My Personal Growth Definition

I hold a pretty broad definition of personal growth: anything that is an attempt to better myself, whether it be inward, outward, as a person, a wife, a writer, a parent, a friend, a woman...
Exercising regularly is part of my personal growth. Taking time to pray is part of my personal growth. Having a date night with my husband is part of my personal growth. Planning and organizing my work time is part of my personal growth. Reading to my kids is part of my personal growth. Going to bed early with a new magazine and a little dark chocolate is part of my personal growth.

The problem with such an inclusive definition is that the efforts I am making get swallowed up in normal routines and I don't remember to keep track of what I'm actually trying to accomplish. Then even if I'm making progress, I don't know it, so I get discouraged. I have a couple of methods that are helpful for keeping track of that progress, so I can congratulate myself or push myself a little harder, as the case may be.

3 Ways to Track Your Progress

• Joe's Goals is a simple online tool.
  It makes it easy to organize and track your goals. You're already checking your email, anyway! You create a user name and password (quick and simple form) and then you can add as many goals as you want, and you can add logs to keep notes about your goals. I went a little overboard when I first found this site and popped about 20 goals up there, which quickly became more burdensome than encouraging to keep up with. So I recommend sticking to a smaller amount, the ones that you really want to make progress in, and focus on tracking those.
• Keeping a journal helps me, too.
  I just use a simple spiral notebook, these days, though I've gone from one extreme to the other with what I write in as a journal. I like those pretty, thick journals with unlined pages the best, but sometimes the formality of it keeps me from using it practically. Maybe I'll graduate up from spiral-bound one of these days, but I'm going to keep it simple for now.
  I use it to track progress by simply jotting a few notes down in my daily writing time. For example, right now I write down what I'm reading in the Bible that morning (as well as any verses that particularly stand out) and then usually a little outline of what I want to accomplish in writing that day. On a more "journaling" level, I write about what's frustrating me, what I feel stuck on, what I'm making progress in, what I'd like to work on in the future, what it might be time to drop. It's a good way to think through the choices I'm making in personal growth.
• My daily planner is my other key tool.
  I have a big but simple one: it's 8 1/2" by 11" size, in weekly divisions, so each day of the week has a nice big space to write in. I draw a couple of lines down the days, so I end up with three sections in each day. One shows me my basic schedule, any events or activities; the next is my to do list (non-writing) for the day; and the last is my editorial calendar for the day. My planner is my best tool for reaching my goals with what I'm writing, because it lets me see quickly what I haven't accomplished, what is important, what is due, and when I'm trying to do too much.

Other Ideas

• Make a chart and put it on your bathroom or bedroom wall.
• Find a friend pursuing the same goal and keep each other accountable for daily/weekly progress. This works really well for exercise, for me.
• Buy yourself a reward (something you really want) and then give it to your spouse or a friend for safekeeping. You get it only when you have reached a certain point (lost 10 lbs., logged 10 miles, written 10 pages, called 3 friends, whatever).
• Schedule a particular time every day or week for working on your goal, and note whether or not you keep the appointment.
• Use a coin jar to track your progress: put a coin in for every mile you run, page you write, day you get up early... When the jar is full, count them up! Then go cash in and get something fun. Then start over.

My husband is changing jobs after working at this one since he was 15. It's been his only job for his entire life. It's a family business, and he has loved it, but it's time. Change is moving in, people are moving on. It's the right thing, but that doesn't make it easier. Nothing is easy right now, because nothing is familiar.

That Lost Feeling

I remember that same lost feeling for the first few months of marriage, maybe even the whole first year. I was knocked-out in love with my husband (I still am) and I knew I wanted nothing else but to be with him. But it wasn't easy because it was all so different. No parents. No familiar routine. No Mom to run errands with. No old friends to call up for shopping or coffee. Everything was new and different, and because of that, it was difficult to accept.

Everything changed with one morning's strange epiphany during that first year. Joe was doing something - I don't even remember what - but it was different than what I was used to. I was just watching him, feeling that tightening, the offense at what was unfamiliar, when it came: the fact that it was different didn't make it wrong. It just made it different, and I could get used to different.

