential. Child-to-adult development is a constant process of becoming more. That’s what growing up is.

But development does not stop once we’re adults. Excluding coma victims, we continue to grow until we stop drawing breath. However, the pace slows considerably, and it becomes more a matter of choice. If you don’t have a clear sense of what’s important to you, you can end up in some wild places. Sometimes you get lucky, and these are good places that bring you round, through a back door, to finding fulfillment. Certainly we all have some of those serendipitous experiences. More often, though, they are not where we wanted to go, not what we envisioned for ourselves, and do not give us a sense of meaning. It’s a sad thing indeed to wake up one morning thinking, “What happened to my life? This is not what I thought it would be.”

Having a clear definition of your values can prevent this sad occurrence. Nobody would answer “no” when asked if having a meaningful life is important. And yet, almost nobody would answer “yes” when asked if they have defined a value system to guide their search for meaning. Thus, the industrialized world is full of people whose search for fulfillment is like throwing darts in the dark. When our daily choices aren’t tied to a value system, finding meaning deteriorates into quelling the hunger within. The easiest way to do this, requiring the least amount of thought, is consuming: food, alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling, shopping. The Buddhist’s have a wonderful term for this: the hungry ghost. Hungry ghosts have tiny mouths and great big bellies, so they are always hungry and never satisfied. They drift through life aimlessly, with sad, desperate expressions on their faces. They exemplify an empty existence.

Without clearly defined values, you have almost zero chance of ever finding meaning, much less sustaining it. You are a hungry ghost.

Defining Values
Defining values is a fairly straightforward matter. What’s important to you? If you have never defined your values, do yourself a favor and spend fifteen minutes or so on it. Think about the things that are important to you. Think in terms of principles: independence, dependability, honesty. Write them down, along with at least one desired goal for each value. A partial list of values and goals might look something like this:

I value:

• Meaningful work. I would like to change jobs so that I am doing work that helps others. To do this, I will have to finish my master’s degree, then look for work in my chosen field.

• Honest, loving relationships. I would like to have a better relationship with my children. To do this, I will have to work on patience and spend more time doing fun things with them. I would also like to improve my relationship with my sister.

• Good health. I want to lose weight and pay more attention to nutrition. I also want to exercise at least three times a week.

• Learning. I love learning for its own sake and want to make time in my weekly schedule to just enjoy learning: reading, web surfing, or whatever.

This is not a finished list; it’s just to help you get started. Working out the details will take some time. Goals should be as specific as possible because they are how we make sure our day-to-day activities fit our values. For example, if meaningful work is a value on your list, and you are not as happy as you want to be in your current job, set specific goals for change. Do you want to ask your boss for more responsibilities? Change departments? Change careers entirely? What have you always wanted to do? Make a plan to do it. Get the training, make the contacts. Make a plan to move in the direction you want to go, and base your daily work activities on this plan. Set dates for completion of each goal. Do this for all your values. Soon your daily activities will be rooted in the values you hold dear. You will be more efficient, more relaxed, and you will feel better about yourself.

If you find it difficult to plan daily activities, then your goals are too vague. For example, if meaningful work is an important value and you have chosen “Make more money” as a goal, it might be difficult to follow through on. You may have to break “Make more money” into more specific goals, such as “Finish Master’s degree,” “Seek promotion,” and “Develop new job contacts.” Which in turn can be broken down into even more specific goals and, eventually, daily activities.

Most goals should also have a timeline. If the completion date comes and goes, don’t give up. This does not indicate a failure! Re-evaluate and re-set the timeline. Goals should be periodically reviewed and updated anyway, perhaps three or four times a year. The most important thing is to figure out a system you can stick to, and stick to it.

Complications of Goal-Setting
Sometimes it seems impossible to live up to the values we’ve chosen, regardless of how specific and clear our goals are. Usually this is because the values we’ve chosen more accurately define how we want to be than how we really are. For example, you’re overweight, and you want to lose weight. One of your values is “Good physical health” and you’ve made goals to adhere to a certain diet and exercise plan and to lose X number of pounds by X date. Those are terrific, well-planned goals! (As long as they’re realistic, anyway.) But something goes wrong, and you find yourself sneaking down to the fridge at night to eat leftovers that aren’t on your diet, and you aren’t sticking to your exercise plan either. You are full of remorse and shame, but can’t seem to behave differently.

What’s going on?

You weren’t honest with yourself about your values. You may value good health, but you value the pleasure of eating more. You may want to be thin, but not as much as you want to eat the food you love. You may want to be healthy, but you would rather watch a movie than exercise.

All of us have blind spots like this, these shortcomings in our character that we are not happy with. They don’t mean that we’ll never be able to change, that the value we want to have is unattainable. In fact, honest acknowledgement of a shortcoming is the first step in changing it. Discrepancies in our value systems can cause a great deal of remorse. But this is good, because:

Honest acknowledgment + remorse = impetus to change.

Sometimes, being honest with ourselves is extremely difficult. That sort of makes sense, if there is remorse waiting on the other side, doesn’t it? But there is nothing more important to our personal development. (I think most of the industrialized world’s woes are caused by self-delusion, but that is a topic for another essay.)

Change is always possible—where there’s life, there’s hope—but it must start with personal honesty.

Summary
To summarize, personal development is the process of becoming more than we currently are. It is rooted in a value system of our own choosing, it can occur in all areas of our lives, and it continues until we die. The way we adhere to our values is by setting goals in conjunction with them and planning our everyday activities around accomplishing these goals. Values, activities, and goals are always fluid and should be reviewed and revised as necessary. Personal honesty is the foundation of all personal development.

Defining and living by our values, the essence of personal development, is a spiritual process. As such, it brings us ever closer to the Great Wholeness sought by all.