I Can Get Used to Different

That moment was the first in many steps upward, back to the comfortable glow of familiarity. When I reached that threshold of being comfortable in my new life, it wasn't because I had finally managed to make it the same as my old life. It was because I had accepted a new set of circumstances and behaviors and routines and surroundings as my own. I had put aside the prejudice against the unknown, allowed it to come close enough to me to become known, and had accepted it as something equally good to what I had before. In many ways, something much, much better.

The One That Stuck

I could have shortened that process had I learned a little something about acceptance before getting married. I think it was shorter than it might have been because I had been watching, a long time, and making those resolutions that single people love to make before marriage. A lot of them disappeared once I experienced marriage, but one stuck. Over and over I had seen my friends and family expend all their energy on changing their spouses. It seemed so obvious to me, the single and objective onlooker. You can't change somebody else, and you just frustrate each other when you try.

Create a New Right

I didn't understand the powerful motivation of wanting to accomplish that change until I entered marriage. It's not as simple and petty as I thought, not necessarily a power struggle, though it often turns into that. Mostly we start trying to change each other because we are trying to create a life that feels right. We have strong ideas about what right is. It takes a good bucketful of humility dumped on your head before you realize that sometimes "right" is merely a matter of preference, and fighting to the death over preference is just stupid. Create a new right, together, and you'll both be happier.

I think that's what acceptance is. It's letting go of comfort long enough to get close to the unfamiliar. It's letting go of assumptions long enough to see that the unfamiliar isn't so bad. It's letting go of control long enough to let someone else's preferences be just as important as yours. It's a difficult thing to do.

But we need to learn how to do it.

Some days I wake up and I don't feel comfortable with myself. Some days the whole world feels foreign. Some days the ability to accept is the only thing I've got going.

So I'm thinking about registering for this 5k. I need to lose ten pounds before I start getting baby fat again. Hmm.I need to get some motivation for exercising regularly, and paying $20 to be in a 5K might just do it. I worked in the yard for 2 hours today. That's a good start. I've been tired, and haven't gotten up early as usual for the past couple of days. That's not a good start. I'm behind on a few things... but I weeded all around my compost bin and the back patio. I did not take "before" photos because, well, it was just too ugly. I don't have any "after" photos yet, either, because I'm not through yet.

I guess I have two goals with exercising: I figure if I can get myself up early again, and go out for a 30 minute walk in the morning, then I can spend 20 minutes working in the yard/garden. And, if I am walking and gardening every day, I can get in shape enough to survive a 5K.

I'm kind of talking myself into this...

I get us all on a pretty, shiny schedule, and these silly kids won't quit growing. Mara stays awake through at least one naptime, now, wreaking havoc instead of sleeping peacefully. The days of two extended kid-quiet times are over.

Yesterday I kept Mara up in the morning while Robbie napped as usual. I didn't really have a plan, just a vague idea that I would throw some toys over in the living room and she would play quietly while I wrote for a couple of hours as usual. Every person reading this who has a child is laughing right now. You know what happened, or rather, what didn't happen.

She did pretty well at staying in her designated play area; we've worked on that before so it's nothing new. But the playing quietly all by herself - when Mommy is still in sight - oh ha ha.

"Mama, cor?" (color) "No, baby, not now. Mommy's working."

"Mama, wead? Book?" "No, sweetie, not now. Mommy's working."

"Mama, choo choo tree?" (choo choo train). "No, Mommy's not going to play with trains right now."

"Mama! Boo!" (Her little head pops up from behind the bench at the dining table. I can't help laughing. The scenario repeats two hundred times.)

I didn't get much work done yesterday morning. She took a great nap in the afternoon, so I think the schedule works well for her, but by afternoon my mental abilities move at a slug-like pace. I can do general no-think stuff, like pay bills and cook and deal with the mail and answer emails, but actual writing doesn't go too well after 3 p.m. So I took a nap, too. I guess the day wasn't a complete loss.

Last night, after putting the babies to bed and whining to Joe for a bit, I took a nice long soak in the bathtub, because that's what I do when I need to think. (That, or take a long walk, and I was just not feeling up to it.) Here are my options: 1) Quit trying to do anything other than just the Mommy/run the household thing. 2) Continue shutting Mara in her room during morning nap time, giving her a pile of books, and hoping nothing catastrophic happens. 3) Figure out a way to keep her occupied with her own "work" while Mommy works.

Oh, #3 I like! Actually, #1 sounds appealing when I'm tired at night, but I really enjoy writing, web design, and helping Joe with his business stuff; even if I wanted to quit, I probably couldn't extricate myself at this point. And I've done solely the Mommy/Household thing for months on end; while it was challenging and fun, a significant part of me was missing. I got bored. I started to contemplate taking up complicated craft projects that require a large investment in many tiny itty bitty supplies. But I don't like crafting. You make "crafty," I make "crappy." It's just not me.

I like a pile of projects on my to-do list. I like learning new things, writing, reading, thinking, analyzing information, writing, compiling, finding resources, researching, organizing projects, managing, writing.

So. #1 is out, #2 is stupid. #3 is it. Brilliant. How?

I've been reading about Montessori methods lately (you can see my post on it here) so I decided that's what I wanted to incorporate, on a very small scale. Basically, next to my office, set up a play area for Mara with several different activities that she can get out and put away herself, a little Mara-sized table and chair, and provide a little direction when needed. I figured that would work for about an hour or so, then I can let her watch a Baby Einstein, and then rest for 20 or 30 minutes, because she still gets a little tired. (At this point I stopped planning, because my hands were all wrinkly. Time to get out of the bathtub.)

One problem: my current "office" is the dining room table. This morning I tackled clearing off half of the long table Joe uses as a desk in the basement. It's a work in progress (don't look at the far end of the table, past Joe's really huge monitor, to the piles of stuff.) It's workable, though; I have a nice, big, clean work space for laptop, papers, books, phone, big glass of water, camera... And I can use Joe's chair because he's not here in the mornings. Whoopdedoo!

I have a big rug on the floor over to the right. I found a little green table that is the perfect Mara size, and she has a paint can for a stool, plus her own little rocking chair. I'm still working on the activities; today she colored for quite a while, then played with her number and shape cards until I decided it was movie time. Yes, she interrupted me several times, but with a little direction and encouragement she kept herself occupied for the most part.

I'm thinking this can work. I'm hoping. I'm really, really hoping...

Maria Montessori, you better not have made this stuff up.

I tend toward what is easy. Discipline, pain, sacrifice? I shudder at the thought. Yesterday the sermon was on being spirit-led. Sounds nice, but it was uncomfortable: controlling your appetite, saying no to what you want, realizing that the urge toward what is easy, comfortable, and instantly gratifying is probably the opposite of what spirit-led means.

Everything worthwhile that I have done has required discipline, pain, and sacrifice. Think about pregnancy and birth. Even getting married, candy-coated as that time was, required change, which is always difficult, and leaving behind the old life to begin a new one. Read the rest of this entry »

Most worthwhile things are difficult at first. I wasn't born a professional; no one is, whether their chosen field be basketball, business management, or motherhood. Most of the time, I achieve a level of mediocrity in what I do and stay there, satisfied to be average or a little above. Read the rest of this entry »

Alex and Brett Harris wrote a book called "Do Hard Things" which I probably would know nothing about but for an excerpt in TPE, the magazine of my church's denomination. (Yep, I'm one of those crrrrazy Pentecostals. Are you scared? Are you making assumptions right now? You are, aren't you? That's okay. I love you anyway.)

I was impressed. The book is directed toward teenagers, which, strangely enough, is a group that no longer accepts me as one of their own. (I am still a little hurt by this.) The book's premise seems to be (understand, I have only read an excerpt, not the whole book, so I'm sailing a little blind here) that the "Myth of Adolescence" has turned a group that should be vibrant, energetic, unstoppable into a lethargic and rebellious one.

What a waste. As the book says, "We waste some of the best years of our lives and never reach our full God-given potential. We never attempt things that would stretch, grow and strengthen us. We end up weak and unprepared for the amazing future that could have been."

I'm 26. My husband is 25. We've both been working since we were about 14. Of course, it was part-time during the school year, and some of my earlier jobs were just baby-sitting. But at that tender, adolescent age, our parents expected us to begin to take responsibility, to pay for stuff we wanted, to contribute. We didn't have to put grocery money into the family pot or anything, but that probably wouldn't have been a bad idea.

We're not rich, by any means. But we have worked for and gained an independence that many of my peers seem unable to find. And we're not talking teenagers! It starts then, back at 13, or before, maybe at 10, or 6, when the whole world revolves around a child's happiness. At what point do you let the child know that the point of the world isn't to make him happy? It's a sad awakening, and I have friends who are still fighting that knowledge as hard as they can.

Some people manage to avoid acknowledging that truth their entire lives, and they are the ones who Alex and Brett describe on their blog as " Peter Pans who shave." (This article they wrote describes more about "adultescence.")

I see that in my generation, now in our mid-twenties. I see that in the one coming behind me, the teens with shiny laptops and enormous libraries of music on their iPods, but with no vision for the future, no library of skills or knowledge or character from which to draw.

We're going to be playing catch-up for a while. We better start getting over our own lies and pointing the way.

I had a dream about a woman who wanted to be a chef. "Someday," she said, "I hope I can be a passionate cook like that." In the dream, I was trying to find a way to leave her a note with three simple words on it: Why Not Today?

Why trade today for someday? Why push our dreams back day after day, until years roll by? Sometimes we forget the dreams. We let the daily complexities overwhelm us. We let the obligations reach a level we can barely survive. We let our lives become controlled chaos, and all our time, energy, and resources go toward holding it together one more day. We never give ourselves a moment to ask what would happen if we let go. Would the world really end? Would our world end?

We need to end this chaotic, frenzied world, this empty, lethargic one. You come home from running all day and collapse in front of a box to watch other people have fun doing the things you wish you could do. Underneath the chatter, you are bored. You never stir the deeper water. The foaming and rushing on top make you seem busy, active, productive, but you are not drawing from the greater resources. You are not even allowing yourself to look that deep.

Deep in that undisturbed place are the visions and dreams. You sunk them like a pirate's chest. You left them there to wait. You wait too long, you'll die and they will die with you.

Meanwhile, there are storms and troubles building on the surface. You are navigating your boat down the river and you have to pay attention. If you jump off to dive into deeper places, the boat will hit the bank. You'll lose direction. You'll lose everything. The wind will fling your vessel and all it holds up and down the river. You will surface and find yourself alone, struggling to swim with no place to rest.

But if you wait until everything is calm, find a good place to tie up your boat, secure your stuff, clean up the storm damage, make sure everyone is okay... the next wind will be rising. Too late to dive in now; you've got to handle this first. Maybe then...

That perfect calm never comes. We have to find a way to live, to keep cruising down the river, maintaining a steady course, and get to that treasure. Nobody wants a shipwreck. But what is the good of an empty ship? Or one with a hold full of junk, haphazard leftovers you skimmed off the surface as you floated by? You may get to port safely, but what will you have once you arrive? The treasure is not for later; it is for now. If it is truly treasure, it will survive the using, the journey, and so will we.

We have to clear out the junk so there is room for the treasure. We must invent ways to handle the storms and keep going in the right direction. We must find a way to get down, get deep, get to what really matters and bring it into our ship. We must make those dives often so that as we use our treasure along the way we can replenish our store.

It seems impossible, but it isn't. There are ways to live deeper than this surface scurrying that we do. As we begin to wake up, we can find them.

The first step toward fulfilment is dissatisfaction.

Resistance is the most toxic force on the planet.

It is the root of more unhappiness than poverty, disease, and erectile dysfunction. To yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be. If you believe in God (and I do) you must declare Resistance evil, for it prevents us from achieving the life God intended when He endowed each of us with our own unique genius. (From the book The War of Art by Steven Pressfield)

The work of art, of creation, is given all of us.

We have a calling. Starting a profitable business, baking cookies, writing poetry, raising children, running a shop, fixing cars, making crafts, designing shoes, doing accounts, designing curriculum, painting, singing, reading, reviewing, helping, overseeing, managing, organizing; whatever the term, some action, some work for life, is yours. It belongs to you and you belong to it. No one is relieved of this responsibility. No one is inartistic, or unable, just dull, unmotivated, lazy, fearful.

Every attempt we make toward something higher and better finds resistance.

We camouflage the call. We are afraid to see it. We make it all so complicated when most of it is so very, very simple. Go check the Self-Help section. Hundreds of titles all say essentially the same thing. This month's version has newer packaging and a cuter catch-phrase. But it's either 1) stuff you know instinctively or 2) drivel to make you feel good about ignoring the stuff you know instinctively.

This article, for instance.

You don't need it.

You know there are things you need to do in life. You know there are particular things for you to do. You feel the tug. You know there is resistance because you are the one resisting. You even know what to do about the resistance, don't you? No? Can't remember? I'll give you a hint:

Ignore the resistance and do what you're supposed to do anyway. Take action.

(Okay, that was more than a hint.) But you knew already! You could probably write this article but for one small quality I (we assume) have and you (we assume) would like to have more of: the voice of successful experience.

Oh yes, you have experience.

You have knowledge. but you're reading this article on the premise that I, the Author-with-a-capital-A, not only have the knowledge but also have the map to the secret goldmine you need: success in applying the knowledge. That little glimmer of gold is what keeps the self-help genre alive. If we share the same knowledge, have similar experience, but I have succeeded and you have not (yet, you say to yourself), then I must have the secret. The key. The difference. It's in this article, somewhere. If you read it all, it will be bestowed upon you, like a prize for wading through all the paragraphs: the final key to insert into the slot which will unlock the door which will release the treasure of your own creative genius successfully!

It's just a flash in the pan.

Ever hear of fool's gold? It's just a sparkly mineral, but there were lots of gold rush miners who got pretty excited. For a while.

The only thing I know that you don't know is that there is no secret to success.

Understand, I'm not saying there is nothing secret about the deep, divine, meaningful, beautiful, worthwhile things of life. There is, and all of us struggle continually to get closer, get more, get immersed, or else to utterly deny its existence. We identify with different parts of the struggle. Marriage, parenting, organizing, self-esteem, setting limits, creative flow. Whatever. The common, and misleading, theme is this: You are a Victim and I, the Helpful Author/Owner/Guru will set you free. I have the key that you, poor child, were never given. I have the question you didn't know you could ask. I'm not better or smarter or worthier... just luckier.

Here's a simple idea we need to deconstruct:

If I'm not successful (moreso than you) because I am better/smarter/worthier than you, why should you listen to me? Don't you want a teacher who is wiser than you? Yes. You do. Heretofore you have gone right along with (sincere or not) self-deprecating authors and have attributed success to that lucky something, that missing piece they somehow found that you somehow missed. They were good enough to share it with you. That's only right, really.

Let's rethink all that.

I'm not saying I am smarter or better or worthier than you. I'm probably not. What I am saying is this: there is no secret that lucky people know and unlucky people don't. Success depends upon your choices and your actions, your habits and your diligence, your persistence and your willingness to work hard, every day, until you see movement. Then you work harder. You are not the victim of cosmic oversight.

Success isn't a given to the lucky few; there are no automatic winners and automatic victims.

But we are enamored of victimization. It is appealing. It removes the responsibility from our shoulders. We can sigh and say, Oh well, it isn't my fault. But if it isn't your fault, my friend, then you really are powerless to fix it. Sure, there is resistance to action, to change, to forward movement, to positive choices. Resistance comes from everywhere: your family, your friends, the culture, the workplace, your peers, your church, your social life. The only Resistance that matters, though, the only one that can actually stop you, is what you allow to come from yourself.

We all have a calling, a work.

Destiny. Fate. Choice. Success. It's what you burn with, what you hate hearing about when it isn't about you, what you can't stop thinking about, what you love, what you drift to while you're waiting for the plane to take off or the game to start or your friend to call. Some of us have covered it deeply and can't even call its name right now. We may have forgotten, but it is a temporary forgetting, one we walked into voluntarily. Somehow we forgot how to stop forgetting. We fixate on little things, details, methods, tradition, criticism, circumstance and let the most important things drift away.

The call isn't lost.

The work, the sanctity, the dream, the draw: it is just buried. It is not my job to tell you what it is. You know it's there. Keep walking toward something better, even if in little steps. Resist the Resistance. You will begin to uncover treasure